Modcult

I Have No Idea How To Fix This

2010-09-02T14:54:10Z

Which leads to a general theory, reinforced by informal observation of hipsters with iPads in coffee shops: a tablet is, crucially, a more shareable computer. A laptop, with its fragile hinge-ware and space-gobbling keyboard, is just not comfy to share. A tablet is easier to bring to the café, easier to hand across the table or along the sofa, easier to seize in the heat of the moment, easier to hold up in triumph, easier to set aside when you need to meet someone’s eyes.

—Tim Bray on tablets

The problem with this is that currently, iOS and Android devices are built under the assumption that they are Very Personal Computers. If you pass your phone to someone, you have no idea what the hell is going to pop up in terms of texts or facebook notifications while someone is looking at it, it’s always kind of nerve-racking.

The iPad is in this weird spot where you absolutely want to pass it around, or leave it lying on a coffee table for whoever to use, but you swipe off the lock screen and then all your noise is right there. The current design of iOS is like gluing your diary to the back of a photo album. Besides Mark Zuckerberg, who wants that passed around?

My main feature wish for iPad’s iOS is some way to share some of it without sharing all of it.

Subculture Fashion Slaves

2010-09-02T13:19:17Z

Tom Lax spins a bunch of rare 7”s over at Brian Turner’s show on WFMU. Start amending your wantlists… Radio is still a better option for finding new music than a social network.

Nordland

2010-09-02T10:47:46Z

Packet Flight

2010-09-01T13:35:03Z

Packet Flight

This is a visualization of an HTTP image request, slowed down 40 times. You can clearly see the handshake, slow-start ramp-up and full bandwidth phases.

Created using Packet Flight.

I Smell an SMJ Fighting Series...

2010-09-01T11:26:25Z

rebarbative |rəˈbärbətiv|

adjective formal

unattractive and objectionable : rebarbative modern buildings. ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from French rébarbatif, -ive, from Old French se rebarber ‘face each other “beard to beard” aggressively,’ from barbe ‘beard.’

Triangle Chromatique

2010-08-31T08:30:03Z

(via The Creation of Color in 18th Century Europe via the modcult archives)

Oh Buffy!

2010-08-30T17:13:12Z

Oh Buffy!

This 1991 Super Soaker commercial is the shortest 80s teensploitation flick ever made.

I had the 300

2010-08-30T16:45:36Z

If Michael Jackson was our age, can you imagine how many fucking Super Soakers he’d have?

Mirror School

2010-08-30T15:17:32Z

Mirror School

Soft Machine

2010-08-30T14:21:21Z

(via unsung)

NEW BEDFORD and nearby places

2010-08-27T20:52:16Z

See Charles Olson’s Melville Project and browse the cards.

(via the art of memory)

All the world a stage

2010-08-27T14:02:21Z

The iconography of Nintendo makes only the barest sense: A good guy saves a princess. And the princess is drawn with only the briefest strokes: her name is Peach and she is constantly imperiled. Occasionally she may help the hero with magic items or something similar, but mostly she is taken to the tower by the monster. About the hero we know almost nothing except that, bizarrely, he is a life-long plumber who has occasionally been able to spit fire, fly, turn into some sort of rock, grow a raccoon tail, breathe underwater, turn into a frog, fly through space without a space suit, double in height, and eat stars to become briefly invincible. It’s funny to picture the Nintendo game designers as medieval playwrights reaching into their box of dramatis personae: “We’ll need an antagonist. Bowser will play that role. And for the damsel, Peach, of course.”

--An email from Jeb

Cyclotron

2010-08-27T07:50:03Z

Lotus

2010-08-26T10:36:15Z

Duayne Hatchett, Lotus, 1973
Acrylic on canvas, 38 x 36”

Drowned in Wine

2010-08-26T08:00:03Z

Drowned in Wine