The Best Two Second Slayer Video Ever

I was upset to read that Slayer’s guitarist Jeff Hanneman died yesterday morning at age 49. In honor of Jeff’s passing I present to you my most favorite two second Slayer video ever.

These two ushers had a hell of a night during the August 25th 2010 Slayer show at Magness Arena in Denver, CO. They stood like that the entire night. Magness Arena really doesn’t have a lot of concerts (Though I have seen Pixies and Jane’s Addiction there) and I don’t think these poor ladies had any idea what they were in for.

Denver Has The 3rd Best Looking Flag In The Nation.

http://www.artifacting.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1000px-Flag_of_Denver_Colorado.svg_1.png

According to the North American Vexillological Society, Denver has the 3rd best looking flag in the nation. In a 2004 internet survey, the design qualities of the flags of 150 municipalities in the U.S. were rated and Denver’s came in just under Washington D.C. (#1) and Chicago, Illinois (#2).

The top three worst designed flags originate from Rapid City, South Dakota (#148), Huntington, West Virginia (#149), and lastly Pocatello, Idaho (#150). The flag for Pensacola, Florida is horrible but didn’t make the list.

Personally I’m particularly fond of the flags hailing from Oakland, California (#47), Ocean City, Maryland (not listed), New Orleans, Louisiana (#5), and Mesa, Arizona (#146 but they have since created a new flag).

If you are really interested in flag design you’d be doing yourself a favor if you checked out Ted Kaye’s Good Flag, Bad Flag (It can also be downloaded online for free).

Rare Color Film Of The Three Stooges

My father is a big fan of The Three Stooges so I’ve spent many a Sunday morning watching the Stooges clown around in black and white on the television. That’s why it was such a treat to stumble upon this rare color film of the trio. Filmed in 1938 at the Steel Pier, Atlantic City, New Jersey by George Mann of the comedy dance team, Barto and Mann. The film was shot without sound and held no other purpose beyond having fun.

video courtesy of Brad Smith

Every Human Being

It is crazy to think about the fact that, outside of Michael Collins, every human being, living or dead, was contained within the frame of this picture.

Every Human Being EverImage via NASA.

As always, click the image for wallpaper size.

2013 SXSW Music Torrent & Radio

I’m a little late to the party this year but the 2013 SXSW Music Showcase Torrent is up for your downloading pleasure. I try to post a link to the torrent every year but Greg Hewgill’s website has torrents for SXSW years going all the way back to 2005. This year the torrent contains 999 files totaling 6.13 GB of music from bands playing at this years South By Southwest Music & Media Conference. Keep a close eye on Greg’s website because he will most likely be putting up a second torrent with more bands in early March.

If you’re not interested in downloading/seeding but still want to listen to the music you might want to try this (currently not working) SXSW FM page.

Museum Of Endangered Sounds

I love the idea of saving sounds from extinction. Marybeth Ledesma, Phil Hadad and Greg Elwood (under the guise of Brendan Chilcutt) have created and curated the online Museum Of Endangered Sounds. It’s an audio archive of yesteryear’s gadgets and electronics. Without the museum the sounds of analog cameras, dot matrix printers, dial-up modems, Speak & Spells, and floppy disks would have died a silent death. But now I have them archived for my own nostalgic musing. We would have failed as a generation if we didn’t try to preserve and then force our past on the youth of today. Long live Museum Of Endangered Sounds.

(via Alan Cooper)

United States Of Electoral Votes

In an unearnest attempt to rethink the electoral college, Neil Freeman redrew the US into 50 new states with equal population. In an effort to reduce the disparity in size and influence of individual states in the current electoral college, Neil Freeman redefined geographical boundaries of all 50 states (and renamed them) so that they each contain a population of about of about 6,175,000. For example California is split into nine states while Colorado gets divided among Shiprock, Ogallala, and Salt Lake.

US Electoral Map

The map began with an algorithm that groups counties based on proximity, urban area, and commuting patterns. The algorithm was seeded with the fifty largest cities. After that, manual changes took into account compact shapes, equal populations, metro areas divided by state lines, and drainage basins. In certain areas, divisions are based on census tract lines.

Keep in mind that this is an art project, not a serious proposal, so take it easy with the emails about the sacred soil of Texas.

via kottke

Gravity Is A Mistake

I typically prefer roller coasters over the dizzy, spinney, types of amusement rides. However, the rides being engineered by the Institute For Centrifugal Research (ICR) look like a barrel of fun. But not only is the IRC trying to create good times, they’re attempting to increase the cognitive function of their riders through centrifugal research. While most of their rides are for adults only, Dr. Nick Laslowicz is hoping that the Centrifuge Brain Project will theoretically improve the passenger’s cognitive abilities through “achievements in the realms of brain manipulation, excessive G-Force and prenatal simulations.”

Blueprints for some of the rides developed by the ICR can be found below:

ICR Spheroton

ICR Dandelion

The IRC has lofty goals of having “These machines provide total freedom by cutting all connection from the world you live in – communication, responsibility, weight.” The amusement park rides are said to have created profound experiences “Which in many people in many people resulted in the readjustment of key goals and life aspirations.” However, as you’ll see from the video below these goals have come at a cost.


All images and videos via Till Nowak

More videos and images about the project can be found at the IRC website.

