March 18, 2006

The Guest

The SXSW Cockroach

As suggested previously, we had an unscheduled guest in our hotel room for our last night in Austin. It was 3:00am and he was hangin’ out on the counter in our bathroom. Jake and I had just returned from the hugely epic SXSWi after-party (thrown down by Media Temple with an open bar and all that jazz) and we were thoroughly out of our minds, so needless to say chaos ensued.

We taped it for you, which is a weird thing to say because at no point was actual tape involved. Rather, we recorded it in a manner that rapidly captures still frames and stiches them together to create the illusion of movement. To this there is also sound, which may be unfortunate for those of you who are sensitive to words whose dictionary meanings are ill-defined at best.

With that, we must stress that this video is rated R, for strong language and overbearing stupidity.

The SXSW Cockroach (1.4MB, low resolution)

The SXSW Cockroach (6.0MB, high resolution)

P.S. It is worth mentioning that our hotel was extremely kind in respect to our cockroach extravaganza, and as a result knocked a whole night off our final bill. That little bugger saved us $100. I would stay at this hotel again in a heartbeat, and can only hope that we will have such great fortune next year.

March 15, 2006

The X is for Xtreme!

The people of Austin seem to have a problem with pants management. Anywhere you go you see pairs of pants that have been abandoned, all up and down the sidewalks. I don’t know how these people live and what they do for fun, but I am sadly aware that my life does not include such spontaneous bouts of pants-loss.

One could go as far as proposing a Pants Management System for Austin, some sort of Web 2.0 AJAXian Rails API mash-up. In the interest of keeping Austin weird, however, a source of pride that has spawned entire t-shirt enterprises (and we know about t-shirt enterprises), I would have to discourage the Pants Management System. In current form it would also lack an appealing abbreviation, which would make branding rather difficult.

Anywho, we have been safely delivered back to Minneapolis after a rolicking time at SXSW, an event that for five days will grab your brain from both sides and shake vigorously. This it does until the matter inside liquifies, and all you can do is move through the scenes with a dumb grin upon your face, the kind of dumb grin that only comes from the most intense social and intellectual stimulation you have ever known. My relationships with the interweb, and with those who hold the bottles of glue and glitter and nail polish remover and take it upon themselves to build the interweb, have never been stronger.

We fought to the death in a bowling tournament and made every effort to be the loudest team possible. We were wildly successful, and though there was no award for volume, we made sure to set a precedent that next year, oh next year, there would be such a thing.

The panels. Did I mention the panels? Lord, they were informative and frequently sexy. I have a hundred pages of notes, all taken down on graph paper in true Web 0.1 style. My notes are indecipherable to any eyes but my own. While chatting with a guy at the final SXSW party, he recalled sitting next to me in a panel and identifying me as the chicken-scratch guy. The lesson here is that encoding and obfuscation have histories from long before the digital age, and it would do us well to remember this.

Last night, or rather this morning, we engaged in an epic battle. It took place at approximately 3am, and of this we have videographic evidence. The rest of the morning was frought with chaos. I managed to sleep from 6am to 9am, until it was time to board a jet and fly an hour across a state only to land in the same state. Texas is huge my friend. It is fitting that this is the only state left alive that can host the likes of SXSW.

You can see our lovely photos over at Flickr. Watch, as this may become the reality of all things.

March 13, 2006

Meat

The natural state of everything in Texas is meat. That is, unlike the rest of the universe, which is hurtling toward entropy at an incredible rate, in Texas everything eventually turns into meat. Of this there are only facts.

At breakfast Jake and I have been debating the nature of these eclairs that they offer at our hotel. They are wrapped in clear plastic with red lettering, not unlike Twinkies. I have been convinced all along that these are chocolate eclairs, while Jake remains suspicious. To end the mystery once and for all I grabbed one and dove in.

Meat. And bread. It was meat wrapped in fucking bread. The meat was a cruel mockery of sausage, more Slim Jim than anything else, a tubular array of spiced carnage. The bread was bread, the debate was over, the axiom proven.

Everything in Texas is in a constant state of becoming meat. Hence our sense of urgency.

March 11, 2006

Big Enough for Texas

We are in Austin, glorious Austin, where the air is hot and the wind is thick and heavy, like huge slabs of meat. SXSW has barely even started, and yet we have already been treated to free beer and free food and free schmoozing in a bar owned by Lance Armstrong, this guy who likes to ride his bike and stuff.

