Stories

Weird Wicker Park

With an Urban Outfitters and a Levi’s store recently moved in and cool-coffeehouse Filter moved out, the once artist-friendly Wicker Park might seem inevitably tipping towards the sanitized yuppification of its neighbor, Lincoln Park. However there are bits of offbeat weirdness to be experienced, from the screen print vendors who set up shop on the sidewalk (literally) to the bemusing Animal Collective-esque hippyish folk band that randomly sets up on the corner of North and…

Splashtone: Online booking for bands, DJs and musicians

You can get almost everything over the internet from videos to furniture, but booking a band for your next event is not quite as easy. Sure, you can try surfing through Myspace and Google, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could just type in your zipcode and select the genre you want, click on your choice, and pay them an advance online? Splashtone is a website in beta stage that aims to make booking…

Dealing with Hostmonster CPU errors

If you have a Hostmonster account, chances are more than not you’ve run into the less-than-friendly account suspension / CPU Quota Overload gray screen of death. Figuring out the process for un-suspending it isn’t readily available on the Hostmonster knowledge base and Googling for it isn’t much help either. Don’t even bother sending in a support ticket, since it’ll take about three days to hear back from a person. Here’s the auto response you get…

Daft Punk: Daft Plagiarists?

On the heels of the announcement that Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 is scheduled to drop in November of this year comes a few interesting revelations regarding their production methods and raises some questions about the “ethics” of production. Kanye West’s new single “Stronger” features a sample from “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” slowed down and rearranged as suitable backing material, a fact that’s easily recognized by anyone who’s familar with DP’s work. But in a strange,…

Who are the most geek-chic guys and girls?

Those of us who combine geekery with personal style usually have a running list of people we admire, even if it’s not on a conscious level. In your opinion, who are the “role models” for Geek Chic? If there was a top ten list for geeky cool celebrities, who would be on it? List your top picks on the Fractalspin blog: Who are the most geek-chic girls? Who are the most geek-chic guys?

Open source Tuxes

Tux, the chubby, cuddly penguin mascot of Linux is now as open source as the software package it represents–how appropriate! If you would like a plush Tux, head over to The Free Penguin Project and download their latest “development release” of open source sewing patterns. The blog attached shows a few of the penguins made from the patterns, a few of them differently-colored. I think this would make a pretty cool Etsy project, seeing how…

Earrings made from gadgets cast in sterling silver

Here’s some great gifty stuff for geek girls, chem-bots, and engineers that features earrings like floppy disks, cell phones, and microscopes. It’s a side project of the tech jewelry line, Zelle (mine): Gnerdy Jewelry. I used Drupal to build the site, with a long list of modules like CCK, Contemplate, Captcha, and TinyMCE. The design elements may remind you of this very blog (shapes created from electronic schematic symbols.) Digg and share! read more |…

Industry Night at Lumen ft. Kate Simko & Quantazelle

Lumen is a new Chicago club that’s got an LA-from-the-future vibe, with lots of blonde wood, stainless steel white walls, plenty of couches and tables, music that’s not tinnitus-inducing, and sound-reactive LED-encrusted ceilings. Come check out audio from Kate Simko and Quantazelle (Liz Revision) at the Lumen + Snow Queen Vodka Industry Night on Tuesday the 25th of September. 9pm – 2am Lumen 839 W. Fulton Market St, Chicago IL Half price Snow Queen Vodka…

Max/ MSP lets you Keepon Dancing

A friend of mine sent me a link to the WIRED-sponsored video of this adorable, Peeps®-like dancing robot that’s miles above and beyond that swaying guitar-playing flower you got as a birthday gift in the late 1990s. Needless to say, I was both instantly charmed and impressed with Keepon’s moves and spot-on sense of rhythm, and wondered a bit about the mechanics of its internal workings.Thankfully Create Digital Music has spared me the hours of…

Miles Tilmann, Mystery Palace, Emulsion, Liz Revision

Many Boards of Canada fanboys and fangirls were disappointed with the Scottish band’s latest albums, finding them insubstantial frottages of their profound, emotionally resonant, layered-synth-heavy earlier work. Tycho‘s stellar show at Sonotheque in March proved that the legacy of early Boards can live on in the hands of contemporary artists without being flatly derivative, and this September 11th our guest of honor, Miles Tilmann, will take the reins and lead us all on a consummate…

Mandelbot: Your new paper robot friend

Here’s a paper toy robot that I designed for Fractalspin.com, Mandelbot. Just download the PDF (email address required), print it out on cardstock or heavy paper, cut him out with an X-acto knife and then glue or tape him together. He’s also featured on the back of a 5.5 x 8.5″ postcard featuring items from Fractalspin, although the gloss coating means you’d have to use super glue or a similar adhesive to get him to…

Like robots? Here's a blog you'll love.

The creators of OhGizmo! (the niche, gadget / technology / weird things blog) have spun off a blog devoted entirely to robots. Not only is robotic technology ever-innovating, more and more people have come to develop a humanoid soft spot for our cybernetic friends (just do an Etsy search for Robot and look what pops up), so the OhGizmo! people definitely have their finger on the pulse. It’s appropriately titled “BotJunkie,” and features the tagline:…