Taylor Swift

One of the late breaking freestyle hits and one of the best.

Many “old iron” stories here. Back in the day, *real* computers blew up, shot out sparks and spewed smoke, and could be fixed with a good whack in the right spot. Not like today, when you can shut down entire cities from the comfort of your living room with a simple firmware security hole.

Meta-nostalgia is when you find one of your own nostalgiac postings in someone else’s nostalgia.

We’re always happy to run into Narumi. She’s a regular around the streets of Harajuku and she works at the popular Spinns Harajuku.

In addition to her blonde braids with lilac tips, her look includes a resale sukajan jacket over a resale mandarin collar shirt, a sheer skirt from over Topshop yin-yang print pants, and tall platform sandals from the Japanese brand K3 (worn with socks). Accessories include hair ribbons, a ring on a chain necklace, and a Fjallraven Kanken backpack from Spinns.

For more info and pictures, find Narumi on Twitter where she’s active as MeguroNarumi.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

“The 90s and the economic depression interest me. Backcombed hair looks good.”

8 May 2014, Telakkakatu

Japanese fashion brand Vive Vagina is best known for their trademark vagina-print tights, which are popular with many young women in Tokyo’s street fashion scene. The brand was launched in 2011 by well-known Japanese model si oux. The first collection of tights became an immediate sensation with Japanese fashion bloggers and others in social media. Harajuku fashion icon Hirari Ikeda is a longtime fan of the brand, and was the featured model for the 2012 Vive Vagina accessories collection.

Taking a step beyond tights and accessories, Vive Vagina is launching their debut fashion collection in Autumn/Winter 2014.

The theme of the Vive Vagina 2014 A/W collection is “Blue Willow” and inspiration is drawn from patterns found in traditional Chinese ceramics. The graphics used in the collection are by the Japanese artist Phazee, best known for creating album art for Japanese musicians including m-flo and OKAMOTO’S.

The collection features mostly dresses and tops, with a number of the dresses showing traditional Chinese influences going beyond the “Blue Willow” graphics. The designer’s background as a Japanese street fashion icon are also evident in many pieces in the collection. Check out the Vive Vagina pieces below and watch for the collection to appear in stores – and on the street – in Japan later this year.

Click on any of the Vive Vagina images to enlarge them.
 

Vive Vagina Brand Concept – Taboos
Things that bring happiness in our daily lives that are made taboo under cultural norms which regulate the lives of individuals and groups. Such as the notions of what should not be done and what should be done. By appealing to these taboo aspects of pleasure which one is inhibited from, the sense of repression is awakened.

External Links:

• Official Brand Website
• si oux on Twitter

Wow, have you got a full plate tonight. As part of the multi-faceted art/media explosion that is Together Boston, Inman Square’s always bumpin’ Lilypad is bringing an unforgettable evening of local psychedelic rock and pop of epic proportions. Whetting your appetite is CARLISLE SOUND, the enigmatic psych-pop outfit featuring members of Major Stars. DOUG TUTTLE, fresh off of a tour supporting his new album (out NOW), will surely blow your mind in some fashion with his kaleidoscopic pop majesty. Indie pop legends LILYS –currently based in Boston– will delight and mystify with their imaginative pop excursions. Scene vets MAJOR STARS will pummel you with one white-hot fuzz riff after another until you’re finally satiated. GET PSYCHED.

9 pm // All Ages // $10

The post MAJOR STARS, LILYS, DOUG TUTTLE, CARLISLE SOUND @ LILYPAD appeared first on The Boston Hassle.

Support this week's full-text RSS feed by buying Playdown Pandemonium: A Gil Thorp Basketball Collection

Enjoy this collection of Gil Thorp basketball storylines from the days when Gil's head was impossibly square and Milford actually won in the playoffs, sometimes. It's pandemonium, probably!

(What's the deal with these links? Click here for info.)

***

Hagar the Horrible, 5/10/14

Hmm, seems like there’s been a shift since the last time I wondered whether Hagar and his clan have converted to Christianity! Clearly he’s grudgingly accepted the new faith from the south; while he continues his people’s traditional economic activities (pillage, theft, murder, enslavement), he now has to grapple with the belief that his soul’s fate after death will be determined by where he falls on some abstract scale of virtue. If he still maintained belief in the old gods, he’d know that after death in battle he’d be whisked away to Valhalla, where he would feast with the souls of history’s other great warriors.

