It might be a bit of a lie to call this a comic review. Basically, I am just repeating to our readers something awesome that I found a while back. I know that couple of you at least will be interested. I have had (at the prodding of Mr. Meyers) a little experience with locksport, or rather the recreational art of lock picking. There are sites and groups dedicated to the activity but lock picking has long been a side part of “hacker” and general nerd culture. It is just something about defeating the hard (or not so hard in some cases) work of others. There are basic rules of conduct to it as well, so as to distinguish between the lock enthusiast and the thief. The main one being that one should never pick a lock that they do not own or have been given explicit instruction to do so by the owner. That is the general gist of it. I am still not very good and it specifically relates to my lack of tools. I know that I should have made my own set of picks but I opted for the easy way out and bought a small, basic set. Now you might be wondering where all of this is going? Well its going to the educational comic made by Locksport International! Basically they took Apple’s new Comic Life software for making homebrew comics and used it to teach the art of lock picking. No more will you be forced to learn from some IT Geek or dry MIT created text only walkthrough. Now you can get the basics in colorful comic form, which actually makes it all that much easier to follow. I think instructional comics are largely underrated and would love to see more of them. Anyway I think it is well worth a gander whether you are interested in picking locks or just want to see a good use of Comic Life.
What can I say? The window seat needed a coffee table. Although this is a very simple design, and has reportedly been used to make several beer-pong tables, I had promised to publish it, so here it is: a flat top, 4 legs, and 2 corner brackets on each leg. This table is also very long, which was chosen to match the length of the window seat; however, the dimensions listed here can be very easily adjusted to fit any space. (more…)
Here’s an idea for anyone that has ever fantasized about turning their instant oatmeal into an oatmeal cookie. The texture is different than a baked cookie, and almost resembles that of a chewy granola bar, but it’s great for a quick fix, and easily modified for any flavor oatmeal cookie (I recommend peanut butter)—and all you need is sugar, milk, butter, instant oatmeal and 10 minutes (5 if you’re as quick as I am). (more…)
I’ve recently been faced with a large, empty apartment, a budget, and about a week to make it feel like a home. Furnishing via Craig’s List had always been my plan, but with two living rooms? Oh, also, by the way, we can’t fit anything larger than the smallest loveseat up our stairwell. The one that did make it up here was the result of a 45 minute battle with geometry. The stairwell lost–and not without some wounds to show for it–but we weren’t about to invite another couch to war. Didn’t they have large pieces of furniture in the early 1900’s? What gives?
Anyhow, my sister and I were pondering our large-empty-space, low-budget problems (and recognizing that there was no possibility of solving either problem with big cheap couches) while sitting in the window seat of a downtown Providence Starbucks. Now, wait…we can bring materials up the stairwell… 12 cinder blocks and 32 square feet of particle board later the project had started. (more…)
Despite having one of the best given names of any artist Robert Crumb is also undoubtedly one of America’s best cartoonists. His work is whimsical, freakish, volatile, offensive, crude, off-base, and completely fantastic (in a certain sense). Crumb’s work is so undeniably strange that one is left to imagine what kind of person he is, what his family is like, what his childhood was like, and what kind of drugs he was on. “Crumb” is the painfully revealing documentary with all of those answers. It is part comedy, part tragedy, and much like Crumb’s work, revealing of all the pathos and pure weirdness rumbling under the surface of society. The movie delves deep into Crumb’s brain and pulls out a lot of what makes his art tick. If you aren’t familiar with R. Crumb there are plenty of websites that show off his work and he even runs his own personal/family site. There is a very good biography of Crumb at Salon.com. Do remember though that Crumb’s art can be pretty damn offensive, racist, and misogynistic. He is widely respected but has a distinct dark side that many find unacceptable. With all of the oddity involved in his work you might imagine he is some kind of vulgar weirdo and in a certain sense you would be exactly right, but he is not necessarily what you expect. The documentary is intensely personal and more than a little horrifying (or sad it is hard to tell sometimes). (more…)
Of Montreal is a band that I did not care for until I heard their Sunlandic Twins album. Their previous albums seem to fall outside the range of my normal tastes and never reached a novelty or strength of sound to draw me towards them. This might have been a failure of appreciation on my part but I do consider Sunlandic Twins to be their best work so far (if you don’t mind youtube college weenies for the last one)… by far. Before this album I thought they were fun and interesting but not necessarily that great, but afterwards I realized they are really just that good. With Sunlandic they pulled off a piece de resistance that is not easily matched. However, with their new “Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer” they get as close as they can.
