F**k You by Cee Lo Green (Official Video)
It’s not normally the type of music I like, but I kinda dig this song. All the charm would be lost though if they had to edit it for TV or Radio.
Ben Folds, Nick Hornby, & Pomplamoose VideoSong!!!!
via youtube.com
When I saw Ben Folds in Fargo a while back he mentioned that he was going to be making an album with Nick Hornby. This is the first song off the album that is coming out September 28th.
He calls this video a “videosong”, which means in his words:
Things You Think is (almost!) a VideoSong, a new medium with 2 rules:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice). 2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).
Oh, and I like it a lot.
**Update** Ok, I guess this song isn’t off Ben Folds’ new album. Here is a little more from Ben.
To be clear! “Things You Think” is not on the album. I know its all weird timing but I hope nobody gets the wrong idea. The album is not spoken word and in fact, Nick’s voice isn’t on the album either. Nick wrote the lyrics for the album, sent them to me, and I made music for it. The VideoSong is a totally different thing.
Minnesota Gurls
So Katy Perry has a song on the radio that I have heard a few time called “California Gurls”. The song is kinda meh, but there seems to be a lot of pretty funny parody songs popping up on YouTube. Since I am from Minnesota here is “Minnesota Gurls”:
Minnesota Gurls
And now that I am living just across the river in North Dakota here is “North Dakota Bois”:
North Dakota Bois
I haven’t looked, but I am willing to bet there are Parodies for every state.
Hitch-22
This month the audiobook I am listening to is Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22. I am only two chapters in, but so far it’s pretty good. I don’t know if I am going to make it though the whole thing though. It’s read by Christopher Hitchens himself. He is a good reader, but he has a heavy accent that I just can’t get use to. Maybe after a few more chapters I will get use to it. If not, I will just have to buy it in ebook form.
I love audiobooks. I usually listen to one book a month while doing dishes or other household chores. I actually tell the Wife not to clean up the kitchen just so I can do it listening to a book.
Sing It Loud’s “Here With You” VIdeo
via youtube.com
I don’t know why I didn’t post this video before. Probably because in my world, Sing It Loud is a pretty popular band, but in real life they probably aren’t. They are a great band from Minneapolis that I have seen twice. I love this video because it was filmed in Minneapolis, and shows off many of the famous landmarks.
Social Media Not Quite Worthless
So over the weekend Leo Laporte noticed his Google Buzz feed wasn’t feeding into Twitter for almost the whole month, and no one noticed. He was shocked, but I’m not really surprised. My Twitter stream goes by pretty fast. I probably only read 50% of the tweets. I wish I could read them all, but that’s just not possible. If someone dropped off the face of the Earth, I would have a hard time to tell from my Twitter stream.
He came to the conclusion that if nobody missed him, why is he even there? He felt like he was wasting his time feeding content into Twitter, when he should have been feeding it to his blog, at least he would have something to show for it.
I agree with him on that. So many bloggers have quit blogging because of Twitter. A lot of blogs that I used to read almost daily, now are hardly ever updated. People spend all day Tweeting and at the end of the day have nothing to show for it. If they would put it on their blog, send all the TwitPics to their blog, after a while they would have a nice record of their life if nothing else.
Some people think RSS is dead. I live and die by RSS. If you blog something I will read it thanks to RSS. If you tweet it, there is probably only a 50% chance that I will read it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Twitter is totally worthless. It’s great for short little comments. It’s great to communicate with while watching tv. It’s great for telling everybody what you had for breakfast. But don’t forget about you blog.
If I find something I want to share, I might tweet about it, but it’s for sure going on my blog first. Some people hate it when people tweet about blog updates. I do it, and I don’t care. My blog is mine. I own it. At the end of the day this is what’s important. I couldn’t really care less about Twitter. It’s fun, and I will continue to use it as long as it stays fun, but once Twitter goes the way of MySpace, you will still find me here.
Perseid Time-lapse Video
I missed the Perseids this year because of bad weather. This is a great time-lapse video of what I missed. Look at that sky! I wish the sky looked that good here in town. Damn you light pollution.
Phil Plait – Don’t Be a Dick
I finally had time to watch Phil Plait’s “Don’t Be A Dick” talk. Like all of Phil Plait’s talks, this is a must view also. He explains how hard it is to changes people’s minds when they think they are right, and being a dick about it makes it that much harder.
One of my biggest pet peeves is people that believe in woo, or any other nonsense that is not based on facts. I try to be nice about it when I see it.
I gave up talking to my family about their woo beliefs. My Brother is a chiropractor, and the rest of my family is pretty religious. Their belief in nonsense runs rampant. I don’t want any family fights, so I just keep my mouth shut.
But online is a different story. I try to be nice and point people who believe in woo in the right direction. Whenever I see someone online afraid to vaccinate their kids because they are afraid of Autism, I try to point them to the REAL facts. Most of the time I just get blown off.
