Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Happy Birthday TSO

Today, Wednesday, July 29, is the birthday of The Supreme Society's found, TSO. Thor was born eighteen years ago, and has been my best friend for seven. He brought me into the blogging world with his idea for a fun blog that two friends could post about anything they liked, and it's been great so far. From me, The Supreme Society, and all our readers, Happy Birthday.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

GOOD MUSIC II

My GOOD MUSIC installments will be done a little differently than those of TSO. I will mostly be writing reviews of albums, and occasionally singles, but I wont be providing you with a link to download them. Just know that only quality music will be posted here, and I highly recommend that you download the music by your own means.
LP by Discovery

LP is a stunning electro-pop collab between Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot and Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend, with a contribution from Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig. The album has a powerful opening three tracks with "Orange Shirt," "Osaka Loop Line," and "Can You Discover?" and Discovery makes excellent use of tempo change to transfer between sections of the songs. The talent from Vampire Weekend is what drew me to this album. The melodies on the keyboard by Batmanglij are sweet and creative, and in my opinion, make most of the songs, and Koenig plus auto-tune equals some catchy electro tunes to make for a fun, innovative summer soundtrack. Track listing below, with asterisks indicating standout tracks.

LP
01. Orange Shirt*
02. Osaka Loop Line*
03. Can You Discover?*
04. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend [ft. Angel Deradoorian]
05. So Insane
06. Swing Tree
07. Carby [ft. Ezra Koenig]*
08. I Want You Back*
09. It's Not My Fault (It's My Fault)
10. Slang Tang

Enjoy,
The Crane

The Rubber Player



Nixon released two new colorways of their popular Rubber Player watch in the last month. The ancestor of the Rubber Player was simply called "The Player," when it was released a few years ago, but its popularity has made it one of Nixon's top selling timepieces, inspiring new versions like The Ceramic Player and The Rubber Player. On the fifteenth of March, April, May, and June Nixon released four different color ways of their new Rubber Player. These colors included green, blue, red, and yellow, but unfortunately they were extremely limited and can only be found on Ebay now. The two permanent colorways that this post is about are the new purple and black colorways.

The Rubber Player maintains the same look as The Player, but instead of being made of just metal, the watch is encased in rubber, giving it an attractive matte look and a soft, grippy feel. The watched have a real diamond at the six o'clock position, and the yellow and blue second hands are a nice touch. The watch is not only stylish, but also durable, with the ability to withstand upto 100 M underwater. Priced at $150, the Rubber Player is a reasonable and fun watch.

Given the choice between the two, I would probably choose the black, only because it would look ridiculous to wear a purple watch to any sort of formal event, but throwing sensibility and usefulness to the wind, I would choose the purple. Check it out at Nixon.

Peace,
The Crane

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Hype Machine


"Every day, thousands of people around the world write about music they love — and it all ends up here."

The Hype Machine is a must-visit-daily website, if you want to keep on top of your music game. Every day new bands are emerging, and new music is being written. And we all know that deep down, being the first to find a band/artist and spread it around feels pretty legit. It makes you feel like you are somehow part of that band, even though you have literally nothing to do with them. So, you may be asking, "Crane, how can I be the first to hear the music?" The Hype Machine, my friends. People like TSO and me, run music blogs from all over the world. Allow them to sift through the massive amounts of music out there for you. The Hype Machine is an aggregate of all music blogs, posting the exact same posts as the blogs themselves in real time. Almost all the new posts have download links for the individual songs in the post.

Some cool features of the site are "popular," "radio," "most blogged artists," and their annual "zeitgeist." If you navigate over to the "popular" tab of The Hype Machine, it will show you songs from the last three days with the most favorites. It's a list of user-voted top music in the world, unbiased by big record labels. What I like to do is go to the popular tab every other day or so, and go through the top twenty-five songs for that day. With a simple add-on to Firefox, FlashGot, you can click the little play button next to songs on The Hype Machine, then click the FlashGot icon on your browser to download all the songs that you have streamed, even if you didn't listen through the whole song. The "radio" section includes a stream of popular and recent songs posted by blogs, and a weekly radio show run by the website featuring the hottest music. Most blogged artists is a simple feature on The Hype Machine's main page that is a list of that weeks top artists to give you a better idea of new bands to follow, without being muddled by new singles. At the end of every year, The Hype Machine produces their Zeitgeist, which means "spirit of the time." It's a list of the year's top albums, artists, and songs. Really helpful for catching up on good music after a busy year of school and whatnot.

