Hey guys, apologies for the long absence.  The site seems to have grown quiet.  I’m still kind of hunkered down in emergency mode trying to finish up an experiment, alluded to by mark and still ongoing, before my thesis is due on the 16th.  But, here are some link i’ve been digging over the past few weeks:

• Let’s all get killed by volcanoes!
• Macbook wheel
• gaming
• Exploring design with Mathematica
• BackGames
• Kindle vs. P.A.D.D.

And finally:

for what it’s worth, for one month google is letting you search using its oldest web archive, dating from january 2001. it’s funny what ubiquitous things are totally absent from the web even 7 years ago. most notably, youtube – the very basis of content around here – returns zero resuts!

my favorite thing, though, is that all of the search results’ pages are available as archived versions! like this search result from the search string “mark sterling” rochester – SLUMBERING IDENTITY ARCHIVED.

It’s weird because although I think Mark probably wouldn’t write quite the same things these days, the characteristic “mark-ness” is still there. Especially compelling is his post on skiing, which acts as a potent and crushing retort to my earlier screed on the same topic.

In the interest of fairness, here’s the oldest version of my site. And since that doesn’t have anything bloggy or sufficiently embarrassing, here’s my oldest archived blog entries (from a year or so later than mark’s archive).

zach hastens to add: Just so nobody feels left out, here’s Ross’s 2001 webpage (removed by his request ), and Rob’s 1999 review of XTC’s Apple Venus v.1.

Dave and Kirk don’t appear to have any 2001-era google juice, and Michael’s stuff isn’t archived, except for this less-than-illuminating wrur schedule featuring him, Andrey, and me.

omg you guys.

i wish i could have heard this presentation. this makes powerpoint look like a pile of puke.

over the past week or so i’ve slowly been accruing a bunch of pretty good links that i think i’ll share with you in lieu of a more substantive post.

RollTube – firefox extension that you maliciously install on someone else’s computer. Once installed, it replaces every youtube video with the sublime video to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It’s the endgame application of the internet prank known as a RickRoll.

Kate Beaton’s History Comics: 1, 2, 3 – People write in historical subjects and she does the comic. From what I can tell most of them are from the opening sections of each item’s wikipedia entry. My favorites so far are “The Peach Basket Man is Hard Done By” (plus accompanying video) and the last panel of “The Fate of a Nation” (both in the first link).

Reporter Lessons:

A Narrative in Crisis – this is from a while back, but Penny Arcade on the video game Crysis. They have a pretty uncanny ability to take a game I know nothing about, and, more importantly, don’t really care to know anything about, and still make a funny strip out of it.

Pitchfork defined – From John Campbell at Pictures for Sad Children, I really can’t think of a more clearly stated vision of Pitchfork’s madness.

WE’RE ALL DOOMED – formerly distinguished scientist James Lovelock abandons all hope in favor of a dystopian future where he can feast on the flesh of his fellow man. But my favorite part of the article is the side-bar where they have a picture for a story about UK reality celeb and all-around chav jade goody. mmmm.

and i know this is probably going to bring harsh judgement down upon me for buying into the hype, but i’m actually really into this vampire weekend song “a-punk”:

best idea: sleeveface

In a flurry of blog-posting frenzy, Rob seems to be taking on the daunting task of writing an entry about a subject for each letter of the alphabet.  Or so I’m assuming from Rob’s post a few days ago (cross-posted below!) about AMC, and today’s post about Jacob Burckhardt.  I don’t know if Rob will cross-post them all or not, but the series is off to a great start so be sure to check him out regularly.

I always try to avoid reading reviews of movies before seeing them in order to have the most virginal experience possible. I can see pluses and minuses to this approach, but in this case if I had read Michael’s both excellent and withering June 29th review of SiCKO in stopsmiling I probably could have saved myself the $7 and seen Transformers or something instead.

Although Michael has posting privileges here, he so far has refrained from exercising them. Maybe it’s a subtextual comment on the quality of the site to date, but in any case I hope he doesn’t take offense to my highlighting what I think is a pretty stellar cinematic suggestion made recently on his blog.