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Playboy cushion robbery in France
not a headline you see everyday
27th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Del Toro to direct Hobbit movies
Guillermo del Toro of Pan's Labyrinth fame is set to take the helm on the latest Tolkien adaptations.
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25th Apr 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Dark Matter Located
Italian scientists might have tracked down some of that elusive dark matter
24th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hair Care
.....just came in from a dust storm.
.....beards freshly washed for Essen, Germany.
23rd Apr 2008 - 9 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Death Note
nutty new Japanese high-concept thriller, Death Note is on at the ICA
22nd Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Free the Conchords!
well, free mp3s of Business Time and Ladies Of The World - album out soon
22nd Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Martin Scorsese's Sesame Streets
thanks to j lawless for passing on this classic
21st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Massive Meltdown
Portishead are back, Martina Topley-Bird's got a solo album coming out, Oasis are getting ready to grumble again... 90s fever continues with details of this year's Meltdown, curated by Massive Attack: Grace Jones, Terry Callier, Gang Of Four, Tom Tom Club, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Gong and Horace Andy...
21st Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Open Mac
reports of Psystar's DIY mac operation coming in... not quite sure what "highly extensible" means, but could be a return to the 80s heydays of fake Apples imaginatively sold as Pineapples and Tangerines...
21st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Oxford Collapse!
Thanks to some late breaking data from chimpovich, team Chimpomatic has been mobilised for tomorrow's Brixton Windmill show by 2006 favourites Oxford Collapse. You can't argue with £5. Hope to see you down the front.
New album BITS is out on August 5th.
20th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Evil Urges
With momentum building around their upcoming album Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket are making the title track available via their website for one week from April 18th. That's until next Friday folks. Get it here. Password is urges101.
20th Apr 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Everybody's At It
BW brought home a 500mb flash drive keyring yesterday, sent through by none other than the Tenderstem broccoli company. As you can imagine, the supplied photos and press release outlining Tenderstem's "mild, distinctive flavour and a texture which is more akin to asparagus than traditional broccoli and it’s deliciously succulent" are unlikely to stay on there long, but I thought I'd pass on the good news first.
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19th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Super Friends
Stumbled across this classic-era viral this morning, from the internet glory days of late '99. Back when AOL and Ask Jeeves ruled the searchwaves, Netscape was a viable alternative and Napster was still pretty tough to get your head around. What's an mp3?
18th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Hold Steady, It's Gonna Be A Rough Ride
2006/7 favourites The Hold Steady are following in My Morning Jacket's footsteps and signing with Rough Trade for the U.K. Not resting on their laurels, they've already recorded a follow up to the Springsteen tinged Boys & Girls Of America - scheduled for release later this year.
18th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
El Rey
May 26th is the date. Tracks are:
1. Santa Ana Winds
2. Spider-Man On Hollywood
3. I Lost The Monkey
4. Soup
5. Palisades
6. The Trouble With Men
7. Model, Actress, Whatever
8. Don't Take Me Home Until I'm Drunk
9. The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend [Santa Monica And La Brea Version]
10. Boo Boo
11. Swingers
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17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Grooveshark
Check out music site Grooveshark, which offers a combination of Last FM and iTunes/iPhone like features. Not bad, with a snazzy interface - but as usual the catalogue that they actually have full-length tracks for is perhaps a little slim at the moment... but you can line up tracks to play in sequence.
17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Sub Pop +20
Sub Pop records may have been operating as the SUBTERRANEAN POP fanzine since 1979, but 1988 is the official start-date for the label so 2008 has being designated as the official 20th birthday.
The celebrations will be varied, but highlights include an fundraiser outside Seattle on July 12th & 13th, featuring bands past and present (Green River, Flight of the Conchords, Foals, Iron & Wine, Kinski, Low, Mudhoney, Pissed Jeans and more) and a series of re-releases for high profile albums from the label, starting with Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff: Deluxe Edition on My 22nd....
As noted by chimpovich, in the pre-internet days 'anything on Sub Pop' used to be a pretty solid recommendation for new music, so pull your weight and get involved.