Momma, 5/10/14

Isn’t this a cute scene! Francis leans against a bush (?) on Thomas and Tina’s (?) lawn, while Thomas, clad in pajamas (I guess?), stands sits kneels (?) by the window, hanging out to talk to his brother, eager (for some reason?) to hear every detail of the argument Francis had with their mother, which Francis relays for hours until Thomas dozes off. A true demonstration of brotherly love, and also baffling art-insanity.

Mark Trail 5/10/14

BREAKING: NEXT WEEK TO FEATURE BEAR FIGHT IN MARK TRAIL, STAY TUNED TO MARK TRAIL FOR RED HOT BEAR VS. BEAR ACTION

This post, "OK, fine, technically he might go to Fólkvangr instead", originally appeared on The Comics Curmudgeon, which is the best blog on the Internet.

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Check out “Wandering through Taroko Gorge,” a participatory, audio-enabled remix.

As James T. Burling stated on the “projects” page of MAD THEORY:

In this combination of presentation and poetry reading, I’ll present a remix of Nick Monfort’s javascript poetry generator, “Taroko Gorge.” My remix added a musical component using a computers oscilloscope function, and more importantly allows participant-observers to type in answers to prompts which are then added to the poem in real-time. The poem will be available throughout the day, gradually adding all inputs to its total sum. I’ll discuss the process of decoding html and javascript as a non-coder, describe some of my theories on participatory performance using computer interfaces, and raise questions about agency in performance and how a digital artifact can function as a poetic event.

A muffled cavernous melody opens the first seconds of “It’s Probably Not Your Fault,” appearing from nothing and gradually revealing itself as the song bursts open, spearheaded by guitarist Dan Parlin’s urgent cries. The nervous, desperate emotion of the verses gives way to the gorgeous release of the chorus. A haunting female voice (Deborah Warfield of Swirlies) joins guitarist Dan Parlin’s by the last movement of the song, which takes several unexpected turns into the dissonant before it ends. The song sets us up for more moments with the same mysterious and jarring qualities that come to define Soccer Mom, released just last week via 100m Records. Soccer Mom have been making cathartic, shoegaze-inflected emotive indie rock since they released their impressive debut 7″ in 2010, followed by 2011′s You Are Not Going to Heaven EP and 2012′s digital single Brides/Canoe, carefully honing their craft little by little. Their self-titled debut LP is a representation of their tireless commitment to innovation and emotion within the confines of a Sonic Youth-y school of rock, and it shines as some of the most thoughtful music coming out of Boston as of late.

“Orejas” contains an infectious guitar lead that rides drummer Justin Kehoe’s bouncy, stuttering rhythm in an uplifting harmony of forms. Guitarist William Scales makes his first tentative appearance as vocalist with a hollowed out, echo-y effect that compliments the dreamy calm of the verses. The verses themselves are punctuated by Kehoe’s nuanced and thoughtful stops and starts, and throughout the record the band seems to constantly be on edge for something to change. There is a world of detail within Soccer Mom and a steadfast intention to challenge and soothe in equal measure. “No One Left” chooses the latter approach in a truly blissful send-up to their shoegaze influences, rolling along in a hypnotic guitar haze, Parlin’s vocals soft and comforting. The tranquil stretch is notable for its earnest simplicity and singular aim. Bassist Danielle Deveau occupies an almost subliminal influence over the busy noise-making, fitting into a pocket similar to Tina Helms of Boston legends Helms, quietly shaping the shifting movements of the song with simple but effective basslines.

The mood of “Dry Mind” is ominous but strangely comforting, perhaps due to Scales’ understated sing-talk offering an eerie calm to the dreamy anxiety of the song. It eventually drifts into a mesmerizing drone midway, shaken up by Kehoe’s restless punctuations. “Hideaway Sands” contains a majestic instrumental section that traverses an almost cinematic scope of emotion, alternating between enigmatic curiosity and razor-sharp violence, and by the end the song itself dramatically slows down and hushes little by little, as if being smothered. Parlin returns on vocals with “Sundown Syndrome,” a song that jumps between a pillowy-light lead melody and dives into more dark and dreamy territory as it goes, highlighted by some particularly beautiful call-and-responses and harmonies courtesy of Warfield. As with several of the tracks on Soccer Mom, the band effortlessly ratchets up the emotion and volume, and just as quickly falls back into a more sedated attack, leaving one mystified in the wake if they weren’t paying enough attention to the changes. Soccer Mom, for better or worse, require one to always be alert, and I usually think of their live shows as ‘workouts’ in the best way possible. When they let you relax a bit and get lost in their soundscapes, it’s like a comforting hug and a whisper in your ear that it’s going to be just fine. “7.15″ retracts into an almost mournful introspection, and when it does climax, it’s decidedly muted and lilting. The effected intro of “Open Heart Surgery” features a backwards guitar and a muffled percussive shuffling, and the combination of the title and the instrumentation immediately create a queasy, nervous vibe that only progresses as the song unfolds. Kehoe’s shuffling snare hits are particularly effective over the droney guitars, and eventually the rhythm levels out to a mid-tempo glide, complimented by walls of warm synths. The section that follows gives us a wave of bliss to rest in following the thick air of dread we had been immersed in only minutes before. The record ends on this warm, dreamy note; a peaceful end to the rollercoaster ride of its sprawling compositions.