If you're not one for downloading music in an extralegal fashion, you can always listen to the songs and artists directly off of The Hype Machine. They have a fantastic flash player at the bottom of their page that has a seamless method of playing music off the website while switching pages, much like Facebook chat.

One final thing I like about The Hype Machine is that it provides you with otherwise difficult to find remixes of tons of songs. Remixes can bring life back to a song that you may find boring after too many listens or make songs that don't fulfill their full potential great. Check this website out, I highly encourage it. The Hype Machine.

Continue having a great summer,
The Crane

Monday, July 13, 2009

Drexel University Computing Academy

*Just a heads up guys, this post is pretty long. Read only if you want to*

It's summertime. Suns out, guns out. You know the rules. Its a time to kick back and relax, and enjoy the vessel of joy that is summer vacation. While many of you take this time to get some well-deserved rest and relaxation, some of us have... a few inconvenient obligations.


In order to understand any good story, you need to understand the context. With that said, the beginning of this story starts out kind of like this...

Which functional retard shown above is George W. Bush?

It all started when Governor Rendell decided that Pennsylvania just didn't have any money. It wasn't really his fault - the nation was a little short on change. Cutbacks had to happen, and unfortunately, some of the more prestigious, academic investments had to be cut short as well. Thus, the Pennsylvania Governor School of Excellence was cut. 12 of the most highly ranked summer programs in the state disappeared. There were whispers, deep within the underground (read: internet) that some of the schools might stay. Drexel University, the host of the Governor School for Information, Society, and Technology, decided that they weren't letting a huge scouting opportunity pass them by, and of course, they dished out the money in order to keep it alive. Despite the fact that it's the same exact program, they couldn't keep the name because the state wasn't paying for it. Thus, DUCA was born.

The Drexel University Computing Academy is a " five-week, residential summer learning experience" that is "...an outgrowth of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for Information, Society, and Technology (PGSIST), which was hosted at Drexel from 1998 through 2008". Really? I wouldn't know because there are so many damn rules.

Pictured above: residential summer learning experience

I'd like to thank my parents for their support, my teachers for the awesome recommendations, and, of course, me. With good grades, I successfully condemned myself to five-weeks of minimum security prison. I mean, it isn't THAT bad, but it surely is much less fun that the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Summer Program. Basically, we have class for six hours a day, and after that we just kind of chill and work on these long term projects that DUCA has assigned us. On weekends we don't have classes, and instead have random little fun field trips. On the Fourth of July, we went to the Constitution Center (right), and last weekend, I saw Transformers 2 for the second time. Most of our time however is spent in the dorm, which ,thanks to years and years of college students, is in a horrible state of disrepair. We still manage though.

As far as the learning portion of the program, I can tell that there will definitely be a lot of stuff that I'm going to get from DUCA. Already, I've learned a bit about 2 significant programming languages (PHP and Python), and have learned how to do a plethora or other minor yet useful skills such as set up a server (that's the first thing I'm doing when I get home). The kids here are also definitely awesome. With 18 guys and 5 girls, it's a huge sausage fest, but we get along just fine. We haven't had a dance yet, and we better not have one either.

One of the big problems I have with this program are all the rules. There are so many. Lights Out at a certain time. No talking to people outside the program (What!? I can only talk to the other 22 kids in the program? That's it? No talking with any of the freshman during their orientation which just so happens to overlap 3/5 of our program?....BS). No cell phones outside of the dorms. And the infamous borders.

