If it weren’t for the terrible precursor that caused it, the Jankowsiki boys would rejoice at one of the big changes happening in London since the bombings.

Don’t let it’s nearly 2 year run on the Times’ best seller list turn you away. This isn’t The Devil Wears Prada or whatever. What it is, is a series of unfortunate events that takes place as described by the narrator, Amir, focusing on the failed friendship between himself and his best friend.

My left wing echo chamber e-mailed and informed me that a new right wing echo chamber, er … Wall Street Journal Editorial Board show, is up and running on PBS. For those of you unfamiliar with the WSJEB, it fairly blatantly serves as the White House’s parrot on just about every issue that arises. Call me unfair and unbalanced, but there doesn’t seem to be a need for this show on an already crowded politics and business PBS lineup that has conservative representation. Write them a letter if you agree after checking here to see if your station carries it.

Audi funded three startup filmmakers to make shorts for their web site and one of them features my favorite electrician, Matt, and discusses the idea of modern parenthood that doesn’t take over your previous life. Follow the link, click “3 Filmmakers. 3 Journeys”, then “View films here” then “Life as You Know It”.

oh. yeah. Matt’s also a singer/songwriter that makes music you would really like.

Some of you may have attended the Zaireeka listening party we hosted awhile ago. After a lot of trial and error it actually came off pretty well and I think we all had fun (and some of us even enjoyed the CD…s.)

Last night we attended Tim League’s listening party and I am pretty sure that his version blew ours out of the water. It helps, I suppose, that as a well-connected member of the business community Tim was able to arrange a massive professional outdoor sound system and set it up in Round Rock’s Old Settler’s Park, and as a well-connected member of the entertainment community he was able to line up two opening acts — the Austin Theremonic Orchestra and Pong (who are playing the ACL Festival) — that were awesome, and as owner of the Alamo Drafthouse he was able to erect four movie screens at the cardinal compass points of the park and wrangle his movie-geek high-level employees to create synchronized videos to accompany the audio (plus a guest video editing spot from Willey Wiggins).

I can’t tell if I should be as disturbed by this as I am, but you can buy a tiny hand carved pig built specfically to hold the fly you capture that makes it appear to come to life.

Be sure to scroll all the way down to the Fly Powered Airplane and read the prose just below the image.

Ever spend a lot of time doing something really technical only to complete it and realize that your accomplishment only accentuates how much of a geeky loser you are?

I have added a feature called “Trackback” here to the Backporch that allows us to see other blogs that reference our blog. Unfortunately after clearing out around 1000 spam oriented trackbacks I narrowed all of our Trackbacks to just one.

Sad. Isn’t it?

I found this staring down at me from my rooftop this morning. This guy is huge!

I am sure that should he return the peacock will only add to the series of jokes about Jim that kick off my weekly poker night. Thanks to the hurricane driven rain that hit us last Thursday most of them centered around my wet…rooster.

Lindsay Robertson and her quote from James Vernier of the Boston Herald, “Being hard to understand is not the same as being smart.” doesn’t really apply to Primer. There are a lot of things that are hard to understand and smart at the same time. Primer is one of them. She is right that the actors’ lack of enunciation makes the film unneccesarily hard to understand but considering the whole thing was produced, directed, scored and written by one guy, Shane Carruth, and he carried the lead acting role we can forgive them that. I will concede a little more ground to Lindsay and say that anyone attempting to consume this film should either be very clear-headed and ready for a science class along with their sci-fi or maybe get really stoned so they can ignore it.

If you decide to go through with watching it and still have questions (as I did) here’s a page that breaks the whole movie down.

Switch the pieces around on this board to make music. So what if it’s French. It’s fun.

Simple art and simple jokes, but sometimes simple is good.

Many of you have heard me foam at the mouth at Morgan Spurlock’s spurious documentary and many of you have laughed at me, called me names and generally derided me because your sheep-like bleating of Spurlock’s ideas on diet reinforced the hippie notion that McDonalds is evil. Merab Morgan agrees with me though and proved it — more than I was willing to do — by losing 33 pounds eating only at McDs.

This site features descriptions of photos the artist (or other contributors) were unable to take. Clarification:

In October 2004, I travelled to Ethiopia for a two-week solo sightseeing trip. I’d been advised against bringing my camera, but as an amateur street photographer, leaving it behind didn’t seem like an option. In predominantly Muslim communities, photography is shunned, particularly photographing women, which is completely understandable. Consequently, at many times during my trip, there was so much to see, and no way to capture it, except through words.

Why wait for renewable energy to come to you? Why endure the protests of your well-to-do neighbors who do not want a wind-farm in their back yard? Why not build your own (including wiring the generator!)

In my backyard, please. (IMBY)

From Make

Right now.

Yes, I’m completely serious. The next hour requires your undivided attention

OK

Head on over to Open Source and download the bit they did on Emerson

Yeah. That’s what I thought, too. Pure poetry.