PopularLemonade » Nerd Status

What Will The Maid Think?

@Radioestes — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:16:28 +0000

If you travel for work, you understand the grind of rental cars, and hotel rooms. It’s lonely and there are bed bugs. Heed this advice: DON’T CONNECT TO THE HOTEL INTERNET. I know folks who get a perverse pleasure planting files on stranger’s computers. By ‘files’ I mean pictures of penis. No internet, no friends and you’re not dropping the $14.99 porno on your expense report – so what to do? Bert Kreischer creates toilet paper, fake blood and pillow sculptures to scare the crap out of the housecleaners. His hash is #whatwillthemaidthink? There must be a lot of bored travelers out there because the meme is gaining steam. Check it out below:

[View the story "What Will the Maid Think?" on Storify]

p.s. – If you are going to contribute, and by all means I hope you do, two things:
1) Leave a $20 – Don’t fuck with the maid unless you are going to compensate them for the gag.
2) Tweet me that pic @radioestes

40 Apps to Freedom: Planetary by @databloom

@Radioestes — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:58:20 +0000

Planetary

What it is:
A music player with astronomical visualizations. The app uploads music from your ipod and arranges it visually as follows:

Constellations – Groups of Bands (alphabetical)
Stars – Individual Bands
Planets – That Band’s Records
Moons – That Record’s Songs

It’s gorgeous.

The album-art skins the planets and moons in a semi-translucent, atmospheric haze. You can control the speed of the orbits and the scale of the galaxy. You can zoom in and out . Activate gyro functions and navigate the galaxies by moving the iPad in space. Re-visualizing your music leads to interesting questions:
What does a Clap Hands eclipse look like over the seas of Rain Dogs?
The answer depends on the solar-flare activity on Tom Waits at the moment.

I need this kind of banter in my life. It’s reminiscent of Pythagoras and the Music of the Spheres only less culty and more nerdy.

What it means:
WARNING – I’m going to make some leaps here.
The organization and insemination of information is evolving. Reading is dieing. Soon your brain will be connected to the internet. You will not be limited by your biology. Bad with directions? Not anymore. Can’t find a CD? No need. Slow reader? Don’t worry, words will be gone forever.
Our brain can process information much faster than it can read words. Which is to say your brain is waiting for your eyes. A good novelist understands this. Often the most skeletal descriptions are the most interesting. Why? The author allows the reader’s mind to fill in the details. This makes for great poetry but bad dialog. Details better our understanding of our world and each other. With a brain enhanced by the internet, our language will necessarily evolve forward. Faster.

The linear procession of symbolic images is primitive and abstract to reality. With an enhanced internet-brain, communication will be embedded into our visual/ auditory field. As fast as you can see, you can exchange information. What was once a literary abstraction, is now a premeditated hallucination. You won’t read a set list, you will rock the heavens with a gesture.
Pythagoras be damned, Planetary gets you there first.

Italian Middle Age Equivalent

Planetary, by Bloom Studio is available exclusively for the iPad from the app store.

@radioestes

40 apps to Freedom: Street Tag

@Radioestes — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:55:00 +0000

Street Tag is a photo geo-tagging, augmented reality app.
The Point:
Virtually spray-paint grafitti on stationary objects in your environment. You can customize a tag with different colors, brushes and sizes – or you can free hand it. Once you have created your tag you place it virtually on a surface with your camera. Then you take a picture with your tag on the surface. You can post the pic to twitter or facebook, or load it to a native google map. On the map you can view your pics and other folks pics that have been approved by a moderator.

