Tag Archives: inspiration

Bookmarks for January 13th

By Ed Fladung | January 13, 2010
  • Official Google Blog: A new approach to China
    must read press release from SVP at Google, about China's censoring authorities' organized and highly sophisticated hack attacks on Google's infrastructure as well as 20 other large companies, in various sectors as part of a plan to uncover information on human rights activists in China. This is no joke.

    I repeat, this is a google press release, not conjecture. [via DF]

  • THERES SPACE FOR OL DAT I SEE by @_m_i_a_ – TwitVid
    how crunk is MIA? chick can do no wrong. prepare to have your mind blown. best to watch this with large headphones on.
  • A Torturous Interview: John Yoo Does The Daily Show (VIDEO) | TPM LiveWire
    John Yoo is the legal scholar behind the total crap that Bush/Cheney used to justify torture. this guy is insane. must not miss episode of the Daily Show. In part two Yoo admits that he never met Bush, the guy who he essentially gave Imperial powers too, simply because Cheney asked him to.
  • Robert Hodgin | Portfolio
    generative computational art, you may know him as Flight404. awesome. [via surfstation]
  • Retro Music Posters by Paul Gardner
    absolutely sick design work. i love this style. you will too. something for everyone.
  • Bodhi Oser's new portfolio site
    run. don't walk. to check out Oser's new portfolio site. one word: fuckingimpressive. Oser (working under Tom Adler's Art-Direction), is responsible for almost single-handedly changing the face of how surf culture is marketed. The singular design aesthetic and definitive photo editing used for Quicksilver/Roxy and mostly all of your favorite surf books, Oser's influence in surf culture can not be underestimated or oversold.
  • Surfstation – Joe Klein
    "Over the past 30 years, Republicans fed the delusions that you can have low taxes and world-class public services, and Democrats acquiesced in it. It would be nice if we had an honest national conversation about revenues–and the sun-setting of many of the Bush tax cuts this year provides the perfect arena for it–but don't count on that taking place."

    - Joe Klein

  • James Cameron's Avatar Movie Performance Capture Featurette
    amazing behind the scenes featurette on the wholly new capture tech behind the movie. James Cameron is a genius. He really does get across the "uncanny valley". I loved Avatar.
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Bookmarks for November 30th

By Ed Fladung | December 2, 2009
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Bookmarks for November 11th

By Ed Fladung | November 11, 2009
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Bookmarks for October 6th

By Ed Fladung | October 6, 2009
  • Samoan Tsunami Surfer Survivor story
    harrowing account of a surfer in Samoa who was out surfing, when the tsunami hit.
  • Why Capitalism Fails (and why it will fail again)
    "Since the global financial system started unraveling in dramatic fashion two years ago, distinguished economists have suffered a crisis of their own. Ivy League professors who had trumpeted the dawn of a new era of stability have scrambled to explain how, exactly, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had ambushed their entire profession.Amid the hand-wringing and the self-flagellation, a few more cerebral commentators started to speak about the arrival of a “Minsky moment,” and a growing number of insiders began to warn of a coming “Minsky meltdown.”" [via Glen E Friedman]
  • The Politics of Spite – NYTimes.com
    Paul Krugman lays down some truthiness about why the current form of the Republican part: "at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America."
  • Red Lionfish Invade Caribbean
    bat shit insane!: The red lionfish, a tropical native of the Indian and Pacific oceans that probably escaped from a Florida fish tank, is showing up everywhere _ from the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola to Little Cayman. Wherever it appears, the adaptable predator corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and sucks them down in one violent gulp.
    Research teams observed one lionfish eating 20 small fish in less than 30 minutes. "This may very well become the most devastating marine invasion in history," said Mark Hixon, an Oregon State University marine ecology expert who compared lionfish to a plague of locusts. "There is probably no way to stop the invasion completely." – This article says that the infestation is limited to the eastern caribean. not true. they are catching Lionfish by the dozen in Cozumel and the Riviera Maya.
  • Yale Daily News – Yale Press drops distinctive logo
    “Branding tip: if your organization is lucky enough to have a classic Paul Rand logo, never ever fucking change it. Ever.” — Justin Ouellette [via Jen Bekman]
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Bookmarks for September 29th

