Target is selling books on transporting Radioactive Material...for Christmas??

Packaging and Transportation of Radioactive Materials Patram 1986/Isp7181: Proceedings of an International Symposium on the Packaging and Transportation ... Series (International Atomic Energy Agency)) Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like receiving a book on the transportation and packaging of radioactive materials, especially if it is from Target (!) Don't forget to read the Guest Review!

Flight of the Conchords Premieres a Month Early Online | The Underwire from Wired.com

Flight of the Conchords Premieres a Month Early Online | The Underwire from Wired.com

Watch the 1st episode from the second (and last?) season online now!

2008 Mug Shots Of The Year - December 17, 2008

2008 Mug Shots Of The Year - December 17, 2008

Highly entertaining/disturbing top mug shots of the year thanks to The Smoking Gun. Sure to start a conversation!

Blu-Ray Region Code Info

Blu-Ray Region Code Info

Looks like a pretty thorough website that will tell you if that Blu-Ray disc released outside of the US is region free or not.

Darn it, Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights is region locked for UK/France! :(

Radio Shack Catalogs

Radio Shack Catalogs

Sweet, sweet 1970s stereo system porn. I now know where my parents got most of their stereo equipment! The 1979 one is particularly funny cover and great picture of Peter Nero inside recommending something. Hilarious!

Robert Siegel's Golden Hollywood - How the West Was Won

Robert Siegel's Golden Hollywood - How the West Was Won

Interesting history of the first dramatic Cinerama picture, How The West Was Won. Lots of old photos (including the Cinerama dome in Hollywood of course) and a good background on how the 3-camera playback system worked (pretty amazing for its time!).

Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names

Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names

Wondering where these hurricane names come from? Well, there's an official list. Make sure to scroll down to see hurricane names for other Oceans. Although I'm sure the hurricane itself wouldn't be funny at all, some of the names are. Hurricane Sally or Teddy or Bill don't sound too menacing to me!

Shared items...the new blog

As you may have surmised by now, I'm not updating this blog regularly. Instead, my "Shared Items" on the right are my new updates. There I share interesting articles I find from Google Reader. Hope you like them.

My Blueberry Nights - Good discussion

It's not secret that I'm a Wong Kar Wai fan. I had been waiting to see his first English film since it premiered at Cannes last year. Based on the reviews, I was prepared and had set my expectations low. I enjoyed the film. It was a light Wong Kar Wai but still had many elements from his other films.

This link has a good review of the film. Most of the film critics seem to have just gotten groupthink and outright panned the film which it just doesn't deserve.

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2008/04/world-inside-my-blueberry-nights.html

Amazing Finnish Version of YMCA

I saw this listed on Boingboing.net.

Amazing video from the 70s (I hope!) of a Finnish version of YMCA, called NMKY.

There are 5 things I love about this video

1) The keyboard player, his crappy synth sound, his 70s clothing and beaming smile.
2) The lead singer and his wardrobe
3) The back-up singers and their choreography
4) The bass player. He has some sick chops! Apparently he is famous, Pekka Pohjola (in Finland). There are a few quotes (early on) in the comments on YouTube like "Did he need the money?", "Why Pekka, why?", etc.
5) The band's total lack of emotion.

It's only 2 minutes so you really can't loose.

Open DNS

If you want to speed up (slightly) the web, you might want to try OpenDNS service. DNS is Domain Name Server and is what your computer uses to translate the text of an http address (like google.com) into the numbers the internet really uses -- IP address (192.168.1.1 for example [not google's]).

This company has their own, more effecient DNS server which speeds up the request for IP addresses and also blocks phishing sites. Seems like a good idea. Not sure how they make any money on it though. Privacy policy seems pretty good.

If you are using DSL, click on configuring your router instead of each computer and then all computers will use it.

http://www.opendns.com/

Live Earth has started...

Well, I was looking forward to the Live Earth web broadcast. But what I'm seeing right now...well, it sucks. I was expecting a lot from the same people who did Live Eight. That was a great web broadcast. Great sound, full screen video, easy to change to different stages. No commercials, no interruptions.