Some Numbers:
Highest position on the Billboard 200 Albums chart #2, The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (2007)
Best-selling album 1.6 million copies, Nirvana, Bleach (1989)
Most releases by a single artist 17, Mudhoney
Number of releases through June 2008 777
Sub Pop Singles Club releases, first incarnation, 1988-1993 62
Sub Pop Singles Club releases, second incarnation, 1998-2002 47
Sub Pop Singles Club releases, third incarnation, 2008-2009 12
Singles Club members at peak of first incarnation 4,500
Grammy nominations 4
Children assigned Sub Pop Records catalog numbers 2
Percentage new releases sold by download in 2007 21
Free downloads of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” on subpop.com 11,655,300
Employees as of March 2008 27
Dogs roaming the halls of Sub Pop HQ 3
Cost in cents for 12 oz. Ranier beer in lunch room soda machine 75
Corporate charitable donations in US dollars for 2007 250,000
Highest winning online auction bid in US dollars for Nirvana “Love Buzz” single 3,451
17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fox Captcha
Following on from 71's earlier captcha malfunction, Wired has an article about how the technology is proving useless at defeating the bots. Perhaps Skynet itself became self-aware through such activity.
Anyway, skip the heavy reading and cut straight to punch line. The top candidate for an unbeatable Captcha (that's
Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart FYI) Kitten Auth, designed specifically to out-fox the bad guys.
.....a similar variation is all about cats:
17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Constant Constantines
Favourites The Constantines are back with a new album - Kensington Heights - which they have genrously made available in full over at theirspace.
16th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Google Dudes
been getting some weird google malfunction all day - like how my "human input" code is "dudes"
16th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Bubbles
As I know it's distinctly uncool to promote ads, but as an occasional filmmaker I'm looking at it from that aspect. Fallon are the Agency, Sony is the brand.
16th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
iPhone £ drop
the 8gb iPhone is down to £169 on O2 at the moment - looks like the 3G version is coming out this summer
16th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
New Videos
I thought Holy Fuck / Water Curses made a nice couplet. Check out Animal Collective's latest single Water Curses from the EP of the same name here:
And get your ears bashed in by Holy Fuck here.
15th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Anytime, anywhere, forever? You can PuchiPuchi
PuchiPuchi - for all your simulated bubble wrap needs
15th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Generation Kill
After wading through the brilliant finale to The Wire last night, the Chimp TV Squad has finally been able to have a look at HBO's spoilertastic site again - where they've got a trailer for Generation Kill - David Simon's new Gulf War mini-series. Starts in July in the US, should be picked up in the UK sometime, but no word on who's got it yet. Series 5 of The Wire should be on FX UK by July...
15th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Alvin & The Chimpmunks
personally, I'd rather see Alvin & The Chimpmunks, but this blog from the Typo Eradication Advancement League is pretty entertaining
15th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Curious George
Arch-agitator Shepherd Fairey has been commissioned to cover two of George Orwell's classics - 1984 and Animal Farm. Not sure Big Brother will be too happy about it.
14th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
What Does Your City Sound Like?
DJ Shadow's teamed up w Nokia for a competition to get you to record the sounds of your city which he'll then put together in a Shadow-style song of your city. you can win a phone or something
14th Apr 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Dust Off That Live Jacket
My Morning Jacket are on tour in June and July in support of forthcoming album Evil Urges.
JUNE
25 Wed Sheffield, UK Leadmill
26 Thu Bristol, UK Academy
27 Fri Manchester, UK Academy
29 Sun Glastonbury, UK Glastonbury Festival
JULY
01 Tue Hamburg, Germany Gruenspan
02 Wed Koln, Germany Gebaude
04 Fri Werchter, Belgium Werchter Festival
06 Sun Kent, UK The Hop Farm
08 Tue Amsterdam, The Netherlands Melkweg
09 Wed Paris, France Le Trabendo
11 Fri Nottingham, UK Rescue Rooms
13 Sun Glasgow, Scotland T In The Park Festival
15 Tue London, UK The Forum
19 Sat Benicassim, Spain Benicassim Festival
14th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fall Out
Mark E Smith's new biopic Renegade: The Lives And Tales Of Mark E Smith is being serialised in the guardian this week-ah
14th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Overheard
"Let's play the Wii and THEN watch the Matrix".