No cell phones? Really? According to the higher-ups, cell phones completely remove the ability to pay attention, and they found that students were not learning anything if they had their cell phones during class. Interesting. I could have sworn that cell phones do have some other feature aside from distracting that makes them somewhat useful...

Yes, ma'am, I understand your child is inside, and I'd call it in if I could...
Might I suggest a smoke signal? Oh wait, this isn't the time for fire jokes, is it?


And then there are borders. Before the beginning of the program, DUCA gave all its attendees a map and said 'Here's where you can and can't go'. That would be cool if the map made any sense at all. I can completely understand the horrible part of the city that's really close to us being out of bounds, but some things just don't make sense. A McDonald's? A movie theater? a supermarket? out of bounds, despite the fact that they're in perfectly fine parts of the city (right next to UPenn's campus). According to the higher-ups, the boundary is put up to protect us. And if we ever we're to 'accidentally' 'wander' out of bounds? And I quote, "We have DUCA lookouts who don't work for the program but will see you. They are there to keep you safe. If they see you out of bounds, you are in big trouble" (read: will be shot on-sight).

a DUCA "lookout" securing our "safety"
and keeping us
out of "trouble".
Please note that his "safety" has a scope and silencer.


And finally, and this by far has been the best reason I've received in defense of the rules and regulations. Apparently, every year, Drexel has students at its summer programs that decide to "go rogue" (that's a quote), and don't follow any rules. Based on their description of "DUCA lookouts", I imagine that "rogues" look a bit like this.

That thing circled in red is not his hair,
but his DUCA lanyard with his old room key and ID.
Remnants of his former bondage
.
Now, he fights THE MAN.

All in all, DUCA definitely has some potential to get a lot better (aside from it's acronym, which honestly sounds like a verb that means to excrete something from your backend "I just took a huge DUCA,,,"). I'm only two weeks in, so those math wizards out there know that I have three weeks left. It also has a lot of room to get exponentially worse, so I guess we'll just see how things pan out. I guess it's about time to wrap this post up. We're actually in a class about databases. Kind of important, but I felt the need to keep you guys in the know.

See you all soon.
-TSO



Wednesday, July 8, 2009

GOOD MUSIC Part I


Welcome to a new series called GOOD MUSIC. In this series, The Supreme Society will take a look at songs that we think are absolutely fantastic,. Obviously everyone has different tastes (even the authors of this very blog), so we'll try to get a nice mix of songs up, so you should check back every now and then for some cool new songs. Feel free to drop a comment as to what you like, what you don't, and what you think should be up. Here's a toast to an eternity of GOOD MUSIC...

Music is an integral part of human life. Wikipedia defines it as "...an art form whose medium is sound...". Sounds kinda textbooky, right? We all know that it's a lot more than that. Music is the expression of an individual, matched only by dance, paint, writing, and other forms of art. Today's installment features an array of songs that vary in genre. Here's what my iTunes is rockin' right about now.

(NOTE: Some of the files may be in m4a or mp3. Either way, iTunes plays both, and if you don't have it because whether you think iTunes sucks or because you are a non-conformist... shut up. Get it. It works.)

Best I Ever Had (Remix) (Feat. Nicki Minaj) - Drake
Genre: HipHop/RnB - My Rating: 9.5/10
Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWNiAbElpOg&fmt=18
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?jo5yaxd5nz5

Get 'Em High (Ratatat Remix) (Feat. Talib Kweli)- Kanye West
Genre: HipHop - My Rating: 7.5/10
Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OccBMzzHzM&fmt=18
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?znxymzkk4ov

Pop The Glock - Uffie (Prod. by Feadz)
Genre: Electronic/HipHop - My Rating: 9/10
Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqedLrZEONE&fmt=18
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?zdmwuz2zijz

All Caps - Madvillain
Genre: Old School HipHop - My Rating: 7.5/10
Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewc1hixzYPY&fmt=18
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?xtz2ommuidm

Gettysburg - Ratatat
Genre: Electronic - My Rating: 8/10
Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odNde8wQ5uA&fmt=18
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?zziwdmyiez2