Soccer Mom is truly a culmination of what this clearly talented group of people have been aiming for since their inception, namely to craft intelligent, gripping, emotional music that speaks to both the mind and heart. Throughout the record, they adequately shake the listener up and just as quickly comfort them — only to throw them back into an emotional storm of guitars and rapid-fire rhythms. Their approach is a reflection of life, an expression of all of the tragedy that lurks around every corner, the pain of reality’s grip, and the blinding ecstasy of releasing oneself to get lost in a sea of sound. Sound is what Soccer Mom revel in, constantly switching up rhythms and textures, never satisfied with hanging on one idea too long; the hallmark of lifelong artists. Life/art is an exploration, and it’s rarely an easy ride. Soccer Mom brilliantly take you along for the ride, whether or not you’re ready for them.

The post SOCCER MOM – S/T appeared first on The Boston Hassle.

Read the full article at: Install NPM from Command Line

I was trying to update my version of NPM using NPM but long story short, a permissions issue allowed NPM to be removed but not re-installed, and thus I was hosed — NPM was nowhere to be found on “Walshbook Pro.”  Eeeek.  Well, you can install NPM via command line with this command:

curl https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Life without NPM is no life worth living at all.  AT ALL!  Keep this handy in case you do something stupid like me!

Ryu is a well known personality in the Tokyo street fashion scene. He also works at the world famous Candy boutique in Shibuya.

Ryu is wearing a KTZ “Poison” mesh top over a Raf Simons hoodie, vintage ripped jeans, and Dr. Martens boots. His camo backpack is by Verbal’s brand Ambush Design.

Ryu told us that Candy is his favorite shop and he listens to Hip Hop music. Find Ryu on Twitter or Instagram for more information on his life.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Yama is a staffer at the famous Harajuku footwear boutique Tokyo Bopper. She has a very unique personal style and has been a fixture of Harajuku’s street fashion scene for many years.

Yama is wearing a white striped shirt with a collar necklace on top. Her red ruffled skirt is from Tricot Comme des Garcons. Her sunglasses are from Mykita and her pointy, embellished flats are from Unbilical (by Tokyo Bopper), worn here with red socks. We also noticed her reptile tote bag and classic watch.

Yama’s favorite shop is Tokyo Bopper.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

“Elf Bowling: The Movie” costs $3.79, but even at this price, it has mostly bad reviews. It’s based off the 1998 video game “Elf Bowling,” for some reason.

It’s free to watch on Amazon Prime Instant Video, in case you have an Amazon Prime membership & want to murder 82 minutes of your life. I do not suggest this, because I watched it, and the only good part was the teaser at the end for “Elf Bowling 2: The Great Pumpkin Heist,” which, thankfully, was never actually made.

Print.

Before I got an iPhone, I had a red LG flip phone.

I enjoyed that phone more than I probably should have because it’s UI felt more intuitive than all the Nokia and Sony cells I had before it. The buttons on the LG were a joy to press, low profile, but very ‘clicky’.

Nokia’s buttons were always very solid, but I felt they had no weight to them. The buttons felt floaty, like pressing on partially-burned marshmallows.

Sony’s problem was a combination of bad quality (the phone would constantly fall apart) and the buttons being too squishy. Sometimes the buttons were so soft that they wouldn’t register presses. The only thing Sony had going for it was a neon-blue backlight that made me feel like I was in the future.

Then I got an iPhone. It wasn’t a choice I made, I was still a skeptic on touchscreens. Someone in my mother’s family had bought one for me as a graduation present. I was more curious than excited.

As I spent time with the phone, I began to enjoy it. I enjoyed the simulation of swiping and the responsiveness of the touchscreen. I liked the idea of having access to apps that would increase the utility of the phone. I enjoyed the solid build quality. It had a nice density.

But I missed the buttons.

