dullneon : “and i thought i was on my way to being one of those guys” – the cautiously written, occasionally pointless & templated monthly archives

It has been a long time since this site was built and it’s showing its age. Out of date xHTML/CSS code, too many 404 errors, an ageing publishing engine, weird directory names which I can’t recall creating and the itch to try something new are but some of the reasons why I am embarking on a massive overhaul of things ‘round here. Most links will remain unchanged but there will be glitches here and there as I re-design in public.

I will still be updating random notes, though maybe with a little less vigour. Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay updated (and here’s the RSS feed for my frequently updated link log, via Ma.gnolia.)

I am also in the midst of evaluating whether I should to upgrade to newer versions of MovableType or to re-learn shit all over again with WordPress, so over the course of the next 60+ days, dullneon.com will be under severe re-construction. So there may be radio silence from time to time…

Here’s wishing everybody a good year ahead.

This is great satire: if past masters of photography uploaded their work to photo sharing sites, what would the masses say?

(It really does happen, you know.)

It’s that Friday of the year where I reflect, wonder, listen, organize and re-listen to stuff I bought to decide my top ten album picks for 2007. And they are…

1. In Rainbows, by Radiohead

2. Untrue, by Burial

3. Transparent Things, by Fujiya & Miyagi

4. Sound of Silver, by LCD Soundsystem

5. The Boy with No Name, by Travis

6. Fantastic Playroom, by New Young Pony Club

7. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by Spoon

8. From Here We Go Sublime, by The Field

9. Yours Truly, Angry Mob, by Kaiser Chiefs

10. Fabriclive.33, by Spank Rock

Other excellent music purchases for the year that didn’t quite feature in the top ten (but surely would have in a top fifty) would include Dead Horse, Neon Bible, Attack Decay Sustain Release, Friend Opportunity, Bring on the Comets, Myths of the Near Future, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Costello Music, Andorra, Myth Takes, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? and, of course, Hideout.

I don’t know how true and verifiable this is, but apparently, having more than 6 megapixels on your digital camera doesn’t count for shit.

Shopdropping is now the purview of culture jammers and indoor street artists. There will come a day when ad agencies decide to do some guerilla marketing with shopdropping tactics, make big news out of it and make this subversive, underground and possibly illegal activity completely commercial and legit.

The Aptera is actually an American-made hybrid car that is just unbelievably fuel efficient: it apparently can run for slightly more than 200 kilometres on just one litre of petrol! It’s available now and is priced at US$27,000 — sounds like a snip with all that fuel you’d be saving.

A great cover of Spandau Ballet’s 1980 hit To Cut A Long Story Short by the Cazals.

Weird vocals, nimble beats, constant background hums, flitting tempos and sparse ambience make Burial’s latest album Untrue a superb soundtrack or score for a sci-fi movie like Dark City. Without alluding to the mystery behind the artist who still remains anonymous, this is great music that fuels the imagination.

Every week, Joe Suta at Threadless mashes up all the winning designs and creates three 122cm by paintings out of them that go into the Threadless Chicago store’s display window. The older ones get sold on the Threadless site for US$250 a piece and some are just beautiful. If not for the international shipping, I think I might be tempted to grab a piece or two…

Blimey! Just after Opera complained against Microsoft having such a crap browser, the IE team breaks the news of the still-in-the-works Internet Explorer 8 which seems to be closing the gap on IE’s poor standards support.

If there is going to be yet another browser war, you can bet your house Microsoft is going to be right in the thick of it.

So, there was this rumour I once heard of where apparently manufacturers printed an invisible code on every page that is output by their laser printers. Well, now we have proof that it it true.

It was good while it lasted.

Everybody at EMI had become part of the furniture. I’d be a couch; Coldplay are an armchair… Robbie Williams, I dread to think what he was.

» Sir Paul McCartney, on his former record label

Let’s celebrate the endangered CD single this week by delving into two outstanding releases.