What do we see so far with Live Earth? Well, if you don't use Internet Explorer, you get a tiny Quick Time window. Boo! :( If you use Internet Explorer, you figured it would be awesome right? No! It's also not full screen. There is an option to make it full screen, but the resolution is not good enough... it's blocky. So the regular resolution is bigger than the Quicktime/non-IE version, but still not full screen. Gee, thanks Microsoft.

Oh, and get this. Australia concert has started but you can't even access it on IE. You click on the concert link and nothing happens!! Firefox/Quick time is running though. Hope they fix that problem before some real network traffic comes through.

Anyhoo, I'm really only interested in the concert on the Kyoto Stage. Haven't been able to find if it is being broadcast anywhere (HD TV or XM radio). Looks like the Tokyo one is partially on Sundance channel. Here's Kyoto Stage lineup:

LIVE EARTH KYOTO (Special Broadcast Event)
(not representative of running order; TBA)

BONNIE PINK
MICHAEL NYMAN
RIP SLYME
UA
YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA

SPECIAL BROADCAST EVENTS To-ji Temple in Kyoto, Japan

LOCAL START 11:00 p.m. 7/7

USA START (EDT) 10:00 a.m. 7/7

Yeah, I don't know why Nyman is playing there...but that's okay. The big news is Yellow Magic Orchestra!! First reunion under that name in over 10 years. They have been playing a little under the name Human Audio Sponge over the last 2-3 years.


Well, the rest of the lineup is here:
http://liveearth.msn.com/about/factsheet

Only other artists I'm kind of interested in are: The Police and Spinal Tap (not together, unfortunately)

If anyone finds out info about the Kyoto broadcast (other than the web, please post!)

Enjoy??

Odd things from my trip to Singapore/Bali

Here's a link to some photos I took on a recent trip to Bali. They are photos of commercial products or things I found amusing.

BaliTripCommercialThings

Make sure to pick "slide show" so you can see all my clever captions.

Dedicated to Charles Nelson Riley who passed away last week.

Taigan No Kaji

is a Japanese saying that translates roughly into "the fire across the river". It's a nice phrase basically meaning that there is a problem out there but it is far away enough from you that you don't worry about it. I don't think there is an similar phrase in English.

In a work context, I was thinking that there are a lot of people who do their job with this feeling.

Sean Lennon back with new album finally

www.myspace.com/seanonolennon

Sean Lennon is back with a new album finally. Coming out in September of 2006 on Capitol Records. On his Mysapce page, you can here one final track (Dead Meat) and two demos. All are very nice and mellow. Looking forward to hearing the whole thing. The artwork that MySpace shows while playing Dead Meat is the artwork from Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.

I was thinking about him today after reading about the Beatles /Cirque De Soleil premiere in which an online article mention him as mysteriously absent.

A year or two before he was arrested for murder, it was rumored that Phil Spector was producing his album. Wonder if there was any truth to that rumor...

Thomas Dolby & George Clinton - the real story

Thomas Dolby’s Blog » Blog Archive » George Clinton

Interesting story on how Thomas Dolby and George Clinton ended up working together. Great story about George in the Bermuda Triangle too!

Yeah, your Ipod is cool, but is it Bible Stylish?

cowon - bible stylish mp3 player screenshot detail

A description that is (as of 6/3/2006 21:15 PST) on the Cowon website for their G3 MP3 player.

What innovation will Cowon come up with next!??!

Human Audio Sponge DVD!

Saw that Human Audio Sponge (aka YMO aka Takahashi, Hosono & Sakamoto) will be releasing a DVD Feb 8, 2006 called "HAS". Preorder at Tower.jp here: http://www.towerrecords.co.jp/sitemap/CSfCardMain.jsp?GOODS_NO=926020&GOODS_SORT_CD=103

Don't know if there are any more details, but I'm assuming this is the show they did in Spain @ Sonar 2004. Heard some of the audio from that and it was good. Looking forward to this.

Bob Moog has passed away

Decent article at MTV
Bob was the one who started the whole synthesizer craze really. He was 71.

THanks!

After a co-worker accidentally types HTanks instead of Thanks in an email, I came to the reliazation that when we are all typing Thanks, we are really typing in the user ID of Tom Hanks in a typical networked computer (first initial + last name). So, next time you write an email, remember Tom. THanks!

Thanks is also one of those words if you repeat it enough times, it sort of loses its meaning. Try it! (make sure you aren't at work or saying outloud).