new album due Feb 18th

I am a diehard Matt Berry fan. His work on Snuffbox, The IT Crowd and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (among others) and all of his musical output are all great to me. So, I was a bit disappointed when I saw the initial pilot for his new show, Toast of London and wasn't immediately enamored. Maybe my expectations got in the way or maybe it was legitimately too weird but I pretty much gave up on it right then and there.

However, thanks to a reminder from Falfa I decided to give it another spin. I'm three episodes deep and have come full circle on my opinion of it. Clips like this one show off the absurdity and awkwardness of it. It's still rather weird but if you start with the first episode and work ahead - it gels quite a bit better.

tl;dr version - Matt Berry has a new show and it's unsurprisingly weird but should still be watched.

Authy is a tool to help keep your accounts secure; it's one step further than two-factor authentication as it requires a randomly generated code that's only valid for about 20 seconds. Sounds a bit intense, I agree, but after watching this promo I'm sure you'll agree that some of it hits home pretty accurately - particularly the reused password from your youth. I'm not sure I'll adopt usage myself but I'm definitely tossing the idea around.

How am I just now finding out about Cotton Bureau? A Design-and-PreOrder system that makes a lot of sense - post a shirt design and if enough people buy it, they make it. How about a TacoCat or, even better, some Chris Rushing type design? There's a variety of styles available so go find your new favorite shirt.

Very happy to share these new photos of Uncle Skeleton from Jeremy Hunt Schoenherr. Ross has been needing new images for awhile and the results from Jeremy could not have turned out better. If you haven't heard Too Young, Too Old yet - get on it! We finally got the actual vinyl in just recently and they look amazing. Photos of that on the way soon!

Maybe this is really old news but it's new to me! I haven't read / listened through the whole thing yet but this meeting transcript between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt is pretty fascinating thus far. I stumbled into it because of Assange's Bitcoin insight but the entire thing is really quite compelling.

From the department of Paul Hinman Paper Mailed Delivered Artisinal Links comes 26 Stunning Cartoon Backdrops That Deserve To Be Hung on a Wall. The title is a little pitchy but it's a great collection of images - particularly the above, an unreleased plate from Two Pan Goofy. Also, don't miss the Scrambled Eggs or Cap'n Crunch plate - absolutely love those styles!

https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000064846767-dya49z-large.jpg?e76cf77

So much going on at work - launching teasers and pre-orders and plenty of other things. I really should talk more about that, huh? Regardless, here's your playlist and the standard breakdown!

• Trap Ostrich - not gonna lie, this is probably the most surprisingly entertaining video I've seen in some time. I can not explain it and do not want it explained.
• Zero Theorem Trailer - I did not know Terry Gilliam had another film on the horizon and I really didn't know it was a thematic third piece of his Brazil, 12 Monkeys trilogy. Looks Gilliam Good.
• Jim Guthrie - Difference a Day Makes - a stylistically compelling video from Jim Guthrie's latest album, Takes Time. Love the vibe of the whole thing.
• Vita Brevis - remember those somewhat creepy GIF animations? Yea, they are full on videos with sound now.
• Stop and Kiss Program - it took a minute for this Onion report to kick in but I enjoyed it once the testimonials came into play.

Have a great weekend!

Kevin gave me the heads up on a growing movement in Norway best referred to as 'Slow TV.' This preview video is only ten minutes long but gives you an idea of what to expect - very slow paced, non-committal video. The full version is 7 hours long. There's another that is 134 hours long featuring a ferry navigating the countries coast (here's a condensed version).

It's basically the screensaver of television but there's something appealing about it to me. There's something soothing to me about having the TV on. That's probably not healthy but this is a nice way to feed that need.

No still image can properly displaying what's going on over at OriDomi - paper folding for the web. I like the idea of encountering this out in the wild somewhere and surprisingly finding a treat hidden underneath some element on a page. Go tinker, it's fun!

Spotify recently launched Spotify Artists, a How-To site for promoting yourself via their services and, more importantly, how artists get paid. This Guardian article summarizes the whole thing well but it's worth reading through the site to see their growth charts, their international presence and how they calculate artists "market share." That part is the rub, as they claim it's not a per stream calculation but how else do you determine an artist's popularity other than how much they're being listened to? Maybe it's not strictly per play but it certainly plays a factor - semantics aside.

All and all, the whole site is a good resource and an education read for anyone dabbling around in the music industry or the world of Internet Revenue.

Make this into an Rdio Playlist

Got a massive load of time to spare? How about you use it browsing the Tumblr 2013 Year in Review. Twenty-One categories covering topics like Wisdom, Animals, Funny and even Most Viral. So much content to review and re-enjoy!

They've done it before and I'm happy to see that the New York Times Magazine is continuing their trend of featuring "the year's best big-screen performers in original (very) short films." It's rare to see such names - Cate Blanchett, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oprah Winfrey, Greta Gerwig, Robert Redford - doing short pieces written by a variety of other great names - Lake Bell, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, Sarah Polley, etc.

HT Courtney

NPR has posted their 2013 Book Concierge - a list of worthwhile reads selected by NPR staff and critics all heavily tagged so you can really drill down into a category that fits your interests just right. You know, like Biography & Memoir For Art Lovers - easy!

It's a nice clean site and, frankly, we could all stand to read a bit more, right?

You are a dead, failed video game character wandering through the recesses of the Random Access Memory, trying to find peace in the final moments of your existence before being deleted forever.

The above is the, somewhat lofty, concept behind Continue? 9876543210 - a new game for iOS, Mac, PC & Linux (aka everything). The trailer looks like the game totally delivers on the above promise and manages to create a rather dystopian, hellish, pixel world. I haven't played it yet but I'm excited to try it out.

via Erica.

Get a bunch of incredibly talented animators together to create individual 30 second looping animations based on a common theme (fireplace) and, apparently, the results are astounding. Seriously, I'm sort of at a loss for words when it comes to the sheer overwhelming greatness of Yule Log 2.0. I can't link directly to them but there's goodness in there from Erica Gorochow, Frank Chimero, Skip Hursch and a long list of others. It's great. Period.

more reasons to use Songkick for show listings

Hopefully this is just the first of more to come but Chris Rushing recently released pre-orders for his Midnight Oil Crew tee. It's only $20 (with discount if you use the "Cyberoil" code) and it features his great hand lettering! I love the "Member Since Forever" tagline at the bottom. I'd take this as a poster too please.