Cullman Liquidation, video games and design
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Let’s start with this hilarious, awesome local commercial:
- 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.