The band, OK go , has a music video played on Treadmills. It’s really well done and this got them a spot on the MTV Video Music Awards. The coreography alone makes it really interesting. I wonder how many takes it took? Either way, the video is really good.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Here It Goes Again” by OK go from the “Oh No ” Album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different, Video
The New York Times has an interesting article called "Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books" about Senior year "History" books in Shanghai. What should be in a History textbook is an issue that every Society has to deal with.
IMO, I think it's healthy to question any official History. History textbooks for high school tends to be very filtered and watered down. Often it's not done to follow any Political agenda as much as there is a space limitation for the book and for the class. for example, American History covers over 200 years, how do you Cram that in two to three hundred pages? In China, it seems to have a lot to do with the current Message that the current Gov't wants to deliver. If it's a "Social Studies" class, then it has more to do with a message than actual history.
Back in the day, my high school history teacher, Dr. Kahn, had a discussion about the difference between History and Social Studies. He pointed out that labeling high school Social Studies as a History class might not be accurate.
Personally, when I feel like exploring history, I go to Newspaper microfilm archives in a library (Are they still available??). Even if the newspaper coverage is biased, it's a bias that was current to the time of publishing. Another advantage of reading the old newspapers is looking at the printed advertisements. Go back ten years and it's a completely different world with very different products for sale. The concerns and issues are totally different too. Jump 10 years back each time and you'd be surprised at the changes that have happened just in your life time.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Call Me When You're Sober" by Evanescence from the "The Open Door" Album.
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Posted in Different
One of my hobbies is photography, another is programing (Also My Job…). I've written a couple of MT Plugins to create Yahoo Maps or Google Maps in a Movable Type Entry.
Sony has introduced the GPS-CS1 that
might allow me to easily combine the two.
It's a pretty simple idea:
I'm hoping it downloads the data to a usable format like a Text file of some sort so i can make use of it for my own uses. If it does, I'll try to modify my MTYahooMaps plugin to take advantage of the Coordinates in the Jpeg EXIF data.
Here is a screen shot of the software as shown on CNET .
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Pump It" by The Black Eyed Peas from the "Monkey Business" Album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
CNN.com has an Article which discusses the latest GOP Buzzword, Fascism. It's interesting to me as Politicians of all parties like to use Buzzwords to "Clarify" issues but frankly, the GOP are experts at getting their talking points out.
In this case, "fascism" is used to make a comparison to the "War on Terror" to World War II. As the article mentions, I'm not sure it's a valid comparison. "Islamic fascism" makes for a good sound bite, but, IMO, is dangerous since people will lump all Islamic groups as Fascists and Demonizing a culture for the actions of a relative few would be a great mistake.
Political pundits have been using this term for quite sometime, but as elections in November approaches, I bet we see more and more politicians jumping on the band wagon as well.
Update: As Cooks and Liars points out, Keith Olberman holds Donald Rumsfeld to task for his. Keith Olberman makes some very good points and comparisons.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Move Along" by The All-American Rejects from the "Move Along" Album.
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Posted in Different
But it's been All good. Among other things:
In short, Life is busy but good. I can't believe that it's nearly the end of summer!
If you've never been to Toronto, I highly recommended it. We stayed with some friends of mine and met some people that I've corresponded with via Flickr. I've always thought that my wife, Janny, takes better photo's than I do and on this trip she took my Camera and shot away. I'm hoping to convince her to participate on Flickr and share some of her shots. With a little luck she'll develop a severe case of flickritis and get hooked on Flickr…
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley from the "St. Elsewhere" Album.
Image from CN Tower Web site.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Mr. Curiosity" by Jason Mraz from the "Mr. A-Z " Album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
It was the Battery or more accurately, the Battery terminals. Turns out when the Radio momentarily died, the Entire Car did. I never noticed until it happened while I was at a Red light. This happened before on an Old Honda Accord (I've owned 8 cars so far) while on the FDR Drive. To put it mildly, that was a very educational moment in auto mechanics. I cleaned the terminal and the car has been fine so far.
Still need to get a tune up but I won't be getting a new car radio.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Move Along" by The All-American Rejects from the "Move Along" Album.
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Posted in Different
Today, In NYC it's hitting close to 95 Degrees Fahrenheit (I'm betting it hits 100). During my lunch hour, I like to take quick walks and take photo's of anything interesting.
Might not be a good day to do that…
Music I'm listening to right Now:
Nothing at the moment.
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Posted in Different
Ok, I listen to music a lot, especially when I drive (Oddly Karaoke singing with the window down keeps other cars away from me. Why is that??). So naturally, driving back home, my factory car radio starts randomly turning off and on. I’ll take apart the dash to see if it’s a loose wire or not, but I suspect the CD/radio is just out of warranty and Thus ready to go the way of all things.
This begs the question: If it is broken, what should I replace it with? When I purchased the car, I didn’t have an Ipod, so a CD Radio worked fine. Now I have an ipod with an Itrip radio transmitter to play over the car radio. The Itrip is a good product, works well most of the time given conditions but the sound quality is lacking when there is radio interference.
I’m pretty demanding about Car audio too. Not just the sound quality, but how usable the device is. That is: I don’t want to have to look at it to turn it on/off, change the volume or to change the station.
Apple has an “Ipod Your Car” page which was actually pretty informative. Crutchfield has an Excellent on line site too. After going to Crutchfield’s site, I’m leaning towards a Sony CDX-GT300 with a Sony XA-110PI iPod interface adapter. It allows control of the Ipod and is what I call a “Fire and Forget” system. You plug your Ipod in, it gets charged and you only need to use the radio controls to access it. Also, The layout of the controls looks usable and has a detachable face to it. If I did get this with an Ipod controller, likely I’d never use the CD player built into it…
Image from Dave’s Antique Radio and TV Restorations . It’s a Philco 802 Antique Car Radio.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley from the “St. Elsewhere” Album.
Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
Tagged Audio, Car, Dave's Antique Radio and TV Restorations, Music
One advantage of working late is that I come across events like this one. Not really a Fan of Blue Grass music, but they sounded great. This is part of "Mad. Sq. Music 2006 " featuring Rhonda Vincent and the Rage.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Dream Attack" by New Order from the "Technique" Album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
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