QotD: Hello, Cleveland!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

If you had a band, what would you call yourselves?

Question submitted by Zoot.

George Dubya and the Patriotic Funk All-Stars, cuz that's how I roll, yo.

test

yeah great, blogger.

Why I Love Boondocks

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

This is the best fight scene I've seen in a while.

Celebrating New Audio Format Support on Vox

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Hooray 0.9.3!  Congrats Vox Team, enjoy this Amelie techno remix ripped from one of the Solid Steel shows in my archive!

QotD: Better than the original?

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What is your favorite cover song?

Question submitted by Ray.

Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billie covered Cravo é Canela, which was originally by Milton Nascimento.  Cravo é Canela means "clove and cinnamon," part of the title of a book by Jorge Amado called Gabriela, Cravo é Canela.  Here's a link to the original song and the cover.

QotD: Weekend Goal Follow-Up

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

So, how did you do with that weekend goal?  No goal?  What did you do this weekend?

Holy crap.  I hiked my ass off this weekend at Pinnacles.  Christine and I hit Balconies Caves on Saturday and Bear Gulch caves on Sunday.  Then we blazed a trail around the reservoir and nearly killed ourselves climbing High Peaks Trail.  Pictures pending, but damn, I'm sore.

Ciao

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Off to Pinnacles for the weekend.  See ya Monday.

Hating the RIAA

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

So just yesterday I linked to Beck's new music video from YouTube to my Vox account.  I went back to listen to it today only to find that the RIAA had ordered its removal from YouTube.  What bastards.  So I go to Beck's site only to find it's all craptacular flash and there's an even worse-quality version of the vid.

When are they going to get it through their skulls that consumers want their content as soon as possible and without any headache?

I think it used to be that music videos were just marketing for the music.  Now you can buy music video DVD's and download them via iTMS, so they've become products in their own right.  Rather than spreading the vids far and wide to get as many eyeballs as possible in order to drive music sales, they're keeping a tight rein on their distribution.  The problem is that now they've inconvenienced me as a possible consumer; I had to hunt around to find another version that was worth watching.  That annoys me and makes me hate them (more than I did) and not want to give them any business.

Anyway, without further ado, here's Beck's vid via Google Video.

(End rant.)

...or is it?  Forget the link above, it got pulled from there too.  Not worth it to keep searching, really.  If you happen to randomly see it someday, cool.  If not, fuck it.  You're not missing much.

QotD: Can you hear me now?

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What's your cell phone's ringtone?  What made you pick it?

I've actually been waiting for this QotD, and when it came I was totally unprepared.  I created my own ringtone with a waveform editor, some effects, and the Cornelius remix of Moby's "We Are All Made of Stars".  I wanted something very understated and minimal.

Anyway, when this QotD popped (lil MMO slang ;), I found that I couldn't upload the .wav to Vox.  So I hunted around until I found this nifty little freeware app called Switch - which just converts from one audio format to another rather effortlessly.  It's earned itself a place in my Apps folder.

Weekend Beats

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I had a fantastically groovy weekend.  Played a little Zelda WindWaker, indulged in a 6-mile hike to Bass Lake in Pt. Reyes, Nicole moved to SF, spent some time with Lydia, got a manicure, and now I'm checking out 0.03 release of Data::ObjectDriver.  Life's good.  Here are some beats from Four Tet to celebrate groovy weekends:

QotD: They're Grrreat!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What or who is your favorite product mascot?  Why?

Ok, so maybe this isn't an officially-sanctioned mascot or spokesperson, but I've always associated Mr. T with MovableType because they're both powerful and well-designed:

QotD: It's hot in here...

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What's the most extreme weather you've been in?  A memorable storm?  Heat wave? Or something else?

A childhood vacation.  I don't remember whether it was Ocean Beach or Virginia Beach.  But there was a hurricane.  My father, sister and I were actually in the water being tossed about and having the time of our lives while they were issuing evacuation orders.  We didn't know at the time that the storm had been upgraded to hurricane status, we were just amazed at how large the waves were.  The most extreme weather and perhaps one of the best days of my life.

(No, it wasn't the safest thing to do, but both my sister and I had been on the local swim team and were pretty strong swimmers).

Travel is Dangerous

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Phew. So that was Vancouver.

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Long week finally over.

So the company I've been doing work for just acquired 8 new locations in the Vancouver area and sent me up to do some site surveys and install some new pieces of network infrastructure.  What I found when I got to these locations was pretty shocking.