The geek banter is overwhelming and self-referential. Jokes typically involve such things as AJAX and tagging. We have met some amazing people, including a brilliant information architect who used to work as a bike messenger in New York, and who is addicted to the word awesome, which itself is awesome, as this sort of positivism one could never label as a character flaw.

We have also met a fellow that we know as The Butt Plug Guy, and his friend who we refer to as Not The Butt Plug Guy. Given the line of work in question (one that involves software, hardware and robotics) and the panels that these guys are speaking on, these names are justified, if not actually deserved. Accurate, but certainly not fair.

Sadly, we have been in Texas for nearly 24 hours and yet we have only seen one cowboy hat. As our crew was heading down to Lance Armstrong’s bar it passed us on the sidewalk. The whole thing was rather humorous as it was the first cowboy hat sighting for many of us, and in true fashion we completely blew it out of proportion. Jokes about Brokeback Mountain and tagging clouds quickly commenced.

We are out of control, but one more thing. If ever you find yourself in Austin, do not discuss credit with the bums. The mere utterance of the words “18 percent” sets them off like crazy, and they will follow you across the street arguing about interest rates and taxation, all the while sweating at an incredible rate.

Also, let’s say you see a lost pair of pants on the sidewalk, and let’s say you see that same pair of pants later in the night. Do not suggest giving the pants to the bum and laugh about it, as you will instantly be confronted by the bum again, because someone powerful has been eavesdropping on your conversation and he wishes to test you on your word.

You will not have the guts to offer these pants to the bum, so don’t even bother mentioning it.

March 6, 2006

Noise!

Over the weekend (a splendid weekend spent in Duluth, getting into all sorts of trouble with all sorts of good friends) a few people suggested that they have some degree of respect for my taste in music. Apparently I have influence in this regard. In the interest of social conditioning, I shall now use this public forum to shape and mold your listening habits, by discussing my own of recent.

We’ll start with the indie stuff, cuz those guys work their asses off and don’t get nearly as much play as they deserve. As mentioned earlier, I saw matt pond PA a few weeks ago at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. Certainly I am biased, as these guys have been one of my favorite bands for five years running, and anyone who has any history with this blog knows that I plug them at least once a month. But I’ll do it again. Their new album Several Arrows Later is wonderful and you should buy it.

I also got of Montreal’s The Sunlandic Twins album, which is pretty stellar. It’s great for music nerds and English majors, what with song lyrics that discuss twelve-tone compositions and use words like sanguinary. Also, non-music nerds may get a kick out of such lines as we made love like a pair of black wizards.

It’s easier to just hear their music than to explain it, but it’s happy, bouncy and playful. If the sad-eyed literary geek in your life has been slouching under the weight that is emo, of Montreal could certainly help in rounding out his/her music collection.

download “So Begins Our Alabee” from The Sunlandic Twins (3.9mb mp3)

I’ve been digging on Headlights lately, and their The Enemies EP is pretty rad. They’ve got a vibraphone. And songs, too. Songs with music in them.

download “Tokyo” from The Enemies EP (3.3mb mp3)

A friend introduced me to a local band called Digitata, which spins some odd electronic stuff that is unlike anything in my music collection. And for that I love it.

download “Death and the Beach” from Sexually Transmitted Emotions (3.7mb mp3)

I saw Feist open for Broken Social Scene a couple months ago, and while she wasn’t quite what I expected, recent forays into the world of Feist may indicate that I was hasty in my dismissal. I have friends who absolutely rave about Feist, so I may just be slow to board the train on this one. The Postal Service did a remix of her song Mushaboom, and I must say that it has certainly been on high-rotation lately. Seriously wow.

download “Mushaboom (Postal Service Remix)” (4.6mb mp3)

(originally gleaned from Good Weather for Airstrikes)

Mates of State have a new album coming out, and if their preview track is any indication, prepare yourself for a good ass-kicking this round. Bring it Back comes out on March 21st, but if you pre-order a copy from Polyvinyl it’ll ship out to ya on March 14th. Just so ya know.

download “Fraud in the ’80s” from Bring it Back (4.0mb mp3)

As far as bigger gigs go, I’ve been totally obsessed with Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys, which keeps getting better every time I listen to it. The riffs they’re laying down in there are so freakin’ tight it blows my mind. The album has a phat 20 tracks with no duds, and every single minute is worth a listen.

