Searching for vintage Hypercolor shirts, I found a company called Body Faders. Body Faders apparently makes the fabric for the few other companies now marketing heat-sensitive color-changing clothing, as well as marketing a few designs of their own. (You can see some of the companies using their fabric at the bottom of their website.)

Original Hypercolor clothes are rare, and usually they don't work very well anymore after so many washes, so I'm open to the idea of a new imitator. Body Faders has apparently improved the durability of the color-change fabric, and manufactures it right here in the good old USA. So what's lame about them?...

On their poorly designed website they claim to be "the Original", so I thought "oh, is this the same company that was behind HyperColor??" No; that company was called Generra. Furthermore, the site makes this misleading half-truth claim:

(emphasis added)

They may or may not be the current "only worldwide manufacturer", but how can a company that has been making this fabric for "over three" whole years claim to be the "original"? Either they are somehow amazingly unaware of the original Hypercolor, or they want their customers to forget they existed for some reason. And I don't see how that lie is supposed to benefit them, unless they think hipsters will poo-poo anything that isn't fresh and brand-new. Either scenario shows a remarkable lack of business savvy.

I'm sure their fabrics are quality, but I get really turned off by this sort of fact-bending marketing. Especially when it seems so unnecessary, and when it seems to aim to wipe away and re-write an important part of our popcultural memory.

American Apparel is also supplying these shirts, but I was unable to determine if they manufacture their own or if they use Body Faders fabric.

With all that being said, in honesty I will still probably buy one of these shirts from somewhere.

Severed Heads: a pioneering Australian electronic project.

Check out more music and info on Severed Heads here.

Alpine is a highly configurable yet simple command-line email client, but I noticed one major problem with it. When using Comcast, and probably other email services, you are likely to have trouble sending messages. You may see this error message when your outgoing messages fail to, well, outgo:

"Need MAIL before RCPT"

If you get this error, it's probably because alpine uses your user login as the user-id for your email account. What this means is that if your *nix login is xbj, and you set your user-domain to comcast.net, then mail will be sent from xbj@comcast.net. When your email name doesn't match your *nix user, you may get problems. Alpine lacks a simple way to set your user-id, so here's a work-around...

First, press S then C to go into Setup > Config. Enter your info for User Domain, SMTP Server, and Inbox Path, and put a check in the box next to 'Alternate Role (#) Menu'. If you use Comcast, this info should look something like:



Exit and save. From the main menu, press S to enter 'Setup', R to enter 'Rules', R again for 'Roles', then A for 'Add'. (I only set my alpine up to use one address.. You may have to go a few steps further/different if you have multiple accounts, but it shouldn't be too difficult.) Now you need to set the following parameters:



Exit, save changes, restart alpine, and hopefully enjoy.

What is EPG? The answer still remains largely unknown. Electronic Play-Girl has worn many faces and represented many ideas, and is as flexible and undefinable as ever. EPG is dynamic, and she grows and changes with the times. So what does that say about the website? It says this thing is bound to change, and it says EPG doesn't like to be too predictable. This place is not a box. This place is open to the public. This place is for the cool nerds.

This Fall, British Knights have returned in classic vintage styles, and L.A.Gear is set to do the same. Both are classic kicks from our childhood, and to the casual vapid fashionista they may seem to be of equal trend value. So why does L.A.Gear fail? Simple: because when we were kids, British Knights were fly and L.A.Gear was cheap shit for losers, and because being retro doesn't automatically give value to something. If it was lame then, it's lame now.

British Knights are remembered for being banned from schools amidst rumors of gang affiliation, for being a status item you might end up shot for, and for being endorsed by MC Hammer and Derrick Coleman. What are L.A.Gear remembered for? Mostly for shitty inferior imitation 'Pumps' called "Regulators", for girls shoes with multiple tongues and sparkly laces, for pathetic gimmick blinking lights, for falling the fuck apart, and for being worn by assholes that nobody liked. Oh, and while BK's had MC Hammer, L.A.Gear produced various ugly Michael Jackson signature models... yeah, real fucking hip...

The site will be under construction for a while..
I know it's been about a billion years since any changes have been made..
Have a look around and check back in a week or two..



COMING SOON:

Debian Lenny on a ThinkPad 390E

How to install GNU/Linux on the University of Reading's new RatBrain CPU architecture

Why Your Taste in Music May Blow, and What You Can't Do About It