Maybe, just maybe, I’ll start using this blog more regularly again since I have become thoroughly disenchanted with the social networking landscape. I used to really enjoy Twitter and Flickr (and tolerate Facebook, etc.), but joining Google+ in June overwhelmed me with social fragmentation. People I care about have splintered into too many social networks. And so now I generally ignore them all, to maintain sanity/memory. Just about the only online activity I don’t neglect is Mascot Mashup, my daily 8-bit art project. Well, I guess I maintain my film ratings and reviews at Filmometer.com pretty well too.

Here is the prevailing sentiment on campus about the latest version of Blackboard course management software:

To make your own nonsense images like this (or, even better, like The RAGE FACES of MARIO BROS. Collection by Eric Foster), visit Meme Generator.

No. 200 happens to be Johnny Cash (because he died on this day in 2003). Even though I attempt to tie my daily characters into birthdays, death days, holidays and historical events, arbitrariness often prevails.

See 12 example characters below. Their body proportions, pigeon-toed feet and poses are due to their direct stylistic relationship to the primitive QBasic Gorilla, which inspired this whole project.

Mascot Mashup was born in 2009, but was often on hiatus for the first year of its existence. In April 2011, the site became a daily blog of 8-bit characters designed by me to be used in an ongoing Flash remake of the classic QBasic Gorillas artillery game (and possibly other 1980s-era games). Each sprite has four animation states. The first sprites drawn were all NCAA Division I college mascots, but the characters have since branched into randomness.

I plan to continue this daily art project through at least the beginning of 2012, possibly indefinitely? To be determined. See all characters at mascotmashup.com.

But you can still follow @iancavalier on Twitter or Flickr or 8tracks or Yelp or blah blah social media blah whatever.

(The hiatus monkey is courtesy of Squidsicle.)

Below is a large dump of random, interesting and useful links I had been storing for future posts or for future personal reference. Most of them were collected this spring. I may or may not have tweeted some of these in the past. Just flushing them out of my system now.

Web development & graphic design

• Less Framework: An adaptive CSS grid system
• HTML5 Reset Stylesheet
• CSS3 Generator
• WhatTheFont! font identifier from MyFonts
• Open Source Templates
• 15 Useful CSS3 and HTML5 Templates and Frameworks (April 2010)
• IE 5-8 CSS3 pseudo-class selector emulation: ie-css3.js (January 2010)
• 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less (February 2010)
• How to Code up a Web Design from PSD to HTML (February 2010)
• 50 Inspiring Examples of Minimalism in Web Design (June 2009) and a university (Loyola University Chicago) that actually has a nice, uncluttered website
• 30 Beautifully Textured Web Designs (February 2009)
• Making a website iPhone-friendly using CSS (June 2009)
• 20+ Websites Optimized For The iPhone (January 2008)

WordPress themes

• WordPress Themes » Mobile Themes
• 40 WordPress-Powered Websites With Awesome Designs (April 2010)
• Using Facebook’s “Like” Button in Your Wordpress Blog (April 2010)
• 17 Really Useful Wordpress Plugins That Probably Are Essential (January 2009)

Music

• Jenny Owen Youngs – “Fuck Was I“
• Erik Hassle – “Nothing Else Matters (Metallica Cover)” and “The Thanks I Get“
• A Knife in a Gunfight – Ian Stillmunks from Des Moines, Iowa
• Synth Britannia – great BBC documentary about synth

Animals

• Orca Guardians – free documentary film
• Melanism: “More Black Penguin Sightings” and “Today’s Pic: Rare Black Penguin” (March 2010)

Games & cartoons

• Dino Run – 8-bit-style Flash game from Adult Swim
• Robot Unicorn Attack – Flash game from Adult Swim
• “Creating a Video Game’s World With Real People: Bright Falls” (April 2010)
• “After Warning, ‘South Park’ Episode Is Altered” (April 2010)
• 10 Most Ridiculous Cartoon Character Makeovers (February 2010)
• Younger and junior versions of cartoon characters

