Pursuitist did a nice feature on my Zelle 1337 line.

We’re a bit taken with Liz McLean Knight’s Zelle Jewelry. It’s a mixture of all things beautiful, techie and geeky — and highly original. That integration between technology and fashion is truly an embodiment of Liz and her Zelle creations. The jewelry is hand crafted in Chicago — watch the vid above to see the wine intoxicating process

Liz McLean Knight’s Zelle Jewelry

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Friend of the Site Liz McLean Knight aka Liz Revision aka Quantazelle of subVariant has put together a special, exclusive mix for CDM of 117-119 bpm musical goodness, excavated from the “_blippy” folder of sketches on her USB drive. Matt Moldover, who has been working on his CD-as-electronic-instrument album, lent his laptop. (Watch him assembling CDs in the video after the break.)

It’s all in celebration of a Halloweeen party Saturday night in Chicago, headlined by Josh Davis (BitShifter). Party ringleader Liz joins Josh on behalf of subVariant to represent the IDM-glitch-minimal-tech-house side of things, and Mr. Automatic (Front 312) and Onefiftyone (Chicago Workshop) will be joining in. If you’re in Chicago, this looks like the place to spend your Saturday. If, like me, you’re not, well, we have some music and videos for you to bring the party home.

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A few years back I modeled for iGo car sharing. If you’re not familiar, iGo is a non-profit car-sharing service, providing cars you rent on a half-hourly basis across the city. Gas & insurance is included, and there are lots of cars in the area. They were trying to let DJs and musicians know that cars are free from midnight until 6am, so it would be like there’s a DJ-discount, ha!

Anyway, so the above photo is the original flier with a closeup of my head. Decent design, but then a few years later they decided to change the layout, as shown below. Why, you ask? I think I might have figured it out…

Well they put some grass in there, which is a bit odd, but I think I know the real reason. You see, they also re-designed the back. Here’s the old version below:

And here’s the new version:

Hmm…why is that car hovering above that grassy field? Now THAT’s pretty strange…I wonder why they did that? Well if you look at the front of the flyer and hold it up to the light, you see this:

Yep.

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LOLkid. Also: Lawlkid. LOLkids are like Scene Kids except add 100 IQ points and subtract emo. (LOLkids=($humanIQ+100)-$emoFactor;).

LOLkids heart the intertronz and nerdery and are all about zar lawlz.

1. Is ok to LOL at yrself. In other words, don’t take yourself too seriously. This involves having a formidable degree of self confidence and not taking things personally. However, don’t overdo it and proclaim how awesome you are at every opportunity (like tweeting about your awesomeness) since others will get tired of you quickly.

I mean, look at this guy on 4chan. He rules. He actually put a shoe on his head. And everyone LOLd. This is the way to roll. [Frak I can't find the jpg.] Nvrmd.

2. Noe flaemz. “No flames.” Reference #1: LOLkids don’t take things personally, so they don’t find the need to start or partake in flame wars.

4. Moar internets. Having multiple accounts on various social networking platforms is awesome. It’s even better when APIs are introduced that allow streamlined account linkage or similar, like what Facebook and the Google and Digg toolbars have done (yay!). Also, the more beta a site is, the better, since it adds to your credibility (leetness). The more obscure and awesome the online app or platform is the better (Google apps that are in beta don’t count though, since even Gmail is still in beta. Feh). Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Buzznet kinda rule, but pr0n (pornography sites) are weak–LOLkids are too smart to have to resort to that to get attention. Sides, if you’re still in the teens it’s prolly illegal NEways.

5. Electronic music is ze way 2 plai. Let’s think about this for a minute. If you were a nerdy superstar do you think you would be wooh-ing at some emo folk dude sitting on a chair crying on his *analog* guitar? The answer–so you won’t get sidetracked by philosophic inquiry–is a resounding “NO.” LOLkids need their heads blown wide open by weirdo sounds that no frakking guitar or drum kit could ever dream of. Aphex Twin, Autechre and Squarepusher are pretty much the holy trinity of nerdtronica. Venetian Snares pulls a close fourth but he’s all aggro and weird and that’s kinda buzzkill sometimes. LOLkids like LOLs and happy so basically anything that sounds like a spaceship made it with a pretty melody (ala Close Encounters) will prolly fly. Off the top of my head, Lusine, Matthew Dear, Apparat, Bola and Kettel are main players. More transitional (as in accessible) peeps are The Presets, Pnau, Franz Ferdinand, Junior Boys and Orchestra of Bubbles. And if you want goofy and pretty go check out my stuff as Quantazelle (shameless plug for the lulz).

