In this mix, for your listening pleasure, I thought I’d slow things down, and stretch things out a little. Kind of get you all in the mood for some late night philosophy and spooning. I’m too cheap to ply all of you with booze so I thought I’d make you a mix tape, kind of give you a little something to ruminate on before I discuss the merits of an open view of love in this century and bum drinks off you all night. Hope that’s cool, ’cause we’re totally friends right broham?

Anyway, the background image for this tape is Sisters G from Gatochy’s flickr stream. I can think of no nicer image to go with the theme of “everything is better in pairs”. Except for maybe some extra-adorable mittens, but it’s Spring now and no more of THAT! Anyway, for the sake of not writing all over the lovely ladies’ faces, I just titled the tape “Pairs”.

Pairs are exactly what you’ll get on this tape. Let’s explore the contents, shall we?

1. Jesus and Mary Chain – April Skies
• I listened to this song the other day on the way to work and it improved my mood like nothing else could at that very moment. Music to soothe the savage neurotic.
2. Jesus and Mary Chain – Darklands
• The second J&MC track is one of my favorites. “I wanna move, I wanna go, oh I wanna go, do-do-de-do-do-doo…”
3. Donovan – There is a Mountain
• Heard this on the radio the other night and thought “WOW, Donovan was on a lot of drugs“. Pure listening enjoyment, here.
4. Donovan – Epistle to Dippy
• I went with one I’m unfamiliar with, to avoid the folly of ignoring deep tracks. It’s got a bit of a Velvet Underground feel. Check the pedigree though!
5. Jonathan Richman – Satisfied Mind
• I chose this track because it’s a classic (1955 by Porter Wagoner), and Richman’s treatment of it is a great introduction to his style.
6. Jonathan Richman – Springtime in New York
• Truth be told, all I can think of when I read this is Stephen King’s The Wastelands. It’s all those dreams about NYC they have.
7. Cocorosie – By Your Side
• Takes a helluva woman to offer to wear someone’s black eyes. I love the way they layer sounds.
8. Cocorosie – Butterscotch
• Why DOES butterscotch taste so good? Dig the sweet singing and electronic rooster noises.
9. Harry Nilsson – You’re Breaking My Heart
• The guy who wrote “one is the lonliest number” says fuck. Several times. AWESOME.
10. Harry Nilsson – Moonbeam Song
• From the sounds of this song, you can see where he fits with Richman and Donovan. Rich metaphor paired with a bare-hearted, literal approach combine for maximum enjoyment.
11. Jeff Tweedy – California Stars
• Just Jeff and the guitar singing a lovely tune from Mermaid Avenue that was originally penned by Woody Guthrie.
12. Wilco – Jesus, Etc.
• Rounding out this mix is Jeff with the rest of his usual band, Wilco, in a tune off of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The opening violin reminds me of Yoshi’s Island.

I hope you all enjoy this! What are some of your favorite pairs of songs?

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Ok, not really. My good friend Kento over at Uglorable has composed an AMAZING compendium of obscure animals – one for each letter of the alphabet – entitled: Obscure Animal Alphabet: Axolotl to Zebu.

For letter A is the Axolotl, which HAS to be the inspiration for that internet famous Pokémon, Mudkips.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Sure there’s color differences, but that’s pretty minor all things considered.

As you go down the list, you realize that the creators of Pokémon were clearly influenced by nature itself. Sure, they take a lot of liberties, but in terms of creature design, it’s clear they went straight for nature’s bounty.

Even if you couldn’t care less about video games, Pokémon, or internet memes, I’d still recommend checking out this animal alphabet. Every letter is an adventure, there’s a photo of each unique animal, and a description of each one! It’s like Zoo Books, only awesome.

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Last night the most remarkable series of things happened, resulting in a delightful print out just for you!
In #ormgas (the IRC channel for the OCR internet radio broadcast), Leissi pasted the following -

Notice: This Department requires no physical fitness program: everyone gets enough exercise jumping to conclusions, flying off the handle, running down the boss, knifing friends in the back, dodging responsibility, and pushing their luck.

