Zero Punctuation review Sonic Unleashed in order to unwind during this stressful Christmas period.

For her Masters thesis at the MIT Media Lab, Anita Lillie created a music library visualization tool called MusicBox. The project will analyze the songs in a music library and group them based on a number of different dimensions - stuff like song length, tempo, ID3 genre information, and more advanced spectral properties of the audio.

This project is killer in so many ways, but my favorite feature is that you can use your mouse to draw a path through the song graph and and the tool will create a playlist that smoothly transitions between the different genres along that path. If this ever gets released, human DJs are going to have to step up their game.

MusicBox: Mapping and visualizing music collections

Previously:
Anita Lillie's Arduino sleep tracker project

Wagner James Au sez, "This is machinima of the Bogon Flux, a beautifully ugly, totally strange, self-assembling, self-destructing, steampunky city comprised of rusty pipes and metal chambers. It's located in the post-apocalyptic Wasteland area of Second Life, so the filmmaker used 'London 2026,' a customized version of SL's atmosphere renderer which literally turns the air into dusty sepia. (At least from the machinima maker's point of view.)"

Man, this is the first SL machinima I've seen that crosses the line from "extremely promising" to "Holy crap!"

Mescaline's View: Watch "Pipedream", and Get the WindLight Preset It Was Made In (Thanks, James!)

Genetic Algorithm (Thanks, Matthew!)

Most kids will find puppets funny, but not this kid. He’s got a severe form of pupaphobia (the irrational fear of puppets). I don’t think he’s making this up, and I sure hope that he outgrows it.

I know people who have misophobia (irrational fear of dirt and germs), chemophobia (chemicals), and flutter-phobia, so I don’t find the kid’s reaction as funny though I’m sure many people would. But it sure is interesting: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Juergen!

Do you have an irrational fear of something? What is it?

Previously on Neatorama: Coulrophobia: Fear of Clown (not a good link for you if you’re afraid of clowns)

Photo: Badger 23 [Flickr] - via Miss Cellania

No, "Turd Baby" isn’t just a pejorative (look it up at Urban Dictionary, if you must) it is a store in Danshui, Taipei, Taiwan, selling stuff out of little vending machines! It certainly has a unique name!