Satellite Eyes is a little application that runs in the background on your Mac checking your current location. If you move spots, it creates an overhead map image of your exact coordinates and sets it as your desktop image. There's something strangely unsettling and equally fascinating about having software openly show you that it knows exactly where you are (Granted, you gave it permission to do so but you get my point).

via Arlo.

• Bootswatch - a collection of colorful themes for Bootstrap so you can set yourself apart from the potential homogeny it creates. See also: Bootstrap WP - a Wordpress theme built on top of Bootstrap. via Madrid and Keegan, respectively.
• Bandcamp Powers Up - they've fully renovated their album manager UI, overhauled their search and even launched a Pro Version of the site. If these guys had an IPO, I'd invest. (They break $20 million in artist sales real soon, just under four years - insane!).

Remember, back in February, I told you about the documentary Beauty Is Embarrassing ? The documentary tells the story of artist Wayne White, the man you likely know for his work creating the visual aesthetic of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I was fortunate enough to see the film at a limited screening during the Nashville Film Festival and can vouch for how great it is in every way. It's sweet, it's hilarious, it's inspiring... everything you'd expect it to be after watching the trailer.

Now they are trying to get the film out to a wider audience by self-distributing it to theaters. Unfortunately, that takes a good bit of money. So, they started a Kickstarter campaign to help reach their lofty goal. Its a long road to $50k and they've only got two weeks left to close the gap. I can't endorse this movie enough and recommend you help get it playing in your town, as you will absolutely enjoy it. Guaranteed.

Kyle McDonald and Matt Mets created the Blind Self Portrait - a combination of software and a moving platform that creates a dynamic illustration of the person sitting at the computer. The results have a great vibe to them and are, unsurprisingly, consistent regardless of the person holding the pen. Be sure to watch an entire portrait being drawn to get the full impact. Love the single line style so much.

via Tromant

Kate posted a link to this great Guardian article on The Race to Fake Meat. It's a nice in-depth look at a handful of the strongest competitors attempting to synthesize meat. Quotes like this make you stop and re-consider what you think you know about food production:

Eating meat is bad for the environment, of that there is no doubt. And the moral arguments against killing animals are compelling. Humans currently slaughter about 1,600 mammals and birds every second for food – that is half a trillion lives a year, plus trillions more fish, crustaceans and molluscs. The total biomass of all the world's livestock is almost exactly twice that of humanity itself. And while crops that feed people cover just 4% of the Earth's usable surface (land that is not covered by ice or water, or is bare rock), animal pastureland accounts for a full 30%. Our meat, in other words, weighs twice as much as we do and takes seven times as much land to grow.

With a massively rising population that number will only increase. Being smarter about food production will be essential, not to mention more humane. It's a complex subject to discuss - as Generated Meat will surely rouse a great deal of doubters but, at this point, isn't the meat the majority of US customers consume so injected with additional hormones and additives that it's a null issue? Maybe. Maybe not.

It's probably not going to be a battle that's fought on the frontline of the media but, let's hope, it's not one that gets squashed by the trillion dollar existing food industry. When dealing with a behemoth like that, change is never going to be welcome.

• Modify iOS icons without Jailbreaking - step by step instructions on how to change the icon of any application installed on your iOS device with the help of iExplorer. It's actually quite simple and works surprisingly well but, I imagine, if you ever update an app that's been modified it will revert to the original icon. So, not much of a permanent solution if you really hate that Tweetbot icon. via Daniel.
• Converting @font-face formats - in case this @Font-Face Generator ever becomes obsolete (or you just love doing things through the Terminal), get familiar with these instructions. via Casey.

The only good part about being gone from Friday Videos for a week is that it gives me two weeks of unseen videos to pull from. Some of this playlist may be old news to you but I haven't laughed this heartily in quite some time.

• J20 Cats and Dogs - Chad sent me a gif of this and then the full-on commercial. Ridiculous in all the best ways.
• Hamster Band - Should I admit to enjoying this? Absolutely not. Do I anyway? Yes.
• Is Only Game - I think I've watched this 35 times already. Hysterical.
• I Can't Believe You've Done This - So proper!
• Picard's Best Line - short, sweet and to the point.
• Russian Death-Cam Supercut - those insane Russian dash cam videos are great but always about 40x too long. This solves that problem.
• A1 Concepts: Let's Pizza - is this an actual video showcasing a Pizza Kiosk or a Hilariously Dry Parody video? I honestly can't tell.
• Conan at Weiner Circle - Jack McBrayer vs Hostile Staff + Triumph The Comic Dog. Probably old news to you by now but I loved it.
• Manny Voicemail - stick with this rant.. it goes to some crazy places. Who knew dreadlocks were so controversial!? Thank you Paul.
• Nigel Minaj - Super Blargh - I know zilch about what's happening here and I like it that way.

Still need more? Watch this new What Are You Doing Tonight? - always surprisingly entertaining.

Have a great weekend!

I love a good random dump of images. Found Photos, Them Thangs, Nevver, this thing.. all great gems to visit somewhat regularly. Following in the same tradition comes Vast & Black - a bevy of desaturated images with no rhyme or reason behind them but a compelling vibe when collected together.

