Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988
Web design and development for small and large business, e-commerce, b2b, b2c, SAAS, and community websites. User experience design and usability testing.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Park Street Renovation
Slideshow of a Bernal Hill house that was renovated to modernize and double (!) its square footage. Here are some other Dwell slideshows.
Charlie Brown Christmas Performed by the Cast of Scrubs
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Randy Rhoads: Last Train Home documentary trailer leaked When I was 13 I first heard the song “Flying High Again” and my life was changed forever. I quickly became a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan, and one day I asked my fiend Dave, who had introduced me to this music, who the guitar player was. He told me about Randy Rhoads, who had just recently died in a plane crash. I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t believe I would never hear any more music from this amazing musician. Even after his death, Randy Rhoads continued to be a massive influence on thousands of musicians, and the two classic albums he co-wrote and performed on with Ozzy are two of the most popular rock albums to this day. An indie documentary has been in the works for several years, and I recently came across an early trailer. The producer hadn’t secured all the photo and music rights yet when this trailer was leaked, so it might get taken down. Watch it now, before it’s gone.
Tunak I may have posted this video before, but this guy is so rad I had to do it again. You’re welcome.
Burning Man photo policy controversy The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (which Velma and I support financially and otherwise) has criticized the highly restrictive photo policy of the Burning Man organization (Velma and I are heading to BM in a week or so), which has responded with a thoughtful rebuttal and an honest plea for ongoing discourse and suggestions of ways to evolve the policy. Plenty of comments have ensued over at the BM rebuttal, as well as from the readers of BoingBoing. Strangely, the EFF’s original post doesn’t seem to allow comments. I have been aware of the restrictive photo policy since my first year of attendance, since I read about it in advance. It’s a tad complicated, but amounts to this: You can only take photos for “personal use,” and any commercial use or published use must be okayed by, and will be administered by, the BM org. This is done, so BM says (and I believe), to protect 1) the BM logo, name, et al from being tarnished by commercialization, and 2) to protect BM participants from having their picture unwittingly appear (in the nude, for example) in an ad, magazine, porn website, etc. Some critics argue that an unstated third reason is so that the BM org can be the only one to commercialize the name and therefore reap the financial benefits. I’m generally not in favor of policies that are as vastly worded as BM’s, but this is indeed a special event and a special case, and as I’ve never intended to use any of my BM photos for commercial purposes, it hasn’t been all that important to me to find injustice in a policy that I’m grateful protects me just as much as it inhibits me. I am, however, glad to see the discourse and the sincerity with which BM seems to be asking for help in improving the policy in future while still providing the protections it values.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 6:13 AM |
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Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Thursday Top 5+2
Last night of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” I haven’t watched Leno for years, and he was never my favorite, as I preferred the wacky ’80s and early ’90s era of Letterman, but Leno’s not bad at all. Last week was his final night on “The Tonight Show” before Conan takes over the reins in L.A., so I decided to watch it for history’s sake. They did about ten minutes of “Jaywalking,” the man-on-the street comedy segment where he just asks simple questions of normal, everyday Americans on the streets of L.A. (assuming there is such a thing in L.A., I suppose), such as “Who was the first president of the United States?”. This segment has always struck me as funny and excrutiatingly painful at the same time, as it shows just how terribly stupid Americans are. Worse yet, on this last show Jay tells us that they don’t even have to work hard to compile the funniest/dumbest moments after each outing. They only go out for about an hour, he says, they talk to a dozen or so people, and they use nine or so. That means over half the citizens of the republic are so retarded they can’t tell you which countries border on the U.S. or name any of the Founding Fathers. Oh, cry for our future! [43:29, 5 commercials]
First night of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” Meanwhile, across town at the Universal Studios lot, the finishing touches have been put on a new studio for Conan, who took over the reins from Leno the very next week. Andy Richter returns as the show announcer, Max Weinberg and the band now get to call themselves The Tonight Show Band, and Conan was in fine form for his first time hosting the legendary show that’s been around since 1954. Musical Guest was Pearl Jam. [43:31, 5 commmercials]
Schwarzenegger answers real people’s questions The member communities of CNN.com’s iReport and Digg Dialogg teamed up to interview CA Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger on May 27. In an unusual example of democracy, the Republican actor-turned-guv answers questions posed by and voted on by the Digg and iReport users. Showing a little more moxie than even the traditional press can sometimes muster, there were a few hard-charging queries, leading off with “Do you support same-sex marriage and do you think the GOP should become more gay-friendly?” Of course, there were some softies too, like “Does the term ‘Governator’ bother you?” All questions and video here [30:31 min].
BART swingers Apparently a few weeks ago somebody surreptitiously installed swings on a BART train. And thus the fun did ensue. More pics...
New Yorker cover created on an iPhone Artist Jorge Colombo painted the cover illustration using the Brushes app on his iPhone.
Beatles come to Rock Band Apparently Microsoft has been able to make inroads where Apple hasn’t, since the two remaining Beatles and the widows of the other two members joined various tech and gaming notables to announce that the Beatles are coming to Rock Band this fall. The animation sequence at the beginning is cool enough to merit watching in HD, but the rest of the long presentation isn’t probably interesting to you unless you’re into gaming. I watched the whole thing, though, and as a non-gamer I’m always impressed at the continually-improving, nearly-cinematic quality of the visuals in today’s games. In fact, if you’re really into seeing where the entertainment and social media technology is going in the next few years, there are some pretty amazing things unveiled in the last 25 minutes or so; look for Steven Spielberg’s appearance to tip you off.
