Here’s another entry in a series of great time wasters. Play golf by flinging a cat around the screen via a bow and arrow. Absurd yes, but a blast. Press the mouse to begin your shot, aim by moving the mouse around, and increase power by pulling the cursor away from the cat. Mid-air maneuvers, or shots, are possible but potentially dangerous.
Spanning 50 years, browse the digital archives of form magazine.
Banksy Was Here: A profile from the New Yorker
Schools nationwide are abandoning laptops
Open Manifesto asks, “What is graphic design?”
Okkervil River’s Will Sheff offers his ideas on file sharing. Working within space similar to cityofsound’s “A New Musical Experience,” Sheff looks at the aesthetic impact of the Internet on music.
The internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent
mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you’re looking for, or knowing what you’re looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you’re not filled. Everything is freely available on the internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less.When I was a kid, I’d listen to the same records over and over and over again, as if I was under a spell. The record would end and I’d flip it over again, doing absolutely nothing, letting the music wash over me. My favorite record albums become like a totem for me, their big fat beautiful gatefolds worked as a shield against the loud, crashing, crushing world. I would have laid down my life and died in defense of a record like Tonight’s the Night or Astral Weeks. I felt that those records had, in some ways, saved my life. These days, with all the choice in the world, it’s hard for me find the attention span for a single album. I put my iPod on shuffle and skip impatiently to the next song before each one’s over. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
Read the rest @ stereogum
Barbarian Software recently released a new cross-platform iTunes visualizer called magnetosphere. I was worried that the fancy music-responsive graphics would burden my old G4, but the visualizer surprisingly ran rather quickly. Easy to install, the visualizer works on Macs and PCs, and I’m sure it runs beautifully on newer machines.
The National releases their first video from their upcoming album. The track and first single is “Mistaken for Strangers.”
Online Communities - Mapping web2.0
Videos galore from the forthcoming Vincent Moon film about The National.
The Branding of Polaroid - How Polaroid beat Kodak from 1957-1977
Critical Metrics - Expertly filtered music recommendations with mp3s.
Lately, I’ve been using the month-old My Maps feature on Google. To access it, login with your Google account and go to maps.google.com. You should be able to click on the “my Maps: NEW!” tab. It’s a great tool for visualizing building locations, and I’ve spent some time documenting my favorite restaurants/businesses in various cities.
You can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos — all using a simple drag and drop interface. Your map automatically gets a public URL that you can share with your friends and family, or you can also publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results.
Of course the maps can be shared and imported into Google Earth, so don’t miss the Olympic Host Cities and Oral Histories of Route 66 maps.
Here is an astounding video of Bob Dylan absolutely on fire in a live version of “Shelter from the Storm,” in Fort Collins, CO:
From the same May 23, 1976 show, here is an equally incredible version of Idiot Wind.
Teahupo’o, a reef break, is world-renowned for it’s consistent ability to deliver glass-smooth barrels. Click the above photo for a high-resolution version. Don’t miss this, and other footage, of riders attempting the wave on youtube
More from wikipedia
Produced by BBC4, “A Skin Too Few” documents Nick Drake, his life, and his music.
“I always said that Nick was born with a skin too few”, says actress Gabrielle about her brother, the English singer-songwriter Nick Drake (1948-1974). This documentary approaches the silent landscapes, locations, people and music in the life of this unorthodox loner.
Nick Drake is one of rock’s most tragically romantic figures. He died when he was 26: an age that for many would be far too young to develop a talent, or realise an ambition or dream. It took 20 posthumous years for his music to gain recognition.
Earlier this week, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released their newest study on how teens deal with privacy on online social networks.
SPIN hosts The National for a short in-house concert way back in 2005 (videos).
PolarClock v2: screensaver/clock (photo above). View the online version first.
Desktop Tower Defense: Don’t begin playing this if you have anything remotely important to do today. It’s wholesome, hand-drawn tower defense fun.
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