Also, Throwing Copper by Live. You heard half this album on the radio when you were in high school, but you never dug into it until Erik the Great loaned you his copy. The music on Throwing Copper is thick, thick and deep, and while I originally got it for nostalgia, I’ve since realized that the other tracks on this album are great as well.

Note: Apologies on any of the album links to Polyvinyl Records. I love those guys to death but their website sucks ass and uses frames, so it’s difficult to link to anything other than the home page. When you do (which I did) link to the innards, their site doesn’t load the outer frame and thus the shopping cart doesn’t work. Navigation doesn’t load either, but we’re not so concerned about that, now, are we?

March 1, 2006

Breadcrumbs

Sometimes I feel like I need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Not those ghetto breadcrumbs that were so popular with the web all those (two) years ago, but real freakin’ breadcrumbs, like a pocket full of moldly bread and such. Seriously, how useless are web-based breadcrumbs, who have the nerve of being all hierarchical and such? I was born in a country founded on the complete and utter rejection of royal monarchies, and I’m not about to find myself ruled under such a navigational hierarchy. Breadcrumbs, you can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. Who’s mah boss, you ask? The sum-bitch ain’t been born yet.

And I spit on the ground just to make my point.

But really, too often I find myself in dark and shady neighborhoods of the interweb, and at some point I look up and wonder how the hell I ended up there. There are entire spheres of the web that are foreign to me. Assuming that the world is at least one percent as diverse as the web (note: it is), I’m sure I will find all sorts of new things to keep me busy until the day I die.

Case and point. Right now I have friends who are in Zambia, Madagascar, Antarctica and Duluth. Some are even in the United States. These are all places I have yet to explore fully, and until that happens I still have things to learn. Benkyo, benkyo, benkyo.

I’ve also been dabbling in drugs lately, and by drugs I mean JavaScript. Such ill-named substances as prototype and moo.fx and dojo and behaviour and scriptaculous have dominated my brain cells in the off-hours. Last night I wrote my first AJAX script, which sucked in a royal manner, but proved that I am capable of performing such nonsense on request.

These days I shop online with two windows open; one on Amazon and the other on Barnes & Noble. The cheapest of the two wins the order for that particular product. I often find myself simultaneously placing two orders with two different businesses. For this there is only reward and no obvious penalty, not in tax nor in shipping. No penalty, aside from the long-term consequences of my actions and the potential for a catastrophic economic collapse that has likely been predicted by Milton Friedman, that darling genius.

However, international financial ruin being something that I have not yet experienced, it would also be something worth keeping me busy. We’ll look at it that way.

February 27, 2006

Ten Bucks

Went snowboarding at Buck Hill last night, mostly because it was only $10 but also because I needed the fix. Though it was a gorgeous evening, 30 degrees and hardly even cloudy, conditions were borderline suicidal. It was what you’d expect from a ski resort located within the confines of a major metropolitan area; icy, unforgiving, and crawling with grommets who need to be assigned more homework.

I made a fairly wretched show of it, spending much of my time marveling at the novelty of riding a chairlift to the top of a “mountain” and finding myself in the middle of someone’s suburban neighborhood. I also enjoyed that the run-out from one of their terrain parks went smack through the middle of the bunny hill. Such is a recipe for disaster.

That being said, some of the kids out there were so good in the terrain park it was disgusting. I watched one kid, who must have been ten years old, throw a 540 off a kicker. I watched another guy do a front flip, and then gap the rainbow box approach to the landing of a completely different jump. The guy who followed him through the park nailed the same gap, but threw a 360 in the process. Then there was the kid on skis who threw a corked backflip with full twist.

All I managed to pull was a tendon in my thumb, which I had previously tweaked crazy-dancing at the matt pond PA concert last week. It was starting to get better and all, so obviously I needed to fall on it. Hard.

February 22, 2006

Secrets Between Friends

www.ivebeentoduluth.net is now alive and kicking!

Break out your world-class martinis everybody, as tonight there is cause for celebration. After months of work conducted in absolute secrecy, a project that I’ve been working on has finally gone live. I have no doubt that there are bugs that still need to be fleshed out, and steps in the whole process that I haven’t even considered, but I’ve never really let things like pesky details stand in the way of a really good time.

