Roger Ebert traces the roots of Internet culture to science fiction fanzines:

Then the university intervened, and I found myself publishing The Spectator (not precisely an original title), a weekly tabloid of arts and politics at the University of Illinois. I had become too busy for fandom, and found it wise to GAFIA (get away from it all). I have always been convinced that the culture of sf fanzines contributed heavily to the formative culture of the early Web, and generated models for web site and blogs. The very tone of the discourse is similar, and like fanzines, the Web took new word coinages, turned them into acronyms, and ran with them. Think about it. Science fiction fans in the decades before the internet were already interested in computers, big-time--first with the supercomputers of science fiction myth, and then with the earliest home-built models. Fans tended to be youngish, male, geeky, obsessed with popular culture, and compelled to circulate their ideas. In the reviews and criticism they ran, they slanted heavily toward expertise in narrow pop fields. The Star Trek phenomenon was predicted by their fascination years earlier with analysis of Captain Video, Superman, X minus One and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and there were learned discussions about how Tarzan taught himself to read.

Link (via Making Light)

Musicians who play tabletop RPGs, rejoice -- here's a detailed guide to using polyhedral dice to improve your musical skills.

The d12 is Schoenberg’s dream die. Music majors, rejoice! Now the dice gods can determine your tone row for you.

The d12 is also excellent for all you wind players who have to do scale competencies in order to pass band. Pair it with the d4 for maximum torture… I mean, practice value.

1. C
2. C#/Db
3. D
4. D#/Eb
5. E
6. F
7. F#/Gb
8. G
9. G#/Ab
10. A
11. A#/Bb
12. B

Roll for your key!

Link (Thanks, Amy!)

Scott Beale reminds us that...

Roboexotica USA, a celebration of cocktail robots, takes place from 8pm-2am this Saturday, May 10th [that'd be today] at Space, 354 5th Street in San Francisco.

I won't be there myself, but I'll look forward to the tweets, vloggage, and flickr coverage likely to pour forth like so many mecha-margaritas.

Update: Scott Beale has photo and videos. Johannes from monochrom reminds us that no mention of the event would be complete without "our friends at Shifz.org who are our Roboexotica co-organizers now for nearly a decade!"

Premiered recently in SF and NYC. Snip from description:

Faubourg Tremé is arguably the oldest black neighborhood in America, the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement in the South and the home of jazz. While the Tremé district was damaged when the levees broke, this is not another Katrina documentary. Every frame is a tribute to what African American communities have contributed even under the most hostile of conditions. It is a film of such effortless intimacy, subtle glances and authentic details that only two native New Orleanians could have made it.

Link, trailer. (thanks, Clayton James Cubitt)

monoface
feed the head
floating head (shown above)
pipe cleaner dance
ptikobj
gamegame
globe salesman
tom's tales of brilliance
green porno

previously on web zen:
ummm...oookaaay...zen
wha? zen

Link, Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Glenn Fleishman says,

Two alleged thieves were found with stolen computer and A/V gear taken from three roommates in White Plains, N.Y., because one of the victims is a Mac expert. She used the notoriously hard-to-get-working Back to My Mac feature in Leopard which allows single sign-in to .Mac for remote, secure access to all computers on which you've signed in. (It uses UPnP/NAT-PMP, wide-area Bonjour, dynamic DNS, and IPsec's IKE coupled with IPv6 tunneling. Any surprise it's wonky? It's cool when it works, though.)

The unnamed victim in question was able to use remote screen sharing to capture a picture of one alleged burglar via the machine's built-in iSight camera, and copied photos on the computer that apparently were of the other alleged thief.

One of the other roommates recognized the two alleged perps from a party at their apartment (they were friends of a friend), told the police, who tracked them down, and made the arrests, finding all the stolen gear in the process.

While I've heard of plenty of Webcams-lead-to-capture stories, this is the first story that ties in IPv6 and recovered gear that I know of.

Link.

Flickr's Joe D! has a laugh-out-loud set of 75 "refaced" US bank-notes, in which the various dead presidents are reinvented as a series of ever-funnier defacements. Link (Thanks to everyone who suggested these!)

Mashup artist Rench has released a free album of "gangstagrass" music -- hiphop mashed with bluegrass. The mixes are really good, in that, "Hey, who knew those two really different flavors worked so well together?" way that makes mashups so much fun to listen to.

