Why I love Wikipedia

From the entry for Skeletor, He-Man’s mortal enemy (and don’t ask me why I was reading Skeletor’s entry on Wikipedia):

Although Skeletor can clearly hear, he has (virtually) never been depicted as having ears. He does seem to have a sense of smell though, as he is shown in the 2002 MYP series attempting to block his nose when Stinkor appears before him to beg a boon, which has some logic as his skull would still have nasal passages permitting him to breathe, if he in fact still needs to. Ironically, when shown as Keldor in flashbacks from the 2002 cartoon, the character’s distinctive nasal voice (a sound-alike of Alan Oppenheimer‘s original portrayal) is markedly less nasal than as Skeletor, despite actually having a nose. US Olympic swim champion Michael Phelps has stated his plans to be a full-time skeletor in his post-olympic career.

Ah, crowdsourcing.

Help Gregory Crosby

I got an email from my friend Gregory Crosby, erstwhile Las Vegas poet and current NYC teacher, asking for help — without getting too far into the personal details, it seems that someone he trusted very much abused his trust and defrauded him badly, smearing his own credit in the process.

Now Gregory’s got two weeks until his paycheck and he’s in dire need of rent, or else he’s going to lose his place. He’s trying to raise $1000.

I’m not in any position to help him right now, as regular readers probably guessed, but if you know Gregory, you might want to get in contact with him at doctorgogol (at) yahoo (dot) com and help him out if you can.

I can personally vouch for Gregory — this isn’t some lazy person panhandling on the Web, but a good guy who’s gotten into a bad situation not of his own making. I think we’ve all been there before.

So help him out if you can.

Sleeping In Flame

Those of you who’ve paid attention may know that I have a song called “Sleeping In Flame”, which is, I think, the best song I’ve written. You might also know that I’ve recorded, like, five versions of it, because I could never get it quite right.

I got it quite right. Sitting here in Thom’s apartment at three in the morning last night, I plugged his Stratocaster into something called a Peavey Valverb (which does tremolo and reverb), and it sounded exactly right. So I did four guitar tracks, and tonight whilst at a barbecue I dropped in drums and a synth pad. And it’s perfect, exactly the way I hear it in my head. Minus lead guitar and vocal and maybe some piano, but it’s there.

I really want to finish recording it so I can share it with you.

Top 15 criteria for new or interactive media art

From the Near Future Laboratory comes this hilarious (and completely on-the-mark) list.

The Near Future Laboratory Top-15 Criteria for New or Interactive Media Art

  1. It doesn’t work

  2. It doesn’t work because you couldn’t get a hold of a 220-to-110 volt converter/110-to-220 volt converter/PAL-to-NTSC/NTSC-to-PAL scan converter/serial-to-usb adapter/”dongle” of any sort..and the town you’re in is simply not the kind of place that has/cares about such things

  3. Your audience looks under/behind your table/pedestal/false wall/drop ceiling or follows wires to find out “where the camera is”

  4. Someone either on their blog or across the room is prattling on about the shifting relations between producers and consumers..and mentions your project

  5. Your audience “interacts” by clapping/hooting/making bird calls/flapping their arms like a duck or waving their arms wildly while standing in front of a wall onto which is projected squiggly lines

  6. Your audience asks amongst themselves, “how does it work?”

  7. The exhibition curators insist that you spend hours standing by your own wall text so that you can explain to attendees “how it works”

  8. It’s just like using your own normal, human, perfectly good eyeballs, only the resolution sucks and the colors are really lousy..plus the heat from the CPU fan is blowing on your forehead which makes you really uncomfortable and schvitz-y

  9. Someone in your audience wearing a Crumpler bag, slinging a fancy digital SLR and/or standing with their arms folded smugly says, “Yeah..yeah, I could’ve done that too..c’mon dude..some Perlin Noise? And Processing/Ruby-on-Rails/AJAX/Blue LEDs/MaxMSP/An Infrared Camera/Lots of Free Time/etc.? Pfft..It’s so easy…”

  10. Someone in your audience, maybe the same guy with the Crumpler bag and digital SLR excitedly says, “Oh, dude. That should totally be a Facebook app!”

  11. It’s called a “project” and not a “piece of art”

  12. You saw the “project” years ago…and here it is again…now with multi-touch interaction and other fancy digital bells and Web 2.0-y whistles

  13. Your audience cups their hands over various proturbances/orifices at or nearby your project attempting to confuse/interact with the camera/sensor/laser beam, even if it uses no such technology

  14. There’s a noticeable preponderance of smoothly shifting red, green and blue lighting effects

  15. People wonder if it wasn’t all really done in Photoshop, anyway