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Cowbells: from ancient GPS trackers to rock and roll legends to late night TV comedy.
Discover their journey in our latest episode.
🎧 podcastawesome.com/2092855/epis...
#CowbellJourney #PodcastAwesome

Behind the Icon: Cowbell-Circle-Plus - Podcast Awesome
💥 A Podcast Awesome Deep CutEpisode Description:🛎️ Guess what? We got a fever … and the only prescription is … well, you know. In this very special episode of Podcast Awesome, we hit pause on our usua...

Podcast Awesome

Behind the Icon: Cowbell-Circle-Plus

💥 A Podcast Awesome Deep Cut

Episode Description:

🛎️ Guess what? We got a fever … and the only prescription is … well, you know. In this very special episode of Podcast Awesome, we hit pause on our usual tech-and-icon-nerdery to unleash a full-throttle ode to one of the wackiest icons in our set: Cowbell Circle Plus.

What starts as a nod to the legendary SNL sketch featuring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken (The Bruce Dickinson, thank you very much), quickly turns into a globetrotting, time-hopping, cultural deep dive through the unexpected history of the humble cowbell. From medieval Irish cow raids 🐄⚔️ to German cowbell zoning laws 📏🔔 to the altars of rock and roll 🥁🎸, we unpack how this sonic sidekick moo-ved (hehe) from pasture to punchline.

Plus: Icon Designer extraordinaire Jory Rafael stops by to share how we brought the Cowbell icon to life (spoiler: it did not involve raiding any farms).

🧀 What We Cover in This Episode:

🐄 Cowbell as medieval emergency alert system

🏴‍☠️ Cattle raids and why your cow needed anti-theft bells in 12th century Ireland

🛠️ The surprising craftsmanship behind cowbells (hello, zoning laws!)

🌍 How cowbells show up in global rituals

🎶 The greatest cowbell moments in music — from Foghat to KISS to the Beastie Boys

😂 The SNL sketch that made “More Cowbell” the rallying cry for comedy nerds everywhere

🔤 Behind-the-scenes with the FA team: how we turned “More Cowbell” into an icon

🤘 A lightning round of underappreciated cowbell bangers

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 – Welcome to the Weird World of Cowbell
 01:15 – SNL Meets SVG: The Inspiration Behind the Icon
 02:30 – History Lesson: Cowbells as Analog GPS
 04:20 – Cattle Raids, Irish Wars, and Why Your Cow Needed Protection
 06:10 – Cowbell Zoning Laws? Yep, That Was a Thing
 07:00 – Superstition, Spirit-Banishing & Ceremonial Bells
 08:15 – Enter: The Iconic More Cowbell Sketch (2000, SNL)
 09:00 – Icon Deep Dive with Jory Rafael
 10:20 – Musical Cowbell Moments You Didn’t Know You Needed
 11:30 – Wrap-up & Credits Roll Like a Cow in a Parade

🔗 Links & Resources:

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Podcast Awesome
Font Awesome Changelog

7.0.0

Font Awesome 7: redesigned core icons, 300+ new icons, seven new Pro+ packs, and smaller, faster files.

Added

  • Introducing Font Awesome 7!
    • The next version of the internet's favorite icon library and toolkit has arrived. It includes more icons, improved performance, and new ways to make your designs look amazing.
    • Redesigned core icons. We've refined the majority of our core icons with more consistent key shapes.
    • 300+ new icons. This first release of Font Awesome 7 delivers a large batch of fresh icons, with more coming soon.
  • New Pro+ icon packs!
    • Each pack offers a curated set of the 200 most commonly used icons for app and website design. Available with a Pro+ subscription.
    • Now available: Chisel, Etch, Jelly, Notdog, Slab, Thumbprint, and Whiteboard.
    • Additional icon packs are on the way.
  • Icon Wizard improvements!
    • A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.
    • Now includes over 40 modifiers.
    • Option to place modifiers in the bottom-right or bottom-left corner.
    • Turn any modified icon into a Duotone icon.