McNamara Breaks His Own Record By Surfing Terrifying 100 Foot Wave

100 Foot Wave

Last week Garrett McNamara broke his own record by surfing a 100 foot wave off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal. Garrett is that tiny speck seen in the terrifying photograph above.

Forty five year old Garrett doesn’t seem too sure about the validation of the record because the wave never actually broke. It lurched, capped, feathered – and then backed off. It never fell forward. He is quoted as saying, “How do you measure a wave? I don’t know who measures ‘em. I don’t know how. All I know is that I love surfing and I love sharing what we do and learning and experiencing new things. And a bunch of the waves ridden on Monday were bigger than the one I rode last November.”

Regardless of whether or not it’s a new record, the man is insane.

Climbing The Mercury City Tower

Mercury City Climb 1

Mercury City Climb 2

Sergey Valyaev and his buddies have illegally climbed the construction crane Mercury City Tower in Moscow. The tower is Europe’s tallest building at 1,112 feet (339 m). What makes this climb particularly frightening to me (outside of the height and security risks) was the amount of snow and ice on rope free climb up the crane. The video below shows how they did it.

This reminds me a lot of this 1,768 foot transmission tower free-climb.

Call Me 147 Times Maybe

The always entertaining Dan Deacon has layered 147 a capella tracks of Carly Ray Jeppeson’s “Call Me Maybe” on top of each other. The results are spectacular – possibly better than the original.

via Waxy

2012: My Year In Music

According to last.fm these are the bands that I listened to most during 2012. Only one band in my top ten this year were also on last years list.

  1. Aden
  2. John Lennon
  3. Twothirtyeight
  4. Beastie Boys
  5. Rainer Maria
  6. 10 Foot Ganja Plant (4th last year)
  7. Fishbone
  8. Metallica
  9. Push Kings
  10. Rod Stewart

Below is a wave graph of the top artists that I listened to over the last year (click for a larger image). It’s a great way to visualize the trends in my listening habits throughout the year.
2012 Wave Graph

Additionally, here is a list of my most listened to songs of 2012:

  1. Wilco – I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
  2. Wilco – I’m the Man Who Loves You
  3. John Lennon – Jealous Guy
  4. John Lennon – God
  5. Aden – Would You Have Stayed?
  6. John Lennon – Working Class Hero
  7. Twothirtyeight – Indian in Your Eyes
  8. Fishbone – Everybody Is a Star
  9. Twothirtyeight – You Made a Way For Moses
  10. Aden – Scooby Doo

You can also see similar lists put together for 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007. Last.fm is the service I use to track my listening habits. I’m always trying to discover new music so please go ahead and friend me over at last.fm.

2012: The Year In Blogging

It was a another great year for readership on Artifacting with 1,506,431 absolute unique readers coming to the blog over the year. Below is a graph of my total number of absolute unique readers throughout 2012.

Absolute Unique Visitors 2012

The spike on March 17th was caused by Buzzfeed linking to my Sloth Name Generator. The spike on April 27th was caused by Metafilter linking to my Perfect Face Post. And the spikes in June were caused by Stumbleupon finding my Alternative Default Facebook Profiles (almost two years after posting them).

The top ten most visited posts published in 2012 are:

Find The Name Of Your Inner Sloth
Miss NASA Beauty Pageant
The Perfect Face
The Women Of Denver Don’t Really Look Like This
Rain Room
Hunger Games: The Most Accurate Maps Of Panem
Teahupo’o
Names And Types Of Full Moons
Top 100 Best Children’s Books
Brooke Shields And Punk Rock

Referring sites sent a smaller percentage of the total visits to Artifacting this year. In 2012 there were 261,471 referred visitors arriving from 2,097 different sources. Below is a chart of referrals to Artifacting throughout 2011.

Unique Visitors From Referring Sites 2012

The top ten referring sites to Artifacting (with search engines removed) during 2012 were:

Stumbleupon
Yahoo Answers
Facebook
Metafilter
Reddit
Buzzfeed
Dark Roasted Blend
Squidoo
Twitter
Dirty

This is the first year since I’ve been tracking that Boing Boing didn’t make my top 10 referral list and the first year that Buzzfeed actually did make the list. I also think it’s interesting that Yahoo Answers has been in the top three referrers for the last four years.

General stats for Artifacting are as follows:

Year # Of Posts Avg. Length Of Posts Total Length Of All Posts Comments (Mine)
2012 88 2,093 184,142 273 (7)
2011 96 3,369 323,412 304 (13)
2010 172 1,900 326,775 326 (20)
2009 105 1,828 191,907 285 (19)
2008 135 956 129,117 363 (34)
2007 248 835 207,145 568 (124)
2006 221 927 204,804 536 (122)
2005 39 1,392 54,292 295 (0)
2004 117 1,673 195,757 955 (0)
2003 144 1,473 212,112 701 (0)

If you’re interested I also have the same stats for 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

2012: My Year In Cities & Towns

My travel was light again this year. Below is a list of cities and towns I’ve visited in 2011. I spent one or more nights in each place listed and those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Edwards, CO*
Niwot, CO*
Vail, CO*
Las Vegas, NV
Buford, CO
Rifle, CO*
Jacksonville, FL
Aspen/Snowmass, CO

I also have city and town lists for 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.