Introducing block rockin' honky-tonk, New American music for the 21st century, built with love in a little studio, hand crafted, running on inspiration and imagination and duct tape, calling on the spirit of Gram Parsons and Otis Redding and KRS-ONE and Dolly Parton and Nina Simone and Willie Nelson and Missy Elliott and Johnny Cash, to write about what we feel and play what our hearts tell us, because to make it happen is reason enough, and to share it with the world is all the reason you need, because we tell the truth with music and the truth is beautiful.

Link to Gangstagrass album download, Link to information about Rench (Thanks, Brooklyn Twang!)

A St. Petersburg, FL TV station reports on a family with a 3-year-old boy who has a rare medical condition that prevents him from sleeping. His parents must watch him around the clock, taking turns to sleep during the day.

Rhett has never taken a nap or gone to sleep at night, forcing his parents to keep watch day and night.

"(My husband) has the day shift and I kind of have the afternoon shift," mother Shannon Lamb said. "We share the night shift because no one can sleep in the house when he is up anyway."

Lamb said she is working extra to pay for Rhett's large medical bills. She also said her husband, David, has given up his job to care for their child.

In Nancy Kress's novel, Beggars in Spain, there were kid genetically designed not to sleep. Link

Brett from Open Source Cinema sez, "We're asking people to take photos of themselves with a mug shot plate indicating their copyright criminality. Then we're going to animate the photos and have them appear in our movie, Basement Tapes, an open source documentary." Link (Thanks, Brett)

Landscape artist Mike Shubic can make you a humongous guitar like the 12-foot-long beaut seen here. This particular style starts at $6500 plus shipping. From his eBay listing:

This is an acoustic style guitar sculpture that can be made in any size, finish or style, and, you can actually strum it. The strings are piano wire in various sizes and the piece can be tuned (to some degree).

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

That's the headline for this BBC story, which reports: "At least one of Britain's birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food. Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars. " Link (Thanks, Coop!)

Today on Boing Boing tv, part two of Xeni's visits with John Gaeta, the Academy Award-winning Visual Effects supervisor of the Matrix trilogy -- his new film, Speed Racer, opens today in theaters around the US.

This latest Wachowski brothers project reinterprets the classic 1960s Japanese anime series of the same name.

In this second part of BBtv's conversation with Gaeta, he reveals some of the art, anime, and pop culture elements that combine to form Speed Racer's "poptimistic photo-anime" feel. The live action Speed Racer is saturated in a candy-colored palette so rich, audiences may just leave the theater with a contact sugar high.

View interactive samples of the digital building blocks behind the movie in a related online feature in VRMAG, "Speed Racer Uncovered."

And Gaeta adds a special message for Boing Boing tv viewers, who are already well accustomed to all things digital -- "For optimal viewing experience, see Speed Racer at a digital cinema or IMAX theater." He's not kidding, with a feature like this, analog projection just doesn't do the work justice.

Link to Boing Boing tv episode with discussion and downloadable video.

PREVIOUSLY: Part One of BBtv's interview with Gaeta on "Speed Racer."

(Special thanks: John Gaeta; Andy and Larry Wachowski; and David Pescovitz)

Artist Justin "Scrappers" Morrison and Studio Acorn collaborated on this incredible trophy head belt buckle. Only two of them were made. One is holding up Morrison's pants and the other is for an upcoming art show at Giant Robot New York.
Link

These gents from Houston are charged with abuse of a corpse after they confessed to digging up a grave to make a pot pipe from the skull. Kevin Wade Jones, 17, was being questioned about a vehicle burglary when he confessed to desecrating the grave a month earlier. Apparently, he and Matthew Richard Gonzales, both 17, and another juvenile dug up the skeleton of an 11-year-old boy who died almost a century ago. I'd love to hear the conversation that led to such a brilliant idea. From the Houston Chronicle:

Jones claimed he and his friends used shovels to dig up the body and removed the corpse's head with a garden tool, (Houston police officer Jim) Adkins said. Jones also revealed he and the other two boys took the severed head to the juvenile's home, where they used the skull as a "bong" to smoke marijuana, the officer said.

Link (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

A lightbulb in a firehouse in Livermore, CA, has been burning continuously since 1901.

