The Fitztastic Awards

formspring.me

2010-03-19T14:48:00.001-07:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/afitzpatrick

Garage Sale Find of the Week: D&D Manuals!

2010-03-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

Ah the memories. I don't think I will be dungeonmastering any campaigns in the near future but these are still rad just to page through them and check out the monsters... and demi-gods.

Asteroids vs. Volcanos!

2010-03-06T14:16:00.000-08:00

A team of Berkeley paleo-everything-ists i.e. botanists, tologists, geologists, etc. have determined that it is a proven fact that a 10 mile wide meteor slammed into the Yucatan peninsula some ten-thousand years ago resulting in an ash, soot and sulphur explosion. The explosion also triggered world-wide earthquakes reaching "Spinal Tap" scales of 11! The ash, soot, sulphur and other crap coated the earth's atmosphere which resulted in a cooling period for the earth which killed the dinosaurs.

There is another school of thought who believe it was a chain of giant lava spewing volcanos some 700,000 years prior to the asteroid slam which began killing the dinosaurs because the amount of sulphur emitted from the erupting volcanos is much greater than the impact of a meteor. Plus the mass extinction was well under way 300,000 years prior to the Yucatan incident.

It is difficult enough for me to plan anything a week in advance let alone trying to wrap my mind around a time-line of hundreds of thousands of years yet the light reflected from the planet at the time of the dinosaurs extinction has not even reached the edge of our own solar system. So there it is, an argument which spans an unfathomable amount of time possibly concerning what started offing the life on this planet and what finished the job. Regardless of which side of the argument you may or may not agree upon; contrary to popular opinion, if dinosaurs were still alive today some of them would be movie stars.

The Inventor Of The Internet!

2010-03-05T17:36:00.000-08:00

Very rarely do celebrities actually invent anything. I tend to think of them as... as... well... celebrities and not really inventors but every once in a while a celebrity comes along and invents something. Which brings us to the question of who invented the internet? I don't know why this subject pops into my head every once in a while and when it does it plagues me. You might think that Al Gore invented the internet which reminds me of a conversation my friends had last week that went something like this,
"I don't believe you."
"Well, I believe myself."
"If you believe yourself, that still does not make two people believing you. You are still just one person."
Which maybe is the reason Al Gore mentioned he invented the internet a bunch of times. Maybe every time he mentions it he thinks it is one more vote to change written history in his favor.
Maybe you think a science fiction writer like William Gibson or something invented the idea of the internet but none of what I've just written is true. I might as well have just made up a story about it raining fish in Australia or something. Oops, wait a minute that's true.
Ok. Here's the real story. George Antheil a pianist from Trenton, New Jersey meets his neighbor Hedy Lamarr in 1940 in Hollywood. Lamarr asks Antheil a question about glands because she would like to enlarge the size of her breasts and the conversation quickly turns to large weapons. Antheil said he would like to track her torpedoes around the neighborhood but Lamarr was more interested in recieving signals from many other friendly transmissions and dodge the enemies' radar field.
So Lamarr went home all hot and bothered and drew up this diagram which was the beginning of frequency hopping. This same technology is still used today to transfer information over radio waves like for cell phones and internet use and stuff. So my candidate for the inventor of the internet (which of course is totally up for debate) is Hedy Lamarr!

VIDEO Deconstruction of UFO Footage

2010-03-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

This video was remixed by an uber nerd. It just keeps getting better. I feel if there was commentary it would be something like:

"If we take a line from the circumference of the earth and curve it out to the object. It's virtually impossible to tell how large or how far away the object is due to the variable factors of the two measurements. The only way to explain this video is that there had to have been a shift in the frequencies allowing the videographer to see into the fourth dimension."

Millenium Falcon

2010-03-05T12:55:00.000-08:00

Found this last week. I thought it was super rad because the last time I saw one of these in the box with the original sticker sheet and the little catalog was 1981. Shortly after that I believe it was eaten by sand worms in my back yard.

Best News Story of The Year - It's Raining Fish! Hallelujah!

2010-03-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

Some kind of tornado at sea apparently picked up a whole bunch of fish. Not only a bunch of fish but a bunch of the same kind of fish! Picked them up into the air and made some kind of floating fish cloud then 326 miles later or probably farther since that is just the closest point to the nearest river dumped them on a town in Australia. I love it. Click on the picture for the full story.

Cacophonius Monk Mixtape

2010-03-05T12:34:00.001-08:00

Hey I made a mixtape for you. Click Here.

