So, utterly bored one day, me and my buddy Rollie decided to revive a podcast we did together called september29th named after his blog. This time however, we decided to make it video. Below is the end result. If you dig it you can subscribe via iTunes or RSS, as I’m sure this won’t be the last of them.

From time to time you need to send a file to someone that is bigger than email can handle and the receiver may not be that familiar with ftp or IM simple won’t cut it. Enter drop.io, a simple website that allows you to create a drop space for people to get a file that you upload and people can upload to the same space if you let them. It is a beautiful interface and very simple. Unlike yousendit which is horribly cumbersome. The best part is there is no sign up . No account creation just space creation. The service has some amazing features like email, fax and phone drops. So you can email a pic to your space and it will post the pic without all the email junk. You can fax a document to it and it will render it a pdf. You can call a phone number and leave a message and it will mp3 it for you. Moreover you can subscribe to the drop via rss and create a media type podcast to include video, audio, pdf’s, images etc. Its an amazing service with tons of potential. yousendit has left my bookmarks bar, I need the space for drop.io.

Feel free to upload a file to me with the widget below.

When Tony Wilson opened The Hacienda in 1982, I doubt he and his cohorts would have known the kind of change they made on music culture beyond the creation of Factory Records. Some might say it was just a night club but it was much more than that. It was the birth place for Rave culture. Hundreds of kids doing drugs, dancing and enjoying the music they moved to. I could speak on the importance of all those involved and the music of Manchester for Proustian lengths but I will make my point quickly. Rave culture made the DJ just as important as the artists on the records they were spinning. In some cases more so. From that point in time forward, a DJ was as much of a star as the artists. They were applauded and cheered just as if they had written the very songs they hit play on. There is still some debate as to the validity of the DJ as an artist but I concede to it being an art form. I’m actually a fan of certain DJ’s myself.

What does this have to do with the internet? The internet has resurged the idea that the medium is just as important as the author. Lets begin with a simple youtube example. Here is a video with about 800 thousand views of Liam Lynch’s song the United States of Whatever.

Liam is nothing short of a creative genius and does a lot of work in the TV and Music industry. Lets move on to another video by Brookers. A youtube starlett, her “cover” of the song in great youtube fashion has a little over 1.5 Million views.

Granted Liam’s work has been seen in other venues and he is probably more “famous” than Brookers, she did have a brush with fame signing a development deal with Carson Daly but little came of that. Nonetheless in the venue of youtube, Brookers seems to be just as important as Liam if not more so. Moreover the idea of authorship begins to blur as the internet allows for you to find one thing but maybe not the other. Some people may never know of Liam or his work despite having watched and enjoyed the Brookers Video.

Lets move on to social news giant Digg.com. Every day people submit content to the site but in this strange place sometimes the submitter becomes as famous as some of the things they submit. It wasn’t that long ago that Jason Calacanas wanted to pay Top Digg submitters to work for Netscape in their Digg ripoff. Are the people who scour the internet to find good content the new DJ. These people are essentially “pushing play” on other authors work. The internet has created a new place for people to congregate and someone who can keep a crowd pleased earns them similar respect of a DJ. It may take a decade before this becomes mainstream but I think the concept is there.

The internet has provided the frame work for a new type of rave culture, and social networking sites have created the venue for content submitters to be just as important as the content itself.

I must say I’ve never been a fan of Tom Green. I’ve always thought his brand of shock comedy was really just dumb. I never really liked him in any movie or any of his previous shows. That said, his new show Tom Green’s House Tonight is really good. There are still some small signature bits that Tom does from time to time but they are short and toned down quite a bit. The show is a brilliantly ultra casual conversation between Tom and two guests. The show is actually shot in his house, right in his living room and his celebrity guests simply stop by his house. It’s surprising how candid the conversations sound, it’s as if you were sitting behind them in a restaurant as apposed to a TV show. I love that the people come on in just casual clothes, no one really gets dolled up for the show. It’s fun to see these celebrities in hoodies and baseball caps. The most interesting thing about the show is that it is transmitted live both on the Internet and in certain TV markets. Moreover the previous nights show is podcasted the following day in case you missed it. It’s a wonderful marriage of the old and new media as well as a true growing up for Tom Green. In this show he’s a rather decent interviewer and they take live calls from viewers via phone and skype which I find infinitely cool. Take a look at the episode below and you’ll see what I mean.