- Goths. Camden town Northern Line 22:44
13th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Ape TV
got a feeling this channel for "alpha males" isn't quite what we'd do if we'd launched Ape TV...
12th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Standing On The Edge Of The Black Hole
The Large Hadron Collider is being started up for the first time in June, so if you find your world being mysteriously sucked towards Switzerland that may well provide the explanation.
The machine is located outside Geneva at Europe's European Organization for Nuclear Research, or C.E.R.N. for short (don't ask). The machine is a particle accelerator, designed primarily to study proton-proton collision (and the occasional heavy ion), hopefully proving the existence of such things as the elusive Higgs Boson scalar elementary particle that could link up a variety of fields of thought.
Until it's fired up however, it's all theory - and some parties are worried that collisions by such previously unexplored energies could lead to disasterous consequences, with micro-black holes and stranglets seeming like potential side-effects. A stranglet could potentially convert the Earth from Ordinary Matter to the Strange Matter that typically makes up a Quark Star, and would not be cool (see Ice-Nine for more info).
C.E.R.N. themselves have gone so far as to address the potential 'issue' on their website and seem confident that an earth-obliterating scenario is unlikely - as the black holes they are generating are likely to be merely 'modest' in strength. Phew.
12th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Ready!!!
Gladiators are back on Sky next month... get ready for the genius of Oblivion, Battleaxe, Atlas, Enigma, Panther, Tempest, Tornado, Ice, Predator, Inferno, Spartan and Destroyer. more pics here
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Yahoo vs Microsoft vs AOL vs News Corp vs Google
Yahoo is still putting up a fight as they try to resist Microsoft's advances, and some unlikely partnerships have come out of the woodwork. Yahoo is testing some limited use of Google's Adsense on its search results, while Microsoft cosies up with News Corp as a possible route for upping their bid for Yahoo, in an attempt to head off growing interest from search dinosaur AOL. Tricksy.
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
AMPed
Adobe have chimed in to the ongoing media player battle, with their new (and ingeniously titled) Adobe Media Player having more in common with iPlayer than iTunes. Using Adobe's own AIR tech, it pulls together a variety of online content - including ad-supported TV shows that aren't as tightly tied to specific territories as some previous efforts - and let's you watch them on your machine (full screen too).
CSI:NY and Yo MTV Raps are some of the more mainstream shows on offer, and hopefully that'll improve as Adobe get more partners on board.
Read more at PC World.
Get it here.
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fortress Of Solitude
stressed out from ruling the world? why not check into the Universitas Leadership Sanctuary in the Nevada desert?
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
P3 minus USB
Portishead have been making a few videos to support the release of upcoming album Third. They'll be featured on the USB stick/box set mega version, but they're also online.
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Stop Making Sense: Accidental Night
Our friends at Accidental are heading south for a night at the Amersham Arms Fri // 25th April 2008 9pm - 3:30am. Herbert dj set (haven't had one of those for a while, so it should be good) plus live bits from new Accidental signings The Invisible, Eska and Micachu - great debut album coming from her, nice props from 6 Music at the moment too
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Muji To Go
if only Heathrow's T5 had one of these: a Muji To Go. this one's in Hong Kong's airport for all your inflight cardboard/filing needs
11th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Mo'Lina
Jason Molina is amongst the stars putting in an in-store performance at Rough Trade East next Saturday (19th), as part of Record Store Day. Support your (or mine in this case) local vinyl merchant and you'll be in with a chance of seeing the likes of Billy Bragg, Eugene McGuinness and a DJ set by Can's Irmin Schmidt...
10th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Who's Your Monkey
today in chimp-related news: trailer for Who's Your Monkey
10th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet