RKNet Blog... Thing

I just want to apologize for any visitors who have actually gone to infinitedesu.com. While I feel as though I did provide fair warning when I originally linked it, I was looking at WPStats and couldn’t help but notice that people have actually clicked on that.

What you will find, upon visiting infinitedesu.com is the following: …nothing.
Apparently, I let the hosting or the domain or something expire. Could have sworn that auto-renewed. Well kids, looks like it’s technically up for grabs. If you buy it because you saw the name here, let me know so I can congratulate you on your refined tastes.

But if domain sniping isn’t your cup of tea, what you can do is visit RKNet’s new affiliate, TorsoPants. I came across their site earlier today and I was so impressed I decided that I had to be their friend. You can be their friend too, just tell them I sent you, ok?

There’s so much going for them: their site works in Opera without fuss, they’ve got all kinds of great design on the site, there are more hidden fun things than at a hidden fun thing convention, and I guess they’ve got good clothing, or something. I definitely spent a while at the site today, really just exploring all the things to see and do, and trying to decide whether or not I can afford to buy a pair of torsopants (which for those keeping score at home, is like a “shirt” only superior in every way) before I spend the money to renew Infinite Desu.

If I get the cash-money necessary to resurrect infinitedesu.com myself (hint), then I hope to achieve a similar standard of site awesomeness that I saw demonstrated by the proprietors of TorsoPants, instead of the old infinitedesu.com, which just had an annoying animated gif for a background, and the word “desu” over and over and over again.

I realize that some of my visitors may be coming here because they have no idea what the deal is with “desu”. I can appreciate being in the dark like that, and would like to take a minute (just sit right there) to explain a little more about what desu is and why I felt compelled to even buy infinitedesu.com in the first place.

Desu

Verb. Japanese form of the verb “to be”. Example: Watashi wa Amerika-jin desu. I am an American.

(aux) (pol) polite copula in Japanese; (P) [via Jeffrey's Japanese Dictionary]

Exclamatory. Taking a cue from a character named Suiseiseki featured in the 2004 anime, Rozen Maiden, people on the internet have come to use desu in excess. This is most often found in the form of the “desu flood” where by a post or entire thread is comprised of ONLY the word desu, repeated over and over again. It is the determination of Encyclopedia Dramatica’s shadowy editors that Desu is a classic meme. No other sources seemed to refute this.

And now…
Needs more desu!

In an attempt to add some much needed variety to the image macro or LOL image market, one website has risen to the task with a remarkable strategy that not only takes on the image macro concept as a whole, but also makes fun of Vanilla Ice at the same time. And let’s face it, who doesn’t like making fun of Vanilla Ice (except maybe Vanilla Ice himself)?

WordToYour.com is an image macro blog dedicated to delivering the absolute most ridiculous photos of humans, animals, and situations possible.

Although the site has posts dating back to August of 2007, there is no generator for the “word to your” captioning. In order to have your photographic and captioning genius displayed on the site, you need to email the proprietor at wordtoyour A gmail.com (where A is for at, children!). On the one hand, this seems relatively slow and tedious in this faced paced world of caption generators and photo hosting sites. I mean, if I can’t take an embarassing photo of my friend’s child eating out of the cat’s dish with my cell phone, upload it to Flickr instantly, and then slap a caption of malformed english on it within five minutes, then what good is even trying, right?

Well, I for one am of the school of thought that not everyone’s adorable little furball (that broad discription includes children as well, FYI) is worthy of captioning in the first place. Just look at icanhascheezburger. They found a great niche in the cat macro, and suddenly everybody’s 50 year old aunt thought their widdle kiddums was just hilarious enough to be famous on the internet. (Exhibit A)

So, if it takes a bit longer to get the photos captioned, and up, then there is a possibility that only the worthy will survive. WordToYour.com has done a pretty awesome job so far. I read through the entire archive and aside from being utterly horrified once or twice (Exhibit B), I definitely lol’d quite a few times.

