I have long admired yahoo for being a bastion of useful products and compelling interfaces. I only hope the next 16 years are as excellent and portal filled.
(click for a larger image — warning its a BIG file, almost 30k, i could only use 23% quality settings, so i hope you can still read the text.)
My only regret is that its not animated. Or blinking.
In celebrating this monumental event, lets think about the great services that they have acquired that I use to this day:
Broadcast.com
whereonearth (now the ubiquitous Yahoo! Maps)
geocities
hotjobs.com
maktoob
Like I mentioned yesterday, I started sketching out a basic twitter bot, I managed to get through Oauth and basic posting, you can find the code on github here:
http://github.com/scrame/twitbot
I might push a bit more if i can get a chance to do it later, but for now thats what you get.
– edit: i burned the rest of my time today trying to figure out a twitter bot. Nothing too interesting, except that it involved figuring out debians cpan issue, and learning that perl can’t do basic http connections out of the box (wtf? I mean I could use Socket, and then fake out the protocol — but that seems stupid its not 1993). Code on github, but it doesn’t really do anything yet.
In addition to some always excellent wtgf’s, I’ve updated the links on the right side to friends of mine. You should check them out. If you are a friend of mine and have a site I havn’t linked, let me know.
Also, there was some other random crap I was going to link, since I’m in between things, check out some random scratch videos:
(dj’s sara and ryusei — better than I will ever be)
Then there is Leon Botha, of Die Antwoord, just a random clip of him juggling, but apparently I can’t embed, so you can catch it here
Roc Raida died last year. He was a legendary dj for a legendary crew. If you don’t know him, check his wikipedia page. If you do, then enjoy this exhibition from 2008 where he shows off his DMC winning routine, including the phenomenal “rap ninja” juggle at the end. The man was in his late 30’s and still had the technical veracity of his youth.
And let me end with a clip of dj craze, who is the only solo DJ to win the DMC 3 times in a row (q-bert and mixmaster mike won as many, but were a team), in 2006 — just fucking around.
Well, with that drawing gone, I’m trying to clear the way for a short term project up until April. Anyway, probably just going to do some wtgf’s tonight, and maybe tack in some other crap.
For example, here is a video I came across recently, that I meant to add the other night, but didn’t get around to it:
(jedi mind tricks — i who have nothing)
Jedi Mind Tricks is a group I never really paid attention to, but have gotten into recently thanks to stumbling onto them in my mp3 collection through just running a long ‘play random’. If you like late 90’s underground hip-hop, you have probably heard “violent by design”, or at least owe it to yourself to check it out. This is a video from their 1997 limited (1000 copies) vinyl release of their debut album, a full two years before they reached underground acclaim (and have continued to be prolific in their own right, while collaborating with an impressive list of other MC’s. At this year they were probably in their late teens, and the rough edges in the video and audio production, as well as the verbose and flowery prose really mark this in their early career, but what really impresses me is the sophistication of it. For any piece that is telltale of being amateur and outside of the MTV borg, that a bunch of punkass kids out in philadelphia could pull off such competent producing, visuals and music, and they were still barely known until a couple years later when they managed to pull their way up into obscurity. They are definitely more well known now, but only through relentless dedication, and, well maybe talking about guns and shit more. Anyway, check it out. When I was 17-19, I may have still had all my teeth, but I wasn’t making shit like this.
Like I said, they are still active, and while a lot of it is deliberately offensive (see the excellent “army of the pharoahs” albums), they still put out their own brand of dark and thoughtful stuff. Hey, its hip hop, you don’t have to agree with it to like it.
This is from their latest album:
Two person producer/MC groups can run into limitations quickly, despite all their potential (see Black Sheep), having done a thorough run-over of their discography in the last six months or year, I have found that stoupes production is really quite good, interesting enough that its worth giving the album a couple spins even if the MC isn’t your type. There are a lot of times when vinnie is still on, but his strength has always been in collaboration, so on long stretches of his solo work, he is interesting, but there is too much of it to declare every gem a diamond.
Anyway, if I continue to post about music, there will certainly be more pieces about the people orbiting this particular diaspora of hip-hop.
Im gonna go post some other shit around, but I’m still going…
So I was digging through youtube for some old school video type things. Thing in parenthesis are notes to myself in case the embeds stop working.
Here is a nice clip of Ice-T/Body Count:
(body counts in the house)
I came to that piece through this one:
(janes addiction, ice-t, dont call me whitey)
I was there at this tour, though I dont know if this is from the enumclaw show. I wasn’t close enough to see the theatrics, but there was enough tension in the crowd after ice-t’s prelude to “cop killer”, that having the headliner come out with a pointlessly racist joke just, uhhhhh… yadayadayada, i guess, woodstock 94 and 99 both pretty much proved that mayhem will just show up and it doesnt have as much to do with violent lyrics against the establishment as much as it does fencing people in at $70 a pop and charging them $8 for 3 ounces of water for 4 days straight. Plus they had to listen to limp bizkit.
Whatever.
Anyway just some other random youtube crap i was digging up:
(spearhead, people in the middle)
Like the title says: From Krush Groove (the best movie ever!).
Anyway, its done. Now I need to find something else to occupy 30 minutes a day for the next three and a half weeks.
I’m open to suggestions.
Anyway, here is a compressed jpg of the final piece. The dark line down the center is an artifact of scanning, the actual piece has no such line. Word.
[Note: i was -not- dealing with a bit of a rodent problem. This is something i had banked before. I was drunk, its stupid, the last notes are to myself and real. Don't bother reading this.]
“Good Game” to a person:
is fun to do and makes you feel awesome at the end, especially if you win.
“Good Game” to a gamer:
keeps them frustrated but entertained.
“Good Show” to a viewer:
keeps them entertaned and curious but not challenged, so it can be forgotten for a week.
“Good Show” to old folks:
is educating about politics (or catchin’ a criminal!).
“Good Site” to a surfer:
has a follow-up link where they can read the opinions of folk like them.
“Good Site” to a critic:
is full of gushing praise for things they should like.
“Good Musician” to a person:
sings a hook you sing along to in your car.
“Good Musician” to a fan:
recorded something they own, you havn’t heard, and probably wouldn’t like.
I suppose it would be better if it was reworked to consistency. But I don’t think I am that motivated.
Eh, lets give it a shot. But dussy it up a little bit! The critic angle seems an easier jibe
REWORK: NORMAL AND CRITIC
MEDIA –
GAME:
P: is fun to do and makes you feel awesome at the end, especially if you win.
C: frustrating with its homages, incomplete in its derivations, noteworthy for its satire.
TV:
P: keeps them entertaned and curious but not challenged, so it can be forgotten for a week.
C: breaks new ground with its border-bending take on modern ways.
WEBSITE:
P: has a follow-up link where they can read the opinions of folk like them.
C: is completely wrong about its gushing praise for things they should like.
MUSICIAN:
P: sings a hook you sing along to in your car.
C: recorded something they own, you havn’t heard, and probably wouldn’t like.
END REWORK
****I’m cutting this one out here ****
*** feel free to try to salvage it ***
Knew I was forgetting something. I did more drawring shtuff, its filled in the lower left corner and getting further and further along. Still a ways to go, but I gotta put the screws to it to get it done in the next couple weeks. Post a better pic tonight.