Zombies!

2009-01-30T13:07:00.000-08:00

I was the dj for a zombie party over at Forbidden Island!

I put together a cd compilation and handed it out to people who came dressed as zombies. Now of course there are a bunch of better known more popular songs about zombies but i tried to put together a couple you may be unfamiliar with. so don't anybody go where's oingo boingo and michael jackson because you should already have those on your ipod.

DOWNLOAD THE ZOMBIE COMPILATION.

Song of the Day

2009-01-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

I'm djing at the mighty tiki bar the Forbidden Island on Sunday, January 25th. retrodiva.com is hosting a zombie party so I've been collecting a bunch of songs about zombies and asking people if they know songs about zombies that i missed. Here's one I overlooked until Amacker brought it up. Dr. John's I Walk On Guilded Splinters

Don't Go to this Website

2008-11-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

Yemiipic.com - you'll be stuck there for hours.

Original Cyberpunks

2008-11-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Yo Fitz! I was thinking of documenting some of the best cyberpunk music, video and art from back in the day. I know that you had a mean collection of Foetus, Skinny Puppy and Psychic TV....just for starters. So I found this site http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/definition.html it has a lot of overall cyberculture info, but I think we could dig up some stuff that people have slept on for a bit. Check out this site too, not so punk but very thorough catalog of cyber punk movies.

The Phenomenauts Zombie Party 2008

2008-11-03T08:49:00.000-08:00

Sassy!

2008-10-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hey I took all the pictures for this cd for my good friends Trixie Delicious and
Kitty Largewood. The cd turned out great. Check out Sassy on myspace and you can pick up a copy on interpunk.
Sassy on Myspace
Sassy on Interpunk

Stunt Double at the Lemon Tree

2008-10-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

HELP! Does anybody know electronics

2008-10-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

I need a gristleizer.
Chris Carter's Original Gristleizer
The Gristleizer Schematics and Video

The Carlos Confusion

2008-10-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

Many sellers on eBay list similar artists in the title of their listings to expand their search range as sort of a...if you like this artist you will like this artist.

I listed this item on eBay.

180290559691 - Wendy Walter Carlos Beauty in the Beast LP 1986 VG++

Vero removed the item because it is in violation of intellectual property rights according to Serendip, LLC. eBay told me to contact Serendip to find out why it was removed from eBay.

Serendip's response was simply, "The artist's name is Wendy Carlos, as clearly shown on the LP."

Now not only is Walter Carlos a similar artist to Wendy Carlos but they are the same person but I guess different enough artists according to California Civil Code Section 3344 so you are not allowed to sell any Wendy Carlos merchandise under the name Walter Carlos. Someone could have been polite enough to contact me and I would have changed the listing but instead the listing was removed from eBay via Vero and now my compliance to eBay Powerseller Regulations are failing.

I did a little bit of my own research and according to Wikipedia, "In 1998, Carlos sued the songwriter/artist Momus for $22 million for his satirical song "Walter Carlos" (which appeared on the album The Little Red Songbook), which suggested that if Wendy could go back in time she could marry Walter. The case was settled out of court, with Momus agreeing to remove it from the CD and owing $30,000 in legal fees."

So in honor of Serendip, LLC removing my listing from eBay for reasons I am not quite sure I can entirely wrap my head around, I am now proud to present to you for your listening pleasure, Momus: Walter Carlos!

You know it

2008-10-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

Creating a new store on cafepress (which I still haven't sold anything on) I came across this gem. You know it!

Click on the shirt to check it out.

While I'm at it I guess I should promote my own cafepress stores.
check out:
This Link
This Link
This Link
...And This Link

Blue

2008-10-06T15:21:00.001-07:00

Pretty much every author on the history of punk rock writes books that chronologically go from like MC5 to Black Flag then from Nirvana to, I don't know anymore, the present, My Chemical Romance? Fall Out Boy? Skipping most of the nineties as if nothing happened. Arguably, that is when a lot of punk went metal and punk rock (which was always dead) broke up into a million different genres. There were a bunch of labels with great bands like Amphetamine Reptile, Touch and Go, Wax Trax.

I went to college in Philadelphia so a lot of great bands like The Jesus Lizard, The Cows, Butthole Surfers, The God Bullies, etc. would come through town and there were a lot of great Philly bands during the nineties. I didn't realize until I left Philly the only bands anybody has ever heard of from that time period are the Dead Milkmen and G. Love and Special Sauce. I don't know how this happened but I sat at the bar and cringed with my PBR at the Khyber Pass every time I saw G. Love open.