Random interest

• “Five Reasons Werner Herzog is More Badass Than Chuck Norris” (November 2009)
• 25 Bizarre Buildings in photos (February 2010)
• “The story behind sex and the city of Portland” (April 2010)
• The Babes of #Boobquake (April 2010)
• Chris Creamer’s Sports Logos and Marc’s Distinctive College Mascot Collection
• Institution Size and Brand Community (April 2010, University Business)
• Tilt-Shift and Lomography Photoshop actions (January 2009) and the Helpless video by Keith Loutit
• “Your new passport has a computer chip inside. Should you worry?” (October 2008)
• BBC – Languages – Spanish – Spanish Steps
• Glidden Paint Versus Behr Paint

I like this quote (read more at quotedump.com):

“What I try to do to maintain my sanity is alternate between artist and whore. If I was just an artist I’d be broke, and if I was just a whore I’d be sad.”
—Jonathan Lemkin, More Tales From the Script (2010)

See you back here in 2011, sometime. Maybe.

• Cullman Liquidation is the 5th local commercial of the I Love Local Commercials series. And it is epic.

Music torture

In music torture news: “Musicians blast using tunes to torment.” Here’s a quote from the article: “a spokeswoman with the National Security Archives says acts whose music is known to have been used covers the musical gamut — from AC/DC to the Barney theme song, Marilyn Manson to Neil Diamond, Tupac Shakur to Sesame Street, Limp Bizkit to Christina Aguilera.” You know, putting the ethics of torture aside for a moment, some of these music selections really make sense.

Literature-related

This project sounds cool: “The Year’s Most Important SF Anthology Is Out Now.” The When It Changed anthology pairs scientists and science fiction authors.

Poe pwns Balloon Boy: “The first great balloon hoax.” The Heene family aren’t the first to come up with a balloon-based con: Edgar Allan Poe did it in 1844, writes Aida Edemariam. Awesome.

Video games

A friend who knows that I like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky a lot has recommended three videos games to me, which he calls “Lynch in game form.” He says that director/writer Goichi Suda (AKA Suda51) has been called the Lynch/Jodorowsky of video games. My friend has played the first two titles below and loves them (to bits):

• Flower, Sun, and Rain (PS2, DS)
• Killer7 (GameCube, PS2)
• No More Heroes (Wii)

He hasn’t played the third one yet, but has heard good things. I probably need to check these out. If they’re good, there are even more titles that Suda51 has written and directed. I’ve seen Killer7 before and it looked awesome, though I remember thinking the gameplay seemed strange and difficult. More like I wanted to watch someone play it than play it myself. I didn’t know the other two. Hmm.

Also, what a strange little game: Wavives (Age Zero). It’s a freeware 2D arena shooter.

Here is an amusing/interesting Wii gaming-related article: “Nintendo Helping Furries To Communicate.”

Design and art

Very cool art, from Fast Company: “‘Reverse Graffiti’ Artist Paul Curtis Shows Us How Dirty We Really Are.”

Awesome hexagon grid: “How the Victorians Imagined An Ideal London.”

Neat design objects: Dieter Rams pool on Flickr.

Technology, home and business

Rethinking GUI: “10/GUI: Fascinating Multitouch User Interface Design.”

You may find this eSATA hot-plugging tool for Windows useful: HotSwap!

This book looks perfect for learning how to make some nifty upgrades to the house: Smart Homes For Dummies by Danny Briere and Pat Hurley. Team up your PC and your home security system.

Nice article on startups: “So You Want to Start a Startup? 5 Places to Start.”

Need to make an org chart? There’s a nice, free site for that. LucidChart is an online collaborative flow chart application.

Web development

I am using this CSS technique in one of my web projects: CSS Round Corners with line layering. It’s JavaScript-free, image-free and backwards compatible! The round corners tutorial also has some nice links to other similar approaches.

I’ll end with this 404 error page: A ninja stole this page.

Dogs and cats

This video is kind of awesome: Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog. Poor dog.

At last. My life is now complete: When poodles turn into peacocks (12 pictures). Sigh.

Oh no: How to properly massage a cat.