Pearl Street Mall

Nostalgia:
Running around Whittier and Baker neighborhoods as a kid, I did my fair share of tagging. I wasn’t a graffiti artist by any stretch. Spray paint wasn’t my media either. I was a Marks-a-lot guy. The big fat rectangle-headed black one. I tagged the name Ryott in middle school. Pronounced ‘riot’, the name was a portmanteau of my first name Ryan and my middle name Scott. I thought it was pretty badass. I though I was pretty badass. My buddies thought differently. As the butt of many jokes, the name evolved to ‘Oot’. To my closest brethren, Oot I remain. I threw up ‘Oot’ all over the place. I scratched it into Todd Ross’ car window in high school with a rock. I didn’t like the kid, and I was a real savage in high school. Todd was pretty upset about it, understandably so. Fucking with a man’s car is like pissing in his cheerios. There was nothing he could do about it however. Sorry Todd, I’d like to think I’ve changed a bit since then. But I’m still a prick so don’t get any ideas.
Tagging is a basic human characteristic. Cave paintings all over the world illustrate this. The difference between today’s graffiti and prehistoric stick figures, is the notion of private property. Cave men didn’t have deeds for their caves. Likewise, it’s hard to tell the kid who grows up in the streets, that they ain’t his. Young men claim their territory like wolves. Piss on the corners and fight for the alpha spot. Kids need to identify territories, it could be detrimental to their survival in some cities. For homeowners it’s a relentless nuisance. Street Tag gives kids the opportunity to leave their mark and keep my fences clean through the summer. (All the kids in Sunnyside have iPhones right?)

I think I'm the only one in CO using this app.

Future:
Street Tag takes the misdemeanors out of tagging (thereby reducing the fun by 99%) and leaves the art. There are idiots who tag trees, there always will be. With Street Tag they can tag the tree in what they call augmented reality. You could choose to view these tags as a digital layer and leave the natural beauty for the rest of us. What this hints at is a cultural aesthetic with a custom objective experience. This goes well beyond graffiti. With integrated windshields for your cars, eye-glasses, contacts and ultimately ocular implant hardware you will be able to add augmented layers of information to your visual field. There will be no billboards, no street signs, no posters, no visual noise in your neighborhood. Unless you want it; and you probably will. In that case, all the advertising you consume will be customized to your personal tastes. Just like Google. (What did you think the end game for Google Maps was?)
I have a vision of a beautifully engineered environment, without uninvited corporate intrusion. Pristine neighborhoods. Gorgeous skylines. I’m no optimist however. You can be sure I’ll cross check the graffiti layer to see which murderous alpha wolves are marking their territory with digital tree tags. Then I’ll cross out their name with a little 187 as I roll out of town. I’m still that guy.

Arvada

Street Tag is free in the Apple Store. The user experience is a little rough. Stick with it though, your augmented reality will be here soon enough.

40 apps to Freedom: Denver Treks

@Radioestes — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:12:57 +0000

Denver Treks is an iPhone app that uses GPS to locate historical Denver landmarks near you.  The app provides a brief written outline of each location and in many instances a 10 minute audio podcast to give historical context.  They have tours called ‘Treks’ which are landmarks clustered around a particular Denver theme.

Here’s some highlights:
Settling the Frontier
Discover the original Indian treaty that voided all future treaties. Explains everything!
Shedding the Frontier Rawness
Explore Denver’s rich Asian heritage. It’s not all Federal Heights and internment camps. No, there is also the patio at Vinyl.

Convergence of Cultures
Denver’s first tomale factory/ boot store/ carniceria is featured. Did you know the same family owns the florist and the transmission repair shop?  They look abandoned but they are indeed open for your historical-tourism dollar.
Women of the West
Molly Brown is the only woman that has ever lived in Denver.
Stage Stops, Railroads & Streetcars
Visit a famous Five Points Restaurant. There they display the first and last dollar tipped by a black man.

Mile High Art & Culture
Is there a Post-Elway future? No there isn’t. Spend time with John Elway’s invesco-manifesto. Terrell Davis will carry the weight of the city into our migraine tempered destiny.
Denver’s Iconic Buildings
See the exact photocopier used to forge thousands of citizenship documents for Governor Hickenlooper’s brew-pub empire.

Denver Treks is available in the Apple App Store for free. Someone look it up on Android and let us know if you can find it there.
Say hello: @radioestes

40 apps to Freedom: Dropbox

@Radioestes — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:22:09 +0000

Dropbox is a free cloud storage service that gives you multiple portals to access your private or shared media. Dropbox is a very snappy name with a great icon that clearly illustrates the service they provide. For the sake of comedy however, I will from here on out refer to Dropbox as MyAss.

MyAss is mad convenient yo.

