No Mod Required

this is a post for all those things I see from time to time that make me think “I should share that” and then I don’t because I think “everyone has probably already seen it” when in fact everyone probably hasn’t. So here are a few of those things, rolled up into one link-filled nugget of joy.

“A Coke Addict Makes a Coke-Flavored Cola and Calls it Coke”

The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High

DNA, Psychoanalyisis, Coca Cola a No Hitter and… you’ll have to click through for #1.

Calvin and Jobs

A brilliant technolust cousin to Garfield Minus Garfield from Mad (the paper magazine, which is why we’re linking to flickr).

Just In Case You Want To Play Catch-Up With the Meme Thing

Here’s a handy timeline. The first I remember experiencing firsthand was the “Ate my Balls” thing, which makes me feel old.

Of course, everything makes me feel old right now, so that’s nothing new.

For what it’s worth, my favorite of the highlighted items is the classic “All Your Base Are Belong To Us.” Now watch as I post it, like the Internet equivalent of a classic rock DJ

Even ignoring the obvious socio-political questions about granting an Olympics to China, the pollution problem in Beijing makes the choice of the Chinese capital as an Olympic host puzzling (to say the least.) Despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, there’s only so much they can do about the air quality and, as this post from the BBC illustrates, the distance events could be exeptionally taxing on the athletes.

I pass a woman whose mobile has an Axel F ring-tone and realise that my throat has started to feel sore, as if I had a cold coming on.

Maybe it’s the road I’m running alongside, I think, and head down a side-street in search of a patch of greenery.

Another five minutes down the line, there’s a strange lumpy feeling halfway down my throat. An old chap watering a freshly-planted verge hawks up a fat lump of phlegm and flobs it expertly into a plant-pot.

When in Rome, I think, and spit into the gutter with relish. The metallic taste in my mouth remains.

Read more of the depressing first hand account:

Olympics 2008 blog

From this month’s Scientific American, we have this sidebar:

Zapping Your Computer
A superstorm might well have strange effects on electronics. The high-energy protons that reach the ground produce neutrons that pass right through the shielding around satellite and avionics systems. (Most computer systems lack even this shielding.)

Extensive background radiation studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month. If so, a superstorm, with its unprecedented radiation fluxes, could cause widespread computer failures. For­tun­ately, in such instances most users could simply reboot.

Based on that assessment I have 8 such events at home and 12 such events at work every month. Whenever something weird happens to my machine from now on I’m blaming cosmic rays. Which is cool with me since at some level I’m all about cosmic rays (being an admitted geek for Marvel Comics cosmic heroes.)

Hell yes. Happy Saturday. Comics + Science.

Yowza.

I Want to Scrub Out My Brain So I Can Ignore This News.

Gladly I’d missed this news until now. Sadly Gibson himself mentioned it on his blog so it popped up on my radar. It appears professional cardboard cutout Hayden Christensen (without question one of the most wooden, charisma-starved actors of recent vintage) is teaming up with a “director” named Joseph Kahn (whose Torque, garnered a painful 3.4 out of 10 stars at the IMDB) to presumably disembowel one of my favorite novels of all time, William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

At first glance, there is no hope for this adaptation. At second glance, I will be stunned to the tips of my toes if this film is anything but an abomination.

The odds are stacked against them, but yet they plug on with this diabolical plan to stomp on the testicles of one of my personal cultural landmarks.

Why must they hurt me so?

Why can’t someone with talent and/or a track record have been given the keys to this project? There must be good directors out there with an interest in this seminal cyberpunk novel. Why did they pick as the star an actor so soulless he made me want to fast forward while Natalie Portman was on screen? Weren’t there any non-android actors available?

Why? Why? Why?

All that aside, at least the art department is competent. The teaser poster was released and, to be perfectly honest, I think it looks pretty cool:

Sadly, I’m thinking the poster will be the best part of the whole enterprise.

The classic early hip hop photographer talks about discovering graffiti, rap, and break dancing:

Welcome to the “Mojave Experiment.” What do people think of Windows Vista® when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename “Mojave,” the “next Microsoft OS,” so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do - and decide for themselves. Now decide for yourself.

The “Mojave Experiment”

Apparently people loved it. Me? I use Vista at home and I love it too. I wish I could use it at work as well. XP is a drag in comparison.

I know what you’re thinking:

“zomg, Vista is teh lame!”

And maybe it is if you’re trying to upgrade an old machine or are stuck with software/peripherals from five years ago (and I know a lot of people are, so that’s a valid complaint.) For my particular situation (a high end machine running Ultimate with current/latest version licenses for all my essential software) it’s great.

There, I said it- great.

The biggest complaint I’ve had in the year I’ve been running it was the fact that my scanner was unstable and I had to replace it with a newer, Vista ready scanner and drivers. Even that’s more on buggy driver support from the manufacturer than it is a fault with Microsoft.

Beyond that, while I have a few complaints about access control oddities, it’s pretty cool.

I know what you’re thinking now:

“Madness! Who’s the crazy man?”

That’d be me

*I need to run a couple of normally innocuous apps in “root” mode to get them to work correctly- my Garmin training software being one- WTF?

