Whisky Van Gogh Go

Am I doing it right?

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:55:01 -0700

Am I doing it right?

new-aesthetic: The New Aesthetic isn’t Tupac doing it, the New...

Thu, 03 May 2012 07:54:00 -0700

The New Aesthetic isn’t Tupac doing it, the New Aesthetic is everyone doing it.

TLC plan to resurrect Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes as hologram for 2012 reunion tour | Mail Online

Digital zombie celebrities.

Digital. Zombie. Celebrities.

There’s a mess of sci-fi stories about this but for the moment I’m drawing a blank.

your work is your life part seven

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:23:00 -0700

“We’re all going overboard (regarding vintage “clicky”-style keyboards)… we spend eight, nine hours a day using the things… of all the things we obsess over that we only use a few minutes a week, why not get obsessive over something you use eight or nine hours a day? I used to be a real cheapskate on office chairs, but I think it actually makes sense to splurge, even if you’re a generally frugal person, it might make sense to spend a lot of money on an office chair.” — John Gruber, The Talk Show

This was my reasoning behind switching from PCs to a much slower, much more expensive Powerbook. Compare the (then) $500 premium to the thousand bucks people will throw at some meaningless feature of an automobile.

“It’s highly possible you might spend more time with close workers than with your spouse” — @robrob

Same thing. Being in a job you hate or having co-workers whom you’re personally incompatible with is as bad or worse than being married to someone you hate.

This is most of your life we’re talking about. This should be a big deal to you.

svpply: The Svpply iPhone app is here! We know a lot of you...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:52:08 -0700

svpply:

The Svpply iPhone app is here!

We know a lot of you have been waiting for this, so we’re excited to announce that our new Svpply iPhone app is available for download in the App store.

We’re super proud of this one. With robust categories, a beautiful custom feed of products, super fast search, and some new interactions that we think suit us well, we put a lot into making this the best possible mobile shopping experience out there.

Speak up if you’ve got any suggestions, we’ll be watching Twitter and Tumblr closely in the coming weeks.

Next up, iPad App!

Get the Svpply iPhone App here

- -

The Svpply iPhone app is available for free download from the iTunes App Store, and is compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iOS 4.3 and up. Let us know if you find any bugs or have any comments! support@svpply.com

like 2600 got guest-edited by McSweeney’s

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:06:57 -0700

like 2600 got guest-edited by McSweeney’s

I taught myself how to read on those strips. (via The Official K...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:02:00 -0800

I taught myself how to read on those strips.

(via The Official K Chronicles and (Th)ink Website)

"People in technology need to understand the creative process — how art is made — and vice versa. The..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:48:12 -0800

“

People in technology need to understand the creative process — how art is made — and vice versa. The two worlds are in a collision course, and they’re not necessarily going to break each other, one or the other won’t win, but they’ll fuse into something that isn’t recognizable to other at the moment.

‘Real artists ship,’ that’s a saying that Jobs uttered, but it actually came from Hollywood. Real artists weren’t people who stared at their navels, they were people who shipped a product and got paid for it. That was considered a virtue and that’s what Hollywood did to the envy of everyone.

”

- terrific episode of Horace Dediu’s Critical Path podcast

"My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:29:00 -0800

“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”

- Norman Maclean, via Best Made Co. (via viafrank) via via via

one of the more interesting spam messages I’ve seen in a...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:15:47 -0800

one of the more interesting spam messages I’ve seen in a while

barelysarcasm: melancholyjen: mydrunkkitchen: I super don’t...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:27:14 -0800

barelysarcasm:

melancholyjen:

mydrunkkitchen:

I super don’t even need to read this article…

and nor do i.

AND ME EITHER!

"One of the reasons I like Svpply so much is I have found it to be helpful in buying fewer, but..."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:36:00 -0800

“One of the reasons I like Svpply so much is I have found it to be helpful in buying fewer, but better, things. One way I use Svpply is to find high-quality merchandise from small businesses that manufacture goods in the US. When I actually buy something I find there, the digital shopping that takes place on Svpply is still helping to contribute to real-world consumerism, but perhaps a less-bad variety.”

- Chris Tackett, The Atlantic. This was exactly my goal for Svpply: to assist in what I hope becomes a broad cultural shift where people acquire fewer, nicer things.

"Creatives have an inherent affection for every process involved in realizing their creative vision...."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:33:07 -0800

“Creatives have an inherent affection for every process involved in realizing their creative vision. No one that likes to design for the web hates code; they hate the pain associated with not knowing how to code.”

- (via fieldstudy)

"The grass roots they can generate is, frankly, concerning."

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:48:00 -0800

“The grass roots they can generate is, frankly, concerning.”

- Cary Sherman, RIAA. Please pause for just a moment, and reflect. Have you ever said something massively, callously, inappropriately stupid? If not, I would suggest that perhaps you are lacking in self-awareness. Think harder.

If so, did you immediately realize how stupid you were at that moment, or did it take a while before you processed that?

