Linkstew

The first trickle of interesting news from the direction of E3 is the Gamecube Logo, which is simply amazing. It integrates aspects of the necker cube and the initials G C into one very subtle, complete, and polished package. In fact, it's pretty much slickest logo I've seen since the Sun logo. After staring at the logo for awhile, I threw together this image compositing a variety of logos into a neat package that I hope I don't get sued for. Of those, I think the Xbox logo is by far the least attractive, and the PS2 logo by far the least original. The Apple logos are elegant, the Nintendo logos are very well done, and even the windows logo shows improvement as it's evolved...

But that's my opinion. I did the hard work of putting all the logos in one spot so you can Judge for Yourself.

Another McSweeney's/Thief of Time coincidence. In "Barry Blitt's Vacation Postcards" in McSweeney's, there is a postcard filled with "Pebbles of the Red Sea", and one of those pebbles is labeled as "Filled with creamy Nougat", and another was labeled "Forged in a blast furnace called time. (The others if you're curious, were labeled "A girl", "The color of cRutney", and "Mistaken for marzipan by early spanish settlers, but these aren't relevant to the coincidence.)

And in Thief of Time, Pratchett bashes Nougat at least three times, and ends the story with the sentence "Even with Nougat, you can have a perfect moment."

On the front cover, McSweeny's #6 claims "We Now Know Who", and nothing else. McSweeney's is a literary journal, more or less, but #6 was an Art (and Music) volume. The idea was to provide a soundtrack for the artwork and short stories, and the result was an interesting amalgamation of words, pictures, and fingertips.

On one hand, the journal by itself has good content, for the most part. There are some dry bits, but no journal can be overflowing with perfection every quarter. According to the introduction in the beginning, the original intent was to fill this volume of the journal with nothing but art, with no words at all. This idea was abandoned quickly, and the art and music (and words) version was conceived.

And on the other hand, the enclosed CD has a lot to like on it. Most of the tracks were composed by They Might be Giants, but there were a number of other artists as well. Most of the music was composed in an attempt to match the theme (and duration) of the work it was to accompany, though some of the tracks were old TMBG songs, such as "Edith Head" or "West Virginia". And a few of the pieces of Art and Stories were composed after the song had been written, such as in the case of "Bangs" (which I found to be the most enjoyable story/song combination). All in all, it's a very likeable CD. With 44 tracks, the CD works great on random play, much like Apollo 18's fingertips.

The problem I have with the whole package, though, is the stories. I had a very hard time to trying to listen to the song for a piece while reading it. Also, though they tried to write songs that matched the length of a piece, it's an impossible goal, and most of the time the song was over long before I was done, which just made me irritable.

But, it was a very good attempt. The songs and the art went very well together. When I listened to the CD, the songs I liked best were the ones that happened to pair up with short stories. But when I read the journal while listening to the soundtrack, the best songs were the ones that accompanied the art. Amazing how significant context can be in the appreciation of something. I'd recommend trying it out... It's interesting.

And there's nothing sadder than a frog plucking a banjo.

On Friday, I finally got my copy of McSweeney's #6. In brief, it's a literary (and art, I think) journal, and volume 6 also features a soundtrack, composed mostly by They Might Be Giants. As I was working like crazy on my compiler, I didn't have time to sit down and fully appreciate the whole package -- instead, I just listened to the CD as background music. I'll write more about how neat this whole package is later...

Anyway, the song that I liked the best on the whole CD was named "Frog and Banjo", by Doughty (formerly of Soul Coughing, I believe), and it accompanied a story/comic named "A Very Sad Story About a Frog and a Banjo, not at all appropriate for Children", by Chris Ware. So far it's my favorite part of the package, but again, more about that later.

Last night, as I was finishing Thief of Time (Which I'll also write more about later), I came across a section about stuffed animals that started

The next gallery was full of stuffed animals. There'd been a vogue for it, a few centuries before. These weren't the sad old hunting-trophy bears or geriatric tigers whose claws had faced a man armed with nothing more than five crossbows, twenty loaders, and a hundred beaters. Some of these animals were arranged in groups. Quite small groups, of quite small animals.

And the next paragraph began "There were frogs seated around a tiny dining table". The combination of the word sad in one paragraph and the frogs in the next paragraph put me in mind of "A Very Sad Story About a Frog and a Banjo", and I thought to myself "Gee, it's a pity one of those frogs isn't playing a banjo...

And then that paragraph that started with frogs sitting around a table ended with "There was a monkey, playing a banjo."

Some how I ended up with this site in my referrer logs tonight, and the first thing that struck me when I looked at the page was the way he had an iMood icon right below his web cam picture. What I'm going to say doesn't apply specifically to that site, though, and is a more general comment. Both webcams and imoods strike me as a little silly, but maybe... If the two were combined, so that a web cam shot were only taken every once in awhile to show a new mood, it would make web cams useful and make imood obsolete. My, it sounds like such a good idea. Looking at Tammy's splash page and Eric Conveys an Emotion, it's clear that people can be expressive enough. It's just a matter of making a face and hitting a button when you notice yourself in a new mood.

