For a band that gave us seminal classics like 1991’s Screamadelica, 1997’s Vanishing Point and 2000’s epochal XTRMNTR, it was quite hard to believe Primal Scream could come up with total crap two years ago, which they titled Riot City Blues. I was really hoping they would have recovered that hard edge and done something new with their newest album, Beautiful Future.

But alas, it’s another derivative, boring and patchy effort from a bunch of guys who seem to have lost their edge. With the exception of one or two well-produced tracks (like the very groovy Uptown), most of the album is just despondently disappointing.

Yeah, I heard the Clone Wars sucked big-time but Marc Ecko’s Star Wars T-shirts were thankfully not done by the same guys. They have about 8 T-shirts and 3 hoodies, any one of which seems like a better spend than the movie.

The Æsop for Children is just one of many classics, available as free ebooks from Project Gutenberg. The vintage illustrations by Milo Winter (1886-1956), as well as the familair stories, are bound to invoke a fair bit of nostalgia.

If a player didn’t want to play for me, I know what I’d do — I’d drive him myself to wherever he wants to go.

›› Sunderland manager Roy Keane on Berbatov

On an aside, reading about Seinfeld and his new gig with Microsoft got me wondering why Microsoft would use a guy who used Macs in his shows.

You can be sure there is always going to be a Pantone cup to match your coffee or tea (or any other beverage that’s fit to go into a cup).

You’ve got spin the eggs to find out. A hard-boiled egg will spin freely (almost like a top) since the inside is also solid. A raw egg, on the other hand, will not spin that well since the inside is all runny and gooey.

Bending Light, Twisting Light and Taming Light are all beautiful images of refracted patterns of light that were captured directly onto film. Awesome analogue beauty.

[Thanks, Steve]

With almost all of Beck’s albums, I have always needed many listens before coming to a decision on whether I like it or not. His 2008 album, Modern Guilt, however took me just one listen to immediately like it. It sounds darkly catchy and much more consistent than the 2006 LP The Information. The Modern Guilt has a ‘vintage’ sound throughout the album and Gamma Ray is a standout track for me, despite lyrics informing us of the state of our ecosystem (”If I could hold hold out for now/ With these icecaps melting down”).

It’s a little introspective, even sad, at times but the album holds together pretty well even on a gloomy, rainy day because thankfully, you cannot always make out what Beck is rambling on about half the time.

Uhmmm… can I have that in size 12 to go please? I’m loving it!

What a performance again from Usain Bolt at the 200 metres race! At 19.30 seconds, he destroy the 15 year world record in some style. His running speed of 37.3km/h for this race was actually faster than peak hour traffic on some Singapore roads!

Starbucks is a mass brand attempting to command a premium price for an experience that is no longer special.

›› Harvard Business School

This is pretty old (and some might say lame) but I think it’s bloody cool. It pulls all the images off a page and makes them all spin into a tizzy. Go to some site (like Amazon or any site that has a lot of images) and copy the following code fragment into your browser address bar and press enter to watch some nifty nonsense animation.

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position=’absolute’; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+”px”; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+”px”}R++}setInterval(’A()’,5); void(0);

Neat huh?

We haven’t struck gold in space and my car radio isn’t solar powered at all, at least we have the home computers that was predicted in the 1979 book, The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond.

There are way too many people around me with iPhones nowadays, which is why I may have been a little out of touch with Android news lately. But if this piece on Wired is to be believed, the first real Google phone might be out soon.

(And hey, it looks like I’m not the only one who doesn’t want an iPhone.)

I saw the trailer for it long ago and I absolutely loved it. I am so glad they have stuck it on YouTube for everyone to watch. Awesome, awesome illustrations and fantastic animation work.

Unlike most elderly folk who reminisce about things of the past, Freeman Dyson is one old man who’s got a great vision of the future.

Everybody loves fireworks during the annual National Day Parades, but with every passing year, it feels more and more like an excessive indulgence. We do need to mark our independence but all the blinding lights, screaming jets and massive pyrotechnics seem very exuberant and expensive. Maybe the money for the electricity, fuel and fireworks could be saved and channeled to other worthwhile causes.

But everybody loves the fireworks and it only seems to get bigger every passing year. At least, we don’t go anywhere near the massive show of opulence and over-elaboration at the Olympics opening ceremony.

Jump into the sale while it’s still on.

A very smooth DJ mix by Adultnapper, Audiomatique 2.0 features music from the likes of Trentemøller, Gui Boratto, Martin Eyerer and many more. Starting off with stripped down downtempo fare, the mix progresses into slightly more aggressive, dancefloor stuff while maintaining a svelte, minimalist undertone all the way. It’s a nice collection of very urbane, minimal and modern electronica, but it’s not really going to set things on fire and become a classic of the future anytime soon.

[Via TypeNeu]

Another piece of brilliance from Yugo Nakamura…

[Thanks, Steve!]

Business Guys on Business Trips is almost therapeutic.

The 2008 survey from A List Apart : Go fill ‘em up!

The Opus Football table is hand-crafted from wood and stainless-steel and comes with individually-modelled players, ergonomically designed handles and many other exquisite details. This table is not just for foosball nerds—this is for bloody wealthy foosball nerds, as Opus costs about US$75,000 a set.

Kowalski was the first single from Primal Scream’s very compelling 1997 release, Vanishing Point. Breaking away from whatever they had done before, this single was a disturbing blend of industrial dub, samples from the (pointless) 1971 movie Vanishing Point and Bobby Gillespie muttering weird nothings.

And it sounded great. The Automator mix was wicked and I was so very captivated by the cover art. In fact, the Primal Scream sleeve art from Vanishing Point, Echo Dek and XTRMNTR (and the singles they spawned) were a definite source of stimulus for me back then as an aspiring designer.

We’ve seen evidence for this water-ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.

›› A researcher from the the NASA Phoenix mission