In 1901, when the tiny bulb was first screwed into place inside a so-called hose cart house, it cast its light on a simpler era.

Back then, horse-pulled carts carried water to fires. The bulb burned day and night, hanging at eye level from a 20-foot cord. Its job: to break the darkness so firefighters responding to calls wouldn't have to fumble to light the wicks of their kerosene lanterns. Manufactured by the Shelby Electric Co. of Shelby, Ohio, the bulb soon outlived its maker, which closed in 1914.

Later, in the main firehouse, it illuminated more modern rigs as horses were replaced by gas-fed engines.

It didn't always receive kid-glove treatment.

Climbing atop their engines, firefighters returning from World War II and Korea often would give the bulb a playful swat for good luck. The next generation -- the Vietnam veterans and the younger kids -- used it as a target for Nerf basketball practice.

Then, in 1972, a local reporter checked records and interviewed old-timers to trace its history. Firefighters suddenly realized they had a treasure.

"The good-luck slaps and target practice stopped," Bramell recalls. "We figured, 'Wow, maybe we should take care of this bulb.' "

Link

(Image: Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times)

The amazing artist Elizabeth McGrath, best known for her creepy-cute faux taxidermy mutants, has a show of watercolor paintings opening tomorrow night, May 10, in Los Angeles. Liz has created more than 50 paintings for this exhibition, titled The Secret Party. It runs until June 4 at the Bill Shire Fine Arts gallery, and all of the work is also viewable online. I'd imagine that this is Liz's last show for a little while as her awesome goth-country band, Miss Derringer, is about to go on tour with Blondie! Above left, "Sailor's Delight" (watercolor on paper, 3" x 2 1/2"). Above right, "Blue Star" (watercolor on paper, 3" x 2 1/2").

Link to online gallery
Link to Elizabeth McGrath's site
Link buy Elizabeth McGrath's monograph, Everything That Creeps
Link to Miss Derringer on MySpace

Previously on BB:
• Liz McGrath, creator of creepy creatures, on BBtv Link
• Liz McGrath show in Los Angeles Link

Richard Morgan's "Steampunk: Remembering Yesterday's Tomorrow" is an excellent, long feature on the steampunk phenomenon that was commissioned by the New York Times, but ultimately cut. He's put the whole piece online anyway:

Sara Brumfield, a software designer in Austin, Tex., agrees. “The Victorian home was a haven away from all the industrial changes. So machines would be invited into your home instead of just invading your home,” she explains, before admitting, “Look, I work with software all day. So much of the technology we have is not perfect at all; it’s just good enough to work. So we should stop worshipping it.”

She keeps her home steampunk and heavy on antique styling. Her website, The Steampunk Home, recently gushed over the analog dials on Kenmore’s new PRO Series refrigerators.

Her living room features a chemical flask as a vase, a brass steamship clock (a wedding gift), a three-foot-tall 1930s-era radio she found at a garage sale, an ornate brass lamp with red glass she bought at a bazaar in Istanbul, thick red velvet curtains, dark wood flooring, a dulcimer handmade by her husband’s grandfather and distressed Victorian floorlamps with frosted bowls. For a few dollars a pound, she scrounged a salvage yard for a sack of gears that she is using to replace the knobs on her bedside tables. Her bed itself is lit with a brass swing-arm lamp she bought at a thrift store for $10. Her pride and joy is a self-made sun jar in her kitchen, a shredded $6 solar light she put in a frosted hermetic jar to use as a nightlight (it charges during the day and glows at night).

Link (Thanks, Richard!)

See also: Steampunk in the New York Times

Tom sez, "Our Stanford Creative Writing class wrote and illustrated a 224 page Graphic Novel this past quarter, and now it's up on the web. The story concerns the phenomenon of acid attacks in Cambodia, especially against women. We made the Graphic Novel in 6 weeks, with a collaboration among 17 students in creative writing, art, and design." Link (Thanks, Tom!)

Kyle Downes of the aptly named "Ultra Awesome" blog built this genius coffee table that's an enormous, working NES controller! It opens to reveal storage space for tons of game-carts . Link (via Wonderland)

The kid-centric online game Club Penguin (acquired by Disney last year) adds 500-1000 words a day to its list of forbidden chat-words in an effort to keep things clean. Wanna bet that kids come up with 2000-4000 new variant spellings a day?

