Many years ago I received a mix CD from a friend containing four tracks from The GoldRoom. I knew nothing of them beyond those four tracks and the fact that they were from neighboring Murfreesboro, TN. Over the years since then they've released a number of singlesongs but never enough to satisfy my appetite for more of what they were offering. Until now...
The Surrounding Hours is the debut full-length from The GoldRoom and it manages to deliver everything I expected from a proper rock band with `dark` tendencies along with a handful of surprises. Long story short, it's well worth a stream or two and absolutely worth the $7 for a permanent procurement.
This weekend I had the fortunate opportunity to watch Attack The Block - a new film from Joe Cornish featuring a bunch of rag tag teen gang members protecting their block from an incoming alien attack. It is that perfect balance of humor, action, quick scares and great CGI (seriously, the aliens look amazing). I'm sure there are those out there that could find some fault with it but, from my perspective, there's no room for complaints - it's just great from the word Go.
The film has been picked up by Screen Gems in the US and should be hitting a small run of theatres across the nation now. For those of you across the pond, it should already be on DVD.
The above piece is from Erik Olson'sOut of India series. There are several pieces featuring multiple heads but that particular Tiger piece caught my eye.
Back to the Start - a Chipotle ad featuring Willie Nelson covering a Coldplay song. It's always kind of odd to see a huge chain promoting "getting back to basics" because real basics would be Mom and Pop owned stores, not chains. But it's still a compelling video.
Other planets the same distance as the moon - not a funny / ridiculous video but a supremely interesting one. Seeing Mars in the night sky wouldn't be that weird... seeing Jupiter is a whole different story.
Dancing Marionette - the most awkward, sexualized marionette you'll ever encounter (hopefully). via Paul.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - "Even when I was a child, I was hated by skeletons." And also, "I sleep now." Must see this whole thing.
Bonus Videos
Don't Hug Me I'm Scared - Some rather friendly felt puppets explore the world of creativity. Obviously, it goes into some dark places but it's a great journey getting there.
That's All Folks - A canon fuse glued to plywood burning through paper to spell out "That's All Folks." I'd love to see this one in double time.
AV Club has a lot of great interviews but some exceed expectations in the best of ways. Their latest with Patton Oswalt covers a lot of ground and every bit of it is interesting. It gets particularly interesting near the end when they start investigating the negativity of the Internet (and the money to be made there), the attitude of not hating everything, punch-ups on scripts, stand-up insider info and the journey. It is, to say the least, quite good.
Check out this really interesting article over at WIRED, The Creativity of Anger, in which a case is made for pro criticism in teams. The example they use to set the stage is Steve Jobs berating the MobileMe team for delivering a subpar product, thus slandering the Apple name. It goes on to argue that negative feedback actually stirs creativity. On the whole, it's probably not best to cultivate an environment where team members would be scared but there is certainly something to be said for a roundtable in which bad ideas are noted as bad ideas and not coddled in any way.
Eric Schmidt Praises Steve Jobs - a nice little pull quote from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt regarding his thoughts on Steve Jobs as a CEO.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke Future Predictions - I'm always a fan of predictions of the future from the past; particularly when they're right on target. The 3-minute video goes through a lot of points - some of them are way off (no more cities?), some of them are spot on (instant contact with each other, always).
IE PNG Black Border Issue - turns out that even though IE8 supports 24-bit transparent PNG files it reverts to IE6 if you try to use a "sliding door" / sprite for anything. The fix is easy but you might pull your hair out trying to track it down. via Daniel
I've only played through a few levels so far but I can tell that I'm going to get sucked into a vortex of lost time with The End - a new game from Channel 4 and Preloaded. Granted, the official description says:
It is a game of self-discovery for 14-19 year olds which integrates strategy, puzzles and philosophical questions into a world which explores a range of commonly (or less commonly) held views about death, belief and science.
And I'm a 32 year old.. a bit outside the range of the intended audience but that's not going to stop me. It's got great game mechanics, phenomenal illustration style and, pleasantly enough, some thoughtful aspects as well.
I may be repeating myself here but it's been awhile since I've taken a look at the Vernacular Typography Polaroids set. It's still great and well worth a re-visit. Consider it an Internet Classic.
You may have seen the intentionally awkward portrait photos of Robbie Augspurger before but he's done a recent update to his site that added a load more stuff. It'd be a good idea if you headed over there and checked it all out. The Glamour Headshots are entertaining but I'm loving the Faux Film Stills and Album Covers even more. I'm even contemplating picking up some copies of Video Pizza for friends.
Do you remember Keygen's? You know, those little bits of software that generated software keys to help you embrace your W4R3Z tendencies? One aspect of them that I had entirely forgotten was that they usually have some sort of background music. Relive your favorite software cracks soundtrack with the KeyGen Jukebox. The music is actually pretty great (assuming you're into a diverse range of 8-bit style) but the song titles are my favorite part - BootXPkg, Swift_3Dkg, Half_Life_2_19trn, etc. etc.
You may recall some time ago when The Manual was looking for funding. Well, they reached their goal, put their heads down and now have the first issue complete with articles from Frank Chimero, The Standardistas and many many others. The site, by Weightshift, is gorgeous in and of itself. I can only imagine the actual product being equally gorgeous.
So, Gimme Bar launched yesterday and it is, apparently, getting slammed with traffic - the server is barely responding. Fortunately, you can check out this demo video to get the basic concept. It's similar to a lot of Bookmarking services - ala Delicious, FFFFound, etc - except that it saves images, text, video within categories that you define. And, the best part in my opinion, is that it can back everything up to your Dropbox account. So, if you wanted to actually have `local` copies of the things you'd discovered, you could.
Hopefully their server comes back up soon and everyone is able to sign up for the service and give it a spin; it seems like a rather handy tool to have.
Nick Thorburn, aka Nick Diamonds - he of The Unicorns, Human Highway and Mister Heavenly among his many projects - has released a solo album over on Bandcamp entitled I Am an Attic. It isn't as frantic as some of his other projects but it's certainly worth a listen - reminds me of the pace and tone of the Human Highway project actually, and that's a great thing.
I caught the trailer for the new Wacom Inkling device and my first impression was complete disbelief. A device that clips to any drawing surface and records the movement, pressure and subtleties of drawing with a real pen (ok, a special Wacom pen with ink) that you can then dump into a vector or bitmap application of your choice? Seriously, that's a legitimate thing? Granted, I've not seen the actual results but I'm blown away by the concept and even more astonished that it's not just a theoretical musing.. it's legit.
Andrew Kolb has taken it upon himself to interpret David Bowie's "Space Oddity" as a children's book. It is a great experience to listen to the song as you browse the illustrated panels - particularly the portions without lyrics where Kolb has brilliantly filled in some blanks.
This time lapse video from Kim Pimmel quickly embodies a sci-fi vibe. It's pretty amazing what can happen with the right amount of soap bubbles, dyes and the magic of capillary action. The first in the series is pretty fascinating as well - though for different reasons.
