Whether it’s a hack, an eccentric debug utility, or clever marketing—there are raptors in hats hiding on Vogue’s UK website. Load it up and then enter the fabled Konami code to manifest a strafing raptor wearing a random designer hat. That’s Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A.
Oddly there’s also a general debug console that can be called up by using the same sequence but switching the order of the last two taps to A B. For the code curious, the JavaScript to trigger this raptor rapture is contained here, just do a search for “konami”: http://d3u12z27ui3vom.cloudfront.net/Build-Vogue-master/1890-6c590b28810e/logic/site.v2.group.generated.js

If you open up your browser’s JavaScript console you can get the actual raptorization code by entering: $('body').raptorize

The analytics line of code in there makes me think it’s more of a clever marketing ploy than some hacker attack—as some supposed “news” outlets would have you believe. Ah, hype. I’ve posted the raptorize code after the jump in case it vanishes from Vogue’s site.

Update: This little easter egg appears to be inspired by a jQuery library called Raptorize created by Zurb in collaboration with Phil Coffman and Noah Stokes.

Creative Lab’s recent Chrome Experiment, Roll It, is today’s FWA Site of the Day and today’s FWA Mobile of the Day. Roll It is a classic boardwalk game played right in your desktop’s browser and uses your smartphone as a motion controller. Play now: g.co/rollit

My old Browser Pong game (2009) is currently on the front page of Paul Graham’s Hacker News. It probably won’t stay there for long, so here’s the permalink: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5951285. Browser Pong was previously on Hacker News when it first launched in 2009. Odd, but flattering, to see a new conversation about it materialize.

Creative Lab’s recent Chrome Experiment, Racer, is today’s FWA Site of the Day and today’s FWA Mobile of the Day. Racer is a multiplayer Chrome Experiment built for mobile browsers—a slot car game that unfolds across multiple device screens. Get out your smartphone or tablet and load up g.co/racer in your mobile browser to play now.

Creative Lab’s recent Chrome Experiment, Racer, has been awarded Adobe’s Cutting Edge Project of the Week by the FWA. Racer is a multiplayer Chrome Experiment built for mobile browsers—a slot car game that unfolds across multiple device screens. Get out your smartphone or tablet and load up g.co/racer in your mobile browser to play now.

I’m speaking about my work tomorrow evening—Monday, May 6th at 6:30pm—at the SoHo Apple store in Manhattan. This is part of the ADC’s Young Guns series of talks (see ADC blog entry). Should be fun. The store’s schedule says I have from 6:30 to 8pm—way too much time. Let’s keep it short and sweet (maybe 1/2 hour?) with some Q&A at the end if that seems worthwhile. The content shouldn’t be much of a surprise: some favorite project highlights, random rants, and so on. Just walk up the glass stairs to the second floor where you’ll find some theater-style seating and a big screen.
Monday, May 6th. 6:30pm Apple Store SoHo 103 Prince Street New York NY 10012 212 226 3126

ASCII lyric vids are music videos made primarily of a song’s lyrics rendered as computer text and animated over time to pair with the vocals. [What is ASCII?] These pure lyric vids are distinct from representational ASCII art vids which use glyph shapes as abstract textural components, rather than as text meant to be read. These genres are not mutually exclusive, however. [What is ASCII art?] To celebrate being blown away by the new Petula Clark video, here are a few notches in the genre listed in reverse-chronological order. If you know of more do mention it.

I’m excited to be on the jury panel for this year’s AIGA Best of New England (BoNE) Show biennial design competition alongside Elliott Earls and Lucille Tenazas. The three of us will be milling about—drinks in hand?—for the casual Meet the Judges event this Friday evening. We’ll talk a bit and perhaps even have some fancy objects to share. (So do come down and say hello.) It’s the BoNE Show’s 10th anniversary, after all.

For an added slice of sunshine I’ll be at Boston University meeting with design students in some capacity for the majority of Friday morning and afternoon. You can hit me up with questions (or disenchanted meanderings) via Twitter: @stewd_io. Non sequiturs—if you were curious, this is what Google Glass feels like. And finally, today is Kurt Cobain’s 46th wouldn’t you know.

My 2011 collaboration with Bernd Lintermann and Robert Gerard Pietrusko—titled trans_actions: The Accelerated Art World 1989–09—is currently on display at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in the Nothing to Declare exhibition until May 26th. For more information, video, images, and a complete list of collaborators on the original piece see trans_actions: The Accelerated Art World 1989–09.