Cary Sherman either does or does not realize that he has a fundamental misunderstanding of Western Civilization.

"George Lucas has decided to devote the rest of his life to what cineastes in the 1970s used to call..."

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:15:00 -0800

“George Lucas has decided to devote the rest of his life to what cineastes in the 1970s used to call personal films. They’ll be small in scope, esoteric in subject and screened mostly in art houses. They’ll be like the experimental movies Lucas made in the 1960s, around the time he was at U.S.C. film school, when he recorded clouds moving over the desert and made a movie based on an E. E. Cummings poem.”

- NYT. I will show up for every goddamned one of these navel-gazers.

I would say [Buffy the Vampire Slayer] is the Gen Y equivalent of modern myth to Gen X’s Star...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:45:00 -0800

I would say [Buffy the Vampire Slayer] is the Gen Y equivalent of modern myth to Gen X’s Star Wars “fighting Daddy” obsessions.
— Jacob Clifton

Darth Vader tells Skywalker he has to made a decision: He can keep fighting a war he will probably lose, or he can compromise his ethics and succeed wildly. Many young adults face a similar decision after college, and those seen as “responsible” inevitably choose the latter path. However, an eight-year-old would never sell out. Little kids will always take the righteous option. And what’s intriguing about Gen Xers is they never really wavered from that decision. Luke’s quandary in The Empire Strikes Back is exactly like the situation facing Winona Rider in 1994′s Reality Bites: Should she stick with the nice, sensible guy who treats her well (Ben Stiller), or should she roll the dice with the frustrating boho bozo who treats her like crap (Ethan Hawke)?
— Chuck Klosterman

There’s a slightly embarrassing reptile-like part of my brain that would be perfectly happy if I strapped myself to an IV and just consumed cultural criticism for the rest of my life.

You have too many principles.
— a friend, a couple days ago

"To begin with, you long for money. Then you develop a liking for work. Work has a much stronger..."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:15:17 -0800

“To begin with, you long for money. Then you develop a liking for work. Work has a much stronger flavor than money. Ultimately, money is nothing more than a symbol of independence”

- Coco Chanel (via mollycrabapple)

My favorite videogames are those from which you walk away...

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:05:00 -0800

My favorite videogames are those from which you walk away feeling like an utter genius (Portal, Braid come to mind). For your consideration: English Country Tune for iOS.

nevver: Those We Lost In 2011 (from left: Kim Jong-il, Col....

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:57:09 -0800

nevver:

Those We Lost In 2011 (from left: Kim Jong-il, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, Family Circus creator Bil Keane, Osama bin Laden)

zen kōans for NYC cyclists

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0800

The city of New York has deployed a series of signs at locations where bicycle accidents are common. The signs feature haikus, the purpose of which is to capture the attention of bicyclists en route and… is this a social Darwinism thing?

The use of haiku is inappropriate; if they really want to paralyze the minds of cyclists, the obvious solution is Zen Kōans. I submit for your meditation:

The pupil asked Zhàozhōu, “Is a bike lane still a bike lane when it is only ever occupied by delivery trucks?” Zhàozhōu replied, “Wú.”
Without thinking of good or evil, show me your face before it hit the taxi door.
When a head unprotected by a helmet hits the pavement, does it hear a sound?
A cyclist on a bicycle is as a kitten in a shoebox, neither alive nor dead, in a perpetual dance with a fuckwad cab driver since the beginning of time.
If you meet David Byrne in a bike lane, kill him.

TiGr bicycle lock review

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:27:00 -0800

Last summer I had the opportunity to participate in a Kickstarter for the TiGr bicycle lock. I received my lock last week and couldn’t be happier.

The TiGr is a long titanium bow and a pocked-sized latch. It’s stronger than a Kryptonite D-Lock and weighs less than a bottle of water.

It looks a bit unwieldy out of the box — as long as a bicycle top tube — but in practice, I’ve found that it’s less visually obtrusive than a D-Lock and even easier to haul around. Shedding the pounds of a Kryptonite (or one of those gawdforsaken chains that so many New Yorkers carry) makes your bike feel like a totally new ride.

I expected that the lock wouldn’t be as versatile as a D-lock, but the opposite is true. The bow is incredibly flexible, so you can lock to a post of nearly any diameter, and the long reach of the bow even opens up new possibilities on already-crowded bike racks.

I was also skeptical of the velcro retention straps, but they work just fine. And manipulating the latch is faster than dealing with a D-Lock once you get the hang of it.

(Technically you are supposed to run it through a wheel but I never bother.)

Unless there’s some undiscovered weakness (a la the Bic pen trick), an entire industry has just been made obsolete. Every urban bicyclist is going to want one of these. I hope Mr. John Loughlin patented the hell out of it.

TiGr locks are shipping to Kickstarter backers today. Following that, I believe there will be a second run for public buyers via the website. I imagine that the final stage is a formal, permanent manufacturing company; interested investors should line up ASAP.