“We Didn’t Start the Flame War” Warning: nsfw. Gotta hand it to the CollegeHumor folks, they nail the ridiculousness of the internets (including self-satire) in this one. [2:44 min]
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Thursday, March 05, 2009
Thursday top 5
Hudson River Plane Landing (US Airways 1549) Animation with Audio Captain Chesley Sullenberger: “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.” La Guardia Ground Control: “I’m sorry, say again Captain?” Makes me gasp and choke to watch, even though it’s just as animated reenactment. [via BoingBoing]
Clean Coal Air Freshener Ad directed by the Coen brothers.
John Stewart bids George Bush farewell
Dog, Cat, and Rat Can’t we all just get along?
Obamiconme Upload your own picture and make a Shepard Fairey-style Obama-like image. Four of the funniest are pictured here. [via Slamo]
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
Thursday Top 5+1
Yes We Did MoveOn’s pimping a commemorative “Yes We Did” poster and sticker by Shepard Fairey (of Obey Giant fame). You can get one sticker for free, although I’m pretty sure it’ll put you on MoveOn’s email list. I contributed $35 to get two posters. BTW, MoveOn’s new home page design is a leap forward, I hope they’ll extend it to the inner pages soon. [via Jason]
Posted by espd at 7:19 AM |
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Monday, September 15, 2008
Lite Brite picture featured in podcast
One of my photos is featured (very briefly) in this podcast from Deke McClelland and O’Reilly Media, Inc., titled “Spirographs on Steroids.” The video, which describes an Adobe Illustrator technique, uses a high-energy production style that cuts to lots of images very quickly, including a picture from my photoblog called “Fun with Lite Brite”. And yes, they did ask permission, and they credited me at the end.
io9 was doing an article Russian science fiction book cover artwork and must’ve seen the book cover I posted to my Flickr group Heinleinia.
The book in question (pictured here) has always been a bit of a mystery to me. It’s a Russian edition of Stranger in a Strange Land published in 2003, but because most of the text is in Russian, I can’t get much information from the title and copyright pages. I found the book for sale on eBay last year.
One of the commenters on io9’s post noted that the cover of the Heinlein book features a painting by Donato Giancola, which was a nice find. Giancola’s produced some great work in his portfolio. Though I’ve never been able to figure out why this particular piece was chosen for the Heinlein book, as it bears no resemblance to anything in the story.
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Sunday, July 20, 2008
Jerry Levitan meets the walrus
In 1969, then-14-year-old Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room and convinced the Beatle to do an interview about peace. Thirty-eight years later, Jerry and director Josh Raskin have produced an animated short film using the recording as its soundtrack, and featuring the pen work and digital illustration of artists James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina.
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Monday, June 16, 2008
Updated an old post about Alternative Press Expo
I had done the first half of this post, but hadn't completed the second half. So here it is, if you're into art, design, comics and such niftiness. The update starts about half-way down the page.
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Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Time-lapse video: Making a digital portrait of Thom Yorke
How to make bread lol! I like this comment: "Add baking to the list of typical hobbies for gay, white, disco ninjas." www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=24479
Declaration of Romantic Intent When you truly (euphemism for attraction) someone, nothing says it like a form letter. bureauofcommunication.com
iminta My pal Aaron Newton launched his new site a little over a week ago, and it's garnering some good reviews. It's a social-web aggregator allowing you to keep track of you and your friends' activity on a bunch of services like Yelp, Digg, Twitter, and YouTube, but do it all in one place. I helped Aaron a bit with some graphic advice early on. www.iminta.com
Clark and Michael I don't know how to describe these webisodes. They're just funny. You might recognize Michael Cera from Juno or "Arrested Development." You gotta start at Episode 1 though. www.clarkandmichael.com
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Thursday, February 07, 2008
Jasper Morello and the Lost Airship
Jasper Morello and the Lost Airship is the first of four shorts in an Australian animated series titled The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. The animation style is at once creepy and deeply beautiful. I'd really like to buy the DVD of the whole series, because they're so wonderful looking (for a teaser of better-quality video than YouTube offers, watch the trailer on the official website), but for some reason the DVD is not sold in the USA or Europe.
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
J.K. Rowling mentions The Tales of Beedle the Bard in the last Harry Potter book, and it later surfaced that she had hand-written and -illustrated seven copies of the 157-page book of wizarding fables.
Amazon.com purchased one of the seven copies at a Sotheby’s auction, for a whopping £1,950,000 (donated by Rowling to charity), and has now released some photos of the book and synopses/reviews of the stories contained therein.
111 nude SF women on couches A book (premiered last week at 111 Minna) by Merkley??? (sic – his name includes the ???). Note: Not exactly safe for work or small chill’n. www.threequestionmarks.com I also like his take on "photographers."
The Superest An ongoing character illustration battle between Kevin Cornell, Matthew Sutter, and occasional guest artists. www.thesuperest.com
WGA Strike: A Love Story The Writer Guild strike continues, but the writers keep writing, while the networks give you reruns and game shows. youtube.com/watch?v=EodzF_orJQY
Watch your (fo)odometer How many miles does your food travel from field to fork? Presented in an interestingly animated fashion. youtube.com/watch?v=p4RCyxgz97g
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Thursday, August 30, 2007
Thursday top 5
Greg Morgan I love this guy's collage work. If you've ever picked up one of the brochures in Starbucks while you were waiting for your mocha, you've probably seen his work too. www.lillarogers.com/artists/greg/
kin-dza-dza This is such an interesting photo, but I need one of my Russian peeps to translate the text so I can know wtf. www.panoramio.com/photo/97671
Guitar Hero 2: Rush "YYZ" on Expert "What's up, Internet?" lol! This guy's damn good on GH2, though. Now if they'd just make a Drum Hero...I'd like to see this guy try to be Neil Peart. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua3hZXfNZOE
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Trailer [HD]
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po