6. Go go gadget-awesome. Gadgets rule. But they have to be cutting-edge gadgets that add to your credibility in that they serve a wide variety of useful functions and often require a certain degree of persistence and knowledge to make them even more useful. Any Linux distro (Ubuntu / Fedora / Debian), Android G1 / rooted cellphone or OLPC / Kbuntu running on a Speak-N-Spell automatically adds cred. Off the shelf gadgets with a minimal degree of hackitude and a high degree of hype are lame (I virtually call you out, iPhone. Um, no copy-and-paste? WTF).

7. You don’t pay for shizznattle. You herd me. Why drop $25 bux a year on Flickr when you can just upload photos to a server (which better be your own PC on a T1 lol) and run Gallery2. Why pay for some bloated, wanked out email list service when there’s PHPList? I hope you’re starting to get the picture. Why dish out $20+ for a movie at the theater when there’s–ok you should get it by now.

Also, yes, I said PC. PS: This thing rules: Bumptop

8. A srsly sweet moniker lawl. You are going to need an account login name that rules as well. Mine is “Quantazelle” which you can’t find in the dictionary but still sounds like a superhero. It’s also my music production name (and making music or creating things in any other media adds leetpoints (credibility)). I wrote about choosing a music project name here with some links to online name generators that might be useful: Getting Publicity: Start With a Good Name for Your Project. Non-dictionary names are way better since a Google search will automatically put you at #1. Get to it, son.

9. Speak ruleage. LOLkid slang reflects one’s perpetual and contemporary internet presence. It borrows heavily from leetspeak (adding -age or -x0r to a noun or verb in place of the adjective form), with references to LOLcat grammar and forumslang (4chan.com / somethingaweful.com). For instance, “sauce”= source, “lawl”=laugh out loud, vocalizing common internet acronyms (“dubya tee eff?” for WTF), etc), and directly utilizing programming syntax ($omgWtf=func(self==”over_this_thread”);). The more clever you are with conveying your message to other humans in a programming language, the more leet points, frill (or “for real” as teh normalz sez). Also, replacing “-y” with “eh” implies a certain softhearted acceptance, as in “This kitteh is just too snuggles!”

10. Use profanity wisely If your profanity can reference sci-fi in any sort, we are in business. For example, vocalizing “frack, Frack, FRACK” when one has accidentally transformed one’s grilled cheese sandwich to a charcoal briquette when one was typing an involved blog post instead of watching the stove is perfectly acceptable. And if it directly relates to realtime IRL, more pwnage to you (and yes, I really did just briquette my grilled cheese and I’m not lovin’ it. Reboot foodage brb.).

11. Spell smartz. Yeh, leet spelling zar kinda ness. So this means substituing “-oa-” for “-o- (long o, ie “poast” instead of post), “eh” instead of “-y”, abbreviating words to their necessary and essential characteristics (ie: “ness,” && “sench” for necessary and essential), using metonomy frequently (“I has to puter 4 wrkz bbiab”), and inventing completely new words that get their meaning from context. One’s cred gets points when one can get other humans to use said neologisms (ie: “gURLs / guise”).A word of warning–don’t overdo it or you’ll end up alienating people (altho aliens kinda rulex0r). Use discretion.

12. Newb werds == new_gangtaAs in“Yea boi, cruisin’ tha tronz.” Using “noob words” ironically–as in referring to the internet as a “series of tubes” “asking Google,” or referring to the protocol of the series of standards within which the Internet is made possible as “the internets,” is kinda leet if played correctly. Again, it is better used for emphasis than as a dialect in itself. Be very careful with this, and its associated irony or you will be called out on the tubes forthright.

13. Adding .TLDs for emphasis or clarification.Adding .com, .net or .org to a statement can either emphasize the statement’s importance, clarify the context, or add lulz. For instance, “inacarwithtoomanyhumans.net,” “usuallyimtheonethatinitiatesthebreakup.org,” and “collectioncompanieswontstopcallingme.com.” See “Liz Revision” for that little gem (et c’est moi, another spam, sorry).

14. All up in the tronz You’ve got to stay ahead of all the memes currently in play. Here’s a lil cheat-sheet for you: Internet Memes Timeline. So, in other words, a replay of Star Wars Kid in this day and age will get you nothing but ignores and rolls-eyes and banz. The best places to stay ahead of the meme-curve are somethingaweful.com and 4chan.net. And other things that I am too leet to disclose to newbs. ::lawl::

15. Pirate Talk Prolly cause “Talk Like a Pirate Day” gained momentum on the internets, and since people who spend a lot of time on the tronz are savvy about acquiring things without paying for them, it is necessary for one to be fluent in pirate should the need arise (or just in general). Yarr, I be one-to-one seeding tharse blimey torrents, matey!

