hey.

so i built this micro-app recently. it’s like irc for people that don’t know what irc is. it’s like im for people who hate im. it’s like an anonymous chat with only people that know each other. is any of this making sense? probably not. sometimes you just have to see for yourself. i present to you, internet, anologue.

One thing I’ll say upfront is that these posts will likely get more personal since they’re coming at ya way less formally than previous updates (or not, guess that’s subjective…). If it is lame or uneventful, I’d say I’m sorry but it’s mostly your fault.

So, Rich has his last week here in Santa Cruz before he moves back to San Diego to work at House of Blues and move in with his girl, Ali. I can’t wait to sleep our your couch.

And, me… well, if you’re curious (and I’ll assume you are since you’re still reading,) I’ve been keeping my brain occupied. Few things of interest:

• I met Flying Lotus. (ok, at a show)
• I’m playing with Processing. It’s a programming language geared toward audio/visual generation/manipulation. The picture above is a screenshot of some live action – a little doctored for ambience.
• Odysseus and I are getting settled in our new diggs.
• I’m playing with Reason. Actually, I’ve been playing with reason for well over a year now but usually alone at night, and hardly as good as one should be after using anything for over a year. Hope to share some beats I come up with if I can get my shit dialed.
• I stopped shaving again.
• In nerd news: I’ve refactored a ton of my first open-source project for anything. This one happens to be an Authorize.net plugin in the most excellent CakePHP framework and the plugin can be found and forked at github.
• I’m in the market for a good chef’s knife.

Well, I gotta finish up this cup of coffee and get my ass to the office. I’ve been riding my bike to work for over a month now so I’ve got a bit of a trek ahead of me.

In the meantime, listen…

i’d like to share some of the magic that is the internet with anyone reading that may not be as adept at navigating the information superhighway.

see, i’ve been using the internet, hardcore, for so long that i think i’ve lost touch. 

maybe you found us through the sinking ship that is yahoo! or that guy from work that installed netscape navigator for you setup this site as your default homepage. perhaps you got a chain fax that detailed instructions on how to circumvent your work’s internet filter to watch pr0n using our site as a proxy. or, maybe you’re from the future and reading this on the internet archives.

regardless of how you found us, the fact is for many it has been an accident.

so, i want to share some of my knowledge of the web and how helpful and entertaining it can be.

one thing the internet is great at is sharing information. almost every media source out there apart from the internet is now on the internet in some way. literature, imagery, video… and even more internet originals are out there and growing even as i write. there’s so much out there it’s overwhelming. that’s where google comes in. searching the internet is a skill. learning how to appropriately word a search will make your internet experience much easier and fruitful. i wish i had a clever and helpful link to throw your way there but really, it just takes time.

now, that’s great for general web use and finding information, but another tool i like to use, mostly for entertainment, is digg.com. it takes the guesswork out of searching. sometimes it’s not a matter of knowing how to word your search — maybe you don’t even know what you want to find and  just want someone else to put stuff in front of you (those of you transitioning from tv-land know exactly what i’m talking about here)…

digg is something of a democratic media source. people from all over the internet submit, or “digg” an article, video or image. from there, other people on digg.com might see it and digg it, too. the more people that digg it, the more prominent it will generally be on the site. therefore, with every page load, you will see things shifting around as the articles, videos and images change with the number of people digging them.

it gets more complicated. so not only are the media items themselves being “dugg”, but there are also users making comments on the media item on digg itself, which users can digg, or as digg calls it, “bury”. to bury a comment is to say that it sucks and isn’t worthy of another user reading. enough people bury a comment and it’s hidden from view (though to the totally bored you can show comments other people buried.) and, you can comment on comments. do you see what is going on here? the community is therefore selecting and showcasing what is generally interesting.

digg as a tool to find media does an incredible job. but, i find the real entertainment as of late has been reading through the digg comments. read the comments on this article to see what i mean.

that being said, i think my work here is done… for now.

in other, ANTI/gen related news: today, rich and i dropped by the nor cal show held here in santa cruz to visit some of our vendors for the shop, as well as make a few new friends we’ll be connecting with in the future to bring you ladies some more of the raddest, sexiest, most stylish clothing we feel this planet currently has to offer. within reason.

as always, thanks for reading — and i hope you learned something. now, use that “share/save” link at the top right of our articles to share and digg ‘em once in a while…

holy crap. i just got fatter reading this blog.
that’s it – i’m going on a the diet.

does the innernette ever stop entertaining?! NO!

sorry about the delays you loyal reader(s). yeah, both of you.

we’ve got big news. considering the amount of time already wasted put into this, i should just leave a link here and call it a day. but, i want to at least try and get you stoked.

so, anyone that’s come within 5 feet of rich or myself in the last year or two has likely heard us mumbling some shit about the ANTI/gen guide. i’m fairly sure our feeble attempts at describing the idea never did it justice. it always went something like this,

us: “Do you remember prevue guide?”

them: “No.”

us: “Oh. Ok… do you have dish(TM) or on-demand(TM) or tivo(TM)? Of course you do. How else are you going to watch Bratz? Well, imagine that for videos on the internet.”

them: “That sounds lame.”

haters. ok, so a few of you acted totally blown away but we know you just felt sorry for us. we didn’t care because we knew you would actually be blown away if we ever actually did what we were thinking.

and, well, just take a look for yourself.

the ANTI/gen Guide is here. with our own channels (and schedules changing daily) of our favorite shtuff on the net, … the internet just got a whole lot better. if you’re out there on the net and see some video you think we should share, or maybe you have a video of your own you think is worthy, well, you can always send us a message. in fact, as always, we’d love some feedback either way.

p.s. thanks for all your support.

note: not sure if i need to say this or not, but if it helps, NSFW. in fact, NSFL.

• sweater kittens – this one might necessitate some disambiguity — not to be confused with slang for boobs, sweater kittens are apparently an up-and-coming fetish regarding fluffy sweaters and hotties. i’ve yet to find a good example site to link to (let me know if you’ve got one) but the idea makes me laugh. courtesy of tyson.
• f2bbs – practically a snapshot of any given forum on the internet in the late 90’s – anonymity definitely brings out the worst in a lot of people, namely 13 year olds who can’t cuss in front of their parents. however, it does occasionally prove to be both true and entertaining. discovered this through a comment on an article in the mercury news about a family almost dying for eating mushrooms they found in the woods. wtf?
• headset hotties – i almost pissed my pants checking this out. to top it off, the rating system is hysterically based on “perceived helpfulness”. comedic genius. thanks rafael.
• shhh!tv – ok this one is a little late, but funny and aesthetically/technically almost like the tv application we’ve been working on. funny thing is, the tv app i’m developing is actually utilizing the same (and my favorite) framework as they use for their backend: cakephp. get into it.

how was your christmas/holiday-time-thing? ours was mellow. rich spent his weeping alone while i spent mine with an extended cold and troubleshooting hardware issues. anyway, on to the good stuff:

notice anything different? probably not, because i can’t confirm anybody really even reads this beside katie and ali. and, they both only do it out of pity. we’re trying hard to come up with something entertaining for you but until now the conversation has seemed so one-sided… so guess what? we have got actual software powering this section of the site now. that means comments! and, no more bullshit links — thinks are actually categorized. try for yourself.

also, i wanted to give you a way to help spread the word in the unlikely event that something here is actually interesting. that’s where that share/save menu on the top right of this post comes in. sharing is caring.

and, as promised from way back, we’ve now got a legit rss feed to subscribe to for those in the know.

well, that’s about it for now. it’s super late and i have to hit the hay — only two days left in the year to try and catch up at work.

what are your plans for the new year?