. Midnight Reverie .

[Some great new work from Audrey Kawasaki. Yay! I haven’t liked all her recent stuff so much, but this new work is back to some amazing directions. -egg]
. Midnight Reverie .:

see all piece from my recent show ‘Midnight Reverie’ at Jonathan Levine Gallery.
runs from Sept. 8th ~ Oct. 6th
after the jump!


all pieces oil, acrylic, and graphite on wood panel.
“You Come First”
16″x16″


“Cocoon”
18″x24″


“May There Be”
18″x24″


“Make Believe”
24″x24″

(can you find the 5 kitties hiding in this painting?)


“Wandering Star”
16″x16″


“Shadows”
18″x30″


“Under the Full Moon”
36″x36″


“Possessed”
24″x28″


“Lost in Thought”
9″x9″


“Into”
9″x9″




“Deep Waters”
36″x24″


“Forget Me Not”
36″x20″

Anthrax’s Dan Spitz is now a master watchmaker

[Dude. -egg]

Sent to you via Google Reader

Anthrax’s Dan Spitz is now a master watchmaker

Hodinkee‘s John Reardon has a great profile on and interview with Dan Spitz, former Anthrax guitar hero who quit the music business to become a world-renowned, prize-winning watchmaker who hand-lathes his own replacement parts for antique watch restorations. Reardon quit his gig to spend more time with his family — he has twin boys who have autism — and to pursue his lifelong technical passions. He’s hand-built his own workbench!


Funny story, actually. I was working as a watchmaker in Geneva and thinking I would never go back to music when Dave Mustaine from Megadeth called me and said “Dude, what are you doing? Stop messing with watches. You need to come back and start writing music again. You are one of the creators of our genre, thrash metal. You need to stop tinkering around with these million dollar toys and get back to music.” This lecture led to the end of my solitary confinement as a watchmaker. I looked down the bench and saw another watchmaker working on a crazy watch but obviously also headbanging. I walked over to him and saw that he was blasting Slayer. He was working on a multiple fly-back, jump hour, chrono, perpetual calendar, moon phase, tourbillon and he’s blasting Slayer! I looked at him and thought, “That’s it, I’m done. I’m going back to music.” In the end, most people in Switzerland are blasting while working on watches, anything from Barbra Streisand to Slayer.

My grandfather was a watchmaker, and I grew up playing with junk movements and parts. It’s amazing to hear the story of someone so accomplished — especially in a second career begun as an adult.

Interview: Meet Dan Spitz, Anthrax Guitarist Turned Master Watchmaker

(via Kottke)


HOWTO protect yourself from ATM skimmers

HOWTO protect yourself from ATM skimmers:

Brian Krebs, who has written many excellent investigative pieces on ATM skimmers, spent several hours watching footage seized from hidden skimmer cameras, and has concluded that covering your hand while you enter your PIN really works in many cases — and that many people don’t bother to take this elementary step.

Some readers may thinking, “Wait a minute: Isn’t it more difficult to use both hands when you’re withdrawing cash from a drive-thru ATM while seated in your car?” Maybe. You might think, then, that it would be more common to see regular walk-up ATM users observing this simple security practice. But that’s not what I found after watching 90 minutes of footage from another ATM scam that was recently shared by a law enforcement source. In this attack, the fraudster installed an all-in-one skimmer, and none of the 19 customers caught on camera before the scheme was foiled made any effort to shield the PIN pad.

Krebs goes on to note that this doesn’t work in instances where the skimmer includes a compromised PIN pad, and it seems likely that if covering PINs became more routine that crooks would take up this technique more broadly. But for now, covering your PIN with your free hand is a free, effective means of protecting yourself from ATM skimmers.

A Handy Way to Foil ATM Skimmer Scams


Check out: Bad Lip Reading

Check out: Bad Lip Reading:
Bad Lip Reading is one of my favorite YouTube channels. Here’s their take on Twilight.

This is the first time I’ve seen them try to assemble a coherent narrative (of sorts) out of their re-dubs. Usually it’s silly non sequitur stuff like this hilarious Mitt Romney piece:

“I bought two zebras and tamed a parrot named Mr. Future.” I could watch this stuff all day.

Why SF movies make me insane

Why SF movies make me insane:
My latest Locus column is “Why Science Fiction Movies Drive Me Nuts,” in which I propose that the reason the science in sf movies is so awful is that they’re essentially operas about technology.

The reason that SF movies command such a titanic amount of attention and money from audiences is because they are brilliantly wrought spectacles. What they lack in depth and introspection, they make up for in polish and craftsmanship. Every costume is perfect. Not one polygon is out of place. An army of musicians, the greatest in the land, have picked up horns and stringed instruments by the orchestra-load and played precisely the right music to set the blood singing, written by genius composers and edited into the soundtrack by golden-eared engineers from the top of their trade. The product is perfectly turned out, and this perfection attracts the eye and captures the mind.

But although these spectacles look like movies, what they really are is opera – stylized, larger-than-life, highly symbolic work that is not meant to be understood literally. And it makes me nuts.

How else to explain the glaring inconsistencies that sit in the center of these movies, like turds floating in the precise center of a crystal punchbowl carved out of the largest, most perfect diamond in the whole world? I mean, look at Spider-Man again, and think for a moment about the absurdity of its set-pieces.

Cory Doctorow: Why Science Fiction Movies Drive Me Nuts