Things
Just some things I wanted to share, or at least found interesting. Really, it's largely just letting me close a few tabs. I've mostly been staying away from Facebook this week (for reasons I may get into in a future post), so the compulsive need to share fostered by having been on it so long needs an outlet. And I can ramble on for no good reason here more than I can there. Facebook doesn't even let you use in-line links.
Are the zombies here?
You may have heard about the naked guy in Florida who police had to shoot because he was eating another man's face.
There was also a fellow in New Jersey who repeatedly stabbed himself, then through his own internal organs at the cops.
There are reports that both incidents involved "bath salts" (which is one of the most ridiculous street names for a drug I've ever heard, as a side note). I haven't seen anything that verifies that the stuff was in their systems (speculation and the possibility that they used at some point, is what I'm mostly seeing) yet. If these guys were on the stuff, though, it seems like a good reason to steer clear of it. This article, including a first hand account, doesn't make it seem any better.
I'm really getting the impression that the stuff can induce friggin' psychosis. Shit, at least cocaine will just make you freak out a little and have a heart attack or two.
Amanda Palmer's Million-Dollar Kickstarter
I've seen some criticism about Amanda Palmer raising money for her album and art book on Kickstarter, and it kind of baffles me. I mean, I can see why recording labels wouldn't like it, but she's not bilking people out of money - she's just making the pre-order process more direct and letting people buy more expensive stuff if they want. The woman's no stranger to controversy, and I can certainly understand some of it, but acting like she's a horrible sellout and screwing independent artists by doing this? That's just ridiculous.
She's also putting a lot of money into the products, so its not like she's just pocketing a million dollars. The woman is, after all, selling something.
It's kind of amazing how big it's gotten. Not totally surprising, but, yeah, I don't think she's just blowing smoke when she talks about how this could be the future of music production.
And her celebratory dance is adorable. I mean, really.
If you go to the Kickstarter updates, be aware that she also celebrates things by taking off clothing. Nothing even approaching pornographic or anything, but you never really know when someone might freak out over a nipple or two. Even if they're covered by smurfs.
(Honestly, one of the reasons I like Amanda Palmer is that she can be a little nutty, usually in a pretty fun way.)
Really, I don't have much to say about this, aside from noting that it's neat and not understanding the haters.
She's throwing a block party tomorrow night in Brooklyn, and (as I have nothing on my schedule) I'm vaguely considering going. It'd be a long-ass day (at least three hours to drive up, before considering rush hour, five hours there, and a three-hour drive back, though at least that last part would have much less traffic), but I've done that sort of thing before. And it'll probably be interesting. I'd put the odds of my going fairly low, but I can't write off the possibility. It'll be live-streamed at Party ont he Internet, too.
On a related note, David Mack did a watercolor for the art book, and he's got a sort of step-by-step progression of it posted over on his Facebook that's kinda neat.
Makey Makey Invention Kit
This was actually featured on a webcast Amanda Palmer did the other day from the MIT media lab.
Effectively, it lets you rig up anything that'll conduct electricity to be an input device you a computer. There's a video of some of the possibilities at their Kickstarter.
I haven't backed it, but that's mainly because a) I'm unemployed and b) I tend to fizzle out of the sort of Big Ideas I might have related to this sort of thing.
That said, it's an interesting concept. As they demonstrate, you can use it to make a synthesizer out of your friends. Or a keyboard out of a flight of stairs. Or whatever else.
In the webcast, they primarily focused on musical applications (having a banana piano and limes as a drum machine for their demonstration). My first thought - and this was brought up in the webcast as well (I forget if Amanda first mentioned the idea or if it was something they said) - was using it or something like it to make concerts actually interactive. The audience could be an instrument, and not just in the sense of clapping and singing along. It would probably be a nightmare to figure out how to do it and make it sound good with a gaggle of human beings that tend to be hard to predict, but it could be damn interesting. Or, as Amanda brought up, crowdsurfing itself could become part of the song, not just part of the performance.
It's all stuff that's not exactly new, as an input concept (a basic controller button just completes a circuit, after all, and Tesla demonstrated that a human body could to that over a hundred years ago). This sort of thing just makes it easier for a layperson in the fields of computing and electronics to kind of skip the how portion of coming up with something crazy.
I'll keep an eye out for the webcast - I didn't catch all of it, and there were probably other interesting things that came up in it - and link it if I do find it.