Battles’ latest album, Mirrored took me a while to get into, so it was with mild reluctance that I sampled the Tonto+ single. And I was glad I did, for no other reason than Four Tet. His nine minute-ish remix is just bloody mind-blowingly awesome. Really.

And then there is LCD Soundsystem’s 51 minute long single, Someone Great. That’s right, not an album but a 51 minute long single. There are entire albums which cannot match up to this single’s duration or quality. My personal favourite from this is the Soulwax remix of Get Innocuous! – excellent Friday floor filler!

Hat-tip to Daniel for the recommendations.

If you are in advertising, you have to see this hilariously ‘oh-so-true’ video.

A moth found was found trapped between the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while being tested at Harvard University in 1947. The moth was literally added to the computer log and tagged as the “First actual case of bug being found”. Later, they would use the word “debugged” when the moth was removed from the machine.

It’s great we made it through but… uhmmm… am I the only one who thought the Champions League could have been sacrificed for a concerted assault on the Premier League title?

These bulbs use technology invented during the age of the steam engine. By getting rid of these bulbs we will save 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

» Irish Environment Minister John Gormley

A drill bra? WTF?

I don’t know whether to be grossed out or laugh, although I would hazard a guess that this might be an animé adaptation.

• we didn’t start the Web 2.0 bubble? (Now I also know it has been taken down.)
• about the rules of internet laughter?
• what your asshole footprint is?
• people can actually die from a broken heart?
• the reason why the server could not be found?
• how good your Soduku skills really are?
• Mrs Google is a real hot babe?
• there are techniques to help you fake a smile?
• you can have Stir Fried Wikipedia and other Food 2.0 delights in China?
• garlic can cut cow flatulence?

Here’s the thing about Underworld’s new album, Oblivion With Bells: It is pretty good, but it’s not that good. It is not a masterpiece like dubnobass or Second Toughest, but it’s not a stinker either. They definitely sound more alive than they did in A Hundred Days Off, but don’t expect any King of Snake or Bruce Lee style tracks to get your pulse racing on this album. Glam Bucket is probably the best track, but it sounds like something that would have been produced by Sasha or James Holden. If you are not a fan, you may not like this, but if you are, you will grow to like this effort, despite the many ifs and buts.

Great song from the Travis’s most recent album with a pretty funny video to go with it.

If one must compare the web to other media, typography would be a better choice. For a web design, like a typeface, is an environment for someone else’s expression.

» Jeffrey Zeldman

Flickr just added photo editing into their site by tightly integrating Picnik.

It’s about time Flickr brought in some editing tools into their main interface. Although there are quite a number of online photo editing apps around, I thought they might have bought out Preloadr which only worked with Flickr. Oh well, life’s tough like that…

Anyway, I just gave the Flickr+Picnik goodness a spin and it’s wicked. Very smooth, lots of options and bloody brilliant.

Finally, classy jewellery that you can buy for your partner, girlfriend or wife that look great and are wallet-friendly at the same time!

From the exquisite Stunning Diamond Necklace to the charming Renaissance Style Sapphire and Diamond Fringe Necklace, the choices are so affordable and aesthetically pleasing that you could buy them all at the cost of a little more than 1½ pairs of sneakers.

Just make sure your partner shares your sense of humour as well because if she does not, you might not look too aesthetically pleasing yourself in the aftermath.

So there’s been a lot of furore over Facebook’s Beacon technology and your privacy going to the dogs. (Of course, there are those who think the current generation of online users/kids don’t really care about their privacy but I digress…)

To enhance the reputation of Facebook as nothing more than lying bastards whose revenue model revolves around peddling your information to the highest bidders, we now find out that their ad service is much more intrusive than they had previously acknowledged.

I am just wondering if anyone will care about all of this when people eventually realise they have a life to lead, find it hard to keep up with their Facebook account and drop off completely (and maybe move on to something else).

This is an excellent item available on Amazon for all mad scientists, James Bond baddies and aspiring Nuclear Man superheroes. No need to get on the Russian black market for stuff like this anymore.