Later
-TSO

a Tribute to The King

At the risk of sounding cliche, it's absolutely true that all good things must come to an end. While we may never forget the controversy that seemed to follow him, it is an irrefutable fact that Michael Jackson is one of the greatest musicians who ever lived. The effects of his music cast ripples throughout not only the United States, but the entire world, and he was truly a world celebrity. From the fast-paced melody of Thriller to the calming serenade of Human Nature, Michael produced songs for all of us. This post is pretty short. Quite frankly, not enough can be said of the man with the white glove. As far as his music goes, look around. You'll find it. Michael's death affected us all, whether you choose to admit it or not, and in the grand scheme of things, we were all really blessed to have lived during the reign of the legendary King of Pop.


Rest In Peace Michael.

Sincerely,
The Supreme Society

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The Supreme Party


Lemons taste like sugar. Tabasco tastes like doughnuts. Chicken tastes like cake. Salsa tastes like ice cream. Flavor tripping, made possible by the miracle berry.
Synsepalum dulcificum: The "miracle berry" plant that produces berries that alter your taste buds. The proteins in the miracle berry bind to the cells on your tongue, changing their perception to make foods taste different.
Some time in August the Supreme Society will be hosting a Supreme Party to celebrate our founding. Come over, chew on a berry, let it sit in your mouth, then eat. It's music and food, is there anything else a party needs? Come hungry. Invite your friends. More details to follow.
-The Crane

Monday, July 6, 2009

You Gotta Have It Part I: µTorrent

You Gotta Have It is the first series here on TSS. This series will point out absolutely amazing programs (most of which will be freeware). The point is that you should get these. They are incredibly useful and efficient, and will definitely be a welcome addition to the rest of the stuff you have on your comp. Enjoy.

Everybody downloads stuff - it's an inevitable part of the internet. With the introduction of file sharing, the world had officially undergone a major technological step. One of the unfortunate drawbacks of sharing files between computers was that one person had to have the entire file, and while you were copying/downloading the file from your buddy's computer, if the connection was terminated or dropped or whatever, you had to do it all over again. Thus, the torrent was born. A torrent file is somewhat like a link in that it's not the actual file but how you get the file. With torrents, instead of getting the entire file from one person, the community of internet users share the burden together by having everyone give a small piece of the file to the downloader until the downloader has the entire file. It's a much faster, more efficient way of sharing information.

µTorrent is a lightweight bitTorrent client that allows you to download torrents (obviously). µTorrent is absolutely worth being the first post in a series of things that you simply have to have - it's a small, portable, executable file (it ends in ".exe"), and has everything you need in a torrent client (that's nothing. There are lots of others that are large and ineffective). To download it, click here or the picture.

Just to be fair, there are plenty of other bitTorrent clients. We just think that µTorrent is the best.

Until next time
-TSO


Sunday, July 5, 2009

a Textual Experience: My Pants Are Off

There comes a time in every man's life when he has nothing more that the simple, primal urge to procreate. This urge overwhelms the body, shutting down all other functions (including, of course, the subtle, yet infamous, I'm-a-weightlifting-douchebag-urge*), and providing that it is the very method that is embedded in the fabric of every core of every man. When no woman is around, some men are so desperate as to resort to the lowest form of mental stimulation: Sexting.

"hehehehe... She'll never know it's only an inch if I tell her it's 11..."

So, here I am, at summer camp, when a friend of mine texts me, asking me for this girl's number that we both know. Now, the two of them have somewhat of a history that is no surprise to the people around them, and that's important because they both have a bit of their own individual reputations. One could say that there reputations absolutely precede them, and those reputations are most definitely not good. Last week, the girl texted me, asking me for his number. That was fine... I guess. I didn't really mind, but at the same time, I'm not your god damn phone book. That occurrence came and went, leaving me more than assured it wouldn't happen again... or at least for a while.

