🪓The Anime Wars, Sick Mini Pc's and The Monospace Web
Brutalism is Back Baby!
Hey friends!
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.
and Happy Labor Day!
September is FINALLY here and I cannot wait for some cool weather.
I did not order a Pumpkin Spice Latte BUT I did try the Caramel Apple Rebel from Dutch Bros - it’s like a Sour Apple Monster crossed with a hint of salted caramel.
AND - I’ve already began my horror movies - starting with the insanely cheesy Zoombies. (Zoo gets animal zombies - chaos and horribly rendered cgi ensues).
I’m also playing The Callisto Protocol - the modern reimagining of the old classic Dead Space.
It feels a LOT like Dead Space.
This weekend I built a plaster volcano with the children - it’s been over 20 years since I’ve touched plaster of Paris, but our volcano mold turned out great nonetheless.
We had a fantastic time making it reign terror with vinegar lava - I much prefer this kind of volcano to cursed mashed potato ones.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
🔪The Anime Wars
So! 2024 has turned out to be the year that “The Studios” got serious about anime piracy.
Yes - piracy is still abundant but anime was the last “easy to do it” medium.
Pirates will fondly remember the days of Megaupload, Putlocker, Project Free Tv, Grooveshark . . . .
A bunch of the “classics” like aniwave or 9anime shut down last week.
It’s not really surprising. Anime continues to grow and grow in popularity with the West - and Western money has began to take over various anime companies.
Fun fact - Crunchyroll started out as a bootleg illegal website.
You only need Crunchyroll and HIDIVE for most shows, but that will likely change as Anime popularity keeps skyrocketing.
In any event - I’m curious to see how long before anime piracy retreats to the same shadows that normal piracy resides in.
Side note: If you’ve never watched anime - I recommend starting with Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (zombies), Angel Beats (humor), and Darker than Black (neo-noir scifi).
🖥Sick Mini Pc’s
Though I’m quite happy with my current setup - I do tend to dream of a sick mini PC.
There’s something appealing about a water-cooled mini pc or building something to fit inside Teenage Engineerings mini PC case.
Someone created a website that pulls cheap mini pc’s from Ebay and spits them into a really fun lo-fi list.
It’s crazy just how cheap some of these are. If all you need is something for some light internet browsing and media consumption - you could get away with spending $60 plus shipping!
Ok - maybe spend $85 and get something like this.
Toss on a cheap Facebook Marketplace monitor - and a cheap keyboard/mouse/ speaker from Amazon and you’re good to go!
And you could probably do all that for around $150.
It’s crazy how cheap computers have gotten!
Check out this fun Mini PC site at the link.
💻The Monospace Web
i do love some website brutalism - I think about using a theme like one of these quite often.
(If you like brutalist websites - there’s a good stack of them here).
What about a minimalist monospace website?
The Monospace web is a challenge to see if it would be possible to pair a Monospace font with a monospace design.
It works pretty well - everything is cut down to bare minimum - text and lines.
It’d be pretty fun to have a website like this!
and the Monospace Web at the link!
🐙The Land of Random
Let’s spin the random link wheel and see what we get!
Volv News
*cross-promotion with Volv News
Volv is a Snapchat-backed social news app that consolidates the most important, viral, and interesting content from around the web into 9-second stories that you can just scroll through like social media. Users call it “TikTok for smart people”, since they use Volv instead of TikTok and Insta to discover quality content that they would’ve never read otherwise. So far, users have read 50 million stories on the Volv app!
Medieval Tunes
Looks like Lofi Girl is getting into the theme of things
One Million Letters
A take on One Million Checkboxes - but with one million letters spelling all sorts of insane things. (potential nsfw/nsfl)
Streamers
Fancy some internet streamers dancing in the invisible aether? Check this out!
Video to ASCII
Now THIS. THIS is awesome. THIS is art. We like THIS.
Lightning and Thunder Oh My!
Watch lightning in real time. This is wild.
Titan Phones
I totally forgot Unihertz has several QWERTY phones. They’re a bit outdated - but if you’re ok with olddd Android, they’ll work great for the aesthetic.
Sacred OS
Windows vibes here. Really fun + weird site!
That’s all for this week . . . unless you want to see this cool trifolding concept video. (Westworld is so close).