...I think that covers most of my open tabs. At least, the ones that aren't Skyrim-related (TV Tropes pages, videos of glitches and silly random events, mods, et cetera).
Are the zombies here?
You may have heard about the naked guy in Florida who police had to shoot because he was eating another man's face.
There was also a fellow in New Jersey who repeatedly stabbed himself, then through his own internal organs at the cops.
There are reports that both incidents involved "bath salts" (which is one of the most ridiculous street names for a drug I've ever heard, as a side note). I haven't seen anything that verifies that the stuff was in their systems (speculation and the possibility that they used at some point, is what I'm mostly seeing) yet. If these guys were on the stuff, though, it seems like a good reason to steer clear of it. This article, including a first hand account, doesn't make it seem any better.
I'm really getting the impression that the stuff can induce friggin' psychosis. Shit, at least cocaine will just make you freak out a little and have a heart attack or two.
Amanda Palmer's Million-Dollar Kickstarter
I've seen some criticism about Amanda Palmer raising money for her album and art book on Kickstarter, and it kind of baffles me. I mean, I can see why recording labels wouldn't like it, but she's not bilking people out of money - she's just making the pre-order process more direct and letting people buy more expensive stuff if they want. The woman's no stranger to controversy, and I can certainly understand some of it, but acting like she's a horrible sellout and screwing independent artists by doing this? That's just ridiculous.
She's also putting a lot of money into the products, so its not like she's just pocketing a million dollars. The woman is, after all, selling something.
It's kind of amazing how big it's gotten. Not totally surprising, but, yeah, I don't think she's just blowing smoke when she talks about how this could be the future of music production.
And her celebratory dance is adorable. I mean, really.
Click to viewIf you go to the Kickstarter updates, be aware that she also celebrates things by taking off clothing. Nothing even approaching pornographic or anything, but you never really know when someone might freak out over a nipple or two. Even if they're covered by smurfs.
(Honestly, one of the reasons I like Amanda Palmer is that she can be a little nutty, usually in a pretty fun way.)
Really, I don't have much to say about this, aside from noting that it's neat and not understanding the haters.
She's throwing a block party tomorrow night in Brooklyn, and (as I have nothing on my schedule) I'm vaguely considering going. It'd be a long-ass day (at least three hours to drive up, before considering rush hour, five hours there, and a three-hour drive back, though at least that last part would have much less traffic), but I've done that sort of thing before. And it'll probably be interesting. I'd put the odds of my going fairly low, but I can't write off the possibility. It'll be live-streamed at Party ont he Internet, too.
On a related note, David Mack did a watercolor for the art book, and he's got a sort of step-by-step progression of it posted over on his Facebook that's kinda neat.
Makey Makey Invention Kit
This was actually featured on a webcast Amanda Palmer did the other day from the MIT media lab.
Effectively, it lets you rig up anything that'll conduct electricity to be an input device you a computer. There's a video of some of the possibilities at their Kickstarter.
I haven't backed it, but that's mainly because a) I'm unemployed and b) I tend to fizzle out of the sort of Big Ideas I might have related to this sort of thing.
That said, it's an interesting concept. As they demonstrate, you can use it to make a synthesizer out of your friends. Or a keyboard out of a flight of stairs. Or whatever else.
In the webcast, they primarily focused on musical applications (having a banana piano and limes as a drum machine for their demonstration). My first thought - and this was brought up in the webcast as well (I forget if Amanda first mentioned the idea or if it was something they said) - was using it or something like it to make concerts actually interactive. The audience could be an instrument, and not just in the sense of clapping and singing along. It would probably be a nightmare to figure out how to do it and make it sound good with a gaggle of human beings that tend to be hard to predict, but it could be damn interesting. Or, as Amanda brought up, crowdsurfing itself could become part of the song, not just part of the performance.
It's all stuff that's not exactly new, as an input concept (a basic controller button just completes a circuit, after all, and Tesla demonstrated that a human body could to that over a hundred years ago). This sort of thing just makes it easier for a layperson in the fields of computing and electronics to kind of skip the how portion of coming up with something crazy.
I'll keep an eye out for the webcast - I didn't catch all of it, and there were probably other interesting things that came up in it - and link it if I do find it.
...I think that covers most of my open tabs. At least, the ones that aren't Skyrim-related (TV Tropes pages, videos of glitches and silly random events, mods, et cetera).