People have been talking about this idea virtually since the advent of Napster: that the rise of the mp3 heralds the end of the 'album' as a cohesive unit of music. Who needs labels? Who needs albums? Why not just record two or three songs that you really like and put them out there on the internet for fans to digest?

It's a testament to what a radical departure this is from the way we normally digest music that no major artists have actually done this.

Well, until now.

So, what noted rock group is crazy enough to try something like this?

I hope you guessed Smashing Pumpkins, 'cause then you got it in one. The name of the not-an-album has been announced as Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, which is actually a less ridiculous title than Mellon Colly and the Infinite Sadness, so don't hate.

Teargarden is supposed to consist of 44 songs, which will be released one at a time as absolutely-honest-to-goodness FREE downloads.

The songs will apparently break down into eleven four song EPs. Physical EPs will be released, as will a boxed set, but all physical media associated with the project is planned to be Limited Edition. In other words: downloading the songs for free is actually the Official Way To Get Them.

Hipsters United has the breakdown but generally speaking this should be a pretty interesting release to watch. And listen to!

( My thoughts... )

Does anyone know if there's any site out there that lets you set up your own radio station? I don't mean like a Pandora station where you help it pick songs you might like. I mean I want to pick the play-list by hand. I want to be the disc jockey. Does anyone know if there's such a thing out there?

This is exactly what I hate about online product reviews.

One of the lessons that living with Dr. Mike taught me is that you should never assume the nutritional content of something. Often foods whose packaging markets them as 'green' or 'healthy' or 'lite' turn out to be surprisingly high in caloric or fat content. Fortunately, the back of the box can't lie. But you do have to actually look at it.

You have to especially watch out for stuff that says 'zero calories' or 'zero fat', I've noticed. There's almost always a trade-off being made! Low in one often leads to high levels of the other.

So I was looking at the back of a can of my addiction Diet Dr. Pepper this morning, just to make sure I wasn't imbibing liquid fat by the gallon. No worries there:

Calories: 0
Total Fat: 0g
Total Carbs: 0g
Protein: 0g

Not a significant source of other nutrients.

Great, but what, exactly is in the can?!?

---

No doubt all the cool kids have already seen this, but as usual I'm a bit behind. Anyway, it's pretty freaking hilarious, and catchy as all get out:

The Guild's Do You Want To Date My Avatar -


The Guild is a pretty awesome web show in and of itself, so you should watch all of those too. Also, I'm going to run away with Felica Day and marry her forever.

---

I was never that enamored with the first Silversun Pickups album. Their sophmore release is different, though. "Swoon" isn't just parroting the chord progressions of The Smashing Pumpkins circa 1994. It's a genuinely original piece of work that still harnesses that sound. Very, very good.

Give it a listen.

Another fun blog: over at Safety Graphic Fun they take seriously the brave stick men who daily suffer excruciating injury to remind us of the dangers of zombies diving into bacon.

Check it out.

And if that's not enough hazard prevention for you, I recommend Nick Frost's Danger 50,000 Volts!

I've never been very much interested in hacking; my interest in "sticking it to the man" is low, for whatever reason.

That being said, I've been on the inside of the IT industry for nearly a decade now. Long enough to know that if you want to break into a secure computer system and cause havoc, you don't do it like they do it in the movies, with lots of frantic high-speed typing on your computer.

You know how in heist movies, the team of wise-cracking criminals always uses high-tech equipment to break into the laser-guarded vault to steal the giant blue diamond? But in real life, crooks just find a pawn shop with a lousy security system and smash a window?

Hacking works pretty much like that. Sure, there may be individuals out there who can code some sort of insidious master program that takes over your computer at the root level and gives them access to all your private info in the form of a glowing three-dimensional grid. But 99% of successful hacks stem from a very bored individual figuring out that your email password is 'fluffy'.

And that's how a Frenchman hacked Twitter.

Strangely enough, I recently used the exact same exploit this guy did - on myself.

( The only account I hack is my own... )

Sorry about yesterday's blank post. Not sure what happened there.

Ironically, though, it did attract more comments than many of my more conventional 'actual content' posts.

Okay, this is pretty clever if you haven't already seen it: Web Site Story, the musical!

Turns out using Facebook doesn't make you stupid.

But apparently, conducting studies with an eye towards getting some press does?

Yes, seriously. Via Dave Barry:

It's a feeling many of us will be familiar with: sitting in a cinema, realising you need the toilet - but there's still over an hour of the film to go, and you just know that if you dash out now, something really important will happen and you'll miss it.

Well, don't worry - as is so often the case, the web is here to help. RunPee.com is a website that lets you know when it's safe to, well, run for a pee.

Operating like a sort of Wikipedia for the boring bits of films, it lets users nominate moments in films where the plot dawdles, and urination may safely take place. An approximate point in the film's running time is given for each pee-opportunity, along with a brief description of what you'll see onscreen when the toilet-window opens.

This site lines up nicely with my theory that the human race is evolving to be biologically dependent on the internet.

Did I mention that I've found a science blog that doesn't suck? It's called Not Exactly Rocket Science and you should check it out.

You've probably already seen YouTube videos of Snowball the dancing cockatoo. Did you know that this is actually Science? Snowball is part of a study to explore the connection between vocal mimicry and rhythm. It's interesting also because the study explicitly uses YouTube to find experimental data!