I guess I should start at the beginning. A few years ago I used to rock an ultra thin notebook from Dell called the X10. Below is a similar model the x300. I loved this notebook. It was thin and pretty beefy for its day. It was light but didn’t feel flimsy by any means. It didn’t have an optical drive and I was totally ok with that because once all the software is installed I rarely used an optical drive any way. I have desktops for that. I used to own this laptop prior to being an Apple fanboy but nonetheless I still look back on it with fond memories. In fact I remember saying back then, and my friends will attest to this, I wish Apple had something similar and I would totally switch. Not long after I got my very first iMac. The snow 800mhz iMac. Which is still in my home serving up my music library and doing menial tasks from time to time. Actually up until rather recently it was my main workstation for designing. Me the iMac and my waacom tablet would work late into the night on a semi regular basis.

The latest addition to the house is a new silver iMac. It’s beefy and a huge leap forward. It’s amazing how much faster rendering in finalcut is and how much better Photshop runs. I literally cut 4 hours of work time from most projects I give all my MAC’s their own names. The new iMac is called 200Red. My old one was called Cube, etc. Anyway I’m getting a little off topic here. Back to laptops. Since my little dell was on its way out I decided that my new notebook would be an Apple. I however was not a fan of the high price points that Apple products maintain so I shopped refurbished. I got a hold of a 12″ Powerbook, the smalled notebook post OSX that Apple made. I’m currently writing this post on it. I got it for its size but it has a few flaws like getting incredibly HOT when charging the battery. Nonetheless I love this little guy, it’s my primary day-to-day computer.

Now comes 2008 and Apple introduces the Macbook Air. My jaw hit the floor, it was exactly what I wanted like 7 years ago. It is bloody gorgeous. I’d love to get my hands on it to see how it truly feels and handles. I had heard the rumor of this laptop for over a year now and in the back of my mind hoping that it was true. Apple rumors are a dime a dozen so I tend not to listen to them and simply wait for Jobs to come out with his black turtleneck and say “there’s just one more thing…”. I cannot beleive how amazingly thin this laptop is. I think I’m going to have to visit the blood bank or something in order to upgrade this time.

It’s been 17 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the images of the Tank Man have become a ubiquitous symbol of protest and humanity. It’s uncertain as to whether the man is alive or dead but below is a documentary that tries to find out who he was and discovers why he was so important.

You might want to read the first Idiosyncrasy before this one.

Again having to take the car to the shop, I made the walk across the street from the repair shop to the lovely diner with that nice waitress. This time I was not so shocked to see her although I was seated by someone else, I took a quick look around and spotted her cleaning up some plates near where the other lady was taking me. I sat, looked at my menu and contemplated lunch. This time I was a little more prepared. I was hungry for lunch and a meal was in order. She brought me water, and I politely refused having anything else to drink and ordered a turkey sandwich. She asked me if I wanted a soup or a salad. I honestly didn’t want either but for some reason the option of neither didn’t seem like a choice. I had to pick one or the other, at least that’s what it seemed like at the time. I chose a salad thinking it was less costly than a cup of soup and then she asked about dressing. Rather than have her ramble off the five or six dressing they had, two of which were probably ranch, I said, “No dressing”. Not sure why I was able to choose nothing this time but it seemed to make sense. Save the dressing for those who actually wanted salad, as if there were only a few spoonfuls in the back. She smiled politely and made her way to the back to put in my order. I took out a book and began reading. I was reading the City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal. Soon thereafter my salad showed up. I looked at it as if someone had dropped off a physics book at my table. Mildly interested but puzzled that it was there. I wasn’t really up for a lesson on velocity and objects in motion. However I kind of did sign up for the physics so I should at least take a look at a few formulas. I took a few bites avoiding the white parts of the lettuce and, after it looked like I had attacked the salad, I stopped and moved my fork back to the napkin on the table, pushing the salad bowl away to that “I’m done with this” position on the table.