By Ed Fladung | September 29, 2009
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Bookmarks for July 31st

By Ed Fladung | July 31, 2009
  • Nick Drake – River Man
    your inspiration for today. beautiful video by Tim Pope.
  • Apple: Secrecy Does Not Scale – Anil Dash
    is Apple slowly self-immolating when it screws over iphone developers with all this secrecy garbage? maven indie iphone devs are fleeing the platform in packs. is the iphone's golden years over?
  • Custom Letter — LetterCult
    holy crapola. so much juicy good typography here. loving it. inspiration for days. [via @Nybe]
  • Scientists Are Concerned About Cancer in Animals
    new nasty, virulent forms of cancer are being discovered in wild animals, that are the result of heavy carcinogenic environmental contamination. are human beings really the top of the evolutionary chain? How did cheap crap from Wal Mart become the thing we collectively care about most? [via @jimmoriarty]
  • Isolator
    my new favorite app. when you need to concentrate on something your doing in a particular application (like writing a blog post in Safari or designing something out in photoshop) just hit the command keys for this app and it hides all your other app windows and the dock and presents your current working window on a black background. hit it again to return the windows. should be built into Mac OS X.
  • Minimal Mac
    one my new favorite blogs. tons of tips on reducing the visual clutter on your desktop (both the virtual and analog ones). less is more.
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Bookmarks for July 23rd

By Ed Fladung | July 23, 2009
  • 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About | GeekDad | Wired.com
    my favorites:
    - #18: Computers and Videogaming: Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
    - #45: Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
    - #81: Han shoots first.
  • YouTube – PS22 Chorus "JOGA" by Bjork
    inspirational. the kids go full emo on Bjork's track. this is passionate teaching and engaged students. Apparently this class does several popular songs. and this one the kids learned in one day. I'm sending Luca to this school, where is it? more on their blog
  • Dicks of the World | Arkitip Intel
    I'm really digging this new board graphic by my old school homie Michael Leon. The United Nations erm, um, Johnsons
  • "We Bring Fear" | Mother Jones
    understanding Mexico's drug war: "There are two Mexicos. There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic. It does not exist. There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed. The reporter lives in this second Mexico." [via Intersections]
  • Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com
    This is why DRM is evil: Amazon intentionally deletes Kindle owner's copies of George Orwell's 1984: "This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned…. it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table." – the biggest screw up in the history of digital distribution.
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Bookmarks for July 15th

By Ed Fladung | July 16, 2009
  • Legendary Surfers: Mike Hynson
    an exhaustively awesome article about The Endless Summer's co-star Mike Hynson. great read.
  • scout & catalogue
    Bre was a creative director at a fashion retailer. when the market crashed in October or so, Bre and her man (originally from Vallarta) decided to move to Mexico, something similar to what I did. She just set up a blog, but it's got all the markings of an intimate, well-designed portrait of her experience in a new culture, in a strange land. go check it out.
  • 2 or 3 things I know
    a curated blog of beautiful things. lots of nice arty things. precious things.
  • The blue and the green | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
    wicked optical illusion: "You see embedded spirals, right, of green, pinkish-orange, and blue? Incredibly, the green and the blue spirals are the same color." – I still don't believe it.
  • Rodrigo Fuenzalida : Graphic Design & Typography
    a couple of free, nicely designed fonts from a Venezuelan graphic designer. nice stuff!
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Bookmarks for June 23rd