Changed

  • Design improvements to the majority of our core icons.
  • Massive improvements to SVG/JS pseudo-elements performance.
  • Significantly smaller webfonts due to higher Brotli compression, a switch to CFF and various other optimizations.
  • Smaller CSS files by using custom properties and optimizing the files for better compression.
  • Upgraded to Dart Sass with modern SCSS and improved CSS properties.
  • Improved naming and consistency of CSS custom properties.
  • Use of CSS Logical Properties to support RTL languages and diverse writing modes.
  • Icon canvases now render at a consistent fixed width. To use the default rendering from v6, add our new fa-width-auto class.
  • We've added mapping support for renamed CSS custom properties and SCSS variables to help existing projects using FA5 or FA6 work seamlessly with FA7.
  • We have changed how our individual SVG files are formatted in FA7:
    • No longer include a global stylesheet
    • path elements no longer have classes on them
    • They default to fill=currentColor
    • Duotone path color and opacity can be set using --fa-primary-opacity, --fa-primary-color, etc.
  • We removed some redundant icon designs, and remapped them as aliases:
    • user-large[-slash] → user[-slash]
    • hexagon-vertical-nft-slanted → hexagon-vertical-nft
    • headphones-simple → headphones
    • toilet-paper-blank[-under] → toilet-paper[-under]
    • vector-[shape] → draw-[shape]
    • film-simple → film
    • grid-horizontal → grip
    • handshake-simple[-slash] → handshake[-slash]
  • If you have custom CSS that selects the .fa-primary or .fa-secondary classes on SVG path elements, they'll no longer be present in FA7. Use the CSS custom properties to set opacity and color.
  • Changed SVG stringification on the Kits CDN. Most importantly, duotone icons must now be parsed based on the presence of an opacity attribute with a value less than 1, rather than relying on earlier structural patterns.
  • We are no longer including legacy .ttf or .woff webfonts. If your project depends on those files, please update to use the .woff2 format, which is now the standard for webfont delivery.
  • We removed the sr-only classes, as Font Awesome's built-in accessibility doesn't use this approach anymore. If you were using them in your code, make sure you add sr-only styles to your own stylesheet.
  • We removed the fa-fw class, as it is no longer needed with the new default fixed-width rendering. If you were using it, you can now use the new fa-width-auto class to revert to the previous behavior.
  • We have removed support for Less CSS in FA7. If your project uses Less, we recommend migrating to Sass, using our precompiled CSS, or continuing with Font Awesome 6.
  • We have dropped support for our official Python Django plugin. If you were using it, you can either continue with Font Awesome 6 or switch to a self-hosted Kit or our standard CSS.
  • We have ended support for the official Ruby on Rails Gem. Projects using it can continue with Font Awesome 6 or migrate to using a Web Fonts-based Kit or a self-hosted Kit.
  • Our official Vue component now supports Vue 3+ only. Compatibility with Vue 2 or earlier is no longer guaranteed in FA7.
  • The React component no longer supports dynamic imports. If you were importing icons dynamically, you'll need to update your syntax to use static imports for compatibility with FA7.

Fixed

  • Improved support for screen readers and assistive technologies.
  • Updated accessibility documentation and guidance to align with current best practices.
  • Downloaded SVGs now default to a square viewbox, with an option to download a trimmed version.
  • Since SVG icons now get a currentColor fill, icons that were previously black might now get a different color. For example, an SVG inside a div with blue text will now become blue instead of the default path color of black.
  • We dropped the --fa--fa for Duotone which we briefly introduced for FA6. You can now trigger the second layer of a Duotone icon by ligatures (just repeat the Unicode value) or enabling a stylistic set (font-feature-settings: "ss01").

The wait is almost over ...

Font Awesome 7 is arriving TOMORROW! If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading to Pro+ (and getting your hands on those seven sweet, special Icon Packs), now’s the time! Once Font Awesome 7 launches, prices go back up.
fontawesome.com/plans

Podcast Awesome

The GI Joe PSAs and the Birth of Internet Weird

Pork chop sandwiches!! 🫡 🏃‍♂️‍➡️

Gather round the interwebs young Gen Xers and Elder Millennials ... 

In this oddball solo episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt rewinds to the early 2000s and dives deep into the glitchy, glorious chaos of Fensler Film’s GI Joe PSA remixes — a series of bootleg web videos that helped shape meme culture as we know it.

