SHABANG!

flex — Wed, 23 May 2012 01:23:42 GMT

The Disappearing Double Chin Trick for Portrait Photography: "The key to looking good in photos? It's all about your jaw, as photographer Peter Hurley explains in this video." (YouTube, ~15 min.) Hurley's quick tips for better portraits in the NYT; Hurley's helpful headshot tips for actors. (~8 min.) Want more? FStoppers behind-the-scenes video (10 min.); an excerpt (from his DVD) of one headshot session (20 min.); a 2-hour seminar on "The Basic Headshot". An SLR Lounge interview with Hurley. (~40 min.) (main link via laughingsquid + lifehacker)

super quick kitchen tips

flex — Thu, 24 May 2012 02:57:39 GMT

America's Test Kitchen Super Quick Video Tips: "Test Kitchen wisdom distilled into eminently watchable video clips" of no more than a minute or two long, including tips for meat (how to make the most perfect bacon ever - how to quickly defrost meat - how to dry-age steak at home) to coffee (how to make pour-over coffee - how to fake a latte at home) and wine (the fastest way to chill wine) to pizza (flattening dough and baking a perfect thin-crust pizza ) and general kitchen tips (is your knife sharp enough? - do you really need to buy regular olive oil? - how to quickly soften butter and soft cheese). And there's Ask the Test Kitchen quick video tips as well (what's the best way to peel eggs? - how do I store brown sugar?).

He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.

unSane — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:45:16 GMT

He uttered a sound much like a bull dog swallowing a pork chop whose dimensions it has underestimated. Random P G Wodehouse quote generator. That is all.

Oh that's tearing my heart out, I love that, just keep that going...

empath — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:39:31 GMT

BBC's Essential Mix has been running two hour DJ sets for nearly 20 years, usually continuous mixes of current club tracks. Nicolas Jaar took things in a decidedly different direction this week, with an eclectic mix of sound track music, jazz, hip-hop, IDM and pop music with just a sprinkling of deep house here and there. Truly essential listening.

The guide to implementing 2d platformers

Artw — Thu, 24 May 2012 22:20:19 GMT

Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details.

star wars as you've never heard it before

flex — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:00:27 GMT

Star Wars: The Radio Play - Seven top voice actors table read Star Wars (YouTube) at Emerald City Comicon. "Join voice actors Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell, and Rob Paulsen as they re-create the magic of the Star Wars films, albeit in their own special way!" Characters include: Fry, Bender, Batman, Yakko, Wakko, Pinky, The Brain, Morbo, Bubbles, IronHide, Dr. Zoidberg, Jake the Dog, and many impressive celebrity impressions: Shatner as C3PO, Walken as R2D2, Tony Soprano as Greedo, Twilight Sparkle as Han Solo... (via reddit)

Robert Hughes' "The Shock of the New"

Trurl — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:28:23 GMT

Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary television series by Robert Hughes produced by the BBC in association with Time-Life Films and RM Productions. ... It addressed the development of modern art since the Impressionists and was accompanied by a book of the same name; its combination of insight, wit and accessibility are still widely praised. - Wikipedia

Episode 1: The Mechanical Paradise
Episode 2: The Powers That Be
Episode 3: The Landscape of Pleasure
Episode 4: Trouble in Utopia
Episode 5: The Threshold of Liberty
Episode 6: The View from the Edge
Episode 7: Culture as Nature
Episode 8: The Future That Was

"Drink when ambivalence haunts you."

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 27 May 2012 05:35:42 GMT

The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game

"I got one of them," said James. "Please don't die."

Sebmojo — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:59:25 GMT

Day Z is the best thing I've played so far this year. On my first go, I bled to death in the dark, alone on a forest trail.

Day Z (pronounced "daisy") is a free roaming, persistent world zombie apocalypse simulator built in the Arma 2 engine by Dean "Rocket" Hall, an employee of the game's developer. It is a wonky, brutal, and compulsively immersive generator of dreadful stories.

Then, after a couple of minutes, we encountered another survivor. A newbie from the beach. He turned to look at us.

We looked at him.

"Let's take him out." A snap decision, but a horrifying one. We murdered him under a tree. He tumbled down, flopping backwards in the grass. The corpse twitched and shuddered. "This is hideous." A pause to look at what we'd done. "Just get his stuff."

To play it, you need Arma 2 and its expansion and the mod itself.

Your Arms Too Short to Post on Blog

benito.strauss — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:11:35 GMT

Excavations in Argentina have unearthed a new dinosaur with a short skull and tiny forearms: Eoabelisaurus mefi.

Officially announced in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society, the dinosaur is a South American (Patagonian) version of Tyrannosaurus rex, whose range was restricted to the Northern Hemisphere (Laurasia).

E. mefi is getting press mainly because of its short forearms — shorter even than T. rex, already the butt of many cartoons.

Brian Switek's excellent Dinosaur Tracking blog gives more details.