By Ed Fladung | June 23, 2009
  • SHANE LAVALETTE / JOURNAL
    Lavalette is a wicked photographer and independent publisher of a fine-art photography zine called Lay Flat. His blog is mostly about photography, fine art and self-publishing. a great resource and seriously inspirational.
  • YouTube – BooneOakley.com – Home Page
    BooneOakley, a relatively small new ad agency, doesn't have a website. they put their whole site on YouTube. the whole site is in video, scribbled with a dry, hilarious, well-written voice-over. awesome!
  • mañanarama: luz del mundo
    awesome post on the atrocious church architecture of scientology-esque Mexican corporatocratic religion called "Luz del Mundo" or "Light of the World".
  • Urban Outfitters LSTN
    Urban Outfitters has a pretty cool music download thingy happening on their site. it's called "LSTN" and each volume has over 20 free tracks packaged individually (versus dl'ing as a mix). Tons of great artists and there are 5 volumes already. time to find some new music…. Incidentally, why iz everyone hatin' on vowels?
  • beck :: "sunday morning" (velvet underground & nico cover)
    Beck is insane! He has a new feature on his site called "Record Club". Where he and musician friends of his including Devendra Barnhart record covers of classic songs. The records are to be very minimal in production and done in under a day from start to finish with little to no rehearsal. Awesome idea! The first song to come out of Record Club is Beck's cover of "Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground & Nico). and I gotta say it's probably my most favorite VU cover ever. Beck kills it.
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A Surfer’s Inspiration

By Ed Fladung | June 21, 2009


Part 1 soundtrack (gets really good around the 1 minute mark)


Part 2 soundtrack

A mesmerizing compilation of various surfing videos and surf-culture significant movie and tv clips for today, the longest day of the year.

Due to corporate jackassery, YouTube has disabled the audio track, most likely because it contained some unlicensed surfy music from the 50s or 60s and some zombie record corporation complained. The ironic part is that the record label owns the rights to the music and the musicians who made the music most likely sold their rights for a good roast beef sandwich and now don’t receive a dime when someone officially licenses their songs.

So in response, I’ve put together my own soundtrack for this video. As you watch both parts just open the track in a new window in your browser, press play and switch back to the video. Don’t download the track cuz that’s stealing from rich, mafioso corporate douchenozzles that will sue yer ass for 2 million dollars and they’ll win and you’ll have to pay $80,000 per song, cuz you know, “it’s not about the amount, it’s about sending a message” 1.

Above videos politely borrowed from Fin Foils + Crafts, an atrophying, dusty surf blog. I happend on to FF+C from one of my new favorite blogs Surf a Pig, following the link to FF+C’s post on The Other Women, a pignar board that is so sick I’m immediately going to my shaper to ask him to hook something similar. I love the pinched rail that goes all the way to the tail and the ‘D’ fin is stellar.

  1. I think people that use this form of rationalization for anything be it corporal punishment, jail sentences, having to stay late after school, etc.. should be drawn and quartered ↩
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Bookmarks for June 19th

By Ed Fladung | June 19, 2009
  • I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel on Vimeo
    1000 frames per second video. ultra slow motion. skip to the 2 minute mark to see the block of jello bouncing (shot at 2500 fps). so amazing. I'd love to see this camera used on a fatty Teahupoo wave from inside the barrel.
  • Al Jazeera English – Focus – Iran on the brink?
    if there is only one article you read about what's happening inside iran right now, politically, read this one. amazing! Mark Levine walks through the different power structures in the government and the potential scenarios for dealing with the protests.
  • Food, Inc. Movie Site and Trailer – Hungry For Change?
    Great trailer, for what looks to be a great movie. That most people won't want to see, because the truth hurts too much. Incidentally, they used to say "you are what you eat". and us gutter punks would chime back "if you are what you eat, then we're all dead meat!" and stick up our two fingers and make the screw face like Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten. The early 90s were a bright, young, innocent time. Now the refrain goes something like "if you are what you eat, than were all highly processed food products" or even "if you are what you eat, then we're all full of shit." that last one is more true than most people know.
  • Asia Times Online :: Divine assessment vs people power
    a huge article on the internal power struggle going on in Iran right now. This is just about election results. It's about a failed system of government and their attempts to stay in power: "As much as corporate media – from anywhere – has been rendered mostly irrelevant. Iranians are deploying an absolute non-stop, 24/7 thriller; a guerrilla communication redux, an ultra-raw version of history in the making via blogs – this is a nation of young bloggers – YouTube and Twitter, battling by all means necessary ultra-slow or shut down Internet, jammed phone lines going in and out, blocked chats, blocked SMS."
  • Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent: Query Letter Mad Lib
    This is an explicit how-to recipe on the proper way to put together a "query letter" for contacting potential literary agents. good advice, wish i found it first before sending out a bunch of queries. oops.
  • On Assignment: Covering Tehran – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com
    images from the Iran election protests taken by 28-year old Newsha Tavakolian, a Times freelanc photographer. These images have a very different feel from the ones we've been seeing from Getty and AP. much more intimate.
  • AgentQuery :: Find the Agent Who Will Find You a Publisher
    trying to find an literary agent to help you publish your blog book? this is a great resource.
  • Shane Lavalette: A Quiet Heaven in Vrindavan, India | GOOD
    beautiful photography by Shane Lavalette taken in India. very quiet photos. something not normally in unison with India. Shane is also the editor/curator of wicked zine Lay Flat.
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Bookmarks for June 18th