While I can’t say I’m happy that Sastre won, in hindsight he was the most deserving winner. He and his CSC team really controlled the race and winning the stage and the Tour on Alpe d’Huez makes his a truly classy victory.

I am happy to see the three time world champion Oscar Freire, win the Green Jersey points competition. Freire is a fun rider to watch throughout the year so seeing him get such a great result on the world’s biggest stage was a real treat.

The best thing I can say about Cadel Evans, in light of his performance is that he’s got some heart. Pulling himself up off the ground and fighting as hard as he did in the mountains was pretty gritty. Even with all of that, he reacted reasonably well to the attacks launched at him in the mountains but in the Tour it’s very difficult to win merely countering moves. As Sastre proved, at some point, the true race leader has to take control. Evans never did that. I don’t know. Maybe he believed his own press or something, but it seemed like he just assumed he would pull it all out in the final time trial. It was a reasonable strategy I guess, but obviously he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. Sastre did.

The rider I’m most bummed about is Menchov. I feel like he was just a couple of breaks away from being on the podium.

On the flip side of that I’m ecstatic for Christian VandeVelde and the rest of the Garmin Chipotle team. Finishing fifth when no one (including me) really pegged him for a finish that high is a great result and is a phenomenal introduction for the team to the world.

Speaking of introductions to the world, Team Columbia had an incredible first race under the new sponsor’s banner. Cav was obviously the revelation of the Tour but the team as a whole showed why they’ve been so successful this year, showing up to race day in and day out.

Is it really another 49 weeks until it all starts up again? At least I’ve got Sastre vs. Contador in the Vuelta to look forward to in the fall

This list isn’t exclusive, of course. There are plenty of other incredible artists out there that I could have chosen.

These 10 are pretty damned good though

Dondi

The Style Master General.

One of the most influential writers of all time. The ultimate stylist.

Revok

My favorite of the LA style writers. I eat that West Coast style up and Revok has taken it all to an impossible extreme. So fresh.

(all revok photos courtesy flickr user anarchosyn)

Vulcan

(vulcan photo courtesy flickr user otherthings.

“The Style Messiah.”

The stuff he did in the 80s is more complex and thought-provoking to me than 99.999% of the work done since. His photos in Spraycan Art (one reproduced below) are amongst my favorite pieces of all time.

Daim

The 3d master. Daim takes what, in the hands of some is basically a cheesy novelty style and brings it to the absolute top of the graffiti style game. Top notch color, form, design and draftsmanship.

photo courtesy flickr user Pasota.com

photo courtesy flickr user Harry Palmer

Doc/Arab

(photo credit to Doc himself. Swiped from myspace)

So much style.

Ces

(classic vet and ces halloween wall courtesy flickr user dmax3270)

The classic wild style practitioner. Very influential.

Bates

For my money, the best style writer in the world today. At a time when many people literally paint the same outline dozens or even hundreds of times and just change up the colors, Bates paints a different style pretty much every time. If you’re a writer, know one thing: Bates can probably do your style better than you.

Delta

One of the most unique styles in graffiti, Dutch old school legend Delta takes his industrial design background and applies it to the letter form in wildly creative ways.

(photo credits to … you guessed it … my hard drive*)

Dream TDK

RIP

One of the first West Coast writers that really impressed me when I was younger. He had a really smooth classic style. People doing 500 color “burners” could learn a lot by looking at Dream’s letters.

REAS

Reas is, for my money, the best practitioner of that funky AOK/RIS style that basically took over graffiti a few years ago. So fresh, crazy influential and as Todd James, one of the top ‘writer makes good stories” ever.

Photo credits are noted where possible. A lot of these are just pulled from my hard drive (and therefore originally pulled off the net), so if you see an image here that’s yours and you want it pulled or just want me to properly credit you, please just let me know.

And we still don’t have all that much clarity.

My podium right now looks like this:

1. Evans
2. Sastre
3. Menchov

Sastre and CSC rode this race to perfection and Sastre had the legs to deliver the goods. Will it be enough time to hold off Evans? I don’t think so. But he’s definitely got a chance owing to their tactical perfection and to his excellent legs yesterday.

I feel bad for both Menchov and Christian Vandevelde. CVV fell on the descent the other day and lost a minute or two. He said he was only 35 seconds behind over the top of the climb. Otherwise, with the way he climbed on the Alpe yesterday he’d have a strong shot at landing on the podium.

As for Menchov, his fall during his attack on Sunday is the great “what if” from the race for me. That was his best day in the mountains and I think he might have been able to take some serious time out of Evans on that stage. He’d broken out to a big lead (costing energy), fell, had to catch back up (more energy) and still had the energy to attack later (even more energy.) If it had all been smooth sailing I think he might have been in much better shape coming into these last two alpine stages. Certainly his losing seconds on the descent on Tuesday is inexcusable, but it didn’t matter as much as it probably should have because of that missed opportunity on Sunday. As it stood Evans was the main “strong” time trial rider defending against the CSC climbers.

I know one thing, the Time Trial will be a lot of fun.

This is super fresh.

Did I mention super fresh?

Check out some video of the billboard being painted (time lapse starts around 1:30 in)

Augor x Revok x The Dark Knight (video Logan x Keegan) Meatpost.com from Meat Post on Vimeo.