This is a cute kitten (on a weird Japanese TV show): Kitten eyebrows.

Movies

The new and upcoming movies below are all on my “To See” list.

• Check out the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
• I guess I’ll need to watch “Alice” out of morbid curiosity. (This is the Syfy miniseries, not the Tim Burton movie.) Weird.
• This might be good: Leap. At least it caught my eye.
• The latest Miyazaki film Ponyo should be amazing, once I get around to seeing it, right? Wait. Why do they play the dubbed version of Ponyo in U.S. theaters? Dammit, Disney. Apparently this song (in Japanese) mutated into this awful English version. Horrifying. Also, the boy singer is named Noah Cyrus . . . is that Miley’s brother?! Oh no, there are more of them! Why doesn’t he sound like he’s been drinking whiskey his entire life as well? And the girl is the sister of the Jonas Brothers. What?! No! Sorry, guys, but I have to go die now. If you hear an Auto-Tuned scream in the distance, that was me. Miyazaki!

Check out this cool movie blog: Three Frames.

Photography and randomness

I enjoyed this tomato-themed photo journal: “This Town Is Red All Over.”

Personal photography note: I currently have a backlog of photos to upload to my Flickr account. But no, I haven’t abandoned my “365 Days” photo project. I’m still taking at least one photo every day. I’ve just gotten lazy about taking them off of my camera. Plus, there was a whole glut of praying mantis photos from August 19 that I wanted to sort though. That’s the bottleneck that started my apathy about uploading. Someday I’ll catch Flickr up.

Speaking of Flickr, these are some nice photos: X-Ray Funnies (mainly X-ray shots of gaming consoles).

I was amused by this crazy, over-the-top video game trailer: “New Serious Sam HD trailer is the best trailer ever.” I think it works for the jaded, demented consumers demographic.

This site is kind of awesome: Truck Spills. I like the Doritos spill on the beach.

Here is some YouTube video evidence that Zach Galifianakis may be the best young comedian alive: appearing as a 1700s comedian on the Comedians of Comedy stand-up comedy tour, as himself on The Michael Showalter Showalter (for CollegeHumor.com), and as Seth Galifianakis on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Also, here’s another 8-bit cover album! Kind of Bloop is an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.

I love the last panels of these Comixed entries: Good at his job, It was an “accident” and Khan hates spoilers. I can’t wait to not watch “Heroes” when it starts up again. No, I probably will. No! It’s terrible . . . and yet.

I’ve browsed through a number of non-Flickr sites lately that have provided excellent inspiration for my own photography projects. Here are some:

• Scott Wade’s Dirty Car Art Gallery
• “Rubik’s Cube Sandwich,” which I plan to make someday (but with different, more colorful fruit and vegetable ingredients)
• James D. Griffioen’s photo sets, including Feral Houses
• “Gallery: Inside Alaska’s Answer to Area 51“
• The Ruins of New York
• The ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which still has an actively burning Silent Hill-style mine fire (also see Johnny Blough’s Centralia set on Flickr)
• Russian plastinochnye (record) collages

Weeds, fruits and vegetables

I will probably want to refer to this article later. From The Oregonian: “Get rid of those weeds once and for all.”

This list by the Environmental Working Group will help you decide what produce is the most important to buy organically grown: “The Full List: 47 Fruits & Veggies.”

I’m thinking about trying some Vegiforms-type molds for my garden vegetables next year. Who doesn’t love novelty vegetables with little faces? These clear plastic forms are very similar to how the Japanese create square watermelons for easy refrigerator storage and stacking.

Technology and gaming

Cool: “Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH.”

Amanita Design’s Machinarium looks amazing: “Machinarium has become too gorgeous.”

Insect technology

I found this fascinating: “Hacking a remote-controlled moth with insect venom.”

Cats and baby animals

He’s quite the cat: “Pet cat catches the daily bus for four years.”

Need to replace your toilet? Make your next one a toilet-tank aquarium: Fish ‘n Flush.

Lastly, here are three more of of these blogs: FYBA, Item Not As Described and Probably Bad News.