Lawlz, illegal wiretapping.

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I’m not sure if you guys know about the Billboard Liberation Front, but you should absolutely check them out. Here is an quick excerpt of “services” that they offer to their “clients”:

We offer a broad range of black-bag operations and cultural jam services, from project management and subversion consulting to media manipulation and thought placement. The key to our success is developing a true collaboration with our clients, and by caring as much about the working relationship as we do about the final execution. Our philosophy and track record has resulted in roster of long-term, satisfied clients in a diverse range of industries, from Fortune 1000 companies to local entrepreneurs.

Mmmm, I could really go for some subversion consulting and thought placement right about now.

Here is a link to the first page in a gallery of improved billboards. Big fan of the Exxon Corp “Shit Happens” one, and “FATAL ERROR - Invalid Stock Value Abort/Retry/Fail” on various dot com’s billboards. The Exxon one is from ‘89, been at this a while, you have.

I absolutely love this T-shirt from Glarkware. If you’re not a fan of the show… well, I assume you won’t get it.

A toaster is capable of a lot more than you might think at first glance. Even more than toasting your bread, actually. Treat it poorly, and it will find a way to collude with other toasters to overthrow humanity. But treat it well, and…well, you and that little old toaster might actually find love. It’s not a love that either of your communities will sanction or even understand, but you know best: that seemingly simple appliance loves you from the coils of its heart.

Damn you Baltar!!!

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Continuing in a series of informational posters which amuse me…

Via boingboing.

Trent Reznor’s ability to make beautiful noise has always impressed me. His ability to make different sounds and beats flow together has helped make Nine Inch Nails what it is today. In the past, most of Trent’s music has been harsh and brutal with a few exceptions. Most of the these exceptions would be the instrumental track that have appeared on NIN releases. So I guess it should come as no surprise that NIN’s new instrumental anthology is more beautiful then brutal.

Ghosts I-IV is something that I would have never expected from Trent but isn’t all that surprising when one thinks about Trent’s projects in the past few years. Year Zero and Niggy Tardust have both been very ambitious projects with experimental marketing and releases and Ghosts is no different. Trent’s strategy of releasing Ghosts as soon as it was announced works well with tone of the album. The recording experiment that led to Ghosts I-IV was an intense 10 week recording session where Trent set out not to over think but to just make music and when one listens to Ghosts this becomes very apparent. To call Ghosts simple gives the wrong impression but in a way it is. There is nothing to analyze about this album other then the meaning of the title (which I will do in a moment). The music does have many layers to it and the amount of musical and recording talent needed to make it is high. However, there is little reflection needed to understand these songs. Ghosts I-IV provides a NIN experience that fans haven’t had before, listen to a song, ingest it, understand it. There are no lyrics with multiple meanings, no hidden political or personal angst, there is just the music. Ghosts I-IV is a very refreshing experience for long time NIN fans.

The title of this release is very fitting with the simplicity of the release. The music lends to a feelings of loss and regret but also to anticipation and an awareness of things around you. By using a title that can lend to so many feelings and emotions, Trent manages to encompass a theme to 36 songs with no lyrics and this is impressive. The title helps to bring more cohesiveness to this records then just the familiarity of the usual NIN sounds do. As for the different volumes, the do fit together well and some share more common sounds and feelings (Ghosts III is most rocking or intense volume) but how Trent decided to group these together I do not know (this adds to the long list of things Trent does I do not understand but fully support).

Finally, I cannot review this album without mentioning the amazing artwork that comes with it. Trent and company worked with Rob Sheridan to group each song on Ghosts with an accompanying photos and they are amazing. Each photo helps to convey the emotions of the songs but they also stand alone as beautiful pieces of art. Also, the fact that these come along with digital release as an pdf file makes the experience all the greater. Ghosts I-IV is a fantastic album and great experience with the accompanying photos and is well worth whatever the cost of whatever option you choose.