Email is a great way to move around documents. Unfortunately there are limitations to the file-size you can attach to any given email. What to do then with rich media files e.g. movies and audio? MyAss can handle that. In fact, MyAss was designed especially for that. I can save my podcast there, I can save documents and pics there too. MyAss has customized folders so I can keep my cherished family pics (shared publicly) separate from my home made pornos (shared here). MyAss is handy. Here’s a real world scenario to demonstrate:
Your boss steps over to your desk all agitated and sweaty:
“You promised me that pic of hot chicks on the beach!!!”
You say, “Yes sir, did you check MyAss?”
Your boss says, “I checked! There are no hot chicks in MyAss right now!!!”
You say, “Pardon me, perhaps I forgot to share it. Give me a second and I’ll pull some hot chicks out of MyAss for you.
Voila:

problem solved

Having all my media in one place is fantastic. I don’t need to worry what I have on my phone, or ipad, or netbook, or laptop, or computer. Because it’s all in MyAss.
The future:
You know what MyAss reminds me of? Ideas. All of my memories are stored in one central location, that is my brain. These memories and experiences shape my ideas; my ideas manifest themselves into physical realities. For example: I remember liking peanut butter sandwiches, I have an idea to make a sandwich, I prepare and eat the sandwich. This very basic example is emblematic of the evolution of human technology. Experience > inception > creation > repeat. We are the only known creatures in the universe who can imagine a better peanut butter sandwich (w/ pickles and garlic), and create it. There are signs that our technology will evolve the ability to think in this manner. Computers will use the shared information of all humanity to guide their progress: Digital anxiety.
Exibit A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txIqNqZAbqg&feature=related
A computer printing a crescent wrench.
Exhibit B:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80DhBLEhdzk
A computer printing an ear… a fucking ear with skin and shit!
Today computers are still at the mercy of our programming. They are just hammers that require an arm to swing. When the hammer starts swinging the arm, humans can only hope the machines respect their biological heritage. There is no precedence in nature where a species with higher intellect respects a species of lower intellect. Look at our zoos. Monkeys and dolphins have a remarkable intellect. They are only a few million years behind humans in brain development and look how we treat them. We smack them on the head and eat the lucky ones. The unlucky ones end up in cages. The Matrix and Terminator movies explore the post-apocalyptic, man/ machine territory with brilliance. Terror and war are only one side of this coin.
I’d like to think an intellect vastly superior to humans will take on an enlightened flavor. Perhaps a self-aware Internet will see error in the dominant/ subordinate paradigm and look to include us. Machines, the internet and humans, incorporated into a unified higher life form. They call them homo-evolutis, and they sound damn near god-like in description. A new kind of homo for that ass,and MyAss is only the beginning. Sign me up. I am limited by the confinement of my own experiences. How awesome would it be to download other people’s experiences? I’ll take Tommy Lee in the 80’s, Michael Jordan in the 90’s and sprinkle in whatever Timberlake is up to this week. It’s coming. Homo-evolutus will reshape our cosmology and our destiny in unimaginable ways. It’s almost impossible to speculate what this future holds. I am interested. At the very least I’ll be able to finally pull my head out of MyAss. Literally.

Dropbox is free: Apple, PC, iOS, and Android platforms.

40 Apps to Freedom: Everyday

@Radioestes — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:58:20 +0000

The Everyday app for iPhone stitches together self-portrait pictures and converts them into a video. Everyday provides an alignment grid so you can position your nose and eyes in the same position for each picture. The app will send you alerts at a time of your choosing, to remind you to take a pic – everyday. You can post your video from the app to various social networking platforms. I’ve been at it for about 3 months now.

You may remember this video, which I assume inspired the app:

Noah, from the video above, added dramatic piano. The music takes something away. A rapid succession of images has a mystical and soothing effect. Particularly when the video is silent. Denver film maker Stan Brakhage, took this form to remarkable ends. Stan hand painted raw film. He is most famous for a series of shorts where he glued moth-wings to film. I met Stan at the Bug theatre a few months before he died. He was presenting a collection of his favorite works stemming from his prolific career. Frantic, vertiginous, hysterical movies and all silent. It’s damn near seizure inducing on the big screen. Stan was a critical component of Denver’s beat/ hippie community in the 50’s and 60’s. He helped establish Naropa with Allen Ginsberg. He was a professor of film at the University of Colorado for many years. He was making bad-ass youtube videos long before there was an internet. I happened to see this film at the MET for their 20th century modern art retrospectives a few years ago:

Looks awesome – like watching fire. ‘Like a moth to the flame’; is that the sentiment Stan was hinting at? Was he pointing out our inherent attraction to the universe’s most mesmerizing element? Was he intentionally calling out the loneliness every person feels staring into the abyss? He was probably high. I’ve read Kerouac – I know what those fellas were up to. When I watch my Everyday video and Noah’s video, I watch for the hair to change, the swelling of the eyes, the little details that pass in and out of sight. It’s a lot like watching fire slowly consume wood. And for that it’s interesting enough to drop the $1.99 in the App store.
Noah set the bar high at 6 years. I don’t know how long I’ll stick with it. Probably until i grab an iphone 5. Maybe longer, time makes it interesting.
Everyday adds a dose of narcissism to Stan’s format. So it’s a little nauseating. No more so than the glued moth wings. Nausea and vertigo are good bedmates after all.

Taking the good with the bad: Amy Winehouse, Michael K. Williams, and Portugal. The Man

Alli Sands — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 04:03:09 +0000

Amy Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011)

It’s been a tumultuous week. A bombing and mass shooting took place in Norway, claiming nearly 100 innocent lives. The Grammy-winning songstress and heroin enthusiast, Amy Winehouse, joined Hendrix and Cobain in the 27 Club. And our national government can’t seem to remove its head from its own ass long enough to actually effect any sort of positive change in this country. Did I mention that every part of this country is experiencing that time of the summer where the heat is oppressive, exhausting, and sometimes even deadly?

It’s rough out there but nonetheless, there are good things to appreciate and enjoy. For example, Dan Harmon told TV Guide that Michael K. Williams (The Wire‘s Newport-smoking moral enigma, Omar Little) will be in at least three episodes of the upcoming season of Community as a biology professor. Williams’ character earned his biology degree while in prison and his first assignment as a teacher is at Greendale. Community returns to NBC on Thursday, September 22.

Portugal. The Man 'In The Mountain In The Cloud' (Atlantic)

Psychedelically-influenced indie rockers, Portugal. The Man, released their sixth studio album earlier this week, In The Mountain In The Cloud. While this is the band’s first with record label heavyweight Atlantic, they maintain true to themselves and their roots. It’s always nice when that happens.

The world of fashion was in a tizzy over crown of thorns headbands retailing for $125 a pop. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was sacrilegious but seriously, $125 for a headband? Sweetie, I might have been born at night but certainly not last night.

While the future remains unseen, this week brings the season premiere of Project Runway. Denver fans can join the fabulous Mondo Guerra at Beauty Bar for Project Runway viewing parties starting this Thursday, July 28. Additionally, the sci-fi Western blockbuster, Cowboys and Aliens, hits theaters Friday, July 29.

'Cowboys and Aliens' in theaters Friday, July 29

Drunk & High Movie Recommendation: Bridesmaids

@Radioestes — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:39:42 +0000

PIMPCHILLA

40 apps to Freedom: Blip.me

@Radioestes — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:57:46 +0000

An iPhone/ iPad app review column.

Blip.me

Blip.me is a communication app. Two clicks and you’re sending a recorded voice message. It’s voice texting essentially. This comes in handy in a variety of situations:
blip1

blip2

If you grew up with walkie-talkies you understand the necessity of saying ‘over’ after every blip. It’s trucker slang. Over, means you have ended your communication and are waiting for reply. It’s a period at the end of a sentence; we’ll use that distinction frequently once we begin communicating telepathically. After the singularity it will be important to differentiate between intentional and unintentional messages. If you need to find your keys you don’t want to let on that you’re just thinking about your keys.

The fuck you say?