[The dinosaur's genus name, Eoabelisaurus, means "early Abelisaurus", and its species name, mefi, disappointingly honors the MEF, the Museo Paleontológico "Egidio Feruglio" in Patagonia, where its main discoverer, Diego Pol, is active.]

Les Mains Noires: Tempero Brasileiro

Tom-B — Sat, 26 May 2012 20:07:13 GMT

Tempero Brasileiro (mp3) is a collection of rare Brazilian tracks originally issued on 7″ vinyl. Compiled by Edson Carvalho, one of the top São Paulo crate diggers.

Les Mains Noires is a blog by an expat French DJ/crate digger currently living in São Paulo. Check out his DJ mixes page.

Some favorites:
Postcard for Sofrito
Salsita con Swing
African Hip Hop
Dirty Caribbean Jazz Vol.1
Dirty Caribbean Jazz Vol.2
Dirty Caribbean Jazz Vol.3
Angola Dancefloor Shakers

Ektoplazm

Trurl — Thu, 24 May 2012 02:30:02 GMT

Ektoplazm is now the world's largest distributor of free (and legal) psytrance music specializing in high-quality Creative Commons-licensed content from netlabels and independent artists, all released in MP3 and lossless CD-quality FLAC and WAV formats.

Confessions of a recovering lifehacker

Foci for Analysis — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:18:38 GMT

I used to be a lifehacking addict [...] But sometime over the last couple years (around the time I turned 30, not coincidentally), it has begun to dawn on me: Maybe all the time I spend looking for better ways to do things is keeping me from, well, doing things.

Confessions of a recovering lifehacker

Does TED even understand it's being mocked?

oneswellfoop — Sat, 26 May 2012 19:50:49 GMT

Reggie Watts gives the Ultimate TED Talk which means deconstructive, meaning-free, musical and far more entertaining than most.

Also, Reggie as a starship pilot is one of the highlights* of Hot Chip's very silly Peter-Serafinowicz-directed new video "Night and Day"
*along with Terence "Zod" Stamp lipsync-rapping and rhyming "Abba" and "Zappa"

Louisiana Inc. arcerated

painquale — Sat, 26 May 2012 20:26:12 GMT

"Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's. The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash." Louisiana Incarcerated is a tour de force eight-part series on the Louisiana prison system.

Via this NYTimes op-ed.

Commuter Reading

netbros — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:57:21 GMT

What's a Readlist? A group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything—bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone.

A Fan Asked Bill Murray For An Autograph. Instead Bill Gave Him This.

feelinglistless — Fri, 25 May 2012 21:49:30 GMT

A fan asked Bill Murray for an autograph. Instead Bill gave him this. [via]

Wendy Carlos' "Beauty in the Beast"

Trurl — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:25:53 GMT

Wendy Carlos is best known for Switched-On Bach, the best-selling album that popularized the Moog synthesizer, and the soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange and Tron. But what she calls her "most important album" is the 1986 recording Beauty in the Beast, whose experiments with instrumentation, tonality, and scaling are described in these two PDF reproductions of contemporary articles from Keyboard magazine.

The title cut of the album, this compact piece whimsically blends two quasi grotesque ideas with a romantic theme in best "Ballet Russe" style. The new scales used for all of this are quite odd the first heard called Beta, splits the perfect fourth into two equal parts (actually eight equal steps of nearly 64 cents each ), the second, Alpha, does the same to the minor third (four equal steps for 78 c. each). While both scales have nearly perfect triads two remarkable coincidences!), neither can build a standard diatonic scale, and so the melodic motion is strange and exotic. The two forces, beast and beauty, shift back and forth, and things are never quite what they seem. - liner notes by Wendy Carlos

Architecture of Open Source Programs

Rubbstone — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:06:32 GMT

Architecture of Open Source Programs The Architecture of Open Source Programs is a guide into the functional implemenation of major opensource code bases. Notable Open Source Projects that are included: BASH, CMAKE, LLVM,GDB,Puppet and PyPy among others

Great NYTtimes article on Philip K. Dick

xammerboy — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:10:28 GMT

The fish pendant , on Philip K. Dick's account, began to emit a golden ray of light, and Dick suddenly experienced what he called anamnesis: the direct perception by the mind of a metaphysical reality.

Popular Posts at MetaFilter

SHABANG!

super quick kitchen tips

He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.

Oh that's tearing my heart out, I love that, just keep that going...

The guide to implementing 2d platformers

star wars as you've never heard it before

Robert Hughes' "The Shock of the New"

"Drink when ambivalence haunts you."

"I got one of them," said James. "Please don't die."

Your Arms Too Short to Post on Blog

Les Mains Noires: Tempero Brasileiro

Ektoplazm

Confessions of a recovering lifehacker

Does TED even understand it's being mocked?

Louisiana Inc. arcerated

Commuter Reading

A Fan Asked Bill Murray For An Autograph. Instead Bill Gave Him This.

Wendy Carlos' "Beauty in the Beast"

Architecture of Open Source Programs

Great NYTtimes article on Philip K. Dick