The Gong Show

I’m smiling because this is the forecast for my vacation in a few days. I hope it snows in NYC while I’m gone… is that malicious?

I got bored with Garfield when I graduated from elementary school (around the time I started to dig Foxtrot). I got over the novelty of Garfield’s cynicism… I realized that Monday’s could be great :)

BUT, today I found Garfield Minus Garfield. I’m obsessed.

It’s Garfield comics with Garfield and all his lines Photoshopped out. The result is a bitter, voyeuristic look at the sad (and slightly psychotic) life of Jon Arbuckle (Garfield’s Owner). As soon as I saw it, my first reaction was “More!”

Enjoy!

Side Note: I found Garfield Minus Garfield through Tumblr’s homepage redesign. Kudos to the Tumblr team for vastly improving the discoverability of interesting Tumblelogs. If Tumblr were a household good made by Kraft, their motto would be “get straight to the good stuff,” and this homepage release is very much in keeping with that motto.

I went to the IFC Center this weekend to see all the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts. Here’s my thoughts on each of them.

- I Met The Walrus: A 14 year old kid somehow manages to get a taped interview with John Lennon. This is a real interview, with wild animation that supplements and riffs on the words the participants are saying. The closest comparison (which is still quite distant) is Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. Lennon evangelizes peace and the animations are tiny digressions triggered by various words and phrases Lennon says. The use of color is terrificly restrained… strictly black and white, yet occasionally we get a beautiful blast of bright pink streaking across the screen: it’s a great contrast. This short was the most entertaining, and the audience responded really enthusiastically.

- Madame Tutli-Putli: If David Lynch had the opportunity to play Pixar director for a day, this short could easily be the outcome. A woman drags all her worldly belonging onto a train, and has a bunch of terrifying experiences. This short had the most engrossing mood: it transported you into the frightening world it created. There isn’t much of a plot to follow; you kind of have to let it wash over you. If I had to guess what a bad acid trip was like, this would be my closest basis for comparison.

- Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven): It was a cute story about a elderly gentleman that is tricked into buying a machine which will transport him to heaven. It would have worked well as a short story, and was only enhanced by the animation. This short had the best characters. Every bit of gesture, posture, and movement is very well thought out with great attention to detail. Put a smile on my face :)

- My Love (Moya Lyubov): The animation was a series of very brushy paintings; thus, I’m sure it was incredibly time consuming to create. It’s a classic “boy coming of age” in which a young teen idealizes the women in his life and becomes classically paralyzed by the choice between them. The style of animation fit with the subject matter quite well because both the boy and the audience are looking upon these woman through the rose colored lens of paintings. The story in My Love was a bit disjointed and thus the whole thing dragged by the end.

- Peter & The Wolf: A silent film adaptation of the classic score by the same name. It’s pretty true to the original tale. I couldn’t stop staring at Peter’s light blue eyes. They were giant (a visual cue indicating youth) and like some kind of blue rarely seen on celluloid. Very well executed, but less original and inventive than the rest of the shorts.

When they open the golden envelope tonight, I hope I Met the Walrus wins. Give peace a chance. Here’s an embed of the I Met the Walrus trailer below:

I can’t get over how many amazing and inventive hacks have been created using the Twitter API. It’s as if the Twitter API is the new spray paint and developers are the new graffiti artists: constantly competing against each other to tag (no pun intended) the most ridiculous locations in the most interesting ways.

The latest Twitter hack that caught my eye is this iPhone Lo-Jack. Twitter is used as the semi-secure repository of information for where your iPhone is at any given time (can update as often as you’d like). Lo-Jack (in case your iPhone is missing or stolen) is the most obvious application for this dataset, but I’d be interested in seeing a graph of the information over the course of a year, so I could see everywhere that I (or at least, my iPhone… with decent service) had been. If you’d like to implement this hack for yourself, TUAW has instructions and a more detailed description.

I’m torn between what’s the greater “net good”… donating to a political candidate that I think could affect public policy positively, or donating to a charity where my proceeds will go to improve a cause.

That last sentence is a little vague because I don’t want to get bogged down in the definitions of things like “better” or “public good”… I also don’t want to get bogged down in a political debate of which candidate will have a better effect on public policy…

Maybe this question can’t be answered in a vacuum outside of specific details, but when I feel the urge to donate to a political candidate that I strongly support, should I just donate to my favorite charity instead?

Right now, I’m leaning towards the charity. But, I know if every one of my peers made the same choice, then the political candidate I support would surely lose due to lack of funds. Should I alter my judgment based on what I hope the group would decide when faced with the same decision?

95% of consumer electronics aesthetic design is flat-out boring. The lid of every laptop is a wasted opportunity for artistic expression. They are canvases that are ignorantly left blank.

I wish the industrial designers behind consumer electronics devices would take a page from skateboard designers (or dare I say: skateboard artists). What if the cover of my laptop could look like these:

Or what if my monotone iPod skin was designed by a tattoo artist? Or if the design of my digital camera said, “I’ve been loved by my creator” instead of “I take great photos of family gatherings.”

I’m not advocating the change of functional industrial design. I don’t think consumer electronics ease-of-use and functionality should be sacrificed in favor of aesthetics. Instead, I’m advocating the end of gray, silver, beige casing.

Union Square Ventures is looking for a new analyst. If you think you might be interested in entering Venture Capital, this would be a great way to dip your toes in the water for 2 years. More details about the position and the application are on our blog.

Also, Charlie’s exit post on the position is a great take on some of the benefits. It’s an old post, but still very relevant. A choice quote:

Think of working at USV like MBA 2.0. Lots of networking. Lots of “case studies”. We met a ton of companies and in each and every single one of those meetings, there was something to be learned… some new way of thinking… or an inspiration for a thought experiment of our own. It was the most educational birds eye view of Everything 2.0 that I could have had….

Space Invader

Originally uploaded by Michael Surtees

I found this Space Invader in the meat packing district the other day. This is 3 blocks away from my new apartment.

Little Space Invader mosaic tile graffiti are scattered all around the world. They a created by an artist called Invader who documents his work at his website.

I know that some knockoff invaders have been made by people who dig Invader’s work. Anyone know if this one is legit or if it’s a knock-off?

Update: Turns out I’m no longer listed in any Google SERPs, not just ‘Andrew Parker.’ My site was hacked (yet again) and contained a TON of links to porn sites which were made invisible with a CSS trick. I upgraded my WordPress install to the latest version and removed all the offensive crap, but I’m sure it will be a long time because I get back into Google’s SERPs. If anyone has any advice for expediting this process, let me know.

Original Post: For some reason Google removed this blog from the SERP for “Andrew Parker”. I used to rank #1 on the SERP when people searched my name. Now, I’m nowhere to be found.

I’m not sure what happened… anyone know of any changes to The_Algorithm(TM) that would cause me to get dropped? I still get plenty of traffic from Google on other search terms, and I’m definitely indexed. There doesn’t appear to be anything fishy (no warnings) according to Google’s webmaster tools.

I’m stumped.