• I met Matthew Reilly today.

    I’ll post up some more thoughts on this tomorrow (wait, make that later today), but it was… interesting, to say the least.

    You’ll forgive me for the unusually short and cryptic post. I’ve been playing Killing Floor, some coop survival horror game that’s free this weekend on Steam. Sadly my time with the game will run out in about 6 hours, but that’s okay. It was incredibe fun while it lasted 😀

    More tomorrow, I swear.

    Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

  • Technology, eh?

    Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

    Here’s a story about what I spent doing the night after my first exam for semester 2, 2009.

    Borderlands was was preloading on Steam with the Left 4 Dead 2 demo , Stargate Universe S01E05 was downloading in glorious 720p, and my intertubes were a little clogged. With nothing else to do (study was postponed until Monday), some NCIS (the original) was in order. Unfortunately, this didn’t satisfy my geek curiousitys as much as I wanted it to – while it was certainly enjoyable, I needed something else.

    Problem number one: on my Mac, I use a Fluid-based SSB (Single Site Browser) tied into Google Reader for my RSS feeds. The exact reasons why are probably best left to another blog post, but it works, and I’m happy. The fact that it’s Reader inside an SSB isn’t the issue, however.

    Continue Reading

  • Another one from the camera roll.

    When you think about it, the iPhone camera can take pretty good pictures sometimes. Here’s one I managed to capture one lazy Sunday evening. For those of you that don’t poke your head out that often, it’s Elizabeth Mall.

    What I like about this shot isn’t that fact that it’s blurry, but because the blur adds a sense of realism to the shot itself. If you look closely, it’s like the blur only affects the edges of the photo as well, while the centre is still in focus (relatively speaking).

    So, there you have it. The iPhone 3G camera can be decent at times – for a geek like me, it’s a shame it’s not a better macro camera. It’s also a shame I don’t have a 3GS, but that’s another story.

    This post, part of Blogtober 2009, just goes to show how damn lazy I actually am. Sleep beckons, gentlemen.

    Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

  • Production as performance.

    What I love about the approach is that it’s show­ing us a com­pli­cated, vir­tu­oso per­for­mance, but mak­ing it really clear and acces­si­ble at the same time. It’s enter­tain­ing, but it’s also an exer­cise in demystification—which of course is exactly the oppo­site objec­tive of every music video, ever. Their pur­pose has been to mys­tify, to mas­quer­ade, to mythol­o­gize in real-time.

    via Making music without a mask  Snarkmarket.

    Had a long internal battle with myself over which of their (Pomplamoose’s) songs to link – it was between September by Earth, Wind and Fire, and Single Ladies by Beyonce (ugh, which I’ve only just discovered I linked to by mistake in another post. More at the end of this post).

    As you can see from the video above, September won out – not because I don’t think their version of Single Ladies wasn’t great, because it is (on more levels than one), but because to me, September better represented what the production-as-performance genre is all about – “subdivision of the video frame, lots of gear, performance, but above all performers” – who, by all appearances, to be normal; there’s no smoke machine, nor any hi-tech special effects.

    It’s this kind of stuff that makes YouTube great. Like the Awesome Stopmotion Music (and it’s subsequent redux, coming soon to this blog), such pop-culture references, more commonly known as “memes” have absolutely exploded, and yeah. It’s great 😀

    Right, so I only just discovered that I linked wrongly to Pomplamoose’s Single Ladies cover, when I was actually supposed to link to the Bottle Bank Arcade, part of the Fun Theory Redux. I’ve since rectified this error, you can now watch the Bottle Bank Arcade on the original post. My apologies for this.

    This post part of Blogtober 2009. We’re almost there – and I’ve gotta start pumping out some serious posts, instead of just Pressing stuff from WordPress’ excellent, but making-me-a-lazy-blogger tool, the Press This bookmarklet. Ah well.

  • This.

    This, ladies and gentlemen, is where it is at.

    Somewhat similar to what was said about Borderlands a while back – “screw exams, there’s Matthew Reilly awesomeness to be had!”

    This post only somewhat part of Blogtober 2009. I can’t tell – all I know is that there’s a MR book on my desk, and I want to read it 🙂

    Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

  • Get In Touch.

    I feel silly writing a guide to sending me instant messages, but bear with me, I have reasons. If you’re going to PM me on Head-fi, MacTalk or any other forum I frequent, chatting with me via instant message (MSN, AIM, etc.) is more efficient. You can find my IM details in my forum profile.

    via Instant-messaging me (IM’ing me) – Truth is Stranger than Fiction.

    As part of my Dynamic Web Development study today, I revamped my contact page on this blog. (I am, of course, kidding. Call it procrastination, call it a distraction, call it anything you want – but it definitely wasn’t study.)

    This continued (funny how these things snowball, isn’t it?) onto me introducing a new page – elsewhere. I am elsewhere on the internets, and this “Elsewhere” page is designed to let you know exactly where. It involved a good evening’s worth of hunting down my online profiles, identities, and what-have-you, but I think it was worth it. I’m pretty much contactable in every way possible now.

    That being said, not EVERY single online profile. Off the top of my head, the Elesewhere list is missing my never-updated Tumblr, my Steam profile, my forum profiles (Mactalk, OCAU), my Youtube, Vimeo, as well as stuff that I haven’t touched in years (Ubuntu Forums, Gentoo forums).

    What prompted this mass online-identity updating and linking was a post by one of the people I follow on Twitter who had a list of all her networks on her Posterous page. I thought it was an excellent idea, so inbetween episodes of Stargate Universe, I managed to get it done.

    Maybe I’ll update my Elsewhere page to point to those eventually. And if I join even MORE social networks, I’ll add those to the list, too.

    For now – catcha round on the interwebs.

    This post part of Blogtober 2009. A post a day – and a page or two thrown in for good measure.

Benny Ling's Bling

Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.