Random note 35426:

If you have a black background and white text on your website, you are in fact, an asshole. Thanks for making me see lines everywhere I look for the next ten minutes.

Skull master - Pay your respects to Mr Vernon Courtlandt Johnson - Lifelounge - Daily Goodness

There are very few artists that can claim that their artwork has helped to define an entire subculture and era. Vernan Courtlandt Johnson (VCJ) can easliy stand by that claim as his iconic illustrations shaped and represented one the of the most influential skateboard brands of the 80s, Powell Peralta. Still to this day, his illustrations are out of this world and in terms of illustrative skulls, he's still number one in my book. Mad respect for you VCJ.

In search of the click track « Music Machinery

I’ve always been curious about which drummers use a click track and which don’t, so I thought it might be fun to try to build a click track detector using the Echo Nest remix SDK ( remix is a Python library that allows you to analyze and manipulate music). In my first attempt, I used remix to analyze a track and then I just printed out the duration of each beat in a song and used gnuplot to plot the data. The results weren’t so good - the plot was rather noisy. It turns out there’s quite a bit of variation from beat to beat. In my second attempt I averaged the beat durations over a short window, and the resulting plot was quite good.

at some point you just say fuck it, throw the oars in the river, open the last beer and float downstream. see what the god damn river has in mind for you because you don't have a fucking clue.

Project MKULTRA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Efforts to "recruit" subjects were often illegal, even discounting the fact that drugs were being administered (though actual use of LSD, for example, was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966). In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The men were dosed with LSD, and the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors and the "sessions" were filmed for later viewing and study.[21]

MK-Ultra fun and good times.

The Teenager Audio Test - Can you hear this sound?

Clicking the play button below will produce a tone that is generally only heard by people under the age of 25. It has been used as a deterrent device to keep teenagers from loitering in malls and shops, and sounds similar to a buzzing mosquito. Typically the longer you listen to it, the more annoying it gets.

This actually hurt my ears and I'm well into my 30's.

Landscape Blurs

In the fall of 2008 I started working on a series of images whose main characteristic involved moving the camera while taking the photograph. This is a process I had tried in Paris in the early 1980s under the guidance of Scott McLeay with whom I was studying photography at the time. Unfortunately, at that time my attempts had been unsuccessful for reasons we will see shortly.

The motivation for creating this series was related to my study and research of color and composition. Because these images cannot be composed as precisely as non-blurred photographs, and because colors get mixed with other colors when the camera is moved, I thought that they were near-perfect examples of composing with color instead of composing with shapes and objects.

The Godfather Wars | vanityfair.com

“There’s a story there,” says Beatty. “I was offered The Godfather before Marlon was in it. I was offered The Godfather when Danny Thomas was the leading candidate for the Godfather. And I passed. Jack [Nicholson] passed, also. And I remember something else. I was offered The Godfather to produce and direct. Charlie Bluhdorn was a fan of Bonnie and Clyde and sent me the book.… I read it. Sort of. And I said, ‘Charlie, not another gangster movie!’”

FRONTLINE: inside the meltdown: watch the full program | PBS

On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. "There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left," says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.).

RadioPopper Blog

High Speed Sync w/ Bees and Others February 14th, 2009

Okay all, we’ve had a little gem in the bag for a while now. Time to share yet another feature of the new RadioPopper X system. How would you like to activate nearly any light source ever produced - including large powerful studio lights - using high speed sync - by radio. Another world’s first, right here.

PIX Feed: PIX CHAT : Jeremy Wilkins, Digital Retoucher

It was exactly at that time that I was introduced to Daniel Kopton, who runs a retouching business called Danklife. We met through a friend of a friend, and he invited me over to see what kind of work he was doing. I was completely blown away. What he was doing was light years beyond any retouching that I had been doing in the headshot world. Daniel agreed to teach me his secrets and give me some freelance jobs, as long as I agreed not to talk back too much. I had some money saved up and knew that I didn't have the time to learn high-end retouching from Daniel and still be at Pixels full time. So, I quit my job and hoped for the best. The transition seems to have been successful. Daniel and I have a really strong working relationship, and I've been with Danklife for 3 years now.

Jeremy gets a little press time!

We are becoming a new species, we are becoming Homo Evolutis - Ars Technica

The day may come when we are able to take the best biology of the known animal kingdom and make it part of our own. This isn't just about being a bit stronger, or having perfect eyesight our whole lives. All of our organs and limbs have weaknesses that can be addressed, and there are also opportunities to go beyond basic fixes and perform more elaborate enhancements. At a private lunch on Thursday, Enriquez spoke of a young girl who, after suffering a knee injury, received tendon replacement therapy centered around tendons grown in a lab. It not only fixed her knee, but made it stronger than normal. Later in life as she pursued life as a professional skier, the coach actually asked that she have the same surgery on her other knee to increase her abilities.