If you want to listen for yourself, click below

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Note to the music industry: This is how you release music on the internet and still survive as an artist

Trent Reznor has just announced the release of Ghosts I-IV, an instrumental project that was recorded over the course of 10 weeks last year. This alone is nothing amazing (well, depending on your opinion of Nine Inch Nails’ instrumental tracks) but the fact this is available immediately and the variety of release formats is. Nine Inch Nails fans have 5 different options for this release:

1. Free download of first nine tracks in high quality mp3 format. Gives unsure fans a taste of what this release is all about.

2. $5 download of entire album (36 tracks!!!) in a variety of formats (including Apple Lossless which is FLAC for itunes. Will only work with some ipods.)

3. $10 double cd-set with immediate digital download of album. This is perfect for the cash strapped fan (for example, me) who still wants physical cd’s from one of his/her favourite bands. Also, $10 for 2 cd’s is a really good fucking price.

Fanboy break: Trent Reznor is a fucking god

4. $75 package with double cd release, a dvd with multi-track files for remixing goodness, a blu-ray disc with high-def sounds and video. The video is a slide show of artwork inspired by the music. Finally, a 48 art book inspired by the album. If you have more money and a blu-ray player this is gold. The blu-ray disc experience with this will be amazing and I can’t wait to find someone who will get this (or lower the definition so I can download it). The art book also looks beautiful.

5. $300 package with everything from the $75 package plus vinyls and two art prints. Obviously Trent understands his rabid fanbase and these will be soldout in less then a day.

My love for Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor runs very deep and this release re-enforces and deepens this love. Trent has put the time and effort into creating options that will suit every fan. And making this is all better is that it is released under the Creative Commons License. Translation: this release can be shared and there will be no repercussions. The album is copyrighted by Nine Inch Nails but considering Trent’s feelings towards major labels, something tells me the RIAA won’t be coming after you for sharing this album. So to summarize, Trent Reznor has set the new standard for releasing an album. Smaller, independent artists will not be able to do this but larger acts that still announce albums 4 months before the cd comes out and sell DRM soaked mp3’s are way behind. Innovation isn’t impossible and for that matter, Trent has done most of the thinking for you. Bye major labels, your business plan from 20 years ago is fucked and you have no one to blame but yourself.

(Review of album coming soon…)

Not for test taking, huh? Your washroom is breeding Bolsheviks.

fuck off.

Here is the second half of our opinions of the characters in Brawl, enjoy.

Ness
fink: I have never really gotten good with Ness and I really couldn’t care less. He has some sweet moves (love that bat and yoyo) but the rest is just ok. Final Smash is also looking pretty weak and easily avoidable
allonby: Ness scares me. No, really. Not the character itself, but the fact that anyone who can actually play with him seems to be able to pound my ass into the ground. Luckily there are only 2 people who can actually play as him, and I can take solace in the fact that they live in their parents basement. Also, YoYo FTW!!

Peach
fink: I fucking love hitting people with that frying pan and while at first look her final smash looks weak, it makes people fall asleep which means free hit with frying pan/golf club/tennis racket which makes me very happy.
allonby: Ah, Peach… How I love the way you float about tossing turnips at all who dare question your place as sole sovereign ruler of mushroom kingdom. Even going so far as to “show ‘em the toad” if they step further out of line, asking whatever happened to King and Queen Peach. I truly admire your choice of weaponry as you continue your revisionist crusade to hide the true history of the bloody military coup which lead to your seizing power, and the throne. All hail General.. er, I mean “Princess” Peach. (zomg frying pan, lawlz)

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Note: This is a rant and is meant in no way, shape or form to end any discussions about anything. These rants are meant to start discussion and (hopefully) open some minds to new ideas. Also, these rants are written by fairly seasoned pompous asshole who will not respond to comments or questions. Now here’s Tom with the weather.

