tlvx

Dysfunctional App Store reviewers

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:17:37 -0400

well put:

It takes a special kind of asshole to complain that $10 is too much for an iPhone app, yet $5 would be perfectly justifiable.

full post by marco.

tie my hands, lil' wayne

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:52:00 -0400

So, accept my emotion
Do not take it as an offensive gesture
It’s just the epitome of my soul
And I must be me

We got spirit y’all
We got spirit
We got soul y’all
We got soul

They don’t want us to see
But we already know

terminal culture

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:45:00 -0400

From the current (#79) issue of the always-polemical Adbusters, Douglas Haddow on hipsterdom:

The hipster represents the end of Western civilization—a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the ‘hipster’—a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

(via Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, a.k.a. the book of lamentations: a bitterly nostalgic look at a city in the process of going extinct)

"But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who..."

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:25:00 -0400

“But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

- The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley. 1954.

i wonder how many people blogged this today

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:00:00 -0400

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara.

"At one point living a bohemian life meant embracing failure, squandering the opportunities and..."

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:16:18 -0400

“At one point living a bohemian life meant embracing failure, squandering the opportunities and privileges of your class background, a deliberate self-impoverishment that rejected the conventional ideas of wealth and success in favour of spiritual and aesthetic riches. Now certain aspects of bohemianism—a life dedicated to aestheticism, exquisite sensations, “experiences”, the exotic; systematic derangement of the senses (albeit as brief forays rather than a permanent condition); an unstructured and de-routinized lifestyle—have become compatible with an essentially affluent and careerist existence.”

- Simon Reynolds on his blissblog. (via sangennaro)

In Changing Face of Beijing, a Look at the New China, The New...

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:11:40 -0400

In Changing Face of Beijing, a Look at the New China, The New York Times.

“According to Rem Koolhaas, there are three seminal events in the history of architecture: Samson tearing down the house of the Philistines in 1100 BC, the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 AD, and his design in 2006 AD of the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing.”

Koolhaas and His Omnipotent Masters, William Drenttel, Design Observer.

The plastic buttons we push

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:58:00 -0400

hah, so true:

I earn my living—the food I eat, the apartment I sleep in, the books I read, etc. — by pushing plastic buttons all day long.

It’s the same with most of my friends.

I push a lot of buttons. There’s a trick to pushing them in the proper order, but no one way is “right” and everyone pushes their buttons differently. In fact, the order in which they push their buttons (combined with the number of times they push them) determines how much money they make.

The future (present) is so strange!

via amit.

- __

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:00:17 -0400

Karl Rove flees the country “Karl Rove was scheduled to...

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:20:52 -0400

Karl Rove flees the country

“Karl Rove was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. He didn’t show. Not only that, the Committee was told that Rove had left the country on a “long scheduled” trip.

“In this video clip, subcommittee chair Rep. Linda Sanchez explains that Rove never told them about any trip.”

i’d include a link to a major news source but i couldn’t find this mentioned by any of them. via Majikthise.

ne travaillez jamais, zürich, 2008.

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:49:00 -0400

ne travaillez jamais, zürich, 2008.

Thích Quảng Đức, self-immolation, Saigon, South Vietnam, 11 June...

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:42:30 -0400

Thích Quảng Đức, self-immolation, Saigon, South Vietnam, 11 June 1963.

Malcolm Browne’s photograph. David Halberstam on the event:

I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think… As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

i’ve been incredibly moved by this event lately. the willingness to sacrifice self for a greater cause, and to choose to no longer participate in a world that didn’t meet his criteria for freedom, are traits that aren’t understood by most, and present in very few people. while he burned, policemen, monks, nuns, and passersby prostrated themselves before him, and people claimed to see a weeping buddha’s image in the sunset. i’m amazed by the calm brutality + by the love motivating his act.

sweet thing, van morrison.

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:27:00 -0400

sweet thing, van morrison.

"We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary—or..."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:10:00 -0400

“We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary—or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro and incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered.”

- The World of Sex, Henry Miller. 1940.

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence..."

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:37:51 -0400

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

- Albert Camus

last day

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:38:59 -0400

today is my last day at joyent. (maybe coincidentally it’s also bill g’s last day…) it’s been a great ride. i’ve seen the company go from the founding team of 4 people in early 2005 to around 25 at present count. we’ve grown in ways you only hope to when you start something. but as our direction has shifted from tin (just kidding) end-user apps to automating a cloud computing infrastructure, and as my job has transition from developer and ui designer to director of software, i realized it was time for something new. ‘get back to my roots’ as it were. i’ve loved it + am really proud of what we’ve been able to do (without vc!). good luck to all my fellow joyeurs in the future.

what’s next? well, after some time off i’ll be back at the web game, making some awesome, useful sites for the internets. i can’t wait.

"I shall remember this hour of peace - the strawberries, the bowl of milk, your faces in the dusk.. I..."

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:37:18 -0400

“I shall remember this hour of peace - the strawberries, the bowl of milk, your faces in the dusk.. I shall remember our words and shall bear this memory between my hands as carefully as a bowl of fresh milk. And this will be a sign of great contentment.”

- Block in The Seventh Seal

joyent connector code visualized with processing and code_swarm...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:51:55 -0400

joyent connector code visualized with processing and code_swarm and girl talk
this is a visualization of the source code commits to joyent’s connector suite of online apps. we open-sourced it a year ago and this is the activity we’ve had on it since then. i was on the founding team at joyent and have spent a large part of the past 3.5 years working on it.

au revoir simone nyc appearances this summer. i haven’t...

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:29:01 -0400

au revoir simone nyc appearances this summer. i haven’t listened to them enough lately.

Wednesday, June 25th, 8pm to midnight: DJing a New York Civil Liberties Union benefit at Powerhouse art space in Dumbo.

Saturday, July 19th, 5pm. At PS1 with Danton Eeprom & Dorit Chrysler, presented by agnès b.

picture from the latest au revoir simone mailing list message. it’s simultaneously creepy + heartwarming.

björk + sigur rós concert in reykjavík this saturday. friday is...

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:42:00 -0400

björk + sigur rós concert in reykjavík this saturday.

friday is my last day of work at joyent, then i head straight to the airport for a few days in iceland. björk is my all-time favorite musician, and sigur rós is pretty close. that night sunset is at 12:01 am and the sun rises just 3 hours and 2 minutes later!! i can’t wait.