Author: punyweakling

  • The Orchestra Hit

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    Ear Worm is an excellent series, but this episode in particular is just bonkers good.

    Learn about how the “ORCH2/ORCH5” stab became so popular by way of a modern music history lesson.

    1984 Dave Letterman losing his shit watching someone program a sequencer with a light-pen on a CRT display? I’m in.


  • Online ads are stuck in the ’90s

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    The Outline’s Josh Topolsky waxing eloquent on Recode Media podcast:

    The TV ad works because it’s good for TV. The magazine ad works because it’s good for magazines. You know what Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook (to some degree) and Pinterest figured out? There’s an internet ad that works really well, it just isn’t the box that is on every website.

    Figuring that out is the key to unlocking what advertising should be on the internet, and the key to unlocking what good advertising looks like, and very few people have done it well. Almost no one – I would say zero – publications have built a system that is holistically, like from the ground up, designed around the marriage of both interesting, digital-first content and interesting, digital-first advertising.

    Nailed it.

    The Outline isn’t for everyone, and that’s by design. Their content/ad strategy has been super fascinating to watch, especially in connection to the media manifesto Topolsky published in 2016.

    It’s been doubly interesting to compare The Outline to the launch of The Ringer, Bill Simmons’ media company, which he spun up after breaking from ESPN. The Ringer launched on Medium first to minimise their launch runway, but moved to the Vox media stack less than a year later. The Ringer is a heavily staffed blog, and I think it can be safely argued that their written content is not particularly compelling or well presented, and there has certainly been very “bog-standard” approach to advertising (with Vox handling the ad sales after the move).

    Now – all that said – in addition to the site, The Ringer has a hugely successful podcast network with Bill’s podcast alone estimated to be bringing in around $50,000 per episode. Simmons is clearly leaning heavily into podcasting (as well as experimenting with a variety of video stream/show formats), with the development of the site and it’s associated ad strategy taking a relative back seat.

    None of this is zero-sum, of course. There’s room for a lot of ‘winners’ in the online media space. But watching it all unfold is a great spectator sport.


    The Pod Pod is a selection of recommended single podcast episodes.


  • Photo Essay: Sprayfield

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    The clouds part and the theme to The Simpsons plays in my head as I walk among the colorful buildings of “Sprayfield,” a neighborhood that, in recent months, has been covered with elaborate graffiti murals of the most famous yellow family on TV.

    José Luis Martínez Limón for Vice

  • 700 Sharks In The Dark

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    A single shark is too clumsy to catch even a somnolent grouper. A pack of them is more likely to flush the fish from its hiding place and encircle it. Then they tear it apart. Seen live, the attack is a frenzy that explodes before us. Only later, thanks to a special camera that captures a thousand images a second, are we able to watch the sharks in slow motion and appreciate their efficiency and precision.

    Incredible pictures and story from Laurent Ballesta and his team.


  • Red Dead 4K: The Redemptioning

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    In the midst of announcing a massive drop of backwards compatible and enhanced games, Microsoft released a 500MB update to Red Dead Redemption enabling 4K on the world’s most powerful console.

    Yes, this is a 4K screencap of a 2010 console game.

    This. Is. Fucking. Amazing.

    Most observers reckoned 4K for RDR would never come due to the engineering of the game – many thought the resolution was baked-in for performance reasons. But it seems the Back Compat team at Microsoft are wizards indeed.

    So how does it look?

    Stunning.

    I mean, it’s ridiculous how good it looks. The 360 version (which is also what ran on the initial Back Compat version) was noticeably blurry and shimmery, especially in motion. It still looked great though, and you did get the impression that R* had put a lot more under the hood than the hardware was capable of displaying. And now we know that’s the case.

    The result is that Read Dead Redemption is now – again – a joy to play.


    More Red Dead:

    Finding John Marsden – A wonderful short doc from Polygon about Rob Weithoff, the voice of John Marsden

    In depth review (thinreaper) – One of the best game reviews/critiques I’ve ever invested an hour and a half in


  • Windows Startup Sounds (slowed 4000%)

    erase.net:

    Six Windows startup tones, from 95 to Vista, are slowed to 4000% of their original speed, transforming each into an ambient piece of several minutes’ duration, and amplifying the internal structures of these iconic, dream-like sounds.

    Via Motherboard.


  • Watch Dogs 2 – A Tale Told Before Its Time

    David Rayfield:

    But let’s turn the clock back to 8th November 2016 again. Trump is elected as US President because of three things: 25% of America votes for him, 25% of America votes for Hillary and 50% of America chose not to vote at all. The world’s jaw drops to the floor. Everyone underestimated this gibbering, damaged man-child and now he’s got his finger on the button. Nobody is in a state to comprehend everyday life because nobody is talking about anything else.

    Every conversation inevitably turned to Trump and how this could have happened. What do we do now? What could we have done differently? How badly will this affect everyone outside of America even though the rest of the world had no say in this catastrophe? What we took as normal is thrown out the window and we begin to contemplate just how crazy everything will become. The entire world has changed.

    One week later, Watch Dogs 2 is released.

    I loved Watch Dogs 2. Loved it. It’s fascinating to revisit it as a piece of art, and examine the themes and narrative in the context of today’s techno-political climate.

    PS, Ubisoft, please give this game the 4K update for Xbox that it so obviously deserves. y u no


  • Atari VCS

    The “VCS” stands for Very Cool and Sexy, surely.

    Worth it, just for the looks?

    I have a real affinity for this 2600 retro styling – it was the first gaming machine I ever owned (the Jr to be specific). Months and months of mindlessly delivering leaflets around the neighbourhood was all worth it!

    And yes, in case you were wondering, I achieved ‘Neo at the end of the Matrix’ level zen-skills at Enduro.


    The Atari VCS will be available later this year for between $250-300. That seems expensive.


  • Stephen Hawking

    1942 – 2018.


  • Using only the Pixel 2 XL to photograph the Geneva Motor Show

    Vlad Savov left his DSLR at home and relied solely on his Pixel for the entire show.

    I literally flew in to Geneva with a Google Pixel 2 XL, my laptop, and the hope that my high esteem for Google’s camera wasn’t misguided. After taking more than 2,000 shots, publishing 303 of them (so far), and then collecting compliments rather than complaints about my photos, I can say that this experiment has been a resounding success.

    Amazing results.

    Photo: Vlad Savov / The Verge