By Ed Fladung | June 18, 2009
  • How to Quiet Your Mind | Think Simple Now
    quick tutorial on quieting the internal chatter that ruins your peace of mind: "If you observe our problems, you will notice that most problems are rooted in the mind. The basic premise is the same: some external event happens, we choose to see only one side of the story, and then interpret the situation such that it causes some form of mental conflict, resulting in some form of emotional suffering." [via @nybe]
  • Know your type: Futura: idsgn (a design blog)
    The "Know your type" series is for all of you aspiring typography nerds that haven't reached "nerd" status quite yet. you know you love type, but you don't know why. Futura is the first in the series. You may have seen Futura from Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson movies. It was also the first and only font on the moon.
  • Fever° Red hot. Well read.
    damn! for those of you that are heavy RSS readers, this is a new hosted RSS reader application called "Fever", from Shaun Inman, creator of Mint. Fever rethinks how you group rss feeds and does away with "information glut, un-read item guilt and un-Bold elbow", basically your rss reading experience no longer has to be primarily about changing feeds from unread to read, you don't ever have to worry about that little unread count ever again. awesome idea.
  • Clay Shirky: How Cellphones, Twitter, Facebook Can Make History [VIDEO]
    must watch! – While filmed in May, his points are brought into sharp focus by recent developments in Iran (see #iranelection), as social media tools prove their power to change the world. Shirky explains: “Media is increasingly less just a source of information; it’s increasingly more a site of co-ordination, because groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something can now gather around and talk to each other as well…members of the former audience can now also be producers and not consumers.” [ via @jdotsmith]
  • Moray Eel eats Thumb | quietube
    this week on "that's fucking amazing": Diver messes with Green Moray Eel and gets thumb bitten off. Thai doctors create new thumb from toe and it works!
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Bookmarks for June 14th

By Ed Fladung | June 14, 2009
  • Stop Smiling Magazine: VISUAL RESPONSE: GEOFF McFETRIDGE
    "We asked Geoff McFetridge — founder of the Los Angeles-based design studio Champion Graphics and a member of the Director’s Bureau — to offer his impressions on the differences between living in California and his native Calgary. Included here are several bonus questions that did not originally appear in Issue 36: Expatriate"
  • Daring Fireball: Simple Inbox Archiving Script for Apple Mail
    ok, You're using Apple's Mail app and you have 2 or 3 IMAP email addresses (dot mac, gmail, maybe your own domain) and your inbox is swamped with crap and you're having problems answering emails. This Apple Script created by John Gruber helps you stay organized. You just flag the messages that you know need to be responded to and once per day you run this script. It automatically moves all read inbox mail to archive folders, effectively cleaning up your inbox for you! awesome.
  • Jordy Smith's Rodeo Flip In The Mentawais
    pretty impressive
  • :: andy gilmore :: design ::
    damn! i'm loving this guy's design work. beautiful abstract geometric stuff. awesome.
  • Border Film Project
    Border Film Project is a collaborative art project giving disposable cameras to two groups on different sides of the border: undocumented migrants crossing the desert into the United States, and American Minutemen trying to stop them. To date, we have received 73 cameras — 38 from migrants and 35 from Minutemen — with nearly 2,000 pictures in total. The pictures show the human face of immigration, and they challenge us to question our stereotypes and to see through new and personal lenses.
  • How AT&T Should Handle the Twitter iPhone Price Backlash – Advertising Age – News
    if yer not in the know, Apple introduced a new iPhone 3G [s] this past monday. Of course, when Apple releases a new product millions of people all rush out to buy it. But when you have to buy it with a contract from AT&T things get dicey. When people started seeing the how much it was going to cost them to upgrade all hell broke loose on twitter. This article explains the bru-ha and why AT&T is not doing the right thing. My two cents: AT&T and most telcos are zombie corporations just like GM and Citibank. They don't exist to serve their customers, they exist to serve the interests of their shareholders. and that's it.
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Bookmarks for June 8th

