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Posts will probably be few and far between for the next few days. Check back after Tuesday.

The Urban Beast Project takes discarded stuffed animals, gives them evil looking teeth and then poses them taxidermy style in natural environments. These images are very disturbing to me for some reason. It must be tapping in to some childhood memory. I want more like this.

Ximeta’s NetDisk is NOT ready for prime time. I can’t get this thing to function at all. It’s a USB hard drive that also has an Ethernet jack. Basically, you throw it on your network, and then everybody is supposed to have access to this teeny little 160 GB file server.

Sounds cool right? It would be cool, if the stupid thing worked. I can get my work PC to see it without too much trouble. You have to use their admin tool to connect which is problem #1. Why do we need different software? Just put some stripped down version of Linux on there to act as a file server, and let me connect to it using normal networking protocols. Why complicate things with your proprietary software cruft?

Anyway, I didn’t buy it to have my work PC see it, so the fact that it can doesn’t help. I bought it so that my home computers (and really, my Macs) could use it. The box says that it works with Macs, but that’s looking more and more like a huge old exaggeration to me.

My PowerBook can’t see this thing to save its life. I can’t even mount it as a USB drive. The Mac sees the drive on the USB chain. It even sees the Fat 32 partition that it should be able to mount. It won’t mount it though. Maybe it’s too big, the web site says you may need to partition the thing into little 33 GB chunks. I’ve mounted larger drives that 32 GB on this Mac before though, so if it’s a real limitation, it just points to sucky software on the drive itself.

I hit their web site looking for answers, and didn’t find any. I did find an OS X driver to install. I installed that, but it helped me exactly not at all. I’ll keep playing with it, but for now, I’m really regretting my decision to purchase the thing.

Update: After formatting the drive with a Mac partition, I was finally able to get it to mount through USB 1 (I don’t have 2). USB 1 for the file sizes I’m looking at would be laughable though. I never did get the Mac to see it on the network (which was the point). I took the thing back. Life is too short to mess around with technologies that aren’t done cooking yet.

Y? seems like such an interesting project. You invite people from different races/classes/backgrounds to come together and ask and answer questions. That seems like something that could really remove barriers and bring people together. From what I can tell (and to be honest I didn’t spend a lot of time looking around), despite its promise, it’s mostly just an excuse for people to vent bias and hatred couched in the barest semblance of a question. Too bad, it could be a cool and valuable resource.

Hmmmm… Now, art.blogging.la could be interesting. I go to a bunch of museums in and around LA, but I almost never get to gallery shows (because I almost never know when they’re going on). If there’s an LA art scene, maybe this will keep me in the loop. Nice. via

Tripping the Rift is a very adult animation (seriously, don’t open this at work) that pokes fun at Star Trek, Star Wars, and probably a bunch of other star stuff I didn’t even notice. It’s funny. However, the humor is a little too rooted in sex and overly specific pop culture references to go very far.

Strangely, I understand the SciFi channel has picked it up. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do with it, but I bet it will be very, very bad. There’s just no way they could run with this thing as is. They’ll have to neuter it, and at that point, what is the point?

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, so I took my camera and headed to the Long Beach Aquarium.

I was inspired by the amazing sea horse shot that Tracy got at the Sydney Aquarium.

What I discovered is that shooting aquarium shots is freaking H.A.R.D.!! You have to contend with weird light, dirty glass, troublesome reflections, crowds of people who make it impossible to take your time setting up shots.

Sure, if you take enough pictures, you’ll probably find some keepers. Plus, aquariums are kid magnets. Kids are always expressive as hell, so at least you have that going for you. Still, be prepared to toss away a disproportionate number of loser shots.

Muted Tones is cool in concept and in execution (at least based on the first song I’ve heard so far):

Seven curators, seven months, seventy minutes of music. Each month is assigned to a curator, whose job it is to fill ten minutes with the sounds of their choosing. They are invited to keep a log of their work, as they create it. Each month, their ten minute piece of music is made available for streaming or download.

Via

Here’s a great PhotoShop Curves Tutorial. Simple in concept, hard in practice (unless you can think about color and luminosity in terms of numbers — which despite years of trying, I usually can’t do).

You know, it never even occurred to me to think of February 29th as a totally free day. Once you think of it that way, the conclusion is inescapable. Leap Year should be celebrated — with gusto (and pizza!). Thank god we have people like Matthew Baldwin to do the heavy thinking and introduce us to the so great it should have been obvious: Pizza Party U.S.A.

I’m so down for that. Sign me up. No shrooms for me guys! I can’t stand the things.