Wind Sculpture - Theo Jansen

Posted by Alex on June 10th, 2007 in Art, Required Reading, Sweet

This guy’s work is fantastic.



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And here’s a breakdown of his mechanics.


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Mutanagenic Slime and Weekend Plans

Posted by Alex on July 7th, 2006 in Required Reading, Blathering, Work, Ideas, Ridiculousness, Sweet

I’m leaving for the next few days. Up north with various friends. Tim’s cottage is apparently complete with jet skies. I’m excited.

lamb of the apocalypseI’ve come across some exceedingly strange pictures today, and I’m going to be interspersing them throughout this post. All of them are legitamate.
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Tom Robbins is my favorite author. You don’t as much read his books, as you become drunk in them. His phrasing and illuminating vocabulary leaves me wobbly-legged and dizzy. After finishing Fierce Invalids, my personal favorite, I passed out for like 3 hours dude omg.

I bought you a copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues online Tim, in appreciation of the use of your cottage this weekend. So dont pick up a copy for our gay little bookclub. It should arrive next week.

lamb of the apocalypse_ _ _

The computer tech at Doner is a wild man. He has a bushy beard, rides a Honda motorcycle, smokes a pack a day and is severely paranoid. He’s also damn good with computers. It’s always interesting getting in conversations with him about the governments supposed role in watching and recording various information about our lives, and the wrongs they’ve allegedly performed. The conspiracy theorist and The Man-hater within me eats it up.
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The open source community is simultaneously awesome and stupid. Morons expect ridiculous amounts of work from devs and refuse to listen to them when they (somewhat) patiently explain why the idea the moron posted about is not only inviable or low priority, but more often than not just a stupid bad awful idea. Some of the best, most stable software in the world is open source, but their job ticket trak pages are full of st00pid dj0rks h00 ju57 Python Ironywant what they want, and they want it now, and without any manners thank you very much. It’s free. You aren’t owed anything by the devs, they do it out of the kindness of their hearts, to give back to the community that everybody benefits from. [example]

By the way, this last picture is kind of hard to make out from the thumbnail. It’s a Burmese Python, that fought and killed a large alligator, then attempted to swollow it whole. And exploded. In Florida. [source]


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NiN @ DTE

Posted by Alex on June 28th, 2006 in Art, Music, Sweet

Saw Nine Inch Nails with Tim and Eric Sunday. Awesome show. They have the best live set/light show I’ve ever seen. A cage grate is lowered over the lip of the stage, and images are projected onto it. Behind them, their jumbo-screen also has imagery. This creates this cube environment that they are in the middle of, and opens all kinds of cool options for them. They projected a lot of textures and color waves, but it was how they tied it to their sound that really got me. It’s really worth seeing. All in all, a great show. Heard a bunch of my favorite NiN songs: “Closer,” “Into the Void,” “Ruiner,” Head Like a Hole,” “The Wretched,” etc. Unfortunattly, they did not do this:


This just proved to me how much I need to see Tool live. Before the concert, and throughout opening band peaches, we sat in the car and had a private Tool concert. On a final note there was no lack of bizarro people pestering us with their various requirements.

[preveiw of painting page]


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Futurama is GO + aScannerDarkly

Posted by Alex on June 25th, 2006 in Required Reading, Sweet

I just found this out.

Comedy Central revives Futurama with 13 new episodes in 2008.

Awesome. Why this didn’t happen 3 years ago is a mystery to me. Futurama is a way better show than a lot of people give it credit for. I’m wondering if the new episodes will be as different from the originals as the new episodes of Family Guy. I’m also glad  that its out from the claw of Fox. I don’t like Fox. 

[edit: Futurama is not free. I’ve been lying to myself.]
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I’m also getting very excited about A Scanner Darkly. Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s (BladeRunner) novel, directed by Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Dazed and Confused).

“A Scanner Darkly” is set in suburban Orange County, California in the future. It imagines a paranoid world in which it seems two of every 10 Americans has been hired by the government to spy on the other 8 — in the name of national security and drug enforcement. When one reluctant government recruit (Reeves) is ordered to start spying on his friends, he is launched on a journey into the absurd, where outsourced government contractors largely define the social construct, where identities and loyalties are impossible to decode, and where not even his girlfriend can be trusted. The film highlights the inconsistencies and ironic consequences of the war on drugs.[source]

To top this off, Radiohead has a song on the soundtrack… Fog. It gives an idea of what the new albums may sound like.

[edit: Fog is a b-side off of Amnesiac. Oops.]

This comes out in 2 weeks! I’m excited. Waking Life is one of my favorite movies, and is what originally got me interested in lucid dreaming. The rotoscoping techniques that Richard Linklater employs are competely awesome. And if you can’t follow his dialogue, you can just sit there and watch the pretty colors. It’s worthing watch both ways.

[Thank you adamriff for radiohead news.]




all content other than where non-explicitly stated 2007 copyright alex smith