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Supporting independent artists
I love supporting independent artists who release there stuff online as “pay what you want”. I just bought Wil Wheaton’s new short story Hunter, and Molly Lewis’s new song, “An Open Letter To Stephen Fry”. I love them both, and am more than happy to throw a few bucks at them for their hard work.
I would like to think and hope the “pay what you want” model works. I support it whenever possible, and always throw in a little extra. I would think most fans would chip in, and if they weren’t fans and downloaded it for free—Well, they may become fans and buy future works.
Wil Wheaton said he would probably get $125 for selling his short story to a magazine. With his fan base, I can almost guarantee he will make much for than that selling it online. It would just take 42 people to pay the $3 that I did. The best part is no DRM. I don’t have to crack the DRM like I do when I buy from Amazon, and it also feels good knowing that 100% of the money—after PayPal takes their cut—goes into his pocket.
And if you don’t know who Molly Lewis is, you can watch her on YouTube, and buy her music on BandCamp. I honestly listen to her music all the time, and am always looking for new stuff. Here is her video for her latest song that I just bought:
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How to solve a Rubik’s Cube! rap
This is a genius rap about solving a Rubik’s Cube. I would find it difficult to follow though. Dan Brown makes it easier to solve your Rubik’s Cube—although not quite as entertaining.
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Flight of the bumble bee on an accordion
via youtube.comAlexander Dmitriev plays Flight of the bumble bee on an accordion. How anybody can move their fingers that fast is beyond me.
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Who doesn’t love Pi?
Another great t-shirt at Shirt.woot.com. This one sold out on me, but it’s probably for the better. I have too many woot! shirts the way it is.
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The amazing universe
via youtube.comI’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. I’m about halfway through it, and it’s a great book about the history of science. It got me thinking of this video. I saw it a while back, and may even blogged about it before. The video is nearly as old as me, but it’s still great and illustrates how amazing massive the universe is, and how insignificant our pale blue dot is. It also shows how amazing small atoms are. It always amazes me to think that you and everything around you, including the air, is mostly empty space.
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NASA’s STEREO reveals the entire sun
How frickin’ cool is that? NASA can now see both sides of the Sun at the same time. Science is so frickin’ cool. I just love learning about all the new stuff they discover, and the internet makes it so easy nowadays.
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My geek cave
Currently in my geek cave I have two desks. The one I mostly sit at usually has three computers on it, sometimes four if I am playing around on my netbook . I have a Windows 7 machine, two Macs, and my netbook runs Ubuntu Linux.
Across the room is my Wife’s old desk. Once she got a laptop she didn’t have a use for it anymore. I have two more computers over there hooked up to a KVM switch to share the keyboard, monitor, and mouse. One is my main Linux system running Ubuntu, and the other is an old junker that’s running console video game emulators. If I ever have the urge to play Super Mario Brothers, or Pitfall, that’s where I do it. I can play any Atari 2600, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Nintendo, or Super Nintendo game I want. All the video game systems of my youth.
In the near future I am going to upgrade my desk. I’m getting rid of the two I have and getting one big one that should house all five of these computers. I have looked around town, and haven’t found crap for computer desks, but I have found some pretty sweet ones online. I am going to switch from a corner desk to a L shaped desk with two keyboard drawers. It should give me plenty of room after I upgrade that big ass 19” CRT monitor.
I am so eager to make the upgrade, but I kind of have to wait until I make room on the garage for my old desks. The garage is a pretty sloppy mess now being winter, and having the snowblower and other crap in there.
I hope I will be able to sell my desks quickly on Craigslist. They are both high quality and in pretty good shape. I love them both, but it’s time for an upgrade. Once my new desk is in place, then I will have a whole half of room to figure out what I want to do with.
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100 famous rock guitar riffs – one take
via reddit.comJust try to name them all.
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The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained
via reddit.comThis is a nice little video explaining the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England. It’s something I have always been curious about, but too lazy to look it up myself.
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I’m no longer a “double-spacer”
I am kind of a grammar Nazi. Other people’s grammar errors drive me crazy, but I am sure I am guilty of many grammatical errors myself. I was never a fan of English class in school, and always struggled in English and writing classes. I envy people that like to write. I want to like writing, and I do now more they I ever have before, but it’s always been a struggle to get words from my head, to the paper — or computer screen.
One thing that I didn’t even know was a thing is the double spaces after a sentence controversy. It came up twice lately in a few blogs that I read. I now realize how pointless it is, and it is a little distracting. I leaned to type on typewriters in typing class. There we were taught to double space after ever sentence, so I just did it out of habit. I never really noticed if stuff I was reading was double-spaced or not.
Now that I know it’s a thing, I noticed that most things online aren’t double-spaced, and now the double spacing kind of annoys me. I am doing my best to train my thumb to only hit the space bar once now after a sentence. I added a plugin to WordPress that should correct any errors like the one after this sentence. If it worked there should only be once space there. I’m still on the lookout for a way to fix all my past posts. From now on I am no longer a “double-spacer”.
