(Barbed) Wired News: How To Be A Criminal

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on August 19, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Wiki wiki wiki


Wired seems to be on a kick lately to prove that they’re still “edgey”. Exploring their How-To Wikis, you can learn how to Tap a Phone Line (without getting a government job), how to Hot Wire Your Car (they place some emphasis on the word “your”), how to Cheat on a Drug Test, and how to Disable Your Passport’s RFID Chip. So far I haven’t found a “How to Break Out of Jail” wiki yet, except for the iPhone Jailbreak hacks . By the way, if you enjoy the idea of hacking phones, you can totally Phreak Out here.

Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on August 18, 2008 by admin in Popular Media

Buried Lyndon? Full Cardboard Jacket? A Boxwork Orange?

As a rather rabid Kubrick fan and generally mild-mannered obsessive-compulsive myself, I was riveted to the screen by Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, Jon Ronson’s documentary about the thousands of boxes that Kubrick amassed as he did meticulous research for each film. Originally aired as part of the “True Stories” series that ran on Channel 4 in the UK, there are rumors of a US broadcast coming soon on the Sundance Channel. In the meantime, try watching the entire 49 minutes (Google Video) or in several parts on YouTube. At least, that is, until there’s a takedown notice. By the way, I’d give my left kidney to own a copy of the limited first run of The Stanley Kubrick Archives. At only $695.00, it’s quite a steal, as it includes extras like a twelve-frame film strip from a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey which was actually owned by Kubrick. See more notes about the book on the Taschen web site. God I love Taschen.

Everything That Happens Finally Happened Today

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 18, 2008 by admin in Music

The new Byrne Eno Release is available with streaming previews

David Byrne sent me an interesting e-mail today. He let me know that the The new Byrne/Eno collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was happening today. They’ve done some creative things with this release, one of them being the dirty trick of offering a Deluxe Package for $69.99 that includes four bonus songs, a short film about the album, a screensaver app (meh), an “Everything That Happens” miniature hardbound book, and immediate access to download all the songs in various formats. They’ve also cleverly offered the little embedded player seen here. A little advice David: you’re pretty tech savvy; your people could’ve made it resizeable, and they could’ve included a frigging volume control! I’m going to ponder spending the $69.99 after I stream the songs for a bit, a nice option.

A Message of Change and Hope

[ 4 Comments ]Posted on August 17, 2008 by admin in Comics

And change. And hope and stuff.

How To Get A Head In Life

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 16, 2008 by admin in Popular Media

18 Ways to Morph Your Photo On Line

You’ve probably seen the Elf Yourself ad campaign or the MyHeritage Celebrity Lookalike gizmo , but Mashable.com shows us 18 Ways to Get Your Head in the Game. Upload a picture of yourself to any of a number of sites, and soon you can be one of the Villlage People, a Wanted Criminal, or see your face on the cover of Rockstar magazine . Before you know it, you will have wasted an afternoon, and want to come back here and kill me for it. The Morphable image on the left is from MyHeritage. It was a little disturbing to find that I look like Bruce Willis and Howard Dean (and who the heck is Stephen Chow, anyway) but Drew Barrymore? If only I looked like Drew…my lesbian friends all adore her, she always gets a great table at restaurants…the only drawback would be being chased by whack jobs like Tom Green…Anyway, feel free to post links to your results in the comments.

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