I'm never really sure why I doubted it would happen again. Those two are... special individuals. Sure enough, a mere two days later, he is texting me, and, of course, asks me for her number. Anyone see the opportunity there? I couldn't resist. Quite frankly, one negative aspect of the iPhone has always been the fact that it's owner rarely knows the information of the people that they put into the phone because the iPhone shows the name (or nickname) and picture of whoever you are contacting - never the actual number like many other phones (including some other smartphones).

It really doesn't need to be said that I gave him a number that wasn't the number of the girl he was trying to contact. It actually belonged to my friend Swanny (that's a nickname), and we had quite the laugh talking to the guy as the girl. Because, believe it or not, I do actually have a small, albeit existent, shred of decency within me (although after last night, I'm sure your mother would vehemently disagree), I'm not going to reveal the names of either party. He is from the 610 though, and trust me, if you're close enough to the Main Line and have the right group of friends, you'll know who it is. The same goes for the girl.

(I followed the Texts From Last Night
format, so the 1-610 is simply an indication of the response. The number I used nor the actual girl have the 610 area code. Only his.)

610: Hey it's XXXXXX sry didn't txt u earlier havin too much fun in Cali
1-610: hey sexy. how iz cali?
610: It's the shit...I wanna live here
1-610: can i liv wit you?
610: Umm...ya hah
1-
610: sooooo... what are you doing?
610: I'm at USC that's y I'm our here stayin there in dorms and doin a program here
1-
610: thats how. kinda randm. can we sext?
610: Haha that's corney as shit,..gonna have to do better than that...
1-
610: pleeeeeaaaasssee
610: haha send me sumthin good
1-610: we r in my room. my pants are off. u slowly lick me n my toes curl
610: Then I rub ur tight pussy till u wet and beggin to fuck
1-
610: i need it sooooo bad. you ppull out the handcuffs. my pants are off
610: Dirty girl...Cuff u to the bed and lick ur clutter b4 i gi deep in u
610: Ur clit*
1-
610: LOL smooth. my clit is so hard wet. my pants areoff

There you have it. Short, but sweet. Clearly he caught on, and I'm sure he was pretty pissed, but I enjoyed it and so did the rest of DUCA. What's DUCA you ask? Another post for another day.

Until next time. I'm out.
-TSO

*I'd just like to point out that not everyone that lifts weights is a jerk. In fact, one of my best friends since middle school has been weightlifting for about a year now, and he's one of the nicest, most chill guys around. He works really hard, competes, and does incredibly well (Congrats on that last competition. Second place. Yea - you're kinda the shit). Big ups to all the bodybuilders that work out everyday and push yourselves to greater limits with each passing day. I certainly can't. We all want you to succeed. It's just that occasionally, Mr. 610 and people like him make the rest of you look bad. Don't stop lifting. It's good stuff. Keep it up guys.

Welcome to the Supreme Society

Welcome to TSS. If you're here, this blog is just for you. Anything that we think you need to have can be found here, and believe me when I tell you that we have good taste. Updates to this blog are completely random however, so make you sure you check back regularly for the latest and greatest. At the very least, we'll try to have something fresh every other day.

My name... well... my real name isn't important. You can call me Thor. Thor, the mighty son of Odin. Don't know who he is? Google it. Or, you could... Wikipedia it. Just know that I'm kind of the man. Oh, and I carry a hammer named Mjolnir. Don't test me.

I also brought one of my best buds along for the ride. You can call him The Crane. He's currently the only other member of TSS, and has agreed to help this little bird spread it's wings and get off the ground with some posts of his own.

Most posts will be about things that we here at TSS think are cool. Occasionally you'll get a life story of me or others, but for the most part, we're keeping it to subjective things that you. We'll do posts about sneakers and technology, video games, and maybe even some food. Don't ever be surprised if you come to this site to find something a little different. Change is for the better. At least, it is most of the time. We'll have tons of extras, including our favorite links and downloads, so feel free to come here for whatever you need. Or at least, whatever we think you need.

So there you have it. You've found it. The internet's secret pot of gold. Bookmark us. Love us. We're here for you.

Sincerely,
Thor Son of Odin and Co.