Geneffects: March 2005

The tamPod

Music with smooth application? I don't know. If you all post some good marketing copy in the comments, maybe I'll turn this into a fake web page a-la iBrator.

Madd propz 2 da Pink Slipz 4 d iDea.

Help Out Lance!

Lance's brain is always going, and you could help him on his latest:

Call for Website Testers!

I've been working on a new website, and it requires some testing before I can say "it's finished." The site, PostSecretVoice.blogspot.com, will receive anonymous voice mail messages and publish them blog-style as mp3 files. The idea comes from PostSecret, which uses postcards instead of voice mail, and the creator of that project has been supportive of the new site. The remaining unknown is how robust the voicemail-to-blog service is.

That's where you come in! If everyone who reads this site on Friday will visit the new site and follow the instructions to leave a message, I should be able to get a pretty good idea about whether the system if up to the task. There's no need for you to stick to the theme of the site -- any kind of message will do. Say hello, make drum-machine noises, or hold the phone up to the stereo as it plays that audiobook you've been listening to. These test messages will be deleted when testing is complete.

While you're at it, any constructive criticism of the site will be appreciated. Thank you!

Ah, Crooked Fingers

Hey, how are you?
Don't you, "hey, how are you," me, you fuck!
What?! Don't you, "don't you, 'hey, how are you,' me, you fuck," me, you fuck!
Stop it with the fucking recursion, you cunt sucking bastard!
Okay okay okay. Look, this isn't working.
Oh, Mary's tits, you figure that out by yourself?
Now you're just being rude.
Like getting that other girl's phone number right in front of me wasn't rude?
Heh, yeah, I guess it was.
You bet Buddha's fat ass it was!

The Crowning Moment of My Life

ME: Hey Heidi, the high voltage circuit breakers on our block seem to be on the fritz. Could you check to see if your refrigerator is running?
HEIDI: Wait, let me check.
ME: [holding my breath]
HEIDI: Yeah, it is.
ME: 'CAUSE YOU BETTER TRY TO CATCH IT!!!
HEIDI: You're retarded.

The Spartans

K: Why's that 'S' on your shirt?
B: I went to Michigan State... that's the MSU logo.
K: It's an 'S'? Why is it an 'S'?
B: Who knows why it's an 'S'. I mean, I wasn't a Spartan for very long.
K: What's a Spartan?
B: Oh, that's our mascot. The Spartans.
K: Spartan?
B: Yeah. Spartan.
K: So you're sure you don't know what the 'S' Stands for?

The iPillow

Has anyone else tried to go to sleep with one of those iPod earbuds in their ears only to awaken with a stinging case of bud-ear? It hurts to sleep on the side of your head with one of those things in. It would be nice if there were a pillow that had a little divot in the middle where you could rest your ear so the pillow wasn't pushing the earbud up your ear canal.

Artist rendering:

A Couple of Snippets

It seems every person I respect hates CamelCasing. That pretty much means they hate every product name I've ever come up with.
The Indigo Girls show was... eh, yeah. The French would say, "les bien." I saw Kaia there and hung out with her a bit, but then I think her girlfriend got a little jealous.
Had lunch with E and Beth. Got briefly awkward when I complimented Beth on her solo for "Makeout" and she said, "oh, Leigh played that part."
Then had coffee with a girl who drank her iced-mocha like Napoleon Dynamite. That whole thing was weird.
Been working a lot on future product. Pretty excited, but I just want it to be done now.
I thought this short film was pretty funny.
Been feeling a little anthrophobic lately. Somewhat disconnected. It would be nice to leave for a while.

Hipsters to Screw in a Lightbulb

Don't Mess With Billy Sugarfix

If you want to get on Billy Sugarfix's bad side, just fuck with his stuff.

This performance-artsy-I'm-a-grotesque-buffoon asshole at the Nightlight must have wanted a beatdown Sugarfix style pretty badly because for part of his "act" he smashed some of Billy's music bottles. Bad form, sir. I don't care how tight your camo briefs are; that's simply uncalled for.

That aside, Billy's set was great! His pogo-sticking skills have really improved.

iPod Shuffle Sucks with Audioscrobbler

The latest in info-stalking is Audioscrobbler.

If you install Audioscrobbler on your computer, it will upload your listening habits to your own personal Audioscrobbler page. You can check mine out. Thing is, the Audioscrobbler plug-in works by looking at the "Date Last Played" info for your songs, sees what was played since it last did an update, then uploads the appropriate songs.

If you do most of your listening on an iPod Shuffle, you're out of luck. The thing is, it looks to me like the iPod Shuffle doesn't record "Date Last Played" information. How is it that I have come to this conclusion? When I sync my iPod Shuffle with my iTunes library, I see the play count information increment for songs I've listened to, but not the "Date Last Played" data.

If the Shuffle does in fact have this information, then could Apple please please update the appropriate software so that we can take advantage of this information.

Learning to Rollerblade

Defenestration

Farewell My Funnel Cake

The Surreal O' Rama has one of the most touching posts I've read. You can see for yourself.

Dammit. Now would be the appropriate time to try, but it seems like that is gone again. Trying and all that went along with it was my own personal Funnel Cake.

Met up with V4Y for the first time. He seems like a pretty cool kid.

Tonight I am going to be up forever.

(Mostly) Life Drawing Sketches

I just sat through a meeting attended by one of the stinkiest dogs in existence. On the plus side, the house where I was had a scanner. I scanned some sketches from my notebook.. most are from Life Drawing, others are just from around. The top left is the only drawing of someone i've done from memory. (Click the thumbnails for larger images)

Reader's Digest Joke Submission

Lance: I used to tell my classes that when you assume you make an ass out of u.
Lance: And then someone would say "and me!'
Brian: nuh-uh!
Lance: "Yes, you too."
Lance: blizza-blizzow!
Brian: set up... and... hit!

Listen to it!

Congratulations to Lance

Ten years of blogging and still raising the bar!

Can of Worms

I wrote a little application that turns chats into sound files using AT&T's experimental Text to Speech engine. Please listen to a sample.

Tidbits

See the horrible aftermath of a wild turkey hitting someone's car window.

If you have any appreciation of the movie Office Space, you'll like this mashup with Superfriends.

Did you know that Finger Length Predicts Physically Aggressive Personalities?

I try to console some 14yo girl who was kicked out of the Social Distortion show and she sez, "if I could kill you right now I would." This girl's sister also bit (!) the shit out of some guy's arm. Kidz these days.

Have iPod owners become iBlivious? I mean, they'll talk, sing, curse or cut a huge fart and not even think about it. It's like they think they're in their car or something.

Wow. And all this time I thought PNP stood for "Polynomial vs. Nondeterministic Polynomial". Looks like I was wrong. Gay wrong.

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