By Ed Fladung | June 8, 2009
  • Ayalon on speech: The new "axis of pragmatic forces" | Israel Policy Forum
    amazing analysis of Obama's middel east speech by Isreal's Mahjor General Ami Ayalon. a great read. – Ayalon: We are witnessing the beginning of new American diplomacy in the Middle East whereby it will no longer appear to be very, very pro-Israel, but, as was obvious in the speech, it will be more balanced. Israel has to now understand that this president really believes that there is a common denominator of moderate Arabs, Americans and Israelis. It is a new phenomenon in Middle East diplomacy because we have long believed that the US and Israel represented one side of the conflict and the Arab world and Muslims the other side. But unlike previous administrations where the world was divided by an axis of evil, particularly that of President Bush, Mr. Obama divides the world by an axis of pragmatic forces. [ via TPM]
  • Castles In L.A. | SurfingMagazine.com
    oh snaps! new movie from Taylor Steele and Dustin Humphrey: "“This is my passion project,” said Taylor Steele who was sporting a solid gash in the head from stitches he picked up during a recent trip to India. “These trips and these movies [Sipping Jetstreams and Castles in the Sky] are the films that we get to see the world in a whole new way. We take risks in making them. Travel long distances on a whim. Say yes when strangers invite us over for tea. That’s what makes them so special."
  • YouTube – Bookcast: Author Don Thompson and his new book
    Author Don Thompson in an interview with National Post talks about his book "$12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art" – if you don't catch the shark reference, about Damien Hirst. [via @longdrivesouth]
  • View Master: Diorama Photography by Lori Nix, Jonah Samson and Grace Weston
    very cheeky sex-driven diorama photography from Jonah Samson. Love the top one, of the swimming pool.
  • Seth Godin's Blog
    Amazing reading on entrepenurship, marketing yourself and generally how to navigate the choppy waters of transitioning business to the internet. Godin's blog posts are prescient, witty and full of good advice. on publishing: "Mark this down as another job for the new economy: someone who can collate, amplify and leverage the work of writers and turn it into cash. I don't believe that there's one solution, not this time. But I'm confident that around the edges and deep into niches, there's money being made."
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Bookmarks for June 6th

By Ed Fladung | June 6, 2009
  • Horticulture Jamming | GOOD
    your word for the day: "Horticulture Jamming". yes, two words, whose counting? awesome concept.
  • SO MUCH PILEUP
    wickedly awesome graphic design artifacts and inspiration from the 60s to 80s. rediculously cool stuff here. [via Le Joy]
  • Ritz and Oreo go retro: idsgn (a design blog)
    beautiful new minimal packaging. i love how everything comes around.
  • Brand New: Bing sets New Record in Horizontal Scaling
    Microsoft's new search engine "Bing" has the fucking worst logo I have ever seen. When I saw it for the first time, my eyeballs started to twitch uncontrollably and my hand inexplicably reached for the nearest steak knife and plunged it into my eye socket.
  • the secret life of ants
    amazing video (6:37) of an excavation of an ant city. i'm pretty sure one of these days some scientist will prove that ants (and probably bees as well) have a collective consciousness (hive mind).
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