Occasionally, I went back to the LG and would just click around to remember the sensation of really great button presses. I was sad at the loss.

When I really dug into the world of the iPhone and Apple, I realized because my phone had been purchased by a relative in Lebanon, it was jailbroken and unlocked. This meant I had access to the Cydia marketplace.

Cydia is a black market app store that bypasses all of Apple’s strict standards. Anyone can put anything on Cydia and I used it to see what people on the margins of this ecosystem were doing.

A few months into this process I came across something called HapticPro. The app claimed that it would create haptic feedback when typing by generating small vibrations with each press of the virtual keyboard.

I downloaded it. I was excited: Maybe this would be just what the iPhone needed to feel right.

After using HapticPro for a while I noticed that my typing was more accurate and fulfilling. The phone had evolved.

Still, though something was missing from the experience: The iPhone lacked tactility, it lacked texture.

Nokia phones always had a wonderful feel. Whether the case was metal or plastic, you could run your finger along all the pits and grooves. The Sony phone I had was encased in a dense, white rubber, I loved its spongey friction. My LG did not have any compelling texture, but the click of the phone opening made up for that.

The iPhone was nothing but cold and slippery, lifeless.

I struck out into midwestern suburbia to solve this.

After searching around, I eventually settled on a thick, black rubber case with small grips on the sides.

Now I had something in my hands that felt alive. It buzzed when I touched it. Its skin was soft.

I have always admired Apple for their minimalist approach to design. However, in their quest for technological purity, their products have misunderstood the sense of touch.

A cell phone is a very personal thing. It needs warmth, warmth through texture.

The iPhone had no warmth.

No blood.

No friction.

Esoteric.

When The Elder Scrolls V was released in 2011, it was celebrated by both the games industry and media as a grand and amazing work, a shining example of what games can be. It won countless awards including multiple GOTY nominations and wins. It was a phenomenon.

It was also a bad game.

Prior to release, I had been very excited by the idea of a single-player open-world fantasy game that featured first-person hand-to-hand combat. I had just built a very powerful desktop then and I had been looking forward for just this sort of thing to release.

Once I was able to finally sit down with the game and run through the beginning, I realized how unsatisfying the game felt.

None of the characters (including the player) had any weight or density to them. Everything just felt as if it was hovering inches above the ground like a world of balloon animals.

The first-person melee was equally terrible. It all felt vapid and inconsequential, a self-important pillow fight simulator.

The first person to accurately describe how it felt was Tim Rogers.

I wish I could say that this problem is only limited to Skyrim and games like it, but this is actually a big problem for most games today.

Much like cell phones, games are very personal things. The player is trying to inhabit a space, making it their own by virtue of their own personal experiences, and expressing themselves through either strategic thinking or action.

People get lost in their phones, people get lost in their games.

Modern games lack density. They treat movement as a given rather than as a draw. It seems like every game today is built around the idea that no one will notice the lack of physicality.

No texture. No beating heart.

Compare Elder Scrolls V to Gungrave. Movement in Skyrim is light and airy, there is nothing of significance in it, there is no joy in it. In Gungrave, movement is important. Everything has weight, there is a loud, sharp pulse in everything Gungrave does from shooting to jumping to swinging.

I don’t just blame 3D games for this problem, Modern 2D games suffer also. I’ve made the argument over and over again in the Shoryuken forums that the reason Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is the least appealing in the series is due to its  lack of  ‘presence’  in the characters when compared to the previous entries. MvC1 had real weight. MvC2 had friction and texture.

It almost seems as if the games industry has been slowly withdrawing from the physicality of the arcades. Even the worst fighting games (for example) have some of the best density. Sengoku Basara X and Hokuto no Ken have wonderful frictions. The hits have powerful momentum.

But those are broken games.

Even games that are marketed as ‘arcade’-like today never seem to get the density right. In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden’s hits never have any impact, any feedback. Every enemy in the game hits harder/is heavier than Raiden.

There are a few games in the mainstream that seem to occupy a very nice density. Games like Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Tekken, Gears of War, and Killzone carry their weight well. However, the industry as a whole needs to put more time and thought into a game’s physical presence.

The indie scene is doing this by drawing inspiration from older games where movement and tactility were fine-tuned.

I’m not sure what it would take for the entire industry to follow-suit and change, to focus on the texture of their games, but I am getting tired of just floating around in places I barely occupy.

Fundamentally, the physicality of a game assists in immersion. Speed, force, momentum, velocity, density, friction: These are parts of the machine that absorb the player.

What good is world-building if every interaction with the world is lifeless?

