Some famous artists redo album covers for
Some famous artists redo album covers for their favorite musical artists.
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Entries for November 2003
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
I really want to like the Harry Potter movies, but the potential just can’t make up for their overall suckiness. Take Draco Malfoy. He’s evil, we get it. But he’s overwhelmingly, ridiculously, farcically evil, the kind of evil that bores but makes me want to smack the director, the sad Chris Columbus. But that would be ok by itself, but the acting is so bad that all of Malfoy’s sneering and spitting is painful to watch.
Photoshop actions to create images with soft
Photoshop actions to create images with soft focus, lomo, moody, etc..
National Design Triennial
With the cold weather officially here in NYC, there’s few better ways to spend a weekend afternoon than to sample one of the city’s many museums. Yesterday, Meg and I went to see the Design Triennial (catalog) at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. The curators did a nice job in highlighting good, solid, creative work, avoiding the temptation to include pieces that might have been highly creative but have yet to prove themselves useful in the world (this was a design *review* after all).
The Triennial runs until January 25, 2004; I recommend checking it out should you find yourself in NYC between now and then.
Photoshop actions for retouching and removing noise from digital photos
Photoshop actions for retouching and removing noise from digital photos.
Paris Hilton Sex Tape, my new favorite band
It’s only been a few short days, but thanks to the Internet, everyone who’s wanted to see the Paris Hilton sex tape has seen it, including those whose lives would be incomplete without a viewing, those who think it’s already soooo 5 minutes ago but secretly whose lives would be incomplete if they hadn’t seen it 45 times in the first hour they’d possessed it, and even a few uninterested folks caught up in the whirlwind.
I’d like to say I’m in the third camp (because who wants to be thought of as being interested in something…how gauche and unhip!), but I find celebrity sex tapes kind of intriguing. On one hand, they’re a fulfillment of the fantasy that if TV shows like Baywatch and movies like Cruel Intentions or Showgirls are going to have celebrity actors and actresses acting all vampy and slutty, then they should just bite the bullet and go porno all the way. And on the other hand, these tapes are very celebrities-are-people-too; they look, sound, and act just as ridiculous as the rest of us when having sex.
But anyway, the one question about the tape I haven’t seen answered yet is:
Is Paris Hilton a raccoon? And if so, why haven’t we noticed it before now?
Paris & sex related stuff at Amazon
The Simple Life on DVD
Simple Life poster from art.com
Zoolander (Paris makes a cameo)
Cell phones (“fuck your phone”)
Shop for more Paris merchandise with an Amazon credit card
Who Would You Do: The Totally Unauthorized Celebrity Sex Game
Sex by Madonna
The Big Bang: Nerve’s Guide to the New Sexual Universe
Best American Erotica 2003
Google News won’t list weblogs but somehow
Google News won’t list weblogs but somehow satire news stories are real news?.
VW Touareg can’t tow Airstream as shown in advertising
VW Touareg can’t tow Airstream as shown in advertising. Their marketing department got ahead of itself
Annual Color Forecast for 2004 is all about
Annual Color Forecast for 2004 is all about serenity, harmony, and solace. The palette appears to be missing Iraqi Khaki and Smug Blog Orange, but includes a textured green color called Aloeminium (love that name).
The Patent Office is going to re-examine the Eolas patent
The Patent Office is going to re-examine the Eolas patent.
The Ring
The Ring wasn’t scary, there was no suspense, and it wasn’t thrilling. There was nothing. You can’t just throw a bunch of weird things together with Naomi Watts and out pops a horror/thriller…or whatever this movie was supposed to be. I call it dull and boring. (zing!)
Music group “The Postal Service” was sent
Music group “The Postal Service” was sent cease and desist letter by the U.S. Postal Service.
Outside the inbox, songs inspired by spam
Outside the inbox, songs inspired by spam. buy a CD or download the mp3s
Questions for President Bush’s Next Press Conference
Questions for President Bush’s Next Press Conference.
Want to influence TV media? Write a
Want to influence TV media? Write a letter, don’t put it on your weblog..
Map of the US showing who’s donating
Map of the US showing who’s donating to which party for the 2004 Election. You can also slice and dice by particular candidates
The Dick and Jane Reader for Advanced Students
The Dick and Jane Reader for Advanced Students. “Spot knew Jane was a racist who saw the stew as a symbol of Dick’s ethnicity.”
Interesting Economist article on American exceptionalism
Interesting Economist article on American exceptionalism.
Cooperative web services
I have seen the future of the web and it is the Gothamist events page. Here’s how it works. Gothamist’s editors use free tools and information (in the form of events already listed in the system) from upcoming.org to compile events that are happening in NYC and then publish those events to the site using Movable Type to pull in upcoming.org’s RSS feeds. Gothamist’s readers can add their own events to upcoming.org, which, if they wish, the editors can then add to the events page.
The Gothamist/upcoming.org relationship is an excellent example of a cooperative web service, in which information is not simply pushed from a provider to a user but flows both ways…and even flows to people not directly involved (i.e. everybody wins). Gothamist’s editors don’t have to build their own tools to easily offer event listings to their readers. Gothamist’s readers are down with what’s going on in NYC. upcoming.org’s NYC events section gets “gardened” by Gothamist’s editors and readers (i.e. events are added and annotated to upcoming’s database). Users of upcoming.org benefit from the content added by Gothamist’s editors and readers and they start using the site more often, adding more events and information to the system.
(Oh, if you want to add your own events listing to your site, check out Matt’s instructions on how to make it work with Movable Type.)
Get rich quick idea: have your readers
Get rich quick idea: have your readers edit a book for you and keep the royalties for yourself.
Top 10 Pro Basketball Player Names (2003-2004 edition)
Top 10 Pro Basketball Player Names (2003-2004 edition).
The November edition of Cheshire Dave’s book cover design review
The November edition of Cheshire Dave’s book cover design review.
The Dispassionate Statistician
Jessica Helfand takes the piss out of Edward Tufte in The Dispassionate Statistician.
The Matrix Revolutions
[Warning: potential spoilers…] Well, heck. All that fooferall about the first two Matrix films and the philosophy involved and the whole Internet talking about it and how hard the Warshawski brothers worked to build this philosophical structure and they waste it all and make the last film a straight-out action flick with a love story and a bit of a twist at the end. Not that the movie is bad, it was actually pretty entertaining because they dispensed with all that stuff…but I have to wonder why they put so much emphasis on it to begin with. What did you think?
NYC marathon simulator…pit the winner vs.
NYC marathon simulator…pit the winner vs. P. Diddy to see just how damn fast the elite runners are.
Amazon’s best books of 2003
Amazon’s best books of 2003. A Million Little Pieces is #1, Moneyball comes in at #4
Entries in the contest to redesign Jakob Nielsen’s web site
Entries in the contest to redesign Jakob Nielsen’s web site.
NYC is a cupcake town
NYC is a cupcake town. You can pry my Magnolia cupcake out of my cold, dead hands.
A few brave participants have kept the
A few brave participants have kept the Matrix Reloaded thread going for 6 months and more than 1750 comments. And I think they’re excited that Revolutions opens today
noodleboxxx / the mess below
I’m tinkering with the templates on the site a little (I’m real-time templateblogging!!!!), so if things look a little noodles for awhile, that’s why.
Ok, I think I’m done tinkering and everything seems like it didn’t break too much. Not a whole lot new, but there was some behind the scenes stuff that will make changes to the site easier moving forward. Baby steps. More to come.
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