#46: 2,000,000 Votes!

Early this morning we reached a pretty impressive milestone on the site: our 2,000,000th legitimate vote.

It's a great feeling knowing that so many people have responded so positively and enthusiastically to our idea, especially since it was only a few weeks ago that we wondered whether we'd ever see one million votes, let alone two. In fact, exactly one month ago we were celebrating our 45,000th vote.

A lot of people think we're sort of nuts entrusting such a major decision to people who have never even met us, but this project has been an incredible amount of fun and a tremendous learning experience for us both. Our sincere thanks to everyone who has voted thus far and for all the votes yet to be tallied.

In honor of our recent millions, here's an interview with artist of all trades Brian Eno discussing his latest project, 77 Million Paintings. He uses light and generative software to create visual configurations that seamlessly shift and fade to produce a total of 77 million combinations:



xoxox
Danny

#45: Plano Catches On & New Illustrations.

We got a special treat this weekend from the lovely folks in Texas. It seems as though some of our zealous German supporters wrote to a cable access show called Plano Wired to let them know about our project. The resulting bit of investigative journalism is pretty funny stuff.

Some of our favorite bits include their original cartoon rendering of the lower halves of our bodies (they made Danny taller and gave me some smokin' legs--see today's image) and the inclusion of the song "Plano, Texas, USA." Without further ado:



Aside from that, I've just put up a new section on my site entitled illustration. I'm going to try doing a new sketch each day and hopefully I'll have something more to show soon. I love your feedback, so please share any constructive criticism you may have as well as your thoughts on the Plano Wired piece!

Heart,
Nina

#44: Innuendoes and Other Assorted Tidbits.

Last night, Nina and I watched the following clip and laughed so much we cried. This children's show took double entendres to new heights--it has to be intentional, right?



What else, you ask? We've mentioned Graham Coxon before, and now it seems as though at least one Blur member wants the guitarist back (which is good, since they've become soulless without him)... Clearly, Britney couldn't cope with K-Fed's rapid ascent into the artistic pantheon... And several years into the show, residents of the O.C. realize that show about "them" may not be so flattering after all.

Meanwhile, the country that brought us Sergei Eisenstein apparently can't deal with a little Borat, since Russia has banned his new movie... Youth voter turnout for the recent elections may have been the highest ever (definitely the highest in at least 20 years) for a midterm ballot... And Apple has axed their "Mac guy" from their television spots because he is kind of wanky and is obviously no match for John Hodgman. Hodgman will continue to make appearances in future ads.

xoxox
Danny

#43: Our First TV Appearance!

Yesterday during their local news broadcast, Eugene, Oregon NBC affiliate KMTR aired this segment about us and our project:



It's the first time a television station has picked up on our story, and we're both proud of and humbled by the attention. Since we couldn't be there in person, reporter Mun Li Kong cobbled together some personal photos, our first YouTube video, and a phone interview she conducted with us to create the two minute piece.

Thoughts and comments are welcome on the blog and on the video's YouTube page here.

xoxox
Danny

#40: YouTube Ahoy!

This weekend we finally took the plunge into the wild kingdom known as YouTube with a 1:20-long video outlining this wacky project of ours.

As of the writing of this blog, it's been viewed a surprising 533 times. We hope you'll visit the YouTube page and leave us some feedback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vty9AGK2id4




For the curious, the song in the background is the "Megamix" of Section 25's "Looking from a Hilltop" (download here--11 mb). It's off their 1984 album, From the Hip, which was released on Factory Records and produced by New Order's Bernard Sumner.

xoxox
Danny

#38: Hacking Democracy and the Electronic Vote.

Last night, Nina and I watched a documentary on HBO called Hacking Democracy; you can view the trailer here. Given the outrageous amount of hacked votes we encounter on our site every day and--of course--the proximity of the midterm elections, it seemed a particularly appropriate blog subject.

Hacking Democracy is about a few different issues, but the dominant theme is how unsecure new electronic voting machines produced by companies like Diebold (who fruitlessly petitioned the cable network not to air the film) really are and how easy it would be for someone to use this proprietary technology to rig an election. Electronic was supposed to be the safeguard, but instead it seems to have only made matters worse.

While the documentary itself wasn't necessarily spectacular, it did raise a lot of important questions which all Americans should be concerned about, regardless of political affiliation. Particularly in a time when so many citizens feel as though voter suppression and voting irregularities have marginalized their impact at the polls, it is critical to take a good, long, analytical look at the systems we have in place... even if the voting software companies don't like it.

I wish the film hadn't had as much of a political bent as it did, although to a certain degree there is no way of escaping it. Elections, after all, are all about politics. For those of you who didn't catch it, here's a nice piece from CNN's Jack Cafferty that touches upon a lot of the points raised in the documentary:



You can also watch a video put together by Princeton University, whose researchers found massive security breaches with Diebold's hardware and used it to successfully hack a test election, or watch Lou Dobbs interview filmmaker-cum-voter-activist Bev Harris and security expert Hugh Thompson. The last clip is worth watching just for Thompson, who reminds us an awful lot of a young Professor Frink.

xoxox
Danny

#26: A Crazy Weekend.

So a couple crazy things happened this past weekend. First off, we experienced some insane voting. If you happened to read the comments from Nina's last post, you saw that there are the beginnings of a grassroots movement in Fort Collins, CO to bring us to that town. However, the folks in Jacksonville, FL are not easily deterred. The result? An insane voting binge this weekend. Around midnight on Thursday, there were 29, 609 votes. By the same time Saturday--48 hours later--the vote tally was up to 62,178. One day later--last night--the number of votes had nearly doubled yet again to 106,611. Wow.

Perhaps this will illustrate the point a little more easily:

Needless to say, we've been pretty floored by the voting rate. You can also view the astronomic rise of the current Top Seven towns here.

If you've read the Who We Are section of our site, you know that I'm a big UM football fan. On Saturday, for the first time this season, I decided not to head out to the Orange Bowl to watch them play in person. Go figure, it's the night they choose to bury what has been a very underwhelming season by having a half-hour melee during the third quarter. At least they're playing wiht some passion, I guess. This is what I missed:



Maybe a bench clearing brawl is a nice segue for "Fist in the Pockets" by Comet Gain off last year's City Fallen Leaves. Comet Gain has been putting out music for (can this be true?) thirteen years now, and this was one of those surprisingly stellar records that nobody seemed to pay much attention to. Note that this song doesn't really kick in until about twenty seconds in, so don't crank the volume up prematurely.



xoxox
Danny