I declare this day—Wednesday, 12 December 2012—Pythagoras day. As the calendar marks 12-12-12 we ought to reflect upon the majesty of Base 12 as Pythagoreans are wont to do. (Ridiculous / lofty / over-reaching tone is entirely intentional.) To that effect I present a modest manifesto (unfinished and ill-advised) for calendar revision inspired by the beauty of twelve’s divisibility.

<h4>Redefining Time</h4>

The measurement of time is a human right. Measure itself shapes the experience of that which is measured. It is with these two convictions that we engage our current popular system for measuring time.

It is not the goal of this proposal to be absurdly radical—to propose non-linear measurements of time or uselessly abstract definitions, however poetic. Rather, it is the goal of this proposal to be modest and sympathetic to the current Gregorian system by insisting on simple improvements and even reaffirming aspects of the current system after investigating alternatives.

This proposal is divided into installments of investigation. This current installment in particular investigates the division of a year into both months and weeks. It does not investigate the location and measurement of an epoch nor does it propose a fixed location for the year (for example beginning a year in mid-winter as the current system does versus beginning on the first day of spring.) It does not propose a new system for dividing days into hours, minutes, and so on.

We've closed up shop in London and hauled it all back to New York City, the greatest city on Earth. We fired the fake interns and parted ways with the fake partners. We're not even "we" anymore—or never were as it were. Stewdio will continue to exist as a non-existent entity whilst collaborating with real actual people and organizations, just as it always has.

Beginning next Monday, however, my primary focus will become Google Creative Lab. Here’s to the future.

—Stewart

Google Talk seems to have crashed some time this morning, prompting upset users to take to Twitter for some realtime commiseration. But now Twitter seems to also be down for the count. Fortunately there's always Chatttr to fall back on. (It's like the word Chatter but with the E replaced by a third T.) Chatttr is too small to fail. Or at least, too small to be missed if it does.

No sign-up required, just start typing: http://chatttr.com

Last Friday I gave a quick talk about Stewdio projects called "Live Work" in Google's Creative Sandbox on the beach in Cannes, France during the annual Cannes Lions festival. Google has just uploaded video of the talk:

View on YouTube: http://youtu.be/ZX3CUPSrp_k

Stewart is giving a small Cannes Lions talk called “Live-Work” on Friday, June 22nd at 16:00 in the Google tent. From Google's description: Come and join Stewart Smith—founder of Stewdio—on our beach for an intimate discussion about how he mixes graphic design, art and code to produce some incredible work. For a list of some of Stewart's previous lectures see items tagged with talk.

It’s springtime rainy days in London—as good a time as any for a new playlist heavy on differing versions of St. James Infirmary Blues. Introducing Shale, thirteen songs to brood and sulk by.
01. Knock Knock. The Accidental. 02. Oh My Heart. REM. 03. St. James Infirmary. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. 04. Mostly Waving. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. 05. St. James Infirmary. Bobby Bland. 06. Western Eyes. Portishead. 07. Life in a Glasshouse. Radiohead. 08. Going to Georgia. The Mountain Goats. 09. So. Central Rain. REM. 10. St. James Infirmary. Snooks Eaglin. 11. What’s a Girl to do. Bat for Lashes. 12. St. James Infirmary Coda. Decembler. 13. Where Did You Sleep Last Night. Nirvana.

Stefan Post of PostWare recently took it upon himself to port the source code for our Jed's Other Poem music video from its original Applesoft BASIC form to Commodore BASIC. This means Jed can now run on the Commodore 64! You can read Post's notes and download his C64 port here: http://www.postware.nl/site/Jed2.html
Mac OS X users can download Vice 2.3 which is a package of several related emulators. When downloaded, open the x64sc emulator and from the File menu select Smart attach Disk/Tape (or hit Command+O). Select Posts's PRG file and before long you will see Jed's blinking cursor. Adjust the emulator's speed as necessary.
Of course you can still download the original Applesoft BASIC code and run it on an Apple 2 emulator. For OS X we recommend Virtual ][ which emulates the Apple ][, ][+, and //e. And if you happen to have an actual vintage Apple laying around you can use the audio file included in the source code package to load Jed onto it via the cassette port—just like the guys at Panic Software! See their blog post about it: An Apple //e, an iPad, and Jed.