16. Random Foreign Words. Using foreign words sparingly emphasizes one’s global perceptiveness that has been cultivated through international forums (usu. revolving around a shared interest) and multicultural acceptance of others via chat programs. For instance “Cheers” instead of “Thanks” or “flat” instead of “apartment” reinforce this country-independent platform astuteness.

17. Cute pets. The whole LOLcats thing was enabled by pet-lovers (and involve mostleh cats). I mean, if you work at home without roommates there is a human need to connect w/ something that hearts you and doesn’t care about your post-count or forum rank. So please feel free to post pix of yr animals being silleh, and add captions to increase LOLfactor pls lol thx.

18. Accessorize yerself, scallywag! We has to pimps us with IRL (in real life) stuffs ftw (for the win). Best places frill == http://www.fractalspin.com (geek boutique with awesome nerdy for personal adornment), http://www.shanalogic.com (kewlz, more of ze same), http://www.threadless.com (web 2.0+tshirt design==win). But ThinkGeek is for newbs tho lol. LOL. You herd me.

19. Steer clear of Scene, by all means. I mean pls. That “scene” is lametronica and !clue (clueless). It’s like “Let’s be Emo but pretend we’re anime so we don’t get made fun of.” My friend called it “we’re old enough to get into a bar but lame enough that no one there cares.” Haha–whatever. It’s so played. FYI: LOLkids are high-IQ, rabidly individualistic, doers and hackers, and so over everything that’s overplayed and yeah.

20. You must win at 4chan. And by win, I mean the game, which you just lost.

21. Why not start up your own -chan? That’s leet.

22. Stay above it all and remember the lulz to be had with the game. Don’t take it seriously or personally, and remember that if you’ve gotten this far you’re awesome. Revel in it and don’t be afraid to be who you are. I hope you’re getting some shopping done too. ;-)

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New City did a great feature on the subVariant relaunch party with Insideout called "Spin Control: Coasting Once Again". It’s also the #1 "Show to See Now."

From the article:

In 2008, Liz’s Ramp Chicago had a successful run of monthly techno events in the basement of Debonair Social Club. She decided that resurrecting the subVariant label would provide more opportunities to produce events with an interactive twist. She says, “I did a lot of searching to find alternative venues…to get a bigger space that would bring in more people, in order to have the caliber of talent I’m interested in bringing.” For its label re-launch, subVariant will host Berlin-based producer and DJ InsideOut at Vision Nightclub. The NYC ex-pat and co-owner of minimal techno label Clink Recordings will headline with local DJs Hernan Sanchez, Gianna Hardt and McLean-Knight (as Liz Revision) supporting.

Click on the images to view larger versions.

See you tonight!

-Liz

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No, this isn’t some sort of hippie-dippy Earth Dance PLUR for peace movement that’s convinced it can save the world by hoping *really* hard… it’s a way to power a nightclub by harnessing the power of dancers. The nonprofit Club4Climate is behind the concept, with a fictional Dr. Earth as its spokesman who “wants you to be environmentally aware, but he sees no reason why environmental awareness and hedonism shouldn’t go hand in hand.” Fair enough.

The dancefloor concept as illustrated above is pretty clever–something that healthclubs should consider implementing as well to keep down overhead and be affordable for more fat Americans people. But they don’t stop with the dancefloor:

…No entry until you sign a pledge promising to work towards stopping climate change. Then free entry to those who can prove they got there by foot, bike or public transport. Once inside, organic drinks will be served in polycarbon cups and there will be recycled water in the lavatories.

Combine the whole thing with a bio-feedback DJ algorithm and you’ve got a sustainable club of the future. Or something.

Green Nightclubs Harness Sustainable Power of Dance

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I’m featured on the cover of the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye today–it’s a free magazine for a feature about geek girls, and especially those in Chicago.

“Geek Chic: New generation of women embracing inner geek” [via the RedEye]

If dissassembling computers is geeky and making jewelry is girly, then Liz McLean Knight has found geek-girl nirvana. From her Wicker Park office, Knight, 30, runs a line of accessories make from computer components and sells the “fashionably-geek hipster gear” on a Web site she created, fractalspin.com.

There you’ll find necklaces made from capacitors. Handbags made of diskettes. Cufflinks made from microcontrollers. Woot! Those wrist cuffs made of MIDI cable are super neat!

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