Courtney gave me the heads up on this Arts Beat article regarding IFC developing the Onion News Network as a legit half hour program. This is great news by itself but the article goes on to state that IFC will also be premiering a new Kids in the Hall comedy Death Comes to Town as well as the BBC4 fall series \"The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret\" featuring David Cross and Will Arnett. Given that I fall right into IFC\'s main demographic I think it\'s safe to say I find all of this to be very pleasing news indeed.

Yesterday, Madrid pointed me in the direction of Grain & Gram, a new web publication that is really focused on presenting their content in a beautiful way - much more like a legit magazine layout for the web. The first article, a profile on musician Greg Perkins, is a combination photo essay, interview, recommended listening list and statistical instrument breakdown all wrapped in one pleasing-to-the-eye package.

It also turns out that the project involves Danny Jones, Aaron Martin and JonPaul Douglass - all known for being involved in great things. So, please, go check out Grain & Gram.

I\'ve been seeing the portfolio work of Tim MacPherson making the rounds on the blogs lately but I think there\'s a bit of neglect happening if you don\'t spend some time with his personal sets. The \"Travel\" archive has a load of gorgeous environments captured and the \"Archive\" set has such diversity to it that it\'s hard not to find something you like.

Via Kate.

Arlo tipped me off to this Flash CS5 preview that walks through a lot of the new features of the new app. Most of the hype around the new version focuses on exporting to iPhone app but this video focuses on a lot of the other stuff that is coming; such as flowing textfields and integration with Flash Builder. It\'s a bit lengthy but you can let it play in the background to get the gist of what\'s in store.

Bobby Solomon, aka Kitsune Noir, has always impressed me - mostly with the fantastic content of his blog and his immense Desktop Wallpaper Project - but lately it really seems like he\'s been cranking up his activity to 11. He still posts interesting items with great regularity, he launched his Poster Club and now he\'s teamed up with Furni Creations to start a designer clock series called Neverend. The first iteration in this new monthly series is a collaboration with Dan Funderburgh that has resulted in this clock design. The intricate pattern laser etched into the wood looks great and I imagine having a clock as a canvas is going to yield a load of interesting results as the project continues onward.

Long story short, Kitsune Noir continues to boggle the mind with the amount of quality projects he\'s involved.

If you weren\'t aware, MBV runs a side tumblr account that consists of just the listings of upcoming releases. It is, appropriately, called MBV New Music. It serves a dual function of being a great way to keep up with upcoming releases and to provide some possible inspiration for yourself in the graphic design department. Granted, you can get all this info from the regular MBV as well but it\'s nice to have this option at your disposal.

I love the aesthetic of I Am Not An Artist: An Animated Gif Paranoia About Nonstop Design Workers. The grid view is, obviously, the most overwhelming and fascinating but I love that there are alternate views for each submission.

I just spent a good amount of time browsing through the entirety of works from Karl Herbert. The personal works were particularly fascinating - especially the Going Global and R\'s sets. Also be sure to give a peek to the People Towels piece.. I want some.

Anyone that has had to any amount of Photoshop cleanup work should really watch this preview of the forthcoming CS5 \"Content-Aware Fill\" feature. It really does look too good to be true; particularly about three-quarters into the video when they start demonstrating deleting huge swaths of image with loose lasso selections or filling giant gaps of transparency with a single keystroke. It\'s always hard to imagine Photoshop getting more powerful each go around (remember when the Healing Brush debuted?) but it\'s certainly welcome when it happens.

Daniel has been laying on the updates for Fav 4 pretty hot and heavy lately. Last night he launched an option to customize the link for any of your favorite selections - i.e. if \"Hulu\" is one of your destinations and you\'d prefer it link directly to the Daily Show Hulu page, you can easily update the link. Very nice.

Previously, he also added a search engine option and \"themes\" if you prefer the page be a bit darker when you arrive.

If you are a fan of Jez Burrows (and, really, you should be) this is your lucky week. Not only does he have a very limited edition letterpress print available from Tiny Showcase but he has opened his own shop where you can easily buy a handful of his works; including his Kitsune Noir print and his Destroyer\'s Rubies statistical analysis poster.

There is no such thing as too much Jez Burrows.

Some links worthy of a bit of pondering:

• Google Uncensors China - on Monday, Google stopped filtering their search results for mainland Chinese users and started redirecting them to the Hong Kong version of the site; which operates under different laws. That, in and of itself, is not all that outlandish - but the fact that Google (a company) is taking a stand that affects a huge political issue such as free speech against China (a country) is fascinating to me.
• Bandcamp Launches Image Maps - recently announced on their blog the guys at Bandcamp have made it possible to add an Image Map header to your profile so that further integration of your Bandcamp page and your Dotcom website is possible. I like the direction these guys are moving in - less and less of an external \"service\" and more a standardized page for your site.

Some time ago I linked up the trailer for the, then, forthcoming short film I\'m Here from Spike Jonze and Absolut Vodka. It appears as though they have now put the entire thing online. Viewings are actually limited to a fixed number of people per day so be sure to queue it up when you have some time to actually watch it.

As previously noted, Absolut does not shy away from giving money to creative people and letting them make weird things. I wouldn\'t call this Jonze short \"weird\" per se, just maybe not traditional. Always good to see him try some odder things in a shorter format.

Patrice and Garrick live in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. They Shoot Film of their surroundings; wherever that may be. Their site is simple and direct. It actually reminds me of photo websites from many years back that took the effort to showcase a new image a day but with little extra hub-bub surrounding it; a practice I appreciate.

This morning brought the news that independent radio station WOXY will be shutting its doors due to a lack of funding, effective immediately. This has happened before but it doesn\'t look good this time around.

It is, obviously, a downer to see this sort of thing happen to any fierce outlet of independent music. My condolences go out to all of them.. particularly my good friend Paige Maguire who has been their marketing director for the past six months and really put them more on the map than they have been in the past few years.

Fingers crossed some miracle happens in terms of funding but, if not, hopefully everyone involved goes on to new projects that equal the goodness of WOXY.

Do something good with your day and head over to this contest and give Jeremy Okai Davis a hearty rating in this Paul Frank Art Attack contest. He will reward you with a hip hop mix.. okay, he\'ll give that to you anyway. Just go vote and know you did the right thing.

After just over a year, the Impossible Project - the company set on getting Polaroid film back into production - has succeeded in their mission. According to their site and a press release that came out yesterday, you will be able to buy a wide range of film, accessories and cameras as of this Friday - March 25th. The new packaging looks great and it is a wonderful feeling knowing these guys took on such an enormously daunting task and actually reached their goal in such a short amount of time.

The JB.Tumblr site has plenty of good content but oddly scrolling backgrounds on each post module is what caught my eye. When scrolling the page at first it seemed like an optical illusion; a high compliment for his CSS usage.

You can see another example of this effect in non-blog format at Ultimate Black Belt Test - much more pronounced and works best when clicking the navigation.

Via Daniel.

The AV Club has a great new interview up with Bob Odenkirk where he discusses his role on Breaking Bad as Saul Goodman, his work developing new shows like Tim And Eric as well as a bunch more for other networks, his own possible new show for FX and his take on being a director. It is, obviously, essential reading.