AKA fermented duck egg. Kid is pretty funny.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
R.I.P. J.D. Salinger
During my sophomore year of high school, I read The Catcher in the Rye. Not only was it a good book as far as composition and all that, but it truly captured depression in literary form for the first time (that I had seen, anyways).
I've struggled with anxiety for the last five or six years, and I've bounced around a fair amount of medications. One of them REALLY put me into a funk for a while, and I guess that I finally realized that kids that were actually clinically depressed weren't just being pussies. I got off of that medication pretty quickly, and I soon got back to normal life.
I've only encountered a few works of art that I felt really embodied what it feels like to be down. One of them is the rapper Kid Cudi... there are also some good movies out there about mental disorders and the darkest reaches of the human mind, like Pi or Apocalypse Now. Catcher in the Rye did a better job than any song or movie or book that I've come across at portraying someone who truly has no ambition, no joy, no hope. Holden Caulfield (the main character) is a bitter, negative, cynical kid that we can all relate to at one time or another. He fails out of his prep school and rides a train to New York City. From there he wanders around in a drunken stupor... for God's sake, the kid rents out a prostitute just to talk to someone. He's got some real issues.
The reason I'm writing about this book is because the author, the man who created Holden and one of the best novels of the 20th century, died yesterday at age 91. J.D. Salinger published the simple story of Caulfield in 1951 and achieved immediate success. He was a recluse that did not want media attention, and both he and his former wife experienced depression; at one point in the 50's, his wife designed a plan to kill herself, Salinger, and their infant child on a trip. She ran away instead.
Salinger also was drafted into World War II and fought with the U.S. Army at D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. It was during this time that he arranged to meet up with legendary writer Ernest Hemingway in Paris, who was a war correspondent at the time. Hemingway of course committed suicide in 1961 and suffered from a fair amount of mental illness himself. I would give anything to sit in on his and Salinger's conversation in 1946.
Respect and rest in peace to J.D. Salinger... his work has inspired and entertained millions for the last 60+ years.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Apple's answer to Netbooks: the iPad
With the latest netbook craze, Steve Jobs has been asked hundreds of times, "when will Apple make a netbook?"
He famously responded to one of these questions with "we don't know how to make a $500 computer that works like crap." (paraphrasing)
Here is Stevie J's official answer: the iPad. A tablet computer that is meant to battle with netbooks.
I'm a HUGE Apple guy... but I just can't justify this purchase. I will probably buy a netbook this summer (I'm looking at the Dell Mini 10v) and I've been itching to see if Apple would respond; this just doesn't do it for me.
The biggest thing I don't like about the iPad is the touchscreen keyboard. I refuse to type like that, typing on my iPod Touch is bad enough. I need a traditional keyboard to type more than a sentence comfortably.
I love the price - $500 - as some websites were predicting this to be a $1000+ product. I just don't love the idea. It seems to me like a large Touch, and I'm going to come out and predict a flop from this device in market sales. Sorry Stevie.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
George W.
This is so weird. I get the vibe from this video that Bush is actually sort of cool and funny.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
moot speaks!
Today moot blessed our presence in a /b/ thread that was over 1600 replies by the time I saw it. He gave some pretty interesting info.
>moot on site traffic:
no. that number is unique ips for all of the posts on /b/ at that snapshot. when a GET is happening, thousands of people are posting simultaneously, which drops that number down. a few thousand people browse /b/ at a given moment, and about ten thousand across the entire site. 4chan has 500,000 unique visitors a day, 7,000,000 in a month.
>Will you accept donations?
i have absolutely zero interest in accepting donations. i am not jimmy wales. begging for donations sucks, and large websites shouldn't rely on donations to cover operating costs.
>Is there anything planned for 4chan in 2010? (hardware/software upgrades or otherwise)?
not really. i just spent a bunch of money (five figures) and time (over a hundred) hours rolling new shit out, and redeploying old shit.
>Will there ever be a way to sufficiently get rid of the spam bots?
i fucking hope so.
>Do you remember when was /b/ good?
no my memory doesn't go back that far
>moot, what are you going to do if 4chan keeps growing and you run out of servers to throw out of it again?
i just threw a bunch of hardware, time, and money at the problem and it appears to have worked out decently. the site still isn't as fast as i'd like. i want to get page loads down to .8sec or so. one server was pushing ~1600mbit/sec yesterday though.
>Do you party?
i don't smoke and barely drink. i am not a "social bug" in the least.
>Moot, you obviously know that 4chan won't last forever. How do you intend to put it down when the time comes? Would you have the heart to sell it, or would you simply shut it down?
:is is a mystery:
>what do you plan on studying in college?
not totally sure. NOTHING related to computers though.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
342 movies from 2009, highlighted in one YouTube movie.
2009 was a good year for movies... I loved Pelham 123, District 9, Avatar, Inglorious Basterds and a few others (on the other side of things, I could have done without Transformers 2 and Wolverine). Here is a YouTube clip that highlights 342 movies from this year. Props to Adam Rondeau for the link.
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Third & The Seventh
Groundbreaking, stunning, beautiful, mesmerizing, scary, and none of it is real (all done on computer, every single thing you see is CG).
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Bacon is good for me
I honestly have no idea how I missed this one. Some fat kid gets pissed over the removal of his junk food, and attempts to run away.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
David Sides, pop/R&B/rap piano player extraordinaire
I found this dude last night, and I'm not sure how I've never seen him before. Apparently he's YouTube's 8th most subscribed musician... it's easy to see why. Check out some of my favorite tunes by him.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Lamebook.com
HILARIOUS site. Who doesn't enjoy a little Facebook drama?Also, check out this sweet music video. Heard it from my Twin Cities friends.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Tallest building ever opens yesterday
From Wikipedia:
"Burj Khalifa, formerly known as Burj Dubai, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 828 m (2,717 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009 and the building officially opened on 4 January 2010."Pretty cool. Read more about it here.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Hip-hop albums to anticipate in 2010
I am thoroughly looking forward to the hip-hop music we'll be hearing this year. Here are the artists that most likely will be putting out albums this year, with the name if it's available.
Dr.Dre: Detox (rumored... PLEASE!)
Drake: Thank Me Later
Kanye West : Good Ass Job (will likely be renamed)
Eminem: Relapse 2
Game: The R.E.D. Album
Mike Posner: ? (currently untitled)
Big Sean: Finally Famous
Nas and Damien Marley: Distant Relatives
Lupe Fiasco: L.A.S.E.R.S.
N.E.R.D: Instant Gratification
T.I.: ? (pending release from jail)
Young Jeezy: Thug Motivation 103
Kid Cudi: Cudder
Lil' Wayne: Carter IV (depends on jail time)
"rascal.jpg"
- Pokemon shirt
- Peed sweatpants
- In police station
- About three other things make this pic hilarious. Funniest one of the new year.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Welcome to the new decade.
I've just arrived from another adventurous romp in the Twin Cities. Happy new year to all of our readers! Enjoy the following "year-in-review" music video, sniped from my friends at MusicThatIsntBad.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)