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An unsigned band's success story. Via TopSpin forum.

“Let’s Transform Governments With Tech and Innovation (and Save Millions of Dollars, Too)” “Government entities at all levels face substantial and similar IT challenges, but today, each must take them on independently. Why can’t they share their technology, eliminating redundancy, fostering innovation, and cutting costs? We think they can.”

Artist does concrete sculpture installations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Excellent.

Photos of all of the artwork for the deluxe Newspaper Album package.

This success story is almost entirely the result of efforts by my friend Mike Pooley, who works at Mountain Apple Company and is about to go free-lance to offer his digital marketing services to the world! “These efforts are a great example of how an artist can capitalize on viral buzz. By linking to their free-download offer from the YouTube video, Mountain Apple Company harnessed the video’s exposure to increase their fan base. Their store is beautiful & well-designed, and their marketing efforts drove direct-to-fan sales around the globe.”

The fast and profane music known as sissy bounce creates an atmosphere of sexual liberation — for women.

“I should know better than to write this sort of post, because it will inevitably come across as a peevish and whiney response to being called a Snuggie. It probably is that to some extent, and I’m already sorry about it. I am really trying to transcend that though, because I think this stuff is so important. I wouldn’t have authorized Alex to reveal the horribly embarrassing revenue number that I can’t even comfortably mention here if I didn’t think that it would, to some extent, move this conversation past the point where people equate ‘Code Monkey’ with ‘Hamster Dance’ and call it a day. I’m disappointed that it did not. And it’s not about my personal ego. OK, maybe it is a little, but I truly believe that the sooner we all acknowledge the internet is not actually killing art, the sooner we can get back to making things that are awesome.”

“As you can see, you can do some pretty bad things with JavaScript that will certainly drive your visitors away (or insane!). So why is this kind of functionality available? Some functions is actually very useful if you’re writing complex HTML5 web applications. By disabling text-selection on interface elements you can make the application easier to use, and you can re-implement the right click menu using your own options.”

Michael Nieling/Ocupop designed the icons icons/badges/logos/banners for this. On 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour ‘test flight’. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry — Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies — to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

Christa covers last week's COTQ/Red Rockets improv music/performance art collab at thirtyninehotel. “Five or six people were crowded around a man sitting with a television over his head, suspended from the ceiling. Just his face was showing, so they were taking that opportunity to cover his face with glow-in-the-dark paint.”

Matt Haughey on successful Kickstarter projects.

“Full Key Codes is a little utility to display code informations about each key of the keyboard. The developers know why :-)”

Profile of friend Dominic Amorin's noise music netlabel.

“Public notices and inquiries should be moved from the newspapers and the bowels of the web online to where we are: networks like Facebook and Twitter.”

“The highest points and most infuriating moments on ‘Goblin’ come from the fact that it’s a vérité depiction of the worst aspects of American boy culture. You know, hating girls because they don’t like you because you’re a weirdo, hating any and all authority figures because they try to tell you how not to be such a weirdo. But most importantly (and scarily), there’s the part that involves lashing out about being viewed as a weirdo, and being summarily rewarded—i.e. seen as normal—for doing so. (It probably goes without saying that girls don’t have the same luxury.) Nobody cares about Tyler the Creator being someone’s role model in 2011. Which in a way, is the scariest thing about ‘Goblin’—too much of his scary fantasizing, for too many boys, is all too normal.”

How music became ‘un-bundled’ from CDs as consumers downloaded the one or two songs they actually wanted, and how direct-to-fan sales have re-bundled that music into not just CDs but digital releases, vinyl, and every manner of special package imaginable. “As artists get their arms around all their rights and build direct relationships with their fans we’re seeing artists’ output RE-BUNDLED into higher value packages and average revenue per transaction greater than those delivered by the Compact Disc.”

“Just a list of 20 (now 24) little-known tools for the command line — I hope you find something useful that you weren't aware of yet! Use your operating system's package manager to install most of them.”

On the inadequacy of social media for dealing with actual human emotions. “If you are … feeling sad, turn off the social media, call up another human being and let them take you out. Your sad emotions have value. Make sure you aren’t throwing them away in a market that can’t recognize it.”

“Students are hitting the books less and partying more. Easier courses and easier majors have become more and more popular. Perhaps more now than ever, the point of the college experience is to have a good time and walk away with a valuable credential after putting in the least effort possible.” “Many of these young men and women are unable to communicate effectively, solve simple intellectual tasks (such as distinguishing fact from opinion), or engage in effective problem-solving.”

Return to this. A good set of standards, including some things that I wasn't aware of and would like to implement.

I should install this. “Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely.”

This will come in handy someday. “The script is specifically designed to take an MPEG-4, H.264 file, move it to a new folder based on the filename, create WEBM and OGV versions of it in the new folder, and upload the whole folder to a server using rsync. SSH information and target directories are specified in the config at the top of the script. At the end, it takes what it knows about the files and filenames and creates a TextMate Markdown blog template, inserts the video shortcode for the VideoJS WordPress plugin (which is common syntax for other plugins as well) and opens it for editing in TextMate.”

This Tumblr posts PDFs of poetry anthologies and books of cultural writing and other classic texts, bits of important historical music-related interviews, old, rare, or otherwise important or interesting records, etc. Would that I had the time to take in everything listed here.

“Lifted corners, Curled corners, Perspective, Raised box, Single vertical curve, Vertical curves, Single horizontal curve, Horizontal curves, Rotated box”

“After all, if Starbucks can make a profit by putting its stores right across the street from each other, as it so often does, why couldn't a unique, well-run mom and pop do even better next-door? And given America's continuing thirst for exorbitantly priced gourmet coffee drinks, there's a lot of cash out there for the taking. As coffee consultant Dan Cox explained, ‘You can't do better than a cup of coffee for profit. It's insanity. A cup of coffee costs 16 cents. Once you add in labor and overhead, you're still charging a 400 percent markup—not bad! Where else can you do that?’ Until Americans decide they need to pay four bucks a pop every morning for a custom-baked, designer-toast experience, probably nowhere.”

A picture of Chaz with two fans and a brief mention of the show. “As I’m packing a bag for Los Angeles this week I’m laughing to myself because I already know the dialogues I’m going to have with everyone there. It’s going to be about here. How we got to see Toro Y Moi and how the weather is getting hot for spring.”

A video by Jordan Blackmon, bassist for Toro Y Moi.

Photos by Tracy Chan. “The South Carolina-based ‘chillwave’ musician and his band brought their signature brand of funky, groovy, electronic shoegaze jams to a sold-out show at NextDoor Saturday night. Opening were local acts Clones of the Queen and Painted Highways. Although the club was packed and sweaty, people really got into the music, some dancing and some just swaying with eyes closed.”

Photos by Brian Tseng.

Gary Chun again! “Chaz Bundick and his crew manned their spaceship last night at Nextdoor, and took the good ship Toro y Moi and an audience of eager passengers to a nearby galaxy of sound and rhythm, forward thrusters go.”