I was sitting in a separated booth. The kind where booths align a center wall and a piece of frosted glass sits between your booth and the adjacent booth. The wall almost always making the other peoples’ head-tops visible so you have an awareness of them and, in combination with their voices, you can figure out how stupid they are. I suppose their voices would do just fine but the tops of their heads are a bonus. Three ladies sat across the wall from me and began to chat about nonsense. I shouldn’t say chat, they began to gossip. I’m not very big on gossip; in fact I try to avoid it as much as possible. It is one of the most dangerous things in modern society. It can turn a single mom into a whore and an effeminate man into a pedophile or a misunderstood teen into a monster. Despite having a truthful foundation or not, the purpose is almost always malicious. As they spoke of ordinary people, doing things they seemed appalled at, their waitress came over. They had the really pretty waitress that looks like she is in community college and making tips to pay for the weekend bar trips. They seemed to know each other and began talking; this is when I realized that all these ladies were somehow related, despite arriving at different times to the restaurant. The oldest had arrived first, then the other two ladies but the other two were wearing name tags and looked like they were on their lunch break. I took a quick glimpse over the wall as if to find out what the GDR was plotting. They were employed at the grocery store down the way. After chatting up the waitress a bit they finally ordered. All three had cheeseburgers medium rare, fries, two cokes and one diet. They all had taken a good long look at the menu as if to contemplate this choice intently. I wondered if they ever intended to get anything other than a cheeseburger. My guess is probably not. What was more interesting was the diet coke. Why bother getting a diet coke when having a cheeseburger, are you really looking to cut calories, ‘cause that is probably not the best way to do it. Maybe she’s diabetic, I thought. After reading a bit I wondered if anyone else in the place had not ordered a soda (I’ll save the coke, soda, pop debate for another day). Water used to be in big fashion but it seems that it is falling out. I took a quick glance around and was slightly disgusted to see every table with a glass half-full of black bubbling liquid. In the corner I saw one that was clear and breathed a small sigh of relief, only to be disappointed to see it bubble too. I made a small pledge to myself not to drink a soda again until I saw a stranger drinking water in a restaurant by choice, as if I had made a silent protest against Coke, Pepsi and all the others. In my resolved thoughts of metaphorically chaining myself to water, my turkey sandwich arrived. The waitress smiled and asked if I wanted more water or anything else. I took her up on the water and declined the anything else.

I forked my vegetable medley, removing the lima beans so I could get the rest down. I ate my food in between paragraphs of the book. All the time trying to block out the inane chatter of the adjacent table. At one point they looked across the wall and asked me what I was reading, apparently one of them was in community college and was taking an English class. I knew that this conversation was either going to be entertaining or possibly get ugly. I raised my book and flashed the cover at them for a few seconds. Not surprisingly, none of them knew the book or the author. So then comes the instigating question, “What’s the book about”, the collegiate asked. I had a simple choice to make, say it was a coming of age tale about a boy in search of a friend or say it was about a young boy being gay in the 40’s in search of his first boyhood lover that had moved away. The first answer would get me a polite response and I could probably put my head down after a few more answers and finish my meal. The second could go a number of ways. Not knowing the outcome of the second answer I chose it, simply because I didn’t know how that story ended. After giving them that synopsis, they all stared blankly at me for a second and then they began to look at their bread plates. The collegiate then asked, “Is it good?” I told her it was excellent so far and that if she was interested in English, Gore Vidal is definitely an author she should look into. She told me she was only getting her Associates in something, I forget what, as it wasn’t very interesting. She nodded politely, while the other two had stopped looking in my direction. Luckily their waitress had come with refills on their sodas. They took the opportunity, as I, to end our conversation. I found the whole thing kind of funny, and I reveled in my intellectual superiority for a second before I though what an ass I was for thinking these people beneath me. They were probably nice people but to me they just seemed so boring and banal that I found greater entertainment in the tops of their heads than any words that ever left their mouths. After feeling bad for a few moments, I returned to my book and finished my food.

