thesethings's posterous

thesethings's posterous

thesethings (andy)  //  @thesethings
portland, oregon
lately: #datascraping #bash #python #design #fun #delight #twitter #tumblr #screencasts

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Feb 2 / 12:26am

Opentape is back-in-tape.

Opentape is an open source clone of Muxtape (a convenient and beloved music service run out of existence coz The Man was being a big drag.)

Muxtape

Opentape appeared soon after Muxtape closed down. But until two days ago there hadn't been any updates for about a year. (There are github forks, so the community kept going. The maintainer kept the forum up + active as well.)

Still it was with great excitement that we saw this tweet come outta nowhere:

Testing HTML5 Audio + Sound Manager 2 support in the new version of Opentape, play with it on Github:https://github.com/opentape/opentape

I haven't seen many people talking about it, so I'm blogging about it here to spread the word. I suspect lotsa folks might have unfollowed the @opentape Twitter account thinking it was a bad place to get updates.

Opentape is very easy to set up. Even easier than WordPress. No database or nothin'.

Also, in honor of the update, I'm sharing an Apes and Androids song. They were a band popular in the Muxtape heyday. Muxtape. We miss you.

Opentape: next time call, or wuphf or something.

(download)

Filed under  //  apes and androids   art   bj novak   mindy kaling   music   muxtape   open source   opentape   the office   wuphf  
 
Feb 16 / 1:17am

Meet the Swagger-wagon, the anti-Superbowl commercial

If you caught any of the Superbowl commercials, you know there was a theme:  Domesticity sucks, and you can escape by buying stuff. But don't think too much, bro. That's a total drag."  (It got a bit Fight Club. But instead of urging you to reject all consumerism, they had the tricky task of asking you to be annoyed by your wife's materialsm, but not your own. )

But this is America, and there's room for more than one zeitgeist.

Ladies and gentlemen. The anti-Superbowl ad: The Swagger-wagon. In this universe, domesticity doesn't suck. It's crazy.

[update: Toyota made the commercial (video second down) private (!?!).  The internet-length videos remain embeddable.]

.  

And there is a lot of thinking.  You're not boring, you're cool. But you know you're not really cool. You laugh at yourself. But also at everybody else.

META-Meta-meta.

Toyota has covered every psychological angle.  On the YouTube campaign page, they even call the couple "self-absorbed," in case anybody is annoyed by cloyingly likable people.

We're living in a post Arrested Development world people. (Which if you want to get meta, is a post-Office world).  Which if you want to get meta-meta, is a Toyota Sienna world...

 

Filed under  //  ads   advertising   analysis   arrested development   commercials   critique   media   sienna   superbowl   television   the office   toyota   youtube