Ann Coulter is possibly one of the worst human beings on earth. This hatemonger is to me the definition of a fascist. When it comes to Ann Coulter, I am by no means the first person to label her as fascist and I would like to think I’m not the type of person to use a word a strong as fascist lightly and in this case I think I’m completely justified. The first thing I ever heard Ann Coulter say is that America should bomb the middle east and convert the survivors to Christianity. Now if we are to use the definition of fascism that deals with superiority of race over individual rights and oppressive governments whose power is based in this racism, then Ann Coulter fits right in. Her suggestion of bombing the Middle East is genocide and she clearly believes that her race and religion is superior to others.

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After almost a decade of playing Smash Bros, allonby and myself are going thoroughly insane waiting for the Brawl to come out. In an attempt to quell our anticipation down to manageable levels we will be giving our opinions on the characters that made it into Brawl and the new levels we’ve seen so far.

Bowser
fink: Bowser was fun to play in Melee but with the potential for Gigabowser in Brawl…well, fuck yeah
allonby: Bowser is one of my favorite characters, so much so I intend to name my dog after the antagonistic sonofabitch. I’m extremely happy to see the spiked collar wearing koopa king return this time around, and the thought of terrorizing my opponents as Giga Bowser has me down right salivating.

Capton Falcon
fink: Falcon is a classic character and has always been fun to play and this wont change for Brawl
allonby: Falcon has always been fun to play, but he has never been one of my favorites (maybe cause he can’t swing a bat :P). I truly hope he still sounds like Napoleon Dynamite versus a tether ball while executing his up B. “YES!”

**UPDATE to Falco**
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Free open source games that I actually want to play are few and far between. Then there is Wesnoth.

The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme.

Build up a great army, gradually turning raw recruits into hardened veterans. In later games, recall your toughest warriors and form a deadly host against whom none can stand! Choose units from a large pool of specialists, and hand-pick a force with the right strengths to fight well on different terrains against all manner of opposition.

The art is wonderful and the game play and story are captivating. Available on more operating systems than you can probably name, hours of free entertainment to be had from the the multiple campaigns that are available.

So of course I tried to get it running on my Eee PC.

Initially I had terrible problems with the resolution, font size, sprite size, tiles, all of it seemed messed up. I was trying to compile the stable branch.

I tried the development branch and ended up with a whole other set of issues.

My entire adventure can be seen in this thread over at the wesnoth forums.

Turns out not all the fixes for smaller screens were back ported to the stable branch, and the dev branch’s image resize script was broken, so nothing was actually getting resize when compiled with –tinygui.

They released a new version the next day and it works just fine now.

Still a bit tiny, but very much worth it.

So yeah, if you’re looking for a great game to play on your Eee, go for Wesnoth. You’ll have to compile from source however, just grab the dev brach and ./configure –enable-tinygui.

UPDATE:

I suppose in my haste to finish this post, I neglected to mention the build dependencies.

Prior to compiling you’ll need to make sure you have the required development libraries installed. First off, you’ll need to add the debian repositories to your sources.list file. Don’t let that scare you off, I wrote a friendly tutorial for that type of thing here. We need to add a source repository in addition to the ones mentioned in that post. Once we have access to some source packages, getting the appropriate development libraries installed should be a piece of cake. So, following the same procedure, add the following line to your sources.list.

deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

Next, open up a console (ctrl+alt+t) and type in:

sudo apt-get build-dep wesnoth

That will pull down all the stuff required to build wesnoth. There are a few more things we need to install to get the development branch of the code working on the EeePC however. One of these they decided not to mention on the wesnoth pages, which was quite a pisser when I was trying to get this working, and that is the imagemagick package, which is used when compiling with –tinygui to resize the images.

Some of the stuff in the following line may not be needed for it to compile, and I don’t have a machine to test it on right now. The first part (python-dev) you may be able to omit and have yourself some space on your EeePC. Same thing goes for libboost.

Try this:

sudo apt-get install libboost-iostreams-dev imagemagick

And then give it a try. If you get errors give this one a try:

sudo apt-get install python-dev libboost-iostreams1.33.1 libboost-iostreams-dev imagemagick

Then do your ./configure, make, make install.

I hope that helps, if anyone experiences problems with that please let me know in the comments.