Monthly Archives: May 2005

Music survey

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1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.

Jody

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.

I ripped my 200-300 CDs, so somewhere north of 10 gigs.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.

Symphonie Fantastique, London Symphony Orchestra

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.

“All The Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)

Here are my top 10 from last week:

1 Bright Eyes – Take it Easy (Love Nothing)

2 The Killers – Mr. Brightside

3 Astrud Gilberto – Gentle Rain (RJD2 remix)

4 Louis XIV – God Killed The Queen

4 Brand New – Am I Wrong

4 The National – All The Wine

7 The Polyphonic Spree – Section 9

7 Garbage – Vow

7 Louis XIV – Finding Out True Love Is Blind

7 Echo & the Bunnymen – Lips Like Sugar

6. The five people to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton.’

Prince

Sting

Gwen Stefani

Rivers Cuomo

Billy Idol

I need a laptop

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Ok, so I want/need to get a laptop. Preferably just for internet use, nothing too fancy. I don’t play computer games. I do listen to music though. I’m basically looking for an entry level, bottom of the line notebook and I want to know if there are any specific brands I might wnat to avoid and/or steer towards. After hearing Jody’s adventures, I don’t think I’ll be getting a Dell, dude. any recommendations out there? Let me know what you have/like/hate etc.

NanoThoughts 1.0

philip glass : music in similar motion : video

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About a dozen of my photos are in this nice little video piece. All the pics are from the flickr squared circle group and the music’s by Phillip Glass. Very Koyaanisqatsi like. The guy took the images, sorted by brightness and then synced them with the music. It flows from black to white over the course of it. I can’t wait to see the high res version. (you’ll probably want to play it in Quicktime if you’re using Windows) Check it out!
philip glass : music in similar motion : video : credits

Sending a letter to North Korea

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I was just in the UPS store and a Korean gentleman said he wanted to mail a letter to Korea. The clerk asked him “North or South?”. The Korean guy almost laughed, but said “South” and then “You can’t mail a letter to North Korea.” I wondered aloud about this as well and the clerk said that he had read the regulations and you can actually mail letters to North Korea, but it can’t have anything in it about the United States, democracy, etc. So, I decided to look this up online and sure enough, here are the US Postal Service’s Country Conditions for Mailing – Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of (North Korea). I am pretty sure all mail gets routed there through Hong Kong.

My Korean friends, however, say that no mail is getting in there, so who knows what is really going on. Still, I wonder if 99% of the public realize how screwed up that country really is.

Funny Letters from Switzerland

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Letter from Zurich
Originally uploaded by heyrog.

Zurich 1/21/99
Dear Son,
Here is the money for that new bike you always wanted to buy. Get the low rider with the wide fork.
Al says Hi. He and I worked a whole week so that we can send you all this cash. The mountains are cold and the sun never shines. Our hearts are only filled with warmth when we imagine you on that beautiful bike, driving through the sunny trailer park down the block at spankies.
Love, Imaree
************************************************
Some background on what this letter is about: My friend would send me cash in envelopes from Switzerland to pay for the rental of a storage facility in C-burg. He’d write letters like that so people wouldn’t steal the money or if they did, he hoped to make them feel guilty about taking it.

I think the description for this photo pretty much sums it up.(But be sure to check out the adjoining drawing of the hand with four fingers.) I’ll have to look and see if I others laying around. For those that know about Bleaksburgian quizbowl circa the end of the millenium, I recently found a CBI Nationals placard amongst all my boxes of archived detritus. I really need to go through and trash a lot of that crap.

Subject:Copyrighted Atlantic content on your site

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That was the subject line of an email I got last week in reference to this post on culturally transmitted diseases. It went on:

We have learned that you have posted the full text of Carl Elliot’s article from The Atlantic on your blog. While we are grateful for your interest in The Atlantic, do note that the copyright to this work is held by Mr. Elliot and Atlantic Media. You are, of course, not permitted to republish it on your own site, where it is publicly accessible.

Well, I pointed out that I was just linking to another site and that the site I was linking to wasn’t mine, but instead for a class at the University of Hawaii. The gentlemen at The Atlantic replied with thanks and apologized for the confusion. I can only assume that they have a more or less automated process to email all the bloggers who start to infringe on the The Atlantic’s copyright. (Btw, when did they drop the Monthly part?)

In summary, it feel kinda good to have my “you’re violating our copyright” nastygram cherry popped. I look forward to more experiences of the same ilk in the future.

Now they just have to get it out of Google’s cache!

High-impact physics lesson

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I wonder how long it will be before Solid Neon is giving High-impact physics lessons.

“NEWTON’S LAWS

• Objects in motion stay in motion – such as a car falling from a crane. Objects at rest stay at rest – such as a parking lot.

• The bigger you are, the harder you hit – such as a 2,500-pound car on a parking lot as opposed to a golf ball on the classroom floor. This explains why junior Emily Varnes wanted to see the crane drop a bus.

• For every action, there’s a reaction – like the smashed-up front ends of two sports cars.”

UPDATE: Fixed the dead link. Thanks, Jody!