Merrifield also thinks that there is an over-reliance on technology that ignores the human element, which is why they've decided to devote two-thirds of the company's staff to positions such as safety moderators and customer service.

"We know the limits of technology, even though I would put our filtering software up against anybody's, especially because of that human element - we're adding 500 to 1000 words every day to the filters, simply because of slang that works its way into the language.

"And every new pop song that comes out is inevitably going to reference something that was innocent the week before, but isn't so much now," Merrifield said.

Link (via Raph Koster)

Ethan Persoff of Comics With Problems says,

This fantastic new item comes to us from Saigon, 1966. A truly one-of-a-kind sort of surviving Batman and Boy Wonder knockoff bootleg. For you psychologists in the crowd, Robin becomes invisible and there's a submarine.

Link to 32 pg comic.

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob has spotted this handsomely crafted NES-themed Duck Hunt lamp -- now that's a conversation piece! Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

Boing Boing tv's embedded robo-combat reporter Xeni Jardin witnesses warfare inside Robogames and Combots at Bay Area Maker Faire 2008, where robots battle until death -- or at least 'til one competitor busts a sprocket.

Next, BB-gun wielding battleships go BOOM!, with the Western Warship Combat Club. Participants painstakingly re-create historic battleships on small scale, and outfit each warboat with actual artillery. He who sinks last wins. The cameraman took a pellet or two in the pants, but the goofy safety goggles kept all eyes intact.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.

If you dig the robots, you may enjoy the upcoming Robogames. The world's largest robot show takes place Fri, June 13th through Sun, June 15 in San Francisco. Link to tickets.

Instructables has just posted its latest installment in its collection of HOWTOs inspired by my new novel Little Brother, a young adult book about hacker kids who use technology to win back their civil liberties from the Department of Homeland Security.

This week, it's instructions for building a simple device that will let you spot hidden "pinhole" video cameras:

With one hand, hold up the toilet paper tube to your eye. With your other hand, hold up the flashlight at about eye level and point it away from you. With one eye, look through the tube and scan the room. If there are any small points of light bouncing back, inspect it further. It might be a camera.

Link, Link to feed of Little Brother Instructables

Glenn sez,

I was just alerted that the House of Reps has passed HR 4279, with the lovely name, PRO-IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008). Like the doublespeak PATRIOT Act and Peacekeeper missiles, PRO-IP puts local law enforcement in a position to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. Which means that instead of the RIAA simply trying to collect fines, they can also incite local authorities to collect all the computers and related gear that was used to pirate.

This isn't a judgment on my part as to whether piracy is good or bad (I think copyright deserves to be protected through reasonable methods), but I am always horrified when civil enforcement morphs into criminal enforcement. Conservatives and liberals should be up in arms alike that local prosecutors and/or police could intervene as they desire in essentially a private affair arranged by the RIAA, and permanently seize thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in private property in addition to any civil penalties.

If this bill is passed in its present form by the Senate and signed, that means there's no more pro forma RIAA lawsuit payoffs, because if you wind up settling with the RIAA, you could still lose all your stuff in addition to any fee you paid them.

This is particularly irksome in light of the MSN Music shutdown, about which the EFF has written a strong and powerful letter. It is increasingly likely a normal person could have purchased music legally from an online site, burned it to an ordinary audio CD, and in the right set of circumstances be branded a pirate because the original "granting" authority no longer exists to prove that the consumer was a legitimate purchasers.

The more the law is constructed to sweep in folks who are absolutely observant of it, the more we need broader protections.

PDF Link (Thanks, Glenn!)

As part of Manchester's Futuresonic 2008 conference, you can have your old CDs and DVDs "overwritten" with a vintage record cutter and converted to a 45RPM record:

Take part in a social music sharing event with a difference - in CD-Recycled 45rpm Aleks Kolkowski uses his vintage record cutter to 'overwrite' existing data and cut grooves on CDs/DVDs so they can be played on a turntable. Bring unwanted CDs/DVDs and a sound file and receive a recycled disc in return.

Link (via Gizmodo)

WillS sez, "The Get Out Clause, an unsigned Manchester band who could not afford a camera crew for their video, 'performed' in front of a load of CCTV cameras, requested the footage from the camera operators under the Freedom of Information Act Data Protection Act and then stitched the results together for their music video." Link (Thanks, WillS!)