I think I might just put aside 45 minutes right now and watch this documentary on Lonesome Crowded West from Modest Mouse. Behind the Scenes insight on albums you love is always going to be interesting but it's also fascinating to hear about the general landscape of music during the mid-90's from an area that wasn't Seattle. After that, I'll finally tackle that Flaming Lips documentary as well.

Alanna gave me the heads up on the photographic works of Paul Costello and I'm pretty hooked! I mean, look at this image! Anyone responsible for that capture has got to be great.

• Twivatar - while mourning the death of TweetImages I stumbled upon a similar avatar service, Twivatar - also defunct because of the way that the Twitter API works but with a very handy note about Twitter now officially offering their own version of those services:
  http://twitter.com/api/users/profile_image/username
• Kerckhoff's Principle - not that I deal with a hefty amount of cryptography but I found this axiom to be fairly fascinating: "A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge." or, stated more simply - "The enemy knows the system."
• VHX raises $1.25M - just a nod to these guys on how proud I am of them to raise such funds. They're on to something special and I'm happy others are recognizing that.

I'm blown away by the site design, implementation and overall experience of Black Negative. That sounds like over the top praise but it's absolutely intended to be. Every page design is engaging, the supplemental media is perfectly integrated and there's just enough required user engagement to keep you clicking through every page. Just make sure you click through every panel - they all need to be viewed.

Hopefully someone is buying Sylvain Tran and Dilshan Arukatti endless bottles of champagne for the design and build-out on this one.

Just saw that McBess posted two new limited edition prints likely worth getting your hands on.

HT Davis.

I haven't had a chance to watch the entire thing yet but this Hollywood Reporter Comedy Actress Roundtable has some great gems in it. Christina Applegate, Julie Bowen, Laura Dern, Zooey Deschanel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jane Lynch and Martha Plimpton have a load of experience between the group of them and share a great deal of their trials and tribulations. There's also a new Comedy Actors Roundtable, Dramatic Actors and Actresses and a bunch more. It's a ton of content (and no way to save it in a queue since THR uses the Brightcove player - boo) but every clip I've watched has been interesting and engaging. Seems like a good place to immerse yourself for awhile.

There's a great read from Wesley Verhoeve regarding the changing landscape of the music industry. It starts here where he shares his thoughts on the NPR intern vs David Lowery discussion that's been going on the past few days (if you're unfamiliar, just read this). Basically, the youth of today wants instant access to an infinite music catalog - streaming and available immediately. Not only are they not interested in buying CD's but they're not really interested in buying music. Verhoeve reminds us that the concept of Music As Commodity is a relatively new one, created by corporations.

All and all, it's a fascinating read because you can definitely see the industry headed down this path - the digital subscription model is sure to take hold as the preferred style.. it's just a matter of time, right?

It should be noted that I'm of the shrinking niche audience that enjoys procurement on a consumable scale - buying an album at a time (digitally or physically) actually gives me a chance to appreciate the music within. Having access to any song, ever, just seems overwhelming. So, I am personally not on board for the streaming model but that doesn't mean I don't see the writing on the wall...

Are you familiar with Emma, the email marketing solution? It's in the same competitive realm as Mailchimp / Campaign Monitor / etc and they just recently relaunched their entire web presence. I mention this for a number of reasons.

1) I know a bunch of people that work there and they should be congratulated for all the hard work in renovating their site and their email creation tool. That is no small feat.

2) I may be pulling back a curtain I shouldn't be but the videos promoting the new creation tool feature original compositions from Uncle Skeleton. They're cute little ditties that fit the Emma brand well.

3) Competition breeds innovation and it's good to see the envelope of email marketing continuing to move forward. I'm not convinced Facebook or Twitter are the best routes for staying in touch with customers because they are passive ways of connecting, email marketing feels more direct and harder to gloss over.

Long story short, go check out the (fully responsive) site and the videos. It's a pleasant experience!

Do you ever see something on the Internet and immediately think "There's no way.. right?!" and then you think about it some more and decide you don't know enough about the technologies involved to question how legit or not it may be. So, ultimately, you accept it. Such is the case with this Reel-To-Reel via iPod demonstration. There's even a video of the iphone (with Square reader) making the recording. Craziness.

At the very least it taught me about Paper Tape Archives and, for that, I'm grateful.

My pal Arlo and I share many common interests - one such overlap is our enjoyment of images of highly textured walls as desktop wallpaper. Arlo does a decent bit of world traveling and just returned from Spain where he collected these gems. Sure, you could browse through his non-vague images of Barcelona (or Portugal) but wouldn't you rather just marvel at goodness like this? Go treat yourself, please!

Splitsider has great rundown of The Complete Dan Harmon Channel 101 Canon. At this point can I assume you know who Community creator Dan Harmon is? And that you're familiar with the Channel 101 project he started with Rob Schrab? Okay, well, now you can see everything Harmon put into the competition over the years all from one place. It's basically one of the finest options you've got for wasting your entire day.

Falfa gave me the heads up on these Tennessee Posters from Josh Hawkins and I must say, I'm intrigued! Rarely do you see the likes of TN represented in this kind of style - parts hazy, futuristic, minimal and zero parts country western. It's a nice change of pace.