The waitress came by again filling my water and dropping off my bill after asking if I wanted anything else. Again declining the anything else, I looked at the bill, which came to all of about seven dollars. I pulled out two peculiarly folded bills from my pocket and after unraveling them found them to be two 20’s. I was trapped in a similar dilemma as before, this time not about rent or selfishness but simple economics. I didn’t have change to leave an appropriate tip but if I paid the bill I would be left with 12 dollars and coins and another 20. I knew the bill was only 7 dollars but 2 dollars seemed like an unworthy tip. I knew it is well more than 15% but I hated leaving tips less than 5 dollars for some reason. So I paid the bill, although this time a different person cashed me out in the front and gave me my change. My waitress was in the back clearing away dishes or getting someone else’s order. After getting the change I made my way back to the table to leave the tip and thought to myself, “What else can I do, I have to leave the 10”. I folded the 10 in half and left it under the untouched, clean knife and made my way out the door. I was hoping to see the waitress before I left but she never showed. I walked out the door and imagined the look on her face when she got to my table and saw the money, similar to the way she looked at me the last time I was there.

The glass door closed behind me and as I walked away I thought about how pretty she was.

I made my way to Denver this past weekend. I had no real reason to go other than I’ve never been, so I decided it would be a worthwhile trip. My hotel was about 20 minutes away from downtown but luckily a light-rail station was a short walk from the hotel. I took a rather comfortable ride downtown, I love train rides, they are great for reading and people watching. You never run out of characters riding the trains in larger cities. Upon arriving at my stop I began exploring the city. I took a quick look at the Lucky Denver Mint. I got a glimpse of the capitol building and enjoyed the downtown area quite a bit.

I eventually made my way to the Denver Art Museum. On my way to it I passed a Liberman sculpture outside. There’s a Liberman in just about every major city so I was not surprised. It was fun to see all the kids climbing on it like it was a jungle gym. The Art Museum was designed by Daniel Libeskind and is rather angled and edged. It’s an interesting design and what you would expect of an art museum. Inside the museum the walls are angled much like the outside and you find yourself unsure of left and right in a hurry. The walls have an installation of digital numbers that are rather interesting.

I toured the halls and found some familiar painters and artist on the walls. A Dan Flavin hiding around a strange corner. I’ve always enjoyed his pieces since they are all done with florescent lights. I love hearing what people say about his work.

Soon I found a small installation of Marcel Duchamp a Dadaist. It was an interesting miniature of some of his work. Boite – Series D as it is called was in a strange place near the top of a staircase encased in glass. It was a nice find in that museum. Amongst the kids going “ewe” to some of the nudes in the place I found myself in front of a piece that I found absolutely intriguing. Very minimalistic but in such my style. It’s called Pastel Stack by Robert Moskowitz, a New York painter, which I’m just starting to research. I stared at that piece for upwards of 20 minutes thinking how something so simple could be so beautiful.
After leaving the Denver Art Museum I began walking down 14th street and found it quite pleasant. A StarBucks every five feet like most cities. A lot of restaurants and quant shops here and there, I took pleasure in enjoying a walking city like I usually do. After walking from one end of 14th to the other I found myself in Lower Downtown or “LoDo” as they call it. The hip part of town apparently. I found an interesting book store where I rested a bit and browsed intently through the stacks and stacks of books. I didn’t buy anything as I already had so many books I have that I haven’t read yet.

After that I made my way to the temporary site of the Modern Contemporary Art Museum. They were building a new building and were currently in this off-site hole in the wall. It was a rather plane white building with a gun-metal gray Vespa adorning the wall outside the door. I walked in and this young woman welcomed me, obviously a hip art student, with all the clothes and funky hair. She was very nice and we chatted intently for about 15 minutes about Art and music before I walked into the museum. The museum really only consisted of one large room. I walked through a pathway with hanging ribbons made of vinyl. All different colors. It was difficult to see but there was light coming from a section. It was as if you were intended to feel lost before walking into this space that felt oddly welcoming. There were places to sit and a large sculpture off center with dolls on the floor having a silent conversation and dreaming of the room itself. It was a beautiful piece done by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt called The Peace Project. I sat in the room and tried to understand what they were after. I felt at ease and I think I came away with a good feeling of the piece. I walked out and the girl asked me what I thought. I told her I thought it was gorgeous. We talked about it a bit in detail discussing the meaning and intent. We came to an agreement after a bit.
At this point I had walked about 10-15 miles, I think and was exhausted. I made my way to the nearest station and made my way back to the hotel where I enjoyed a worthy rest. All in all Denver was a nice city, I enjoyed the artwork and had a good time. I doubt I would live there though.