Here are a couple of songs from Blue. Two from the Angels on Hogs / Evil Snake 7" and their "hit" song, Big Black Boots which is not on this seven inch. Blue never played Big Black Boots live. I think it was because they always played everything different and either they could never play that song live the same way they recorded it or they weren't very good musicians and they forgot what notes were in the song.

Sharpie, the lead singer / guitarist would never use a pick so by the end of the second song everybody in the front would be covered with spatters of blood from his fingers because he would be flicking it all over people as he played. They played at the Khyber Pass this one time and (all of this information may be wrong because this was like three life times ago but...) somehow somebody in the band started knocking the acoustic tiles out of the drop ceiling which were being stacked up and stuck on the sink in the back by the door. My friend Andrea was dressed in some kind of Goldie Hawn / Laugh-In Ghett-outfit throwing raw fish at the audience which prompted fish fights and everyone in the bar is covered in raw fish. The lead singer decides after his set to take a bath in the sink so the acoustic tiles get stacked up blocking the back door. Someone calls the cops, probably because it was too loud in there after all the acoustic ceiling tiles get knocked out. The cops show up. The rear exit is blocked which is a fire hazard. The bar gets shut down by the police for a couple weeks.

The raw fish clogs the drains at the bar. My friend Mike is hired to replace the pipes and gets dysentery.

Angels with Hogs

Evil Snake

Big Black Boots

Jimmy Carter as Robotoid

2008-08-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

Everything I am about to write is heavily documented on the internet. Do an internet search for any of these facts and you will get plenty of hits if you don’t believe me. This is pretty much the funniest story I’ve heard in a while.

In October 1969, Jimmy Carter saw a UFO while he was the Governor of Atlanta and reported it to the International UFO Bureau. He was 44 years old. He said, “It was the darndest thing I've ever seen…If I become President, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.”

That’s when it started. After that encounter, Jimmy Carter didn’t last too much longer. During his presidency, Jimmy Carter was replaced with a humanoid that was made of cow parts. The technology was not too good and the FBI had to use a lot of cows to maintain the humanoid. That is the reason for the increase of cattle mutilations during the Carter years.

The media started to catch on so the technology had to be upgraded. In 1979, Jimmy Carter the humanoid was replaced by a robotoid. The robotoid was much easier to maintain.

It sounds like it is a pretty intense process building the robotoid, according to Audio Letter No. 46. By Dr. Peter David Beter, “Robotoids are "manufactured" first by copying the memory of an entire brain. A holographic image is made of the host’s brain and that is transferred into the biological matter functioning as a brain of the robotoid, but adjustments have to be taught and programmed into the mind of the robotoid since the body and brain of the robotoid are not identical to the original person being copied.”

Still the greatest opening sequence to any film ever

2008-08-20T11:52:00.001-07:00

How Do These Stories Go Under The Radar?

2008-08-10T21:03:00.000-07:00

Invisibility cloak one step closer, scientists say.

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Sun Aug 10, 6:55 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.

One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.

Both are so-called metamaterials -- artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.

The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.

Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.

"We are not actually cloaking anything," Valentine said in a telephone interview. "I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that."

Valentine's team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.

"In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive," he said.

"When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you."

These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air.

NEGATIVE REFRACTION

The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different.

"Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface," Valentine said. "It's kind of weird."

For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.

Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, virtually only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.

"What we have done is taken that material and made it much thicker," Valentine said.

His team, whose work is reported in Nature, used stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes. "We call it a fishnet," Valentine said.

The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.

Immediate applications might be superior optical devices, Valentine said -- perhaps a microscope that could see a living virus.

"However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future," he said. "You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it."

Hang 'em High in the TV Sky - Part II

2008-07-21T16:21:00.001-07:00

thanks to the anonymous comment from Part I.
The answer to Hey, where did everybody go? has been received.

....and of course, don't forget where the prices are always insane.

I don't think I have ever been to an ideal in my life but this jingle from gets stuck in my head a couple times a year especially while taking a shower.
The Ideal Jingle

Garage Sale Find Of The Week! 7/19/08

2008-07-20T11:32:00.001-07:00

Phyllis Diller's I Was Born To Sing LP!

Hilarious! Have a listen to (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.
Price: 10¢

i dont know whats going on

2008-06-04T11:55:00.001-07:00

but i am totally having a yummy fur cant seem to stop kind of day.