And the best part is you end up with an archive of yourself making funny faces! Honestly, though, if I were going to add a webcam to the site (which I don't really plan to do) it'd definately be something periodic like that. The whole live webcam thing never struck me as being very interesting, while a moody webcam would be both amusing and useful.

I heard about this contest awhile ago on slashdot, and now they've announced the winners. The winners are all pretty cool, especially The Clock, but what I wanted to comment on is Devolution, the CD Car.

Since Devolution is actually from Berkeley, I've actually seen it around town. In fact, I saw it once when it was half finished. I saw it with the drivers side done up, and ran over to look at it and the whole other half of the car was devoid of discs. The next time I saw it, however, was a perfect photo opportunity that I missed out on due to my failure to carry my camera that day. The scene? It had been raining, and it may have still been slightly drizzling, so Devolution was covered with drops of water, and a street lamp was shining on it making not only the discs, but also the beads of water, shimmer like a magical fish sitting there, parked alone on the street.

It really is a slick piece of work, and I was going to take pictures of it sometime to put on the page, but now I guess I don't have to. It almost competes with the VW Bug I saw driving down the street one time that had a garden planted on top of it and pinwheels sticking off the side and other extreme strangeness that made poor Devolution look pretty normal.

So several of these, or maybe even all of these, were featured on slashdot at one time or another. However, they've been gathering up in my bookmarks, so I figure it's time to archive them all in one shot right here. First, in honor of the release of MechWarrior 4, here is Battletech done in Lego. Next, this page is a lot of links to other Star Wars Lego resources. A lot of the links on that page are great, and a few have some plans, to boot. If you want a particular link for Star Wars Lego, check out The Star Wars Trilogy done in Lego, long before the Star Wars sets were released. Another Japanese page features Lego renditions of The Matrix, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and more. Then, here's a desk built out of Lego. And finally, here is the Holocaust rendered in Lego. Please don't be offended by that last one, it's art.

An Art History 10 test is composed of 4 sections. There are 5 short answer questions, 5 slide identifications, 3 comparisons in the form of short essays, of which two count, and a long essay about one of four topics.

One of the comparisons on the final was to compare the Parthenon to some big ass church or another. I'm not sure which one it was. And I'm not sure what the point of the comparison was supposed to be. But I'm going to tell you what I wrote about, because it had me laughing clear through the rest of the comparisons, through the essay, through turning in the final, and all the way back to my dorm room.

In contrast to the big ass church, the Parthenon did not have windows. This is surprising, considering how much the Greek Gods liked to go out and play, compared to how much the Christian God wasn't much of a people person. You'd think that the Greek Gods would want to be able to look out and see the people they like interacting with, while the Christian God wouldn't want any of that common crap interfering in his place of worship. But upon closer examination, we see that the windows in that big ass church are stained glass windows. These stained glass windows are effectively filters, protecting the church goers from reality by straining everything through these colorful religious images before they get to the eye. Further, the lack of windows in the Parthenon forced the Greek Gods to actually go out and interact with people in order to see what was really going on. Churches are, in fact, a huge conspiracy, so that the world that god sees is stained with the images on the glass, making the world look better than it really is. It's all a cover up.

Yes, there are some logical inconsistencies, and yes, I worded it a little better on the test (which is strange, because I had less time, then), but you get the basic idea. And I still find it really amusing. I'm sure it will make the person grading the test laugh. At least I hope it does. All I needed to do was pass the test, anyway.

I'm not Christian. Can you tell?

So there are two halves to my Art History class, taught by two different lecturers. We're now on to the second half, and thus the second lecturer, who is, by leaps and bounds, worse than the previous lecturer (The fact that the name of the previous lecturer was Stewart has nothing to do with it).

At any rate, the new lecturer is very difficult to deal with, and I've noticed that I've gotten into the bad habit of writing something like "and then blah blah blah..." in my notes.

Blah Blah Blah. That's about all there is to it, though. The old lecturer was quite a lot better. My TA even said so, though not in that many words... However, she agreed with my section when several people started complaining...

The original cast recording of the musical "Assassins" isn't just a good thing; It's a great thing. This musical by Steven Sondheim is probably one of his most thought provoking and potentially controversial, which are exactly the sort of things I enjoy most in entertainment. And it features great songs which get stuck in my head for days on end, to boot. The musical documents the presidential assassins, and why they did it. It not only provides a fresh new look on the most reviled act an American could commit, but it also portrays them as something that is very difficult to except them as.

It also discusses the results of the Assassins actions, and how they are portrayed by history, along with the effect they had on the perception of the President they Assassinated.

This musical features too much good stuff to go into, but in brief, there's Charles Guiteau dancing the softshoe down his Gallows, Another National Anthem and a terrific dialog between John Wilkes Boothe and Lee Harvey Oswald. Since this musical is rarely performed, your best bet is to just buy the soundtrack and be done with it, and hope in vain that somewhere near you will perform this show.

Buy the original cast recording of the musical Assassins now from Amazon!