Also, I’d like to demonstrate two instances of an image. One in what’s been dubbed “lolcat” format, and one in word-to-your format.

see more crazy cat pics

Obviously it’s subject to interpretation, personal preferences, and that lot, but I submit that the short, sweet “Word to your protective glass!” captures the inherant ha-ha value of the image far better than the much longer caption as seen from ICHCB.

I strongly recommend visiting WordToYour.com. After all, it’s about damn time for someone else to piss in the memepool.

Jeremy Pettis has a virtually unusable, but intriguing, site. There is almost nothing of value I can tell you about it except for the following facts:

• It features type designed around an animal for each letter of the alphabet.
• Each one spells out the name of the animal in the type design.
• Each panel links to its mirror on Flickr, but the description is still illegible.
• There is what I assume is a very stirring introduction to this project, but it is too small to read.
• Some of the type faces are brilliant. Some are just plain illegible, but still visually appealing as forms.
• The site scrolls horizontally.
• Another peek at the Flickr account reveals the following: “My Senior Thesis at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2007.”
• The Flickr account also reveals sketches generated during the early stages of the project.

Other than that, the only thing I can recommend is to visit the site and view for yourself. It’s a great artistic diversion, and the linked Flickr profile definitely has a lot more goodies and insight into the creator, but if you’re looking to find a legible copy of the introduction or the descriptions of each typeface, I’m all out of leads.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love my job, and I am sure that the people at Valleywag, Wonkette, Gawker, Gizmodo, and Defamer all have to work very hard. Still, with this disclosure of the new pay scale for 2008, I can’t help but be ridiculously jealous. Who wouldn’t want to get paid money in buckets for coming up with the hottest dish? I had a flash in the pan when I got that inside tip on the Rackspace situation, even if it turned out to be a bit off. (The article should be accurate overall, or at least provide sources to the final, real scenario.)

Oh well. Maybe some day this blog will fall into an update cycle and I can stop dreaming about making money for writing on the internet, and actually start doing it. Does anybody have any good books or blogs to recommend for achieving such a goal? Or would anyone with insight on the matter like to help by writing about experiences writing on the internet? It would be a lot of fun to interview someone who has made a living from strictly internet-generated revenues.

In what can best be described as a very long pitch to get people to join a group called Question Authority on MondoGlobo, Phil Leggiere provides this timeline of the Bill of Rights during the Bush Administration.

It does cite sources all along the way, such as the NY Times, Slate, and US Today, so it can’t really be written off as so much unverifiable conspiracy theory. Still, this is a very long timeline, stretching in a rather poorly designed column from 2001 to this year.

There are gems like this:

June

In “Bong Hits for Jesus” case Supreme court rules that student free speech rights do not extend to promotion of drug use.

And more urgent-sounding items brought up such as:

May

National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) establishes a new post-disaster plan (with disaster defined as any incident, natural or man-made, resulting in extraordinary mass casualties, damage or disruption) which places the president in charge of all three branches of government. The directive overrides the National Emergencies Act which gives Congress power to determine the duration of a national emergency.

Note: For what it’s worth, both of those items are from this year.

It would be really nice if someone could arrange this in a more smooth, visual fashion, rather than a giant article. It is far easier to swallow large timelines of events when arranged as, well, a timeline.

Incidentally, after a little poking around, I discovered that RU Sirius is a member of Question Authority, and the group itself was created by user “MondoGlobo“, who in turn links to 10 Zen Monkeys. All that lead me to look back through Valleywag, where I discovered a brief blurb about MondoGlobo, 10 Zen Monkeys, and RU Sirius.

Given all that, it is difficult to say at this time if the agenda of Question Authority and this timeline is to generate more members for the group, or to generate attention to MondoGlobo itself.

