thinglets: Searching for "Pictures" - The 19% Rule

Was just noodling around doing some research for a presentation next week and decided to get a bit deconstructionist by searching Google Images for the word "pictures". I'd have to say the first page results were more expected than surprising, but did probably represent a pretty accurate representation of web image searches:

3 thumbnails of a sexual nature

11 thumbnails of animals (many with captionz)

4 thumbnails of pics that are just kinda cool

2 thumbnails of pics that are weird shit

1 thumbnail of a webpage graphic to denote other pictures

So, out of 21 pics, I'd probably only have any use for the 4 that are kinda cool. That's less than 19%, and this value has become my new non-scientific de facto standard of how many images on the web have any real merit whatsoever.

thinglets: The Live Band Continuum

One of the greatest things about hearing live music is that, when done right, you don't miss anything. Jazz music has had the ability to do this for decades where duos to orchestras often play entire shows.

I'm not talking about the singer-songwriter genre or dropping a folk duo together; I'm talking about a band mentality that goes for a big sound on stage. In browsing though videos from several bands that I really like, I came to appreciate the following diametric between the following two bands. The Benevento Russo Duo has an amazing sound with just keyboards and drums, while Parliament Funkadelic has more members on stage than a small town - and yet I dig them both.

Let me know what you think.

thinglets: time & again - the workday goes existential

Samuel Beckett certainly grasped something about life when pondering Vladimir and Estragon's dilemma in Waiting for Godot. As stark as the setting of that play was, it still serves as an allegory for the cyclical redundancy of the middle class in the 21st century.

This short video is a simple and effective deconstruction of the existence that many of us feel caught up in on our worst days. We trade time for money... everybody's working for the weekend.

thinglets: Graffiti - Artistic Wall Blogging

While I don't think I'd appreciate someone spraying an inconsequential tag on the side of my house, I can't deny the beauty of some graffiti. Sure the simple pre-pubescent name tag is like the Foursquare tweet after the fact. Like a well-conceived blog entry, however, complex graffiti art can have gravitas, relevance and consequence, often bringing colourful chaos to bleak order.

thinglets: Top Ten Unrevealed iPhone4 Features

1) More absorbent than Sham-Wow in tricky oil spill situations.

2) Able to leap off tall Chinese factories in a single bound.

3) Has the ability to motivate an entire community's police force if it goes missing.

4) Gives you a hundred more reasons to use data and be gouged by your provider.

5) Farmville gives iPhone that touch of class that only Zuckerberg understands.

6) iPhone to blind today's teens in a decade with eBook reader.

7) Google directions lawsuit pales in comparison to the 2011 class-action suit involving video chatters getting hit by runaway fruit cart.

8) Prosecuting attorney uses new iPhone gyroscope configuration to determine the amount of helicopter-like rotations the corpses made before landing on the Google Streetview van.

9) Sharp 720p video capabilities look especially sharp while enduring tailbone trauma on the shockless city bus.

10) Release date of June 24th is 130th anniversary of the first public performance of O Canada which really means nothing as no one in Canada knows when they'll get the iPhone 4 yet.

lovehate summerdrivecast for a musicmonday

Inspired by my recent spate of musicmonday podcasts and a blog post from almost a year ago entitled "The Top Ten Classic Arena Rock Summer Fast Driving Songs of All-Time". At the time I simply listed the tracks and tried to justify the list. This year you get to share one of my favourite hour-long playlists. Hope you dig it as much as I do. Feel free to comment below if your list would be different.

While almost everything else on lovehatethings is Creative Commons, this is not, and if the RIAA or any of the artists ask me to take this down, I'll gladly comply. But until then, if you dig it, maybe you'll go and buy it, which will make everyone happy in the end.

thinglets: An Eight Minute Animated Exploration Of Subservience

via nfb.ca

An amazingly stark, dark and ironic consideration regarding themes of servitude, reverence, classism and futility - all in eight minutes! You may not feel happy after this. In fact I felt pissed off. But that eight minutes of film can make someone feel anything is probably proof positive that it has struck a chord. Kudos to Patrick Bouchard for the vision and nfb.ca for the pipeline.