Often times I hear people talking about going to an acupuncturist, or taking some worthless supplement, or getting their ears cleaned out with ear candling — all nonsense.
It’s really had to get people to look at the REAL facts. It’s so easy for people to know what answers they want, and then find sites that confirm them. The internet is full of woo, and many of the woo sites come up high on Google because they all have some kind of product to sell you. Real facts are hard to find, and when you do they are a really dry read. The real trick is learning how to think critically, and use common sense.
Palmdale’s “Happiness Has A Half-Life” Video
via youtube.com
Letters to Cleo were one of my favorite bands of the 90s. Lately Kay Hanley has been making music with Linus of Hollywood — who also released a great album in the 90s with Size 14 — in a band called Palmdale. They have an EP available on iTunes, and this is the latest video from it.
Ahead Stop
via xkcd.com
I guess I am not the only one who thinks road signs are backwards. I read them backwards every time.
Hawaii Day Eight
For those of you sick of my vacation posts, this is the last one. Day eight was our last full day in Hawaii.
We started it off by taking a helicopter ride. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the ride. I’m not a big fan of flying, but surprisingly it wasn’t really scary at all. The take off and landings in planes is what I really hate. In a helicopter, take offs and landings are nice and smooth. It was only a 50 minute ride, but we got some nice views of a couple waterfalls, and got an even closer look Mount Kilauea. We flew right around the active volcano. We then went on a search for some open lava. The flows are always changing, and mostly underground when we were there. We did see a couple open windows where you could see the lava flowing. It was pretty damn cool to see.
That afternoon we went to Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is the highest point in Hawaii, and one of the best spots in the word to observe space, because it’s above 40% of Earth’s atmosphere, and 90% of the water vapor. We met our tour at the base. It was nice to take the tour up because the ride was a little hairy. About half way up we passed through the clouds. We saw the only snow removal equipment in Hawaii up there, but sadly there was no snow this time if year. The summit was amazing. It was so cool to see all the observatories, even though we couldn’t see inside them. It was pretty cold and windy up there, so we just stayed at the summit long enough to watch the Sun set. It was pretty amazing watching the Sun set above the clouds.
After watching the Sun set, we headed back partway down the mountain, where it’s warmer, and a little less windy. Our tour guide set up a telescope and started pointing out different constellations, and planets, and showing us a few things in the telescope. I could have stayed there all night looking at the stars. The view was pretty spectacular. We saw 8 to 10 meteors, and many satellites. I don’t think I have ever seen a satellite before.
When we were in Hawaii time didn’t seem to go fast at all, but now that we have been back a month, it really did go fast. I really enjoyed it, and hope to get back there sometime again in my lifetime. I just wish it wasn’t so far away, and so expensive.
Hawaii Day Seven
On day seven we spent the entire day at Volcanoes National Park. It’s just like your typical national park, lots of trails and nature, but this one has a volcano too! When we got there we were just in time to catch a ranger guided tour into the caldera of Kilauea. The caldera was closed because the air quality is always changing, so the only way to get down there is on one of these tours.
It was a nice tour down. The tour guide pointed out different vegetation and explained how vulnerable the indigenous plants, and animals are because they evolved to not have any defense mechanisms. People have brought other plants to the islands and they grow wild suffocating out other plants. Wild pigs are their biggest problem. They eat big areas of vegetation leaving big holes, which fill up with water. The water is breading grounds for mosquitoes, which spread disease, and kill indigenous birds, which then aren’t there to pollinate the plants, so even more plants die off. It one big vicious circle.
Inside the Kilauea caldera was pretty cool. It’s probably as close as a person can get to Halema’uma’u crater. That is where it is still active and steaming. Kilauea is actually the longest active volcano. It’s been flowing since 1982, and the flows are always changing. When we were there all the flows were underground.
After the tour to the Kilauea caldera we checked out a few other things in the park, some steam vents, some old lava tubes where lava once flowed underground, and a bunch of old lava flows. We followed the old lava flows down to the cost. It was pretty impressive.
We stayed in the park until sunset to see the glow from Halema’uma’u crater. It was pretty cool, but too far away to get a decent picture. Seeing Kilauea was pretty darn cool, and obviously a learning experience.
New Blog Design
As you can tell I tweaked my blog design a little. I like clean and simple designs, so that’s what I got again. I will no longer be posting my sometimes daily list of links I find interesting. If they annoyed you, well there are done. If you liked them, they will be over there —> in my sidebar. Now they have their very own RSS feed and will be updated as I add stuff rather than once a day.
The thing I like best about blogging is sharing stuff I find cool or interesting on the net. Sometimes they are blog worthy and I blog about them, but many times a link is sufficient.
Like always I will be tweaking the site a bit, but liked it good enough to make the changes tonight.