The American Society of Magazine Editors over at magazine.org have picked their favorite covers of 2007. The seven categories looked at overall cover qualities, cover specifics, and industry types. There are some doozies, and Stephen Colbert made it on the list three times with his appearences on the cover of Wired and GQ.

Most of the choices seem sensible, but the Service and Fashion covers strike me as somewhat uninspired.

My personal favorite?

Just to keep things brief:
I dreamt I had a fish tank with a few kinds of viscious, snappy fish in it, and a small octopus and some other kind of shellfish or something. I accidentally screwed up the whole aquairum by collapsing one of the sides leaving only a tiny bit of water at the bottom, and nearly crushing the fish. I set everything back up and added in the appropriate salt water for this collection of pirhana like fish. (One looked like one of those clap-trap deals from Donkey Kong Jr.)
Next time I looked into the fish tank, it was full of irridescent octopi. They would look like small, but relatively normal, bluish and reddish octopi, then they would contract and glow in neon colors with cartoon faces. I watched this in fascination, as more were arrising, born out of the dead bodies of the fish that did in fact die because I had broken the tank.
That’s all I remember now. There was so much more. There has been so much more lately but I unfortunately haven’t had time to record the overall details. I have been told I need to watch Until the End of the World. …I can’t imagine why.

Hard on the heels of my DESU-related discovery, my friend Keith sent me a veritable dragon’s hoard of gamer themed motivational posters! Tabletop game nerds rejoice, because there are a lot of in-joke posters in here for you. A lot of good MMO, RPG and general geek goodness abound in this collection. I think I saved most of the ones I saw. With a staggering collection of 272 of these puppies, if this doesn’t burn out the humor value for you… then it means they really are just that funny!

Do you have a few minutes?
Do you have a microphone or some audio clips of your voice?
Do have a picture on your computer that you feel represents you?

If so, you can go to Lifehouse Method and they will process all of those things into a musical portrait of you! Word of caution to anyone who runs around with all the bells and whistles turned off on their browsers: you will need Java and Flash for this. Don’t worry though, before you go through the process, they do a short browser test to make sure you have everything you need. I found the signup process short and sweet, with just a touch of warm fuzzies. Even at the signup point, they want to know what you think of the site and their tools. That indicates to me a group of people who actually care what their visitors think and it’s rather refreshing.

If you’re interested though, don’t dawdle! You can “sit” for up to 3 free “musical portraits” until July 31st, and then they are going to go to a subscription service.

Check out the project’s pedigree:

The Method Music Software has been developed under the patronage of Pete Townshend by mathematician/composer Lawrence Ball and software developer Dave Snowdon. A team of composers, personally approved by and occasionally including Pete Townshend, will regularly listen to Method Music portraits and select a few for further development/elaboration.

I still have two more portraits left to go. I’ll probably fire up my microphone for the next one, since I used pre-recorded snippets, and didn’t really provide a “rhythm” track for the software to analyze. Download my first muiscal portrait

I was so excited when I found out Wilco had a new album, entitled Sky Blue Sky, just the day after it released. I immediately downloaded it off iTunes and I’m loving every moment of it. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see them in concert this year. (You can subscribe to the tour update RSS feed with this link right here: http://wilcoworld.net/tours/wilcodates.xml) They are absolutely electrifying live, I just wish I’d gotten pictures.

Speaking of the sky and getting electrified, the other day we had some serious storms here in NH, and there was an actual tornado warning for the area. I told the people I was having lunch with (a New England native and a Floridian) that they didn’t really need to worry, because the sky hadn’t turned green yet. Having lived in central Illinois for several years, and having family who lived in the same area, I’d heard the tale that when the sky turns green, it’s time to run for cover. As it turns out, even science isn’t sure about why the sky turns green, and how often it is a true indicator of exceptionally foul weather to come! It does appear to be a common enough trend to be used as a common warning sign of possible tornadoes, though.

Found at least one decent photo over at stormeyes.org: