Nerd Cadre!

suddenly, a nerd attack!

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:06:00 +0000

Ok, just a tiny nerd paper airplane flying your way. But this is just the best Halloween costume ever:

Hm, if I had a Surrealist costume, I'd love to go as the bride, though maybe more discreetly.

kareno decided to show you this image:

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 07:18:00 +0000

DS Lite + Animal Crossing = I am six years old

^.^

A pairing of Brangelina proportions

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 21:56:00 +0000

So two of my favorite songwriters, Spencer Krug and Dan Bejar, are teaming up for a band called Swan Lake. (via) It's a bit too bad that they had to include that screaming maniac from Frog Eyes, but maybe if he weren't there, they'd produce such amazing music that everyone who heard it would experience such a fit of ecstasy that they'd expire on the spot. Maybe. Anyway, their first album, Beast Moans, comes out November 21st. The blurb on their site makes it sound kinda weird:

Their full-length record features, among other things, beast moans, starling voices, cobra hi hats and arpeggiating pianos.

But I think that's all just a code word for "super fantastic".

Hm I wonder what they're brainstorming sessions must be like. I imagine Dan and Spencer tossing lyrical poetry at each other in a midafternoon haze while Carey sits in the corner banging on a drum while occasionally cursing himself.

Never wants to go, always wants to stay, iilllluminated
But I'm no horse, and you are no aaangel
All good things must come to an end, the bad ones just go on forever.
And I will mutter like a lover, who speaks in tongues, oh he speaks in tongues
Don’t make a sound
Don’t make a sound
Don’t make a sound...

sidenotes - a midsummerish reflection

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 20:07:00 +0000

So was anyone besides me confused about the new Spoon album, or, rerelease rather? I saw this cover and I was like, that can't be Spoon, what kind of bizarre album art is that? I guess they just took the old art n smashed them together, but really, is that guy supposed to be an ugly Britt Daniel? For a long time I thought it was some other band, until I saw the CD on Merge's site. Really, all bands should maintain some sort of consistent design in their album art. i.e. Franz Ferdinand. They were going to have all their covers be the same as their first, just with a change of color scheme. So it'd be kinda confusing to name them ("the red, brown, green one"), but how modern and stylish would that have been! Their albums could've been lined up on the wall like Pop Art. But nooo, in the end they decided to have different covers instead. They could've had it so much better.

In terms of actual music, it seems there're no new hot bands breaking out this summer, no one hot single being crammed down everyone's throats. There's "Crazy", but in my opinion that's no "Hey Ya". I guess Beirut is sort of this year's Sufjan and Lily Allen is sort of this year's hot British import, but no one seems really...big. Maybe I've been reading too many mp3 blogs where bands have a shelf life of about 2 weeks.

"Some people might say the Polyphonic Spree aren't exactly a religious group, but I say that appearances are never deceiving."

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 01:17:00 +0000

I love reading TinyMixTapes news, even if I couldn't care less about band X going on tour. TMT is like the Daily Show of music news. Exhibit A:

Philip Glass Scores Again; I Get Wet; You Have a Dirty Mind

Exhibit B:

An Open Letter To The Common Class From A Captain Of Industry

Dear Lower And Middling Sort,
I have noticed an air of dissatisfaction, a rumbling of disapproval, in the way I'm running my... our business. Now, I know that it seems like I am far removed from your day-to-day jobs on the factory floor. It seems like, "Hey, Old Man Garbo up there doesn't know his girders from his girdles," but I will have you know that every time you send in a small boy to unclog the furnaces and unkink the gears, it's like I'm sending in one of my own children whom I abandoned to the finest boarding schools on the eastern seaboard. I put my gilded leaf-lined pants on one leg at a time, just like you...

Mm I think that's enough to earn the site a bookmarking, no?

Paranoidal agents

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:26:00 +0000

It is so hot and disgusting and I just spent the last 5 hours trying to fix my program for a pset before realizing I'd done such things like write "i + row1" "j + row1" when I meant "i + row1" "j + col1". *despairs* And there's little bugs flying around in my room and I'm kinda scared to turn off the light because I'm afraid they might mass reproduce during the night and take over my room.

Anyway, here's something a bit more positive, sorta, to look forward to. A trailer for Satoshi Kon's next movie Paprika:

w00t, it looks cool! Neon parasitic organisms! Scientists! Spices! "Terrorists"!

Oh I stole the above from Jean Snow, who writes about "design and pop culture in Tokyo" for various magazines. Man I want that job.

Come on hide your lovers, underneath the covers

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:10:00 +0000

Indie Blockedappella (why not Rockappella? copyright issues?) makes these cute acappella versions of indie songs like "Rebellion (Lies)" and "Be Gentle With Me". They're not the best singers, and sometimes brink on whiny and annoying, but it's nice just to hear something besides "She Will be Loved" be acappella-ized once in awhile. I couldn't figure out how to get direct audio links from their site, so you probably just have to subscribe to their podcast. Or visit their myspace. But I advise you subscribe, if only to avoid the visual monstrosity that is myspace.

Now they only need to make indie karaoke...

Watch me as I gravitate, ahahahahah

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 03:06:00 +0000

Jamiroquai is a very god band.
Did I spell 'good' wrong on purpose?
YOU decide.

So my friend Kyle started has started a blog, and you really should read it, because it is just incredible, in more than one sense of the word. I can't really describe it adequately, you just have to read it.

ok last one i pwomise!

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:03:00 +0000

Alright they're kinda typical boy band, but still, the beat is infectious!

Ok because this is just so easy

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:49:00 +0000

Youtube really takes all the hard work outta blogging. So here's some videos ppl made to "Rich Girl", which I am obsessing over just now since I haven't listened to pop radio in like 4 years.

The good:

lol @ "the stuff is bananas"

And the inexplicable:

Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na naaaaa

When nerds get lazy..

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:28:00 +0000

..they..don't...post much. *eyes dart around* *runs away*

I shall drop off this beautiful enigma of a music video, "The Audrey Hepburn Complex" by a Japanese group the Pizzicato Five. It's surreal, sixties, it has a ton of women's shoes, a rabbit, and a drummer carrying yellow maracas doing funky dance moves! Really, what more could you want from a music video?

Radiohead-hatin'

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:52:00 +0000

Here’s a little bit of history, just in case you’re twelve years old or something: There once was a band called Radiohead who made two pop-rock albums, followed by a gigantic nerd opus called OK Computer that set the world’s population of dweebic collegiate brow-furrowers on fire like so many lighters at a Bon Jovi encore.

22% of the letters in Thom Yorke’s name are superfluous. Fuck him.

Heh, that was the best review of The Eraser. Granted though, this guy hates all bands.

Nerds of all shapes and sizes

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 04:24:00 +0000

Mike and I went to see Wordplay yesterday, a documentary about crossword puzzles! It focused on Will Shortz, the current puzzlemaster of..the universe I guess (he majored in puzzles at college!). But it also had brief cameos of famous puzzle-lovers like Ken Burns, Jon Stewart, and Mike Mussina (!). The latter two were just icing on the cake of ninety minutes of dorky glee. They had profiles of the major competitors at the annual crossword puzzle competition, and while the people were a pretty diverse group, the overall tournament still exuded a distinct nerdly atmosphere. The rows of people with pencils in hand, the emcee with the mic and timer at the front, the talent show, just had math team tournament written all over it. Heh, nerds will be nerds I suppose.

The joy of the well-crafted sentence

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:37:00 +0000

I have never been disposed with any particular favor toward cats. I have maintained an opinion of them like to the one they always seem to hold of me. I glare at them, and they glare back. They barely conceal their disdain for me, and I hardly keep mum on mine for them. Now and then, one of them will - if they still have their claws - succeed in a malicious hit-and-run upon my bared hand or too-near face. For my part when thus victimized, I take pride in a higher moral standard than that of the feline, and I turn the other cheek and think ill of them from the next room over. This is how I have coexisted with the feline order through the years.

- "Incidence with a cat", from the most wonderfully written but sadly defunct paper Three Weeks, via the eclectic blog of the Nonist.

Unhealthily obsessed

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 01:45:00 +0000

..with The Superficial. For some reason when I tried to access it a few weeks ago, I kept getting a page not found error. Perhaps the Internet gods wanted me to study for finals instead. In any case I have been soaking up all the tabloidal energy the past few hours like a middle-age housewife at the supermarket. Mmm stupid celebrities:

Tom Cruise dancing (working Youtube link here)

Jake Gyllenhaal being stupid

Britney's horrid poetry

David Spade and Heather Locklear are together?

long time no nerd

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 05:40:00 +0000

Apologies all around. The Cadre members are now unfortunately separated across 1000+ miles, so our nerdly strength has been reduced. But fear not! Our eyes and ears are still avidly probing the atmosphere for signs of geeky intelligence.

Anyway, here're some jokes (from the SA Post Your Favorite Nerdy jokes thread):

e^x is walking down the street when he notices all sorts of variables running back at him from the other end of the street. The variables are shouting "LOOK OUT! A DERIVATIVE IS COMING! IF IT GETS TO US WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" But e^x isn't afraid of derivatives, and he's kind of a cocky son of a bitch, so he keeps walking. He gets to the end of the street and sees the derivative standing there, and he goes up to it to greet it.
"Hello, you must be the derivative. I'm e^x."
"Yes, nice to meet you. I'm d/dy."

I was having lunch with that Gary Kasparov [sic] the other day. We were eating on a checked tablecloth. It took him three hours to pass me the salt.

What do you get if you drop a piano down a mine shaft? A flat minor.
What do you get if you drop a piano on a parade ground? A flat major.
What do you get if you drop a piano on a Chinese gangster? A diminished triad.

Phineas Gage walks into a bar...

Tee hee.

I have to move to Japan

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Sun, 21 May 2006 04:18:00 +0000

Seriously, everything they do is sleeker, sexier, and better than everything here. I'm pretty sure they have all the flying cars and robot butlers that people here dream about in their vision of the future. Check out their version of Flickr, Fotologue:

Too pretty!

The (second) best nerd blog

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 19 May 2006 22:55:00 +0000

Clive Thompson has the coolest, nerdiest blog ever. His finds are a nice blend of the esoteric, the amusing, and the intriguing. Nerd Cadre salutes thee, sir Thompson! You shall be enshrined in our soon-to-be NC Hall of Fame.

psy-che-de-lic

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Fri, 19 May 2006 04:34:00 +0000

A cool audio-visual , music-theoretical flash thingie.

The best show on TV

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Thu, 18 May 2006 04:41:00 +0000

As recommended by McSweeney's:

The American version of The Office
This show really snuck up on us. At first, we were maybe a bit dismissive, suffering from the vertigo that comes from comparing it with the original, but the recently aired season finale demonstrated that this is not only the best comedy on television (RIP, Arrested Development) but one of the best dramas as well.

And..

Jenna Fischer's blog
She plays Pam on The Office and gives inside scoops and anecdotes about what is rapidly becoming our favorite show. Just as charming in print as you'd think she'd be, which is very charming.

(Since McSweeney is God, all of this is true)

Quick cuts

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Thu, 18 May 2006 04:01:00 +0000

Meanwhile the albino monk, whose name is Silas and who may be the first character in the history of motion pictures to speak Latin into a cellphone, flagellates himself, smashes the floor of a church and kills a nun.

From A.O. Scott's review of The Da Vinci Code. He seemed to have a lot of fun writing it.

Here's a great interview with Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential). They have close-up shots of him drawing! He seems as tortured and angst-filled as Chris Ware.

And, the cool artist of the day.

What could be more nerdy than a Rubik's Cube?

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Tue, 16 May 2006 06:11:00 +0000

Just then, one of those guys who usually sell batteries or bootleg DVD's came walking through the car. Except this guy wasn't selling batteries or DVD's. He was selling Rubik's Cubes. I'm serious. This is true. And this other guy, sitting kitty-corner from the original cube guy, stopped the vendor and bought one. He unwrapped it and started messing around with his new Rubik's Cube. And then what ensued was this kind of Rubik's Cube-off on the subway.

A Rubik's Cube-off! (The ending's kinda disappointing but the story is still great)

And I just love when people attach "-off" to words in creative ways. Like in Rome section when someone described the Minerva vs. Ariadne spinning competition as a "weave-off". Too cute!

procrastimanation

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Sun, 14 May 2006 21:47:00 +0000

Hm, so I was just gonna post about my horrid online gaming addiction but instead I'll turn this into a link-san (Yay Irena for the new concept!).

So I spent the last two hours playing Wicked Junior, this rebus-puzzle game whose counterpart Wicked is a derivative of other stuff such as

Dumb: the Game

and the original masterpiece notpr0n, which occupied me for a good portion of last summer. I got stuck around level 50 and haven't returned to since. It's really well-crafted though, and pretty much each puzzle is different.

Now, I should return to those phase planes that need plotting...

A floury adventure

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Sat, 13 May 2006 03:08:00 +0000

So we decided to have dinner at Flour tonight, a bakery/cafe in the South End, which was a neighborhood of broken walk signs and geographically misappropriated pizza places ("Chicago Pizza", "New York Pizza"). Overall the place exuded an aura of Brooklyn with a dash of ghetto.

First though, we stopped at a Japanese supermarket for Pocky and other snacks. There were some products of fame:

..and others that were just inexplicable:

We then got to Flour:

And had some sandwiches. Mine was a grilled chicken with avocado, Irena's a lamb with goat cheese.

Innards!

A Venn Diagram of our thoughts on our respective sandwiches (Irena is green, Kareno is red):

Dessert was pretty good. A chocolate chip cookie, tartlettes, an "Oreo", and a coconut macaroon:

On the way back, we stopped at a Sushi/Wine bar. The decor was walls of wine bottles with the pervading smell of sushi vinegar. Stranger still was the bathroom decor:

which they decided to leave unfinished:

And then, back home on the Orange line!

The daily browse

noreply@blogger.com (kareno) — Sat, 13 May 2006 01:29:00 +0000

Oddica is a new t-shirt site, in the vein of Threadless but focusing more on "artists' rights" (which I take to mean, higher prices for the rest of us). A lotta YH people are contributors. There's nothing amazing for sale yet, but I'm looking forward to Audrey Kawasaki's designs (above).

And now, for some nerdy links! Yay! Our theme today will be Math Origami:

Origami by David Huffman, the creator of Huffman codes! I wish there were more photos out there, his forms are really works of art.

Robert Lang's gallery of animals and tetrahedra (via David Pogue)

Folding theory from Erik Demaine of MIT

Coming up: our very first food outing post! With lots of photos! Get excited!