Everyone, I would like you to say hello to www.ivebeentoduluth.net, a pet project of Brainside Out Industries. Yessiree, after all that yammering on about the bygone era of The Shirt, and after all that ridiculous placement on Google, someone finally went ahead and did something about it.

We are open for business and ready to serve all your existential t-shirt desires. The shirts arrived today, hot off the press, and I must say they are beautiful. Our expert fontographers spent hours squinting at screen captures of a certain late-80’s movie, and hours flipping through (online) font books, just to make sure that we could match the typography as closely as possible.

the famed i've been to duluth t-shirt

Well, all the hard work has finally come to a head, dang-nabbit, and we’re drowning in a sea of hot t-shirts that are achin’ for some wearin’. Fortunately for us, we’ve got a killer website gunning on our side, ready to sling orders like nobody’s business. Beyond the slick color scheme and somewhat familiar layout, we’ve got some neat abstraction layers happening between the structural and visual aspects of the design. What does that mean, you may ask? Well, with a smattering of PHP and a few alternate stylesheets, we very well may see what it means when spring finally gives way to summer.

Even so, we’re still rocking some pretty sweet stuff in the current rendition, including accessible popup windows that do away with tortured javascript calls, and some sweet AJAX nothings accomplished with the teeny-tiny moo.fx effects library. Curious what we’re geekin’ out about? Check out the questions page and click the handy-dandy links on the right. Heh. Needless to say, even with all this wizardry the site still validates through and through.

Anywho, this has been one of the top secret projects that we’re currently working on. The others mostly involve pirates and their kin, and as such we rarely discuss them for entirely different reasons.

February 20, 2006

Battle

It begins in subtlety, a slight breeze against your ear, perchance the beating wings of an insect or a hummingbird larvae, but they have long since gone south or preserved themselves in crystals. You brush your ear but the sensation doesn’t go away, instead growing into sound. Yes. You can hear it now. It’s definitely something, real, not in your head. So quiet though, and you survey your surroundings but it doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. For lack of a better idea you check under your shoe. No, nothing.

The sound grows, mechanical in nature. Snow blower? Ice auger? It has been cold for so long that these are the only things you can think of. No, there’s more than one, definitely more than one, perchance an army of ice fishermen all armed with augers.

The noise increases. It moves faster than that. Ice fishermen cannot make this kind of haste. The magic of internal combustion is at work, here, certainly a pack of engines. But what? Snowmobiles? If so, Polaris or Arctic Cat? For once you are alone and over the approaching din you shout at the top of your lungs that in all honesty you have no preference, no preference at all, and you think that the two camps should just pick a weekend to meet on Lake Mille Lacs with their snowmobiles and just have it the fuck out.

A duel will settle this.

But that is for another day, as a chorus of tortured engines are approaching. The noise becomes unbearable, the belch and choke and stutter that is the siren’s call of weekend mechanics everywhere, and finally it appears. With a final shot at the accelerator the leader blasts over the horizon, airborne and glistening in the frigid sunlight. The suspension protests as it hits the ground, skidding sideways but correcting, always correcting. And then the full army appears, a hundred strong, and you know what is headed your way.

MONSTER TRUCKS!

That’s right, a legion of monster trucks, frankentrucks if you will, hideous pickup zombies that have been coerced into living again, if only for a weekend. Cannibalized from the remains of hundreds of other trucks, the only thing that frankentrucks despise as much as their own existence is the species with the audacity to bring them back to life. To this wild pack you are the one, the manifestation of their agony.

The air fills with noise, the sun dims behind dark clouds of exhaust. You can taste the atmosphere, it is thick, it is palpable. The pack sees you now and they are headed for your position. They will not stop if you stand your ground. They will not give up if you run.

They are honking. They are flashing their lights. These are not warnings, these are promises. The ground shudders with their approach.

The first one is a Chevy. You have five seconds. This is your battle. You expect no outside intervention. You fold your hands into your pockets and rock back onto your heels.

Go.

February 14, 2006

The Most Popular Thing We Do

After much thought and careful consideration, I have added a link to our Desktop Wallpaper Gallery in the site navigation. Nothing is new, of course, unless of course it is, in which case it is new.

My Valentine’s Day consisted of buying a case of Danish beer and slicing my knuckles open on an envelope. This was enough excitement for the day so I took a nap for two hours.