This album does not officially come out until January 23, 2007. However, it has been sufficiently leaked that every song is available online and can be found through the aggregating glory of The Hype Machine and Elbo.ws. So I feel compelled to review it. (more…)
Devotees will notice that the vdov.net gallery (including the now-famous Shawna’s Gallery) has been down for some time now. This is because I was stupid and was running a release of the software which was far too current and untested. Unfortunately reverting to a previous core version isn’t an option. So, as soon as the good people who develop gallery release 2.2 RC 2, we should be back on track. For the time being, sit tight, and I’ll let everyone know when this occurs. Cheers.
Who knew when we would ever get around to a book review. Seeing as we are no longer socially current or interesting and forced to beg for milk at the great teat of Google marketing I thought “why not?” Seeing as I am the only contributing member that actually has time enough on his hands to read anything other than the dense, mathematically complex tomes of statistical thermodynamics, dynamic ion resonance modeling I thought it might be worth the effort to bring some easy reading to the vdov.net crowd.
Botany of Desire is a non-scientific scientific romp through the complex interplay between man and our domesticated crops. The whole work is couched in terms of plants fulfilling our desires and us in turn fulfilling the plants’ desires. Michael Pollan (hilarious last name for a gardener no?) guides us through the massive evolutionary interplay between man and plant in everything from cannabis to tulips. There is a utterly fascinating quality in delving into the genetics of apple trees and the socio-economic impact of European potato cultivation. The best part about Pollan’s prose is that it has the grip and fascination of fiction while being (almost) completely factual. He peppers the book with his own experience and perspective without coloring the facts too much. He is engaging and wonderfully entertaining. Who knew that Reagan’s massive crackdown on cannabis use lead to one of the most rapid genetic changes that a human crop has ever seen or that a debilitating tulip virus was responsible for some of the most treasured blossoms in all of human history? (more…)
UPDATE: So this post is sort of outdated now. There has been such an enormous flurry of information and speculation surrounding the iPhone after its release that I encourage the reader to go and look at some of it. You can find it pretty much anywhere, including places like macrumors.com and slashdot. My RSS reader has been flooded with iPhone articles … ugh.
And now onto my second post of the day. I would imagine that most people who read vdov.net with any regularity have at least heard of the iPhone announcement made by Apple this past Tuesday. If you haven’t, head over to apple.com and play around with the web site they’ve set up detailing all of the features of the new device. I think (and I think I’m right too), that this is one of the most impressive releases I’ve ever seen from Apple. Scratch that, from anyone. A few years ago I was detailing in my brain what a truely great wireless device would be: thin, touch screen, wireless, a composite of all of our digital devices, great UI based on something reasonable (unlike CE 5/6), etc. The iPhone is the only device that even comes close to the “picture perfect” device I have virtually constructed in my head. It is by no means perfect — I see plenty of room for improvement in fairly obvious places like moving away from EDGE, bigger drives (maybe go to flash), etc. The shortcomings of the structure supporting and surrounding the iPhone, however, leave everything to be desired. (more…)
I moved back into taking a harder look at the code I wrote last summer to take care of some new simulations, since soon I will have to write 3D space and searching functions to track objects within many fields defined by millions of small 3D elements (meshes). This of course is something I really don’t know how to do yet but it’ll be fun to figure it out. Jason (of sphericalchicken.net fame) introduced me to valgrind to do some leak checking and associated code checking. So I tried it out. Boy was I suprised … (more…)
I decided to ease you all back in to some more frequent vdov posting with a mini-album review. If you are not a fan of weird freakout rock with heavy breakbeats then you should probably trail off here and find something more fun to listen to. Although that is really selling Big Star Records and Krypton Records (both near Adelaide, Australia if you happen to be in the area). If you email them they can probably send you a copy. In the spirit of full disclosure I have not heard the whole album yet, only what is to be had online. They have three tracks on their myspace page (f— myspace!) and there are a couple better quality tracks linked here and even more so (this one is good) here. Finally, there is a good writeup with a lot of info on the band at Triple J Unearthed. It looks like they are planning on coming to the US eventually and it seems it would be a really good idea to see them live. They are definitely the kind of band that loses a little in the translation to the studio. My feeling (and this has been mentioned in their writeups) is that these guys would literally lay waste to the audience at a live show. They are definitely worth keeping an eye out for.
Lady Strangelove EP - Quebi 3 - mp3
Lady Strangelove EP - Rotate 2 - mp3
Greetings to the vdov.net community on this, our first post of the new year. I wish I were coming to you under happier circumstances, but alas I am sitting in an airport bar (having a few beers) in Portland, Oregon waiting for my vastly delayed flight to Chicago. I will almost certainly miss my connection in Chicago to Indianapolis, so expect more posting later in Chicago. I thought I’d take this opportunity to write about something you all must have noticed — the ads you now see here at vdov.net. As I have mentioned earlier, I have no intention of actually ever keeping adspace as a permanent part of this website, but I decided it was interesting enough to try out and write about. So, here are some stats. My apologies for the crappy formatting. (more…)