These gloriously low-res VHS-rip remixes mashed up 1980s GI Joe cartoon PSAs with absurdist humor, surreal voice dubbing, and non sequiturs that burned themselves into our collective consciousness.

Before TikTok. Before YouTube. Before broadband was normal … we had burned DVDs, word-of-mouth weirdness, and lines like:

  • “Pork chop sandwiches!”
  • “Hey kid, I’m a computer!”
  • “Stop all the downloading!”
  • "It's the body message machine-GO!" 

In this episode, we explore:

  • 🧠 The origin story of the GI Joe PSAs
  • 📼 Why they were viral gold in a pre-social internet
  • 💥 The art of deliberate absurdity and proto-memes
  • 📺 Their influence on shows like Robot Chicken and Tim & Eric
  • 🌀 Why chaotic creative energy still beats algorithmic content

So gather 'round, old-school internet nerds. This one’s for you. And knowing? Well… you know the rest.

🔗 Links & Credits

🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin
🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns (Lemon Productions)
🎹 Interstitial music by Zach Malm
🎥 Video support by Isaac Chase

#PodcastAwesome #GIJoePSAs #InternetHistory #MemeCulture #FenslerFilm #DesignNerdery #TimAndEric #PorkChopSandwiches #AbsurdistComedy

Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Matt Johnson

@11ty/gray-matter@2.0.0

Parse front-matter from a string or file. Fast, reliable and easy to use. Parses YAML front matter by default, but also has support for YAML, JSON, TOML Front-Matter, with options to set custom delimiters. Used by metalsmith, assemble, verb and many other

zachleat

💥 Today's release is bigger and *beta* than ever. We decluttered, redecorated, and added some new toys (<wa-popover>, <wa-zoomable-frame>, full-page layout patterns, and an npm package). It's your turn to boldly build like no dev has built before: webawesome.com 🚀

Podcast Awesome

Set Us Up the Meme: The Strange Tale of All Your Base

Where did the “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” meme come from — and why did it break the early internet?

In this nostalgic deep dive, Matt explores the wackadoodle origin of one of the internet’s most gloriously awkward memes. Before “going viral” was even a phrase, this phrase from the 1992 Sega Genesis game Zero Wing somehow made its way from mistranslation to mass internet hysteria — with techno remixes, Flash videos, Photoshopped street signs, and even a nod from AOC herself.

Yes, this was real. And it was spectacular.

Whether you're an old-school web nerd or just want to understand why your coworker keeps saying “Set up us the bomb,” this one's for you.

**🔹 What We Cover in This Episode:
**🕹️ A breakdown of Zero Wing’s hilariously mistranslated intro
🎶 The techno remix and Flash video that made the meme explode
🧠 Why “All Your Base” became the blueprint for internet weird
📡 How meme culture has evolved from delightful chaos to... whatever’s happening now
🧑‍🚀 AOC’s legendary tweet that brought it all full circle

⏱️ Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro + Barry White podcast voice
 1:31 – What is the Ballmer Peak of memes?
 3:00 – The original Zero Wing translation trainwreck
4:32 – “Set up us the bomb”: the remix and Flash frenzy
6:15 – AOC, memes in politics, and nostalgia rebooted
8:00 – Final thoughts on the beauty of shared digital nonsense

**🔗 Links & Resources:
**🕹️ Original Zero Wing meme history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us#:~:text=%22All%20your%20base%20are%20belong,the%201989%20Japanese%20arcade%20game.

👾 The remix that started it all: Invasion of the GABA Robots: https://archive.org/details/invasion_of_the_gabber_rob

🧠 AOC’s legendary tweet: https://x.com/aoc/status/1086483485668319233

**🛠️ Credits:
**🎙️ Hosted, produced, and edited by Matt Johnson
🎵 Theme music by Ronnie Martin
🎧 Music interstitials by Zach Malm
🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

📣 Like the show?

  • Subscribe so you never miss an episode!
  • Rate + review to help more nerds discover us.
  • Or just shout “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US” in public. (We’ll know what it means.)

Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Matt Johnson