We’re gonna be all up in your head kid. In the not too distant future there will be a merger. The division between virtual and real worlds will dissolve. Welcome to the newly fused, mega connected super-conscious. Your mind will be non-local and infinitely more powerful. So will everyone else’s. Your thoughts will be no less private than your drunken rant after your girlfriend dumped you. (You better straighten out those fetishes fella, your girlfriend was horrified by your midget obsession and so are we.) The singularity/ hive-mind may render conventional communication useless. Add the collected consciousness of 10 billion people with all the information ever recorded. Multiply that times the reasoning of a super computer, a trillion times more powerful than the human mind and you may just be cured of your lizard-brain impulses. Midget porn and blame-gaming included.
blip3
Then again, we’ll still be monkeys. We’ll still need to eat, shit and sleep. Some resemblance of basic communication will remain intact. Your consciousness will make Buddha look like a fart from Forrest Gump’s ass but you’ll still need to ask to pass the salt. It will be necessary for an app like blip.me to be running in the hive-mind. Conceivably, as a novelty; a nostalgic app to reminisce on the little, lonely, isolated, islands of anxiety lives we once lived. It’s fitting then – Blip.me is charmingly retro in it’s design. Vintage/ mod in it’s aesthetics. We’ll be gods soon, might as well do it in style.

Blip.me is free. Download it today – I’ll hear you in the future.

blip4

40 Apps to Freedom – TapDJ and Djay

@Radioestes — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:37:09 +0000

Adolescent men have one goal: champagne and blow-jobs. There are different ways to get there. Music is arguably the fastest method. Birds have songs, plants have flowers, humans have rock and roll. If it worked for Roy Orbison, it will work for you. Teenage boys see this clearly. They are presented then with a choice: guitar or dj? The choice is not a musical one as you may think. It comes down to this: guitar players wear cool shoes; djs wear cool hats.
I had long hair when I was 15, long hair looks silly with a hat, I had a pair of doc martin sandals that were both hippie and badass, I chose guitar. I stand by that choice, it’s served me well.

Eight years ago my band was performing an old-school hip-hop homage. We were all dipped in Adidas everything. I was playing guitar up-front, we had a dj next to the drums and bass cab. I met a young lady that night. She enjoyed my guitar stylings- she told me so. Later that night: champagne and blow-jobs. Mission accomplished. That pretty girl I first saw from the stage is now Mrs. Estes. Had I been a dj that fateful night, some other chump would now enjoy my beautiful family. He’d have the family and I’d be an international touring super-douche, posted up at the Four Season’s tiki bar. That’s how it works in my head.
I have a Stanton Straight-80 and a choice record collection. I’ve always had the intention of getting another record player and a mixer. I never followed through because I’m lazy, and spinning records ain’t gonna get me laid. If only there was a way to dj in bed, semi-conscious, with a whisky. Enter TapDJ and Djay. Two amazing dj apps for iPhone/ iPad.

TapDJ

Djay

Both apps give you two decks and the ability to mix and scratch the music in your ipod. TapDJ gives you a MPC style sample pad and channel volume control. Djay gives you an automix option and a little tighter looping interface. Both apps are very easy to use, they employ a cross-fader, and allow you to record your session. I am reviewing them together because they are nearly identical.

I headed to Craig’s house to get his opinion. He’s a hip-hop, vinyl purist. He also has an incredible man-cave. If anyone could flesh out the weaknesses of these apps – it’s Craig. He loved both apps. He couldn’t scratch with the same dexterity as he could with wax – but that was expected. He said a lot of the user interface was lifted from Serato. Wave-form view specifically. We plugged in the iPad and the Technics. I played songs I love and Craig scratched over it. It felt like Jamie Oliver was cooking me breakfast in my kitchen. With a little practice I figure I can make a pretty decent mixtape. I was going to link the sessionhere but I train-wrecked every 3rd song. I’ll update in a few when we nail it.

There is no replacing vinyl as Craig sagely stated. I agree, I love my records. These apps aren’t out to replace our 12”. Rather, these apps give music nerds an opportunity to really enjoy their music. For the working dj these apps could be incredibly useful. I am willing to bet right now some kid has a bottle of Korbel on ice. He’s preparing for the off chance that his $.99 dj iPhone app is going to get his dick sucked. It just might. Guitar Hero never did that. He’d better have a cool hat.

Aesthetics: Familiar.
User Experience: Elementary, joyous.
Cost: $.99 each

Grade: A+

-Ryan Estes

Craig's man-cave