Not too long ago, one of the members of the Pixel Pints shared with us a simple webapp that he found for building top-whatever lists, called Topsters.
I decided to play around with it a bit, and, as I mentioned in the last post—which was itself a top 20 list—I wanted to have an overlay for links on top of the image, so it was more like a widget instead of just an image. The power of Topsters is not the image that it generates necessarily, but how easily you can generate the image by querying a bunch of APIs based on your media selection (books, albums, movies, or games). So, in that regard adding a little flare to the image seemed appropriate, and why not give it some interactivity? Topsters itself utilizes a canvas element to arrange the pictures of the book, album, movie, or game covers. I could always consider maybe doing that myself, or
Charley Crockett's new album Live From the Ryman has been on repeat the past couple of days for me. I absolutely love it. Which got me thinking about whether or not I should, or even could, compile a TOP something-or-other list of the greatest live albums of all-time.
Driving home from my Dad's this past Sunday, I thought I would only be able to put together maybe 10 albums at most, and I thought there wouldn't be any that I would need to cut, but as I started digging through favorite artists of mine and whether or not they've released any live albums... I realized there are quite a few live albums worthy of being on a Greatest of All-Time list, and I don't think I've ever done a list like this before. Earlier incarnations of my website I used to do fantasy super groups of musicians, or playlists like I was doing with the last incarnation of the website. I might do more of those types of posts, but TOP (insert number here) lists are going to be a new thing going forward.
You may notice the numbers floating on top of the album covers, well, I'm using Topsters to generate the image, but I've also spent the past 3 or so days noodling around in JavaScript to come up with some reusable code that will slap numbers on top of a Topsters generated image, and since I've gone to the trouble of coding it, I may as well use it a few more times. Maybe I can refine it and add some more functionality to it down the road, will probably even do a separate post talking about the code (though, pushing it to github would probably be better). In any case...
As the quality of televised and digital entertainment has degraded over the years, and not wanting to be bombarded by the sheer negativity of it all, I've found myself spending more time listening to music and reading comics. It's been a gradual transition for me... That isn't to say that I don't spend entirely way too much time watching garbage on YouTube or mindlessly surfing, looking at things I'll never buy, or researching video games, or learning things that have no real practical purpose in my life other than to be interesting topics for cocktail parties that I'll never attend, etc.
Something happened though... A tipping point? I did attempt doing a web comic maybe a year or so ago, but I never stuck with it. I have revisited the idea though, and this time I sat and thought about the story ahead of putting pencil to paper, I drew a few outlines and sketches first.
Just from my 9-to-5 and thinking about the type of comic that I wanted to read, I came upon the idea of an insurance company in the relatively near future. But it's going to evolve beyond that, because, fuck it, I have a story universe where people live on Europa and Titan, and giant monsters are a real thing. So I'm going to play with the surreal and the supernatural, the pragmatic and the practical, and I want to put it together to highlight the absurdity of life and the human condition.
Not sure if this will technically be a review of the album... But it's the one album that I've been listening to a lot lately. I only had a mild fascination with Pierce the Veil when they first came out. After I'm done ranting about music today, I'll talk a little bit about MTK Ultra tomorrow, which is a web comic I'm working on and developing.
I still can't believe it. I've been in shock for the last couple of weeks. UFOs and the existence of extraterrestrial life is something that I've wanted desperately to believe in since I was little. Though, I will say, the facts are still lacking... Not that I would believe it if I were to see a news clip. But if there were a way to go see the debris with my own eyes... Maybe a public exhibition now that this stuff is nearly a century old.
People like to say “there's no evidence!” Which is true if you're just paying attention to congressional hearings and mainstream media. This is stuff that has been being talked about for 30+ years now. Regardless of whether or not you believe Bob Lazar, his statements have been given some credibility now that a Pentagon employee has testified under oath and confirmed that the United States has recovered craft and non-human biologics. George Knapp was there for both Lazar and Grusch... David Grusch is taking the spotlight as the guy confirming all this shit, but it'll be interesting to see what actually happens going forward. No one at work seems to be talking about it. I don't hear people in the streets shouting about aliens. Sadly no one seems to really care without actually seeing it with their own eyes.
There are probably a dozen different draft posts that I've written where I talk much more in-depth about cannabis. As of the last incarnation of berkough.com though, it has never seemed to be the right topic to bring up or talk about, ever. I have a lot of things to say about the plant, I just feel that a lot of people tend to think of marijuana as being a juvenile and lazy drug that people indulge in. But the plant is sort of from two different worlds, and it always has been. With legalization happening across the country, I feel that we're finally getting to a place of reconciling the two plants; the herbaceous flowering annual, and the psychotropic drug—a near perfect propaganda dichotomy. The truth is obviously much more nuanced than evil weed or a miracle plant. Nothing is ever just black and white, it's Joseph's amazing technicolor dreamcoat with different tones. When viewed as a medicinal herb—in the same way as St. John's Wort or Echinacea—the effects are moderate. You would never swallow or consume an entire bottle of Echinacea, right? The same is true for cannabis, the dosage is different for every person. So you have to learn how to control your intake. But the beauty is that it's impossible to overdose on cannabis, the worst that will happen is that you get a little too paranoid, or you fall asleep.
Going back to at least Bill Clinton, it has been in the mainstream zeitgeist that even though the plant was illegal (or still is for some), it still plays a non-threatening role in a lot in our early lives, the late teens and early twenties, at least.
Steam bellowed from the elbow joint of the hulking monstrosity. Sitting with it's armpits hooked, the machine bore the shape of a brutish man with large broad shoulders, and a sunken wide skull whose neck had been swallowed by clavicles, twenty feet tall when operated and fully erect, the mechanized suit of armor was a brilliant invention. Tanned leather wrapped around sheets of mythril that formed the major portions of plating, hempen pipes weaved in and out from the gauntlets up to the pauldrons, and the same for the sabatons to the grieves, and up through to the legs before disappearing into the sides where the cuirass pieces met. Decorative copper sewn into the leather often fogged when the hiss of the steam became audible, and the gemstones pounded into the alloys dazzled in the light from the moisture as the steam dissipated.
Mac sat in the belly of the mechanical beast, pulling levers and adjusting wooden knobs that were connected to intricate collections of semi-exposed gears and pulleys lining the inside of the machine’s stomach.
“Damnit Mac! You blew another line! I told you the pressure was too much.”
“So let me get this straight; you woke up, your safe had been broken into, your jewelry was gone, a very large sum of credits went missing, and you have no idea of how any of this happened?” Warden Reinhardt was keen on detecting bullshit when he smelt it, but, it is always imperative to get a verbal response for the record, should the need for formal charges of a spurious nature be brought before a magistrate.
“That’s correct, sir. Here, I brought a copy of the constable’s report.” Lawrence Kirby, the destitute, pointed to the Warden’s assistant.
Marcus Cato slid a data cache across the table to his left and towards the Warden, he had been handed the report right before the hearing and neither him, nor the Warden, had an opportunity to review it, perhaps it could shed some light on some of the questions the Warden still had. Reinhardt grabbed the report and began perusing through it.
One if by land, two if by sea…three lanterns shone above Boston.
“Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was only invested in the mythology of Americana, the type of emphatic thoughts that Ralph Waldo Emerson would once have while reminiscing about the beauty of the New Atlantis he was living in. The mythology we’ve been indoctrinated with is nothing more than a cover-up to ensure that no future generations of plebs would learn of the visitors’ existence.
