Category Archives: From the tubes

Random things in the Internet.

Visualizing friendships

An intern at a website called Facebook (some sort of up and coming social network, whatever that is) took data from millions of friendships and drew a map using that information. He drew the cities where users were from and lines between cities depicting friendships. More details on how he drew this here.

The result: A pretty picture, not unlike the ones you see taken from the ISS at night… except these aren’t lights, they are Facebook users.

It also shows to an extent the level of internet penetration in the world: not many users in Siberia nor the Sahara – or the level of internet censorship – can anyone see China?

High resolution image here.

8-bit Trolololo

This post is dedicated to Erika Himes.

In Mexico there is a saying: “Un clavo saca a otro clavo” (One nail pushes out another). It applies here…

For months you’ve been trying to get Eduard Khil’s beautiful rendition of “I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home” a.k.a. Trolololo out of your head. The saying applies:

In a stroke of Nobel-prize-caliber genius, YouTube user Robinerd created a chiptune version of said song. This means that it was made to sound like it was playing on an old-school machine, think a NES or a Commodore 64. For me this is a problem, because those types of songs have a tendency of sticking around inside my brain for a while.

Without further ado I present you: 8-bit Trolololo. Press play at your own risk.