What good is the scope of the game if in exploring it, the player never inhabits it?

In order to be immersed, the player has to feel that they occupy a space, that there is some warmth there.

This is not something that can ever be fixed by money, only heart can fix this.

Only pulse can drive this change.

There’s a major new release of Inform 7, build 6L02, the first new release of the interactive fiction system in three years.

No Mas‘ new shirt brings back memories of the pre-WWW days of pumping quarters into payphones only to learn Doug Sisk had just surrendered another meatball. As the high fashion imprint points out, “for 50 cents a pop, you could hear a recording of Don LaGreca, Bob Papa, Michael Kay and other future broadcast stars and washouts reading the baseball, basketball, football or hockey scores you desperately needed,” though we can safely presume the West Coast version had it’s own all-star cast (not including Marcus Johnson — hey, NICE PHONE).

Shizuka is a dental assistant whose pretty Japanese lolita look caught our eye on the street near LaForet Harajuku.

Shizuka’s dress and bonnet – which feature a playing cards motifs and appears to be called “Wonder Queen” – are from Angelic Pretty. She’s also wearing an Alice in Wonderland brooch and a ribbon choker. Her bag is treasure-chest-shaped, decorated with a pendant necklace and bows. Her shoes are black patent and have a crown detail on the front with heart-shaped buckles.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Fellow shoppers marked Ko-Ko The Cat’s reviews as “38%  helpful,” which is pretty high for a lady who writes reviews as if she were her cat, and refers to herself as “Mumzy,” as if that is what her cat calls her, internally. Ko-Ko has reviewed women’s loafers, garlic salt, a 1998 Toyota Corolla window switch, and 99 other items.

Student evaluations matter to adjuncts and matter less to tenured faculty. As university job pools shrink, this fact matters more and more. They’re a fact of my life. Fortunately the students who actually write a few comments praise specific assignments and offer suggestions for improvements; they’re not of the “He’s a great professor, he’s an easy A!” variety. Slate’s education columnist wrote last month: “The first, best and most important way to measure teaching effectiveness would be to create a culture at elite research institutions where the instruction of undergraduates actually matters.” Then added, “Fat chance.” Research matters most, I remind students when they complain about a terrible professor or taking a class taught by a graduate assistant or, yes, adjunct. Faculty get tenure doing research, serving on committees, attending to departmental matters; if they teach well, it’s a bonus.

A management and psychology professor contributed a NYT op-ed a few months ago in which he called for two discrete higher ed tracks and a mixed one: a teaching-only tenure track, a research-only tenured track, and research-teaching. The second allows professors “who have the passion and talent for discovering knowledge, but lack the motivation or ability to teach well”; the first rewards adjuncts who “excel in communicating knowledge,” although how departments would promote them Adam Grant does not say, presumably with evaluations, resumés, recommendations, and so on. He also doesn’t mention that many universities offer what are for all intents and purposes research-only tracks whereby tenured faculty barely show up for courses with their names on them. I see no changes to the current system soon, at least in public research universities; this system dovetails with the state’s fiscal intentions (e.g. keeping graduation rates high, offering course loads to part time faculties incommensurate with their take home pay and health benefits).

Here, hold my mead horn.

Over the weekend Blizzard flipped a switch and designated two of its classic games as freebies. The Lost Vikings and Rock ‘ N Roll Racing represent the studios early years, when the word warcraft saw use only among the rabble: Sun Tzu scholars, Henry Kissinger biographers, and other drunken types. Now you can download them straight away when you sign into your Battle.net account.

The Lost Vikings is a puzzle-platformer with a particularly clever conceit. You have to guide three Viking brothers through dozens of devious levels. You only control one brother at a time but can switch between them sequentially, and each brother has a certain skill. Eric the Swift runs and jumps; Olaf the Stout carries a shield; and Baleog the Fierce is armed with a sword and a bow. It takes shrewd planning to see them through a wide array of traps, enemies, and puzzles.

Rock N’ Roll Racing is an unexpected treat, seeing as it was only ever released for consoles. In fact as Gamasutra notes, this Battle.net version relies on the ZSNES emulator. Sadly and inexplicably, it’s a cut-down demo comprised of just the first three levels. At least the soundtrack is intact: digitized renditions of Steppenwolf and George Thorogood lend a period flare to the carnage.

The games join Blackthorne and The Starcraft Anthology among Blizzard’s free-as-in-beer offerings from its back catalog. That’s more than enough fodder to wile away an evening or two. (Or a thousand.) See some gameplay excerpts after the jump.