Single of the Week: The Bees and Beirut
Posted on February 24, 2007First off, yes, I redid things again. A few days ago I asked DB what he thought about whether or not it’s okay to design for 1024px and he said yes. Then I decided screw it. I’m guessing a good lot of my readers are at least 1024 and hopefully more. So I went ahead and designed for 1300px. That’s right folks, this is jWiltshire.org in ultra-high definition. All the Web 2.0 crap is over at the right if you have to scroll over for it, though hopefully you can see it as is. I re-redid things because it was too cluttered. I basically modified Cutline. Like the fruit, the Flickr’s at the bottom. Anyways, music.
First single is “A Minha Menina“, a cover of the previously mentioned Os Mutantes performed by The Bees (a.k.a A Band of Bees). It’s every bit as poppy as the originial, and really the whole Sunshine Hit Me album is mellow gold.
Second up is an interesting old world-sounding song by a curious group named Beirut, “My Family’s Role in the World Revolution“. It’s an intriguing almost-march with no lyrics, and an amusing intro. Definitely something out there, good if you are into Balkan-inspired rock.
Filed Under Hurray!, King of Internets, Meta, Single of the Week | 4 Comments
Tales… Of… Interest!
Posted on February 23, 2007Just some neat stuff from around the interwebs and the apartment…
First of all, next month Samsung is going to do something insane. They are going to introduce the first consumer computer display that uses USB instead of a VGA or DVI connection. It’s certainly an interesting idea. Samsung says you will be able to do multiple monitor setups with multiple USB displays without being limited by your graphics card. Less cables, and less types of cables is good, but beyond that, I’m not sure if there’s much more benefits. How much will multiple monitors tax the CPU, and how this will work with video/multimedia editing/gaming will be the deciding factor to whether this idea sinks or swims.
Secondly, I found out that my favorite Brazilian psychedelica band from the late sixties and early seventies have reunited for an American tour (with Zelia Duncan standing in for Rita Lee), and right now there’s a video podcast of interviews and performances (in English) currently running over at American Girl Productions. If you like that kind of music, or any kind of music that’s outside the mainstream, check it out. Those guys are awesome.
Thirdly, I think I might be going remote-retarded. Earlier today I picked up my tv remote, pointed it at my iMac, and expected it to somehow start up Front Row. It didn’t work. Later on I twice picked up my Mac’s Front Row remote, pointed it at the tv, hit “Menu” and waited for the tv to come on. More news as this develops.
Interesting Wikipedia Pages
Posted on February 22, 2007Wikipedia is a great place for free learnin’. Even though it’s all a bunch of made up stuff by people on the internet, it’s still generally a reliable source for information, just don’t make life-threatening decisions based upon it. Anyways, there is a breadth of information there, on stuff you might not think to look for, or maybe even never would want to look for. Here are some of my favorites:
- The Buttered Cat Paradox - Everybody knows a cat, when dropped, will land on its feet. And toast, properly buttered, will land on the buttered side. So what happens when you butter a cat? I’m entrenched firmly in the levitating-cat-theory camp.
- Telluric Currents - Electric currents that move through the Earth.
- Ass-to-Mouth - You never go ass to mouth.
- The Interesting Number Paradox - The first sequential number that is declared to have no interesting properties, becomes interesting by virture of the fact that it is the first non-interesting number.
- 0.99… = 1 - Math, bitches!
- Numbers Stations - These things will never cease to fascinate and spook me.
- Markovian Parallax Denigrate - Like numbers stations, but on the internet!
- Colors of Noise - I wonder who decides these things.
- Aldus Manutius - A famous 15th century publisher.
Thanks BeerorKid for the post inspiration.
Filed Under Humour, King of Internets, Lists, Robot Research | 3 Comments
News Hottie of the Week: Andrea Bullard
Posted on February 16, 2007
News Hottie of the Week is back again with a fine young lady reporting from NBC-WKTV in Utica New York, Andrea Bullard. Ms. Bullard was first spotted by me while I was glancing up at the rubbish news coverage on MSNBC of the heapum-big snow in New York doing a “local angle” report. Andrea is originally from New York, received a degree of mass communications in Pittsburgh, and started her career in Mankato, Minnesota. I’m not sure how long she was in Minnesota, but apparently it was long enough for her to pick up a touch of that atrocious accent that they have up there. But she is forgiven. When not working with the WKTV News Team she enjoys snowboarding, and has a cat named He-Man, which is awesome.
Filed Under Hottie of the Week, Hurray!, King of Internets | 5 Comments
Single of the Week: Cake and Tim Maia
Posted on February 14, 2007This SotW is special, ‘cuz one of the singles is a video. It’s actually from a little band called Cake, with the song “Short Skirt/Long Jacket“. What I love about this video was that instead of the standard video fare of “here’s shots of the band playing” or “here’s a little movie based on the song” or my favorite, “here’s random crap that has nothing to do with anything but look we’re so edgy”, they filmed real people listening to the song for the first time and giving their initial reactions. A whole range of folks too, some people really digging it and others not so much. It’s pretty awesome to watch.
The second single, a song, comes from down South America way, Brazilian Tim Maia’s “Reu Confesso” For a record from Brazil, it’s very soulful, reminiscent of the soul albums from that era coming from the likes of Barry White or Marvin Gaye. It’s got a light funkiness and when he sings “I was wrong and I beg for forgiveness” he means it. Great song.
Filed Under Music, Single of the Week, Videos | Leave a Comment
Dear Major News Networks:
Posted on February 11, 2007Please ignore the internets. Ah yes, I remember a few years ago, when you did ignore blogs and stuff on the internet. And you shouldn’t necessarily done so, there is important stuff that happens on the web. However, some time last year you started taking notice. First it was stuff like how organizations like Moveon.org could mobilize voters, or how predators were using MySpace. But then you started noticing the less important things. It began with well enough intentions, when CNN had two hip young girls as “blog analysts”, i.e., they would check Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs whenever Wolf Blitzer needed a piss break. But then it expanded.
The flood really began when Time magazine chose “You” as the person of the year. Then all of a sudden MSNBC (arguably the worst offender, perhaps in a ham-fisted attempt to draw in younger viewers) is covering popular search terms of the day. There’s a segment for viral videos (which, oddly enough, I never see other than on tv.) You’re showing YouTube clips. Great idea guys! Let’s take a jerky, pixellated, crappy .flv file and blow it up for the tv! So people can watch this lady with a funny hat fall on a cake.
My favorite offense, coming from MSNBC again, is covering stories about websites. I watched a story about Facebook, and for the graphic you showed a page of search results. With all the pictures and personal information mosaic’d out so as not to show anything revealing. Which means we have a white page with some blurs, some generic text, and more blurs. Genius news coverage, both boring and uninformational.
So news organizations, leave the internet alone unless it’s something really important. No viral videos please, no blog posts please, and I don’t really give a shit what some group of mouthbreathers typed into a searchbox on MSN.com. That is all.
Filed Under Open Letters, Rants | Leave a Comment
