another dead blog

Blip Festival needs to raise money this year due to severe budget cuts in grants that havee previously supported artist travel and performance fees. Now entering its fourth year, The Blip Festival NYC is poised to take over the Bell House, December 17th-19th, to celebrate the best of chipmusic and its related disciplines with live music, workshops, film screenings and more. In the past, Blip Festival organizers The Tank and 8bitpeoples have brought you an amazing breadth of performers and artists from around the world, thanks to the help of our devoted fans and a generous array of sponsors and grants.

A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th).

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

How many servers does Facebook have? For some time now, the stock answer has been “more than 10,000 servers,” a number the company began using in April 2008. Facebook has continued to use that number, even as it has soared past 300 million users and dramatically expanded its data center space.

The essay is titled 'Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal' – although we would have called it 'Run for it Marty: Doc Brown was right' – and put forward the theory that bad luck will dog the launch of the LHC, with future influences stopping the Collider from doing its job.

When you plan your Halloween party, the food must be front and center. Since we published Gruesome Halloween Party Food two years ago, many more creepy and delicious treats have surfaced. Try serving these, and your guests will be talking about your party for years. Warning: some images may be disturbing.

Almost 2 full years in the making, the 8-Bit Operators’ “Wanna Hld Yr Handheld, Vol. 1” Beatles tribute focuses on the glorious avant-garde and electronic side of the Fab 4 with over 20 of the biggest international names in 8-bit chip music, all utilizing re-tooled, classic Game Boys, Ataris, Commodore 64s, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment Systems and circuit-bent toys.

Bastard offspring of now-famous ambient loop player the Buddha Machine, GRISTLEISM is part Industrial sound machine, part noise instrument. Featuring thirteen original and uncompromising loops, GRISTLEISM delivers a mix of signature TG experimental noise, industrial drone, and classic melodies and rhythms.