Alex from WorldChanging sez, "We weren't satisfied with the bogus "green" graduation gifts being hawked out there, so we decided to create the ultimate one. For a gift of $6,000, we'll offset the climate emissions of your favorite high school grad's whole childhood, giving them a carbon clean slate. It's only $7,500 for a college graduate. Expensive? No, discounted. The point is our impacts are much to big to change with some hemp sandals or a solar backpack, and it's time to get real." Link (Thanks, Alex!)

Glyn sez, "Mazz has been posting knitting patterns to help other people re-create characters from the cult series using only two sticks and ball of wool. Impressive? The BBC, producers of the series, didn't think so. They sent Mazz a letter, which states:"

We note that you are supplying DR WHO items, and using trade marks and copyright owned by BBC. You have not been given permission to use the DR WHO brand and we ask that you remove from your site any designs connected with DR WHO. Please reply acknowledging receipt of this email, and confirm that you will remove the DR WHO items as requested."

Link (Thanks, Glyn!)

You know how all the record labels have been dropping their requirements for DRM on their music, opening up more and more venues for DRM-free music? Well, according to David Hughes, head of RIAA technology, that's just a temporary condition. From now on, we're going to increasingly rent our music with subscription services that will use DRM to take it away from us if we stop subscribing. Hughes says that that's the only possible way to run a subscription service -- but of course, Magnatunes has a DRM-free subscription service, and I still have all those issues of Asimov's they sent me when I had a subscription, even though I let the subscription lapse.

The RIAA believes in "intellectual property," which is a fancy way of saying: they believe that they get to own property, and you have to rent it. The bits on your hard-drive belong to them, and that means you have to install DRM that lets them control your PC so that you don't do bad things with their bits. In the information age, "property" is the exclusive preserve of giant companies that can afford to register copyrights and sue to defend them, while the rest of us get to sharecrop all our embodiments of their property, from furniture to t-shirts to music to games to cars to PCs.

Hughes believes that per-track purchases are going the way of the dodo in favor of these other models, and that's why DRM will have a resurgence. "I think there is going to be a shift," he said. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services and they will eventually mean the return of DRM." Hughes did acknowledge that users would rather live in a world where DRM stayed out of their way by saying that as long as they get to use files how they want, users don't care about DRM.

The problem with DRM is that users can't use the files how they want, which is why they do care. And we're miles away from the kind of magical solution solution envisioned by the Hughes that would create the perfect, unnoticeable DRM scheme. Others on the panel realize this. Digimarc Corp. director of business development Rajan Samtani pointed out that there are too many ways for the "kids" to get around DRM and that it's time to "throw in the towel."

Link

This video, made in 2003, was produced to promote Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 by Patrick Rosencrantz. The video has interviews with Gilbert Shelton, R. Crumb, Rick Griffin, Spain Rodriguez, Robert Williams and Justin Green. (I reviewed the hardback edition in 2003 for the LA Weekly) Fantagraphics has just released a revised and expanded paperback edition. Link

Mike Fontanelli wrote a great introduction to cartoon great and unrepentant hippy hater Al Capp and his Dick Tracy parody, Fearless Fosdick. The post includes the first 20 pages (scanned in high res) of the first Fearless Fosdick story, "The Poisoned Bean Case."

"The Poisoned Bean Case" is, simply put, one of Capp's masterpieces. It seems to be a special favorite with fans too, both for its astronomical body count and its sheer outrageousness. Believe it or not, this blood-drenched parody ran in family newspapers in the fifties, in Eisenhower's America, on Sundays, no less!

In the following brilliantly demented pages, no one is spared Capp's merciless needle. From the venality of the justice system to the crookedness of the media; from the corruption of big business to the fickleness and stupidity of a complacent populace. The diabolical plot, which concerns product tampering, presages the 1982 Tylenol case by some 30 years.

As a cautionary note to readers encountering this story for the first time: you are hereby warned. It's impossible not to get swept up in the maelstrom of fury that's about to be unleashed. "The Poisoned Bean Case" doesn't so much unfold, as simply detonate! For comics fans who like their irony dark, raw and relentless- we proudly present Al Capp at or near the peak of his powers...

Link