Struck with inspiration, I decided to make a poster from this material. I also decided that the various cautionary signs from the game Portal, with their wet-floor-sign-guy-in-major-peril quality, were the absolute best to give some graphical window dressing to this wry jab at working life. (I realize the quote is rather old, but I’d forgotten all about it until Leissi was kind enough to remind me of it.)

After several fruitless searches (shocking with the amount of slavering Portal fanatics out there) in the ever-convenient Google Image Search, I finally dug up a panel of Portal’s caution signs. It wasn’t very large so I tried to resize it cleverly, but the end result was still fuzzy. Seeing as this was meant to be a five minute haha on my part, I wasn’t terribly concerned.

I did however take the time to change the saying slightly to make it more apropos to my own current working life. Pleased with myself, I saved a copy as a jpg and slapped it up in #ormgas, and in #ectomo.

I left shortly thereafter, and thought nothing of it, until I came in this morning and checked my gmail. What appeared before my eyes, but a white knight from the depths of #ectomo, Maicro, come to clean up the fuzzy Portal images and raise this snarky little geek joke to the next level of professional subversiveness.

Without further ado, a giant jpg for you to print and share with all the people who fill you with levels of contempt that are at best unhealthy and at worst result in much head explodey.

One million thousand thanks to Leissi and Maicro for their invaluable contributions in the field of snarky, passive-aggressive sign leaving technology. If you have opportunity, comment with links to photos of this particular sheet in action.

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Woe and sadness unto you, cubicle drone. An entire blog dedicated to snapshots of tons of different companies. Mainly young, hip, internet-based companies on top of it.

Take a good look around you. Do a quick inventory of your surroundings.
Do they include any or all of the following:

1. A full wall, hand-painted mural
2. Some manner of arcade cabinet or gaming table
3. “Alternative” or mainly ergonomic furniture
4. Pets, not counting fish, rocks, or plants
5. As-yet-to-be-finished sections, or furniture that is not yet assembled
6. A large colorful logo that isn’t your neighbor’s favorite sports team banner

If you said “no” to all of the following, it is entirely possible that you work for a stuffy, old-school, dead-end company. If this is a concern, it is highly advisable that your reorganize your life goals and hop to it. That house in Bali won’t build itself, bucko.

That said, go check out some of these pictures, seriously. If that doesn’t inspire you to improve your work life, what will?

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Back with more handcrafted ideas for giving people stuff because of some holiday or another is EvilMadScientist.com as they demonstrate how to create Iterative Algorithmic Sculptures from Fimo!

I love fractals despite having only the wispiest of understandings on the mathematics behind them. The tutorial offers you a way to handcraft a physical model of the Sierpinski Triangle, with or without the math background. Although he does offer a few sources that explain what the Chaos Game is, which is worth learning about even if you really only appreciate fractals for their visual appeal. (I found a neat little flash version of the Chaos Game while poking around to find out more about the math portion of this project.)

There are a lot of great photos to go with this project, which is helpful since it looks rather challenging. Seeing this done, I could definitely picture someone making Triforce gear using some of the principles here.
My thought:

• Take iteration one and slice into desired size sections.
• Poke a good-sized hole through the center triangle before baking, as well as any desired holes for adding string or wire if making jewelry out of these.
• Bake per the clay’s instructions
• Once set and cooled, file away the center starting at the hole you poked before baking until there’s only just enough left to hold the outer triangles together. the idea is to make it look like they’re held together by only the corners.
• Spray paint gold or clearcoat, depending on how you want the color.

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Efilon pointed this out earlier in the ormgas IRC. Thanks!

This looks absolutely awesome! In the underwater environment I see shades of Ecco the Dolphin (boy did that game used to creep me out), and character designs that seem to remind me of Odin Sphere.

It’s been put together by a group called Bit Blot. Improvements to the way the character looks and behaves have been made since the time this video was made, according to a response to feedback left on the YouTube page for this video.

…
But yeah, there’s a lot of detail in her animation now and it has been updated a lot since this trailer was made (February) due to feedback. We haven’t had any complaints from people who have played the game.
…

There are more videos, as well as screenshots and written details about this game at the Bit Blot site. Such as the fact that it is due to be released tomorrow! Yup, Aquaria drops on December 7th. Aquaria was also the winner of the 2007 Independent Games Festival competition, which only adds more cred to this already tantalizing 2d adventure game.

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