Saturday, January 29, 2005

New Additions to My Bookmark List I've had a lot of time recently to surf the Web while sitting at home recuperating from my shoulder surgery. I really would have like to be doing something a little bit more productive, but the painkillers make it tough for me to form more than three senteneces in a row without drooling on myself and if I don't take them, the pain accomplishes the same effect. So I surf and play The Urbz on my Nintendo DS (fantastic game, by the way!) and watch TV and read occasionally when I feel like I can concentrate. Whine, whine, whine. Anyway, having all this time, I've come across a few new sites that I wanted to share (but didn't feel motivated enough to write individual entries about). Inertia! Anyway, if you're bored, start clicking and enjoy: near near future (wonderful design/futurism/technology blog) Smarterchild (nifty IM chatterbot with helpful features) Envirance (a really cool "concept food" company) Design Intelligence (nicely done architecture/design magazine) Hello Kitty Debit Mastercard (this simultaneously horrified me and cracked me up) Anti-War.com (slightly breathless but none-the-less-interesting-to-read war news) Above Top Secret (humongous conspiracy discussion site) Google Suggest (a new version of Google that suggests keywords as you type) New York Times Link Generator (generates perpetual blog-safe links to NYT articles) How Much Information 2003 (a study of how much information the world produces) 8:14:25 AM    comment []

(Xeroxed) Blast From the Past   Flipside was one of the first and longest lived of all the early punk zines, comparable only to Maximum Rock n' Roll in terms of its reach and importance in documenting the punk underground in the US. I used to horde each and every precious copy I could get my hands on from my infrequent forays down to Washington DC where I'd prowl Georgetown and pick up  copies at Smash! or (yes, I'll admit it...I went there ever once in a while)  Commander Salamander, the two "punk" stores in the Nation's Capitol during the early 80's. Featuring news, record and show reviews, irreverent commentary, total bullshit, grainy pictures, bad jokes, and attitude galore, zines like Flipside were what held the fabric of the punk community together. Long before the Web existed and made it point-and-click easy to find out about happenings in the underground all over the world, self-published amateur efforts like this one were the glue of the scene. Today, the "underground" has all but disappeared, co-opted by major media (and major record labels) desperate to serve up "new" and "different" experiences to an increasingly jaded public. But back then...wow! Publications like Flipside were what kept us misfits and malcontents from thinking we were completely crazy and alone in what we were in to. So I was pretty happy to find that Mr. Bali Hai had taken the trouble to scan and post the first issue of Flipside in all its xeroxed, nostalgic glory. It was amazing to me to go back and read this venerable zine from the late 70's and realize (yet again!) that what passes as "alternative" these days hasn't progressed all that much from the early days of punk almost 30 years ago. 7:48:26 AM    comment []