Antispin

My friend and I had a rather amazing game of Bananagrams where she was busy constructing elaborate ladder-type layouts while my word grid was doing its level best to impersonate the map of the Russian Empire. All in all a success, I’d say! Anyhow, I decided that what we needed was some dramatic macros of the whole thing.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time after I finished my accidental essay on polyamory thinking as soon after I completed that, I was walking along and more thoughts sprang to mind. Anyhow, today’s topic of choice is the use of language in effective communication in a relationship context. God, that was a mouthful. It’s simpler than it sounds though. For the purposes of disambiguation, I refer to “relationships” in all their multifarious flavours, varieties and forms, not solely polyamorous, monogamous or even romantic ones. ...

My beloved Canon 60D has been sitting with my mum for the last two weeks which has been preventing me from taking more photos, as I resolved to do recently. I got it back last night so of course I did the only thing that a sensible and mature photographer would do: take pictures of my housemate’s cleavage!  After all’s said and done, I’m very fond of my f/1.4 30mm lens and its depth of field. ...

Ah yes. Now we’re talking.. A descriptive graphic of the proliferation of language designed to describe women who like sex vs men who do and the gender divide inherent therein. Try it yourself – see how many words for each of the four categories you can think up and see what the distribution looks like for you. ![]

In sorting through my stepdad’s stuff, I came across, amongst other things, a collection of old cameras and lenses (film, naturally), in the M42 mount format. For some reason unknown to me, I hadn’t thought of the possibility of using these lenses with my 60D until a week ago. In hindsight, it was obvious, given that my friend and fellow photographer, Matt Schultz uses a SMC Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens on his 5D MK-II to great effect. ...

I’ve recently discovered this lovely new feature that SoundCloud has: sets. So, thinking “Hey, a playlist feature! Yawn…”, I idly clicked some tracks and added them to a “Set” but apparently it’s a bit more than that. It’s a ‘social playlist’, after a fashion, that you can publish to the world. Nothing new and ground-breaking, sure, but still undeniably cool. So here’s some things I mashed together into a dubstep / chillstep playlist and think are delightful and make your brain turn in fun new ways. ...

Dumb Ways to Die is by far and away one of the best videos promoting safety I’ve seen. It was created for the Melbourne Metro. The original has since amassed 170 million hits on YouTube and has spawned a bunch of spinoff clips, including a version from Cinesaurus about the Curiosity Rover. Also, there’s a motherfucking Karaoke version available on YouTube and iTunes. It’s a ridiculously chipper song about dumb ways to die. ...

Cyrille Humen and Kyle…er… something posted this video a while back and I remember being incredibly impressed with it and amused at its completely light-hearted approach to performance. Whereas many other videos that people post are serious and polished and a real “performance”, this has more of a “hey we got to playing around – check out what we did!” feel! All in all, a lovely piece of contact juggling! ...

This is my first foray into writing about polyamorous Things. In this post, I’m attempting to collate all of the wisdom I’ve collected so far – none of this should be taken as gospel. Some of it might fit you like a glove. Other bits, not so much. Feedback in either case would be awesome.  What’s happening in your life? So you’re with your partner and feel that it’s time to take your relationship to a new level of openness and trust? ...

Vihart’s videos on Youtube are an endearing mix of maths, silliness, drawing and, in this case, snakes. I’m especially fond of how unabashedly excited she is about geometry, pi, snakes, numbers and mathematical quirkery. Anyway, SNAKESNAKESNAKESNAKESNAKESNAKE

The latest instalment of Solitude’s ambient dubstep delightfulness has been out in the big wide world for a while. I’ve finally got round to listening to it and there are some real gems in here! This one, in particular, is my favourite! So’s this:

I don’t really have a preamble to this… Just watch it. It’s badass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkLM-IlwwPk

Another little mini-mix thrown together by the unforgettable (or entirely forgettable, if your brain sucks at fractals) J-One. Really sharp, relaxed and doesn’t stray from the ‘chillstep’ theme too much, like other mixes are prone to doing!

MrSuicideSheep collaborated with the great Aaron Static and between them, somehow, they cooked up a mix. Mostly, I suspect, it was Aaron. In any event, it’s a wonderful piece of aural porn. For some reason, the key that a lot of these tunes are in appeals rather a lot! This one in particular leapt out at me:

Pretty Lights’ new track, “I Know The Truth” has just the right mix of ground-shaking bass, huge drops and wonderfully suspense-filled buildups! Check this out!

A friend and fellow blogger, Villiljós, linked a disturbing post about how terrible an organisation PETA actually is. Read it here. The thing that shocked me, upon cursory examination of a fraction of their publicity is just how openly misogynistic and abusive to women it is! In all of the footage I’ve seen, women are routinely abused or are shown as looking like victims of abuse. Why is it specifically women that are portrayed as standing in for all the animals that are ‘abused’? ...

The European Union’s panel of talking heads that are responsible for Science, I guess, have knocked some rocks together, made fire and rightly deduced that there aren’t enough lady scientists in the place. Clearly, something needed to be done! Lady-scientists are important to humanity! They’ve got boobs that will improve the performance of all the boy-scientists in the Europe Joint Sciencing Facilities. Right? Anyway, the clever bods at the PR department released this gem. ...

**[Update 27-06-2012 courtesy of Ars Technica] ** The astonishingly tenacious Arizona attorney Charles Carreon, apparently not satisfied with his original filing last week, has now amended his case against Matthew Inman et al. to now include California State Attorney General Kamala Harris. Read the full story here [Update #2 27-06-2012 courtesy of Ars Technica] FunnyJunk lawyer’s wife wades into fray, calls critics “nazi scumbags” Meanwhile, husband Charles pens angry poems defending his mom. ...