I WANT TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT PLAYING WITH MY NEW TOY BUT I ALREADY STAYED UP HALF THE NIGHT LISTENING TO STREET CHANT ):

I've been waiting a very long time for this:

haiku desktop

BeOS and Haiku, its open-sourced phoenix were the operating systems that got me excited about operating systems. This was back before I knew how to subscribe to a blog or anything. Back when I thought blogs were just online diaries.

Anway, you can download the alpha 2 here. They're offering .iso, .vmx/.vmdk and Anyboot files. I'm running it in Virtualbox right now. No internet because it only supports WEP encryption and obvs we're on WPA2 here. Maybe tomorrow I'll get all ethernetted up in between boughts of fighting with the USB interface I'm recording with and writing smooth as, stone cold jams.

(Side note: Crashes for no reason but I can't tell if it's a Virtualbox thing or a Haiku thing. I'm going to go with Virtualbox because I'm an asshole.)

FUTURNARI – RETROSPECTIVE FORWARD THINKING. DIGITIZED META-CREATION MYTHOLOGY.

futurnari

While I've been away sleeping on floors and sitting in the van Futurnari has been further establishing himself in the chipmusic scene. Soon after Another Unlikely Hero was picked up by Bleep City comes Retrospective Forward Thinking.

This five-track EP is a synthesis of Atari 2600 and DMG music with a couple of field recordings. An interesting facet of this release is the hardware. Both the DMG (original 1989 brick Gameboy) and the Atari 2600 are subject to limitations in terms of polyphony, tracks, tempo and tuning. It is especially difficult to sync the tempo of the two devices as the Atari plays at several rather strange fixed tempos which are not whole integers. LSDJ (the Gameboy software) cannot exactly match these tempos so the longer a piece of music continues for the more incongruous it becomes.

However, Futurnari achieves this coupling with aplomb, mixing odd-time numbers (Retrospective Forward Thinking is in 7/8) with broken-beat robot-dancehall numbers like this track, Analyse:

Retrospective Forward Thinking is "the story of the creation of itself."

Grab the entire EP here.

THERE IS NO NEED TO JUSTIFY THIS. IT IS JUST A THING LIKE OXYGEN OR DISTANCE.

fuck the uk

SHERIDAN IS APPLYING TO LIVE IN THAT MUSEUM FOR A MONTH

One of the questions is "List three of your least favourite hobbies (yours or others)" We came up with this hitlist:

  • Complaining
  • Sports
  • Facebook

HE'LL GET IN FOR SURE

ANOTHER BOOK REVIEW, YOU SAY? HERE IT IS – DON’T BOTHER READING THIS ONE, EITHER.

Nick Hornby's High Fidelity is a fairly sexist, mostly uninteresting story about being middle-aged and unmarried

  • Rob gets dumped by his girlfriend and it makes him sad.
  • It makes him think of all of the other girls who've dumped him over the years.
  • He goes to find them for absolution.
  • It makes him sad.
  • Then his ex-girlfriend gets back with him because being complacent and mostly contented is easier than being sad.

Like Brave New World, this novel is set in London. The characters and places in this book are stereotypes from London. Rob owns a small and pokey, snobby record store. None of this is really interesting. The good part of the book is the start where he goes through all of the girls who broke up with him. The rest of the book is basically him floundering around in middle-aged emotion. Middle-aged emotion brings to mind Gavin McInnes' views on people over thirty wearing band t-shirts: Who cares?

Perhaps I'm being unfair. Middle-aged people care about middle-aged emotion. My parents are middle-aged and I care about how they feel but this feeling doesn't extend to characters in shitty novels, sadly. This hardly extends further than my immediate family.

Read this book if you are desperate.

RIGHT NOW MY LIFE CONSISTS OF SHITTY LITTLE BARS AND SITTING IN THE CAR READING. HERE IS A BOOK REVIEW:

Thinking of reading Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? Well, think again because it sucks.

Synopsis:

  • It's the future! (dur)
  • No one is born anymore – they gestate in bottles or tubes or something!
  • There are five castes!
  • The lowest caste gets an impaired gestation to ensure impaired cerebral function!
  • The highest caste doesn't!
  • The other castes get varying levels of impairment!
  • This is to ensure they will be happy in their jobs!
  • Everyone receives conditioning and sleep therapy/teaching!
  • OK!
  • Everyone fucks everyone else and "everybody belongs to everybody"!
  • Monogamy is considered anti-social!
  • Displays of emotion are considered anti-social!
  • If anything becomes to dire or boring or whatevs, people take soma!
  • OK!
  • Shock horror there is an OUTSIDER!!!!!
  • OK!
  • He (of course it's a he – this book was published in 1932) goes to an Indian reservation!
  • Here he finds the NOBLE SAVAGE!
  • He brings the SAVAGE back to civilisation!
  • The SAVAGE is a hit!
  • Suddenly the OUTSIDER is popular!
  • He likes being popular!
  • So much so that he becomes a functioning part of society!
  • OK!
  • BUT!
  • The SAVAGE finds this BRAVE NEW WORLD strange and terrifying!
  • CULTURE SHOCK!
  • He no longer wants to be exhibited!
  • He flees society!
  • OK!
  • Sidenote: About this stage in the novel the author commences with a long and boring and indulgent discourse on this modern society through the SAVAGE's knowledge of Shakespeare. It gets really, really tedious and it's really, really obvious.
  • OK!
  • But the people make a movie of him!
  • They come to his hermitage and harrass him!
  • The noble SAVAGE kills himself!
  • THE END!

OK, so that synopsis is basically the whole review.

Honestly, the start of this book is pretty good. The structure of the society is coherent and abhorrent. The first part of the book is a run-down of how the gestation and promotion/retardation of the fœtuses thinly disguised as a tour of the facility for new workers, which is fine. I suggest you read this bit then skip forward to somewhere in the book where everyone's answer to the problems of life is "chillax – take a soma."

Then stop reading and create your own ending to the book. Skip the SAVAGE altogether (his name is John). Skip Bernard Marx and the other guy with pretensions. Mustapha Mond, World Controller for Western Europe, is probably the greatest character in the book. You should read the part where he acknowledges that Bernard Marx's theories on the conduct of society are probably right but are heretical and dangerous to the stability of society.

The main theme of the book is that stability and happiness are essentially exclusive.

THIS IS THE BEST EMAIL I HAVE EVER RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET.

cocaine crak

THE BEST “TAKE ME BACK” EMAILS I GET ARE FROM THE BEST GIRLFRIEND I NEVER HAD: THE INTERNET.

Dear itcreeps,

Okay, I'm not good at this kind of thing, but I feel like I have to give it a try. So, here goes:

I was hanging out the other night, listening to some old mp3s, and I was just overcome with memories of when we used to hang out all the time. Remember? You were an intrepid, fearless adventurer, and I was the free-to-play, fun-and-funny online role-playing game that won your heart. Do you still remember those good times? I can't stop thinking about them.

I mean, I know things got kind of messed up at the end, and believe me, I'm sorry. If I could take any of that back, I totally would. And I know people grow and change, and you're not the same person you were then, but hey — I've changed, too! I thought and thought about how to win you back. I figured I'd make you a mix CD, but I couldn't decide what "our song" was. So I just concentrated on becoming a better game for you, and here's what I came up with:

Remember how much fun you used to have with your clan? Alternately, remember how you never joined a clan because you didn't see the point? Either way, clans now have clan dungeons, group zones where your whole clan can work together. Crawl through sewers to Hobopolis, a vast underground vagrant vacation vista! Slide into the slime tube, and stir-fry sassy slimes!

I know I wasn't the prettiest game when we were together, so I had some work done. Almost every interface got an interface-lift. You can even manage most of your inventory via chat commands! I also came up with a way for you to automate some of the things you don't love about the game, so you can spend more time with the parts you do love.

Not only that, but there are way more animated .gifs than there were before. Don't worry; I haven't lost that low-fi edginess you love, but I'm a lot easier to play with now.

You can also have a custom title now, just in case you didn't feel like I appreciated what made you unique as an individual.

I should also say
Haiku Dungeon's been revamped.
See what I did there?

Maybe you quit because you got sick of always adventuring above the water. I admit that seems unlikely, but I fixed that, too — there are a bunch of underwater zones with new food, equipment, mechanics, and challenges.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, trust me. I'm still the silly, clever, deceptively-complex game you fell in love with, only with about 95% more awesome.

So, I'm just sayin', if you can find it in your heart to give me another chance, I won't disappoint you.

If you don't drop by, I promise I won't bother you again. I just really felt like we deserved one more try.

Love,

The Kingdom of Loathing.
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com

REGURGITATED SHIT FROM BIG WEBSITES ON THE INTERNET THAT YOU MAY NOT HAVE SEEN BECAUSE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT WEBCOMICS/COMICS/BECAUSE YOU HATE GOD

westboro loltown fags are sexy beasts god hates jedi

Not from Comics Alliance

Suggested additional signs:
GOD HATES UPDATING MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK
GOD HATES THE MAN
GOD HATES FAGS-ING AROUND
GOD HATES THE OUTDATED, OUTMODED PRINT-COMICS INDUSTRY
GOD HATES FANZINES

Winner:
GOD HATES HATERS

DO YOU KIDS…

… fucking love coke?

fckn luv coke