I was at a rather standard cafe today waiting for my car to be fixed. I had quite a bit of time to kill so I pulled out a book to read and order a coffee and a piece of apple pie. I felt like an early Gen-X’er that was really into Bukowski for a moment, as if I should be writing mediocre poetry into a moleskine. I began to prepare my coffee, one sugar and a plop of cream. The waitress I had was rather nice and projected the kind of character you would only get from a truly good person. I ascertained that she was an immigrant from her accented English and some chit chat she had with one of the other customers about coffee in her country. The unfortunate thing is that this woman was less than attractive. Actually I’m putting that rather nicely but you get the idea. I began to wonder in between bites of my pie if she didn’t get as much in tips as a pretty waitress would. If I had to guess I would say no but this person’s demeanor and attitude were so good that after the initial shock of her appearance she was rather pretty. I took a few sips of coffee and delved into the book I was reading. Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. I was reading his justification of pornography as an odd social conscienciousness. In classic postmodern justification he references this as a self justification for watching porn thus almost making it all ok and a little less pretentious. If nothing else his essay on the subject is entertaining. Really the article is about the rapid evolution of the internet and how porn helps the ordinary user understand the internet. It’s a rather interesting read. All the time I was thinking why is it necessary to come up with a discourse around the need for pornography on the internet. Why should it even need to be justified, why can’t it just exist with a simple social understanding that it is available in a split second thanks to the series of tubes.

After reading this and a few other articles I was a little embarrassed, not because I was reading about porn and the internet but because I had been sitting at this relatively empty cafe for about an hour now having only a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. I felt that I was just wasting people’s time, especially the waitress who ironically checked up on me almost instinctively when my coffee was empty. Not when it was half full or when it had been empty for a while but within a few moments of me taking the last sip in the cup. I hate having a refill in the middle of the cup because it throws off the sugar and cream ratio. So after this hour and change I thought I should order something bigger although I wasn’t very hungry. I then thought maybe I’ll get something to go so I could rack up a decent bill in order to give a decent tip to this nice waitress. I felt as if I should pay rent for the table I was at. I used the table for almost two hours when all was said and done. It’s the kind of strange thought that haunts us although no one really cares. A friend of mind when eating alone will dirty his knife a bit so it seems to the waitress that he used it to cut the meal as opposed to the side of his fork. He didn’t want the waitress to think he was some sort of a Neanderthal. Although in reality it’s not about the waitress at all its about the person. It’s more of an internal sense of perception than the external one when it comes to things like this.

The bill came to all of about 4 dollars. So as I looked at the small bill and began to pack up my things, I started to have the internal debate about what to do. Yet what to do is simple: pay the bill and leave a couple bucks for a tip considering I was an easy person to take care of. I’m not a, “Can I have that on the side and no this and no that”, kind of guy. I can take the tomatoes off my own sandwich if I don’t want them. I grabbed my bag and took the bill up to the register, it was one of those kind of places. The waitress was the one ringing me up and I paid with a 20 and she gave me the change. A 10, a 5, a single and some coins. I looked at the combination of bills and folded the 10 in half after looking at the waitress smile and handed it to her. She gave me this look of shock, similar to what was probably my look of shock when I first saw her. She thanked me rather enthusiastically and I nodded in approval and made my way out the door.

Now, did I give her a 10′er because I was paying rent, or because she was truly nice and that was the only thing I could do to show my gratitude. Or was it because I was compensating for her not being pretty so I would not be the kind of guy who would judge on appearance. Does the 10′er make me more evolved? Or does me admitting it make me that much more shallow? Or did I simply do it to have something to write about?

Nevertheless I can always say I had a 13 dollar piece of Pie today and it was good.