One week was certainly not enough time to hit all 8 centers.  I could've spent a week at each individual location and still have stuff left to do.  Sadly, this meant I didn't get to see much of Vancouver.  What I did see, I liked very much.

My hotel was far enough out of the downtown area and into the ghetto that I got to see some interesting sights.  One of my favorites was a public service ad for recycling where a stick figure who dropped some trash on the ground was bitten in half by a great white shark.  Yeah.  I also saw a Masonic lodge with a gaudy neon sign on the outside.  I saw a crew filming some skateboarders grinding on some corporate sculptures downtown.

I got a license for XP SP2 while I was up here so I finally finished my install of XP under Parallels.  Got it set up with VirtueDesktops and it's so neat.  I'm surprised at how fast the emulated Windows feels, and I love that Windows can totally crash and not affect the work I need to do.

I'm looking forward to being home and sleeping in tomorrow.

QotD: Celebrational Muppetational!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Who is your favorite Muppet?  Why?

QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com

Animal.  Why?  Hmm... Animal Cantina

Eyes

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

In honor of the pending new Cornelius release, I bring you Eyes:

New Cornelius 8/23

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

This is very exciting to me.  Be warned; it's a full-browser-window QTVR with sound.  Click through to the promo for the next release on 9/27.  And lest we forget, new Tortoise on 8/22.  August will be a wonderfully musical month.

The Best of The Legendary Pink Dots

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

In honor of tonight's show, I thought I'd whip together a playlist of my favorite songs by The Legendary Pink Dots.  I first heard them in college, downloaded off some random Hotline server (yes, Hotline, remember that?).  I've only seen them perform once, in NYC, so I'm looking forward to tonight's show very much.  Without further ado, the songs and the albums they can be found on:

1. Birdie (All the King's Horses)
2. Prague Spring (Canta Mientras Puedas)
3. Friend - version (Canta Mientras Puedas)
4. Clockwise (From Here You'll Watch the World Go By)
5. Damien (From Here You'll Watch the World Go By)
6. This Hollowed Ground (From Here You'll Watch the World Go By)
7. Home (Maria Dimension)
8. Damien Remix (Remember Me This Way)
9. Belladonna (Canta Mientras Puedas)
10. I Love You in Your Tragic Beauty (Crushed Velvet Apocalypse)
11. The Angel Trail (Canta Mientras Puedas)
12. Princess Coldheart (Crushed Velvet Apocalypse)
13. The Ocean Cried 'Blue Murder' (Maria Dimension)
14. Slaapliedje (Nemesis Online)

Omitted from the list, but still very good when done in the studio is Saucers #1.  All the live versions I've heard of it are super-sketchy.

Update: if you're a lala.com user, you can listen to this playlist if you search for "the best LPD".

The Weblog RPG

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I just had a "wtf" moment, when I followed a link over at digg and found the following text:

By registering an account with us you could receive experience points for viewing an article like this.  Those points could have been used to enter our monthly drawing for cool free prizes.

There was no mention of how much exp will be required to reach the next level of the blog.

Quick Update

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Trip to Vancouver is back on for 7/16 through 7/21.  7/22 is the Flaming Lips show with Tish and Amy.  Last weekend (せんしゅう) hedre and I went to Fort Funston for the first time.  Yesterday (きのう), Tish, David, Jeremy, Fiona and I saw A Scanner Darkly.  This weekend (こんしゅうまつ), I plan on seeing The Legendary Pink Dots at Slims.

Congrats to the Vox Team on the 0.8.0 release.  As usual, the new themes don't disappoint and I'm pleased to see the qotd update.  One thing I'm noticing is that suddenly the compose page has for "link" buttons and four matching "center item" buttons.  Weird.

I'm going to try to limit my Japanese-only entries, as they're just for practice and they seem to bug people.  Instead, I'll work my vocab into regular entries and y'all can just deal with it.  For instance - there's a nifty Shadow of the Colossus statue for $88 - or 10,290 yen (いちまんにひゃくきゅじゅうえん).

Last weekend I also took my first Iaido class.  It's a bit tough on the knees and shoulders, but probably less so than Kendo would be.  I'm more interested in a formal art based on katas and kumite - at least for now.  I had an uneventful fourth of July - stayed home, cleaned house, watched lame movies and made about a billion Japanese (にほんご) flashcards.