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Starcraft 2 Mac Beta Woo!

This is an amazing thing to see on your computer screen. After months of waiting… the Starcraft 2 Mac Beta Client ready to launch!

Okay, we’re all suited up and ready for some 2v2’s! It’s really an amazing thing to be playing the Starcraft 2 beta on a Mac… the game runs flawlessly on a Macbook Pro with medium to high settings at 1280 x 800… it looks really nice and runs really smooth! I’m impressed, Blizzard!

Nothing like spamming tons of hydralisks. Look at those pretty explosions!

And more hydra destruction!

Lonely zealot wanders around early on in a match.

Anyway, after only playing Starcraft 2 for about 4 games I think it’s safe to say this game is going to rock. For any Starcraft nerd the gameplay will be super familiar, but there are some new shortcuts and different units and buildings that are confusing me a bit. I love that you can zoom in and out of the battlefield, it really helps when it starts to look like your base is getting ridiculously cluttered.

With the SC2 mac beta and the imminent May 12 release of Valve’s Steam for mac, I do believe Mac gaming is going to take off in a direction that it hasn’t for what… 15 years? Woooo!!

The game is beautiful and the amount of detail in each unit is pretty cool. I’m happy to see that the game runs great on my Macbook Pro and am looking forward to playing the single player campaign!

EDIT: I added links to the screenshots – these screens were taken at medium quality textures and terrain, etc. – I later upped a bunch of the options to high and the game still ran great… but I got lost in playing the damn thing. Later on I’ll get some nicer screens!

http://www.starcraft2.com

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Gizmodo x iPhone Saga Flowchart

Sheryl Sulistiawan and Tyler Gray over at Fast Company have created a pretty hilarious flow chart detailing the many possibilities of how the messy Gizmodo/iPhone saga went down. I’m loving this graphic!

Check out the article at Fast Company

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Hifana + Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo + Kicks = Sweet Nike Spot

I saw Hifana, I think, back in 2006 at a New York x Tokyo Hip-Hop NYC Summerstage event. This Japanese breakbeat duo put together one of the coolest live shows I’ve ever seen, attaching all of their gear to animations and video clips on so many screens that the power went out and Summerstage went black for a good 10 minutes while they had to get everything up and running again. The visual audio experience was so intense  I copped their debut album Fresh Push Breakin’ shortly after the show but nothing can compare to seeing them kick it live.

Cool to see them here working with Wieden+Kennedy for an awesome Nike Free spot called “Music Shoe” that features some… well… music + sneakers. This reminds me of just how creative and interesting these guys are. Ah, memories!

Hifana has a third album coming out soon – I suggest you check them out! (thanks to Gao Di for finding this ad!)

Wieden+Kennedy | Hifana

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ALIVESHOES = Fashion + Art + Sustainability

Here is an awesome project called ALIVESHOES (not to be confused with ALIFE) that brings together ideas of high fashion, sustainability and artistic expression. Each shoe is beautifully hand-crafted and numbered in Italy with sustainable materials like untreated and organic natural cotton, leather and cork, ecologically scented foam rubber and fully biodegradable TPU polyurethane. Each shoe is also individually hand-colored. These shoes also feature the original sketch of the installment stitched into the tongue. As ALIVESHOES says on their own site, “wearing ALIVESHOES is like wearing nature itself.”

These shoes are then used as the medium to create sculptures and art installations. Above is a photo from Steve Siegel’s Beach Blocks, an installation of a large number of shoes on a beautiful landscape in Srolo, Italy. The shoes used in the installation are now available for purchase for a base level of 150 EUROS, which covers the material costs, and the option to build up your contribution to charitable partners and future art projects. The purchase page is super cool as well and let’s you pick the individual shoe you want. Tons of monochrome color options!

These are some seriously beautiful shoes and I am yearning for a pair myself. You can tell a lot of love went into each shoe. There are more projects to come from ALIVESHOES and they look awesome so I recommend you go check them out. The price is a bit steep but hopefully, one day I’ll get my hands on a pair! My birthday is coming up, friends & family… I would like light blue.. size 43….

Check out ALIVESHOES (via Thrillist)

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Fine & Raw Chocolate – Bonbon Bar!

Went to the Spring Handmade Cavalcade at Berry Park this past weekend and picked up a bar of chocolate at the Fine & Raw booth. Using fairtrade cacao and low heat techniques, Fine & Raw’s raw chocolate bars are some of the best chocolate I’ve ever had. Raw chocolate is actually supposed to be pretty good for you, with vitamin C, natural fiber, antioxidants, etc. that you lose when chocolate is actually roasted.

We got a bonbon bar, which is dark raw chocolate with a thin line of bonbon truffle in the center. This chocolate is seriously amazing and I recommend you go get some!

Fine & Raw

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Ben’s Braised Pork Belly Cooked in Duck Fat

Last night, my friend Ben Newland cooked an insane pork belly. Cured over the course of a few days and then cooked in lots and lots of duck fat for just about five hours. The results are amazing.

Ben also threw together a delicious cucumber salad, a perfect compliment to the pork. Gao Di and Alexa made delicious vietnamese spring rolls for starters. I made rice. How helpful. This pork is ridiculous, it is basically dripping in fat. Fatty pork is one of the best foods. Ever. More pictures are below for your eye feasting pleasure. This = pork porn. Maybe it’s time for some serious pork detox… just after I eat the last of the leftovers…

OH. MY. GOD. SO GOOD!!! YUMM!!!!!! Thanks, Ben! Now we gotta repeat procedure and make some home-made ramen!

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Olivia Munn for PETA + Leather Boots?

Here is a complete diversion from my usual food/shoe posts.

I can always count on The Superficial for something so awesome such as this. Model/actress/G4 TV-host Olivia Munn, quite popular among gaming and sci-fi nerds (like myself), just did a campaign with PETA to combat circus cruelty and showed up to the PETA event wearing leather boots. A protestor asked, “Are those boots leather?” To which PETA staff retorted, “This isn’t a leather campaign.”

The Superficial writer had this to say:

Ignoring the fact these boots might not be leather, PETA’s response is “This isn’t a leather campaign?” What the? That’s like the Klan inviting black people to protest immigration and saying “Hey, we’re not lynching today.” That’s really the only analogy that works here.

Ah. How poignant.

Kudos to PETA at picking the right people for their campaigns, like our good friend Sasha Grey back in January.

The Superficial | PETA Combat Circus Cruelty

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White Hinterland – Moon Jam

Gao Di discovered White Hinterland on hype machine a little while back and the album, Kairos, came out last month and it is one of the cooler things I’ve listened to in a long while.  Casey Dienel is a great songwriter with an unbelievable voice. She has amazing control and can do some things that you don’t hear so often in this kind of music. The album is super cohesive and flows perfectly. The production is also really cool. Silky smooth. Listen to one of my favorite tracks, ‘Moon Jam,’ below.

LISTEN:

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Clark’s Original Men’s Desert Boot (Chukka Boot)

Picked up these Clark’s Original Men’s Desert Boots a few weeks ago. These suede chukka boots have a nice rugged look to them and although they’re grey, they seem to have a bit of a purple tint. Sweet shoes!

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L’Ecole, French Culinary Institute Meal in Pictures

This is what a meal at the French Culinary Institute’s restaurant, L’Ecole, looks like.

Standouts: Pork belly appetizer was deliciously fatty. Lamb chop was amazing. Beer flight was a great run through different beer flavors.

For photos of the rest of the meal go through the jump… (more…)

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Jaga Jazzist’s A Livingroom Hush – Throwback to ‘01

I forgot just how amazing Norwegian experimental jazz band Jaga Jazzist is. This band kills it. Hard. I got A Livingroom Hush back when it came out in 2001 and I always find myself coming back to this album. Jaga Jazzist has released two albums since, and it seems they moved on to a more ‘acoustic instrumental feel, but back in 2001 they had the most ridiculous blend of acoustic and electric instruments.

Tip of the hat has to go to this unbelievable jam, ‘Animal Chin.’ Pretty crazy video. Revel in all its glory.

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Gourmet – Nove Kicks

Jesus, Gilt, the things you make me do. Picked up two pairs of Gourmet’s Nove sneaks, one in grey and one in black. I am fulling in a color gradient here. Anyway, these shoes feature a beautifully simple design. The shoe has a nice shape with a relatively bare surface, except for a slick ankle strap featuring a Gourmet logo. I’m loving the patterned midsole, too. The black ones are very sleek while the grey ones have a bit more of a rugged work boot look. Both are quite awesome.

Gourmet | Gilt

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DesignNotes – Michael Surtees’ Parsons Design IV Presentation

For a while now I have been following Michael Surtees’ DesignNotes blog. Really like this presentation he did for Parsons’ Design IV class. In his presentation he talks about the publishing of his blog, why he does it and the types of things he chooses to write about, goes through some projects he’s worked on, and then discusses Agile Design. I particularly like his ‘Why I Blog’ slide. Go check out the presentation.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, published in 1968, is amazing. This book is the basis for Blade Runner, but the movie and the novel seem very separate to me and are masterpieces in their own way. The book takes place years after most of Earth has been destroyed by radioactive fallout from World War Terminus. To encourage people to emigrate to off-world colonies such as Mars, a special incentive is that each emigrant will receive an adroid (andy) as a servant.

Electric Sheep follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard, based in San Francisco, as he tries to track down renegade androids who killed their masters in Mars and have assumed human identities on Earth, and J.R. Isidore, a man who has suffered brain damage (considered a “special”) who lives in an abandoned building and comes in contact with the androids.

This book brings up a lot of questions on whether or not androids with such advanced technologies can have souls. What is the human condition? The novel is fast-paced and takes place all through one day where Rick Deckard even finds himself empathizing with the andys. At one point Rick finds himself in what seems to be an alternate universe, a self-sufficient police station that is run by androids and has his own identity as human or andy questioned.

This book is a three hour read tops. Personally, I happen to like the tone and pacing of the book more than Blade Runner, but I think they both have their merits. Having not seen Blade Runner in years, while reading Electric Sheep you didn’t even feel like you were that far in the future.

Anyway, incredibly thought-provoking.

Side note. Total Recall (starring our good friend Arnold Schwarzenegger) is based on Philip K. Dick’s short story ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’ which I would like to read soon.

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10:32’s Vanitas on Ghostly International is So Good

Here’s another release on Ghostly International that I’m in love with. 10:32’s Vanitas is a short EP but each song is so slick. 10:32 is a project from Australian producer Tim Koch. ‘Jitter Heart’ is really pretty, featuring a nice mix of nylon acoustic and layers of electronic sounds that create a really warm texture. Calming video, too! Feels to me like what a meeting between Cornelius and Nujabes might sound like. Another favorite from the EP is ‘Blue Little’ which features a darker hip-hop kind of sound. Go get this EP now.

10:32 on MySpace | Vanitas at the Ghostly Store