Surfing YouTube all day for clips of dancing cats - that must be a nice job.

Anyway if you haven't seen the above video you really ought to watch it. Snowball's dancing is actually very sophisticated at times - I've got to admit, he might be able to take me in a head to head competition. I am pretty a-rhythmic.

Also. I'm not much of a bird person, but I might just reconsider my position if the bird in question could boogie to my music. Heh.

My good pal Kristen is getting serious about this whole geek thing. I knew she had a video game blog going on the side but had no idea that she'd gone pro. The site looks pretty slick, it's chock full of updates and apparently people actually send her the occasional review copy. Hopefully she'll keep getting more, although she certainly doesn't mince words when she doesn't like something.

Anyways, if you have the slightest interest in video games, hit up Count Gameula and say Hi. Tell her Tom sent ya.

You know, I have a degree in Computer Science which required taking not one but TWO networking classes. In addition, I am also a Cisco Certified Network Associate. I can use a command line to map out a network (with addresses in binary, natch) on a router. So you'd THINK I'd have a clue why wireless networks are so freakishly capricious. Truth is, I have no clue.

I certainly can't explain why during the past 24 hours our internet has been spottier than a hyena and up and down more times than a drunk boxer. Maybe it's the weather? The signal is always a bit uncertain up in my room, although it's been pretty stable over the past couple of months. But now it's reverting to its old ways.

Heck, even in the library where the router actually IS things aren't all that great. I was chatting with a couple folks online there last night and kept getting drop kicked off the internet.

Also confusing: why I definitely get a better signal when I set my laptop on my actual lap.

There's got to be some way to make wireless internet more of a science and less of a voodoo art. Until then I suppose we must all continue our frustrating dance of looking for signal hotspots and practicing superstitious bits of folklore in hopes of getting that all-important extra bar.

I can't say that I really approve of the practice of yarnbombing. How can they waste so much precious yarn when so many little African children go naked?!?

One has to grudgingly admire the domain name of their website, though.

I have to say, these sarcastic gift tags are pretty awesome.



Unrelated, but awesome, is this informative heavy metal band name flow chart. NOTE: some heavy metal band names may not be appropriate for people who are not in heavy metal bands.

I hadn't realized that Lore Sjöberg was the patron saint of the internet. No really, he is. Saint Lore we should call him. Whereas most folks on the interwebs contribute, what, an occasional blog post? A web comic that was funny that one time? A single, mildly popular YouTube video? Lore does all of the above all the time.

I did not know this until recently when I found his blog and then his webcomic. On the former you can find fun things like video posts about lame things in the official Star Wars canon. On the latter you'll find, in addition to copious D&D-related comics, a medley of Christmas tunes redone with Nine Inch Nails lyrics.

Also? A site that adds 'in bed' to the end of tweets.

And, famous poems rendered as limericks.

Saint Lore. Am I right or am I right*?

* hint: I am right

Okay, this is pretty cute: Pride and Prejudice as a Facebook news feed.

How do you shop online? Do you pay attention to reviews? If so, how do you decide if a given review is an accurate reflection of the product at hand?

In the gentle digital anarchy of the internet, everyone becomes a product reviewer. As empowering as this sounds, it comes with the usual caveat - that means there's a lot of noise out there. Useless reviews, or worse, misleading and inaccurate reviews. Often intentionally so.

For every new book released there's someone with an axe to grind against the author. For every new piece of software released there are corporate shills masquerading as Joe Reviewer. Not to mention the relatively innocent folks who are just a little baffled about how they got here but are going to post something anyway.

How do you tell the good reviews from the bad ones?

A negative review is fine if it warns you away from a project you wouldn't appreciate. A glowing review is wonderful if it turns you onto something you'll love. But equally, a negative review can be used to drive you away from something that is in fact perfectly good, and a positive review can sell you on a piece of crap. What the consumer wants, then, is not negative or positive reviews, but USEFUL reviews.

My approach is to sort of take the temperature of the reviews overall. What's the trend? Is it mostly good with a few angry blowhards, or mostly bad with a dash of hype from unrepentant fan-boys? Even more helpful than this, though, is to look at the good AND bad reviews and see what they have in common. For instance, one person may mention a feature in a very positive light while another may see it as a negative. This doesn't mean that one of them is lying. But it does mean that there's a feature in the product that, depending on taste, I may really enjoy or really dislike. And that is very useful information.

I bring all this up because of Kanye West. I was reading the excellent Slate.com article that patrick___ linked to yesterday on TR-808 drum machines. I was intrigued by the references to Kanye West's new album, so I flipped over to the Amazon review page.

Whoa.

The last time I saw such a polarizing product on Amazon was, well, I really can't think of it. Talk about a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. Amazon.com now offers a helpful breakdown of how many people gave how many stars on a given product. As of this writing, 808's and Heartbreak stands at 56 five-star reviews, 42 one-star reviews and only eight three starrers!

Wars have been fought over less heated feelings than these.

As for me, color me intrigued. I'm always fascinated when an artist takes their music in a radical new direction. It's my experience that heated negative reactions to this is usually an indication that they've done something really interesting, and worth checking out. I don't 'hip' the 'hop' very much, but on the occasions that I have I've really enjoyed the offerings of Mr. West. Perhaps I need to check this album out.