Vegan wins Ultramarathon twice in a row

A vegan athlete has won the Ultramarathon for the second time in a row. This is supposed to be the hardest running race on the planet. I love stories about successful vegan athletes.

Family

Had a great visit from my sister, nephew and niece over the weekend. I picked them up at Seattle aiport on their way back from an Alaskan cruise. We spent a few hours in Seattle downtown then made our way back to Portland and stayed the night there. Had a great Italian dinner at Mama Mia's.

The next day we went to Powell's book store - if you're ever in Portland be sure to go there. They had what appeared to be an original copy of Modern Magic by Professor Hoffman which was first published in 1876. It was the definitive book on the state of magic at that time. They want $85 for this book. I didn't get it but now I'm thinking I should have .. maybe I'll call and see if they still have it.

The rest of trip we hung out in Eugene and ate good food, played cards and disc golf and just relaxed.

I was sad to see them off but glad we had the chance for this improvised visit.

Update: I called Powell's and the book sold 2 days ago :( You snooze, you lose.

A Letter From Morrissey

The Morrissey fanzine "True To You" has posted a letter that he wrote. It seems the Ringleaders tour is coming to close without including the States. The letter is interesting and here it is:

21 July 2006

From Morrissey:

Firstly, thanks to Julia for allowing me to write something for TTY.

I wanted to thank everyone who had turned up - or turned out - for the Ringleader tour; very appreciated by all of us. I know many of you traveled extensively, and in return, all we can do is our best - which, believe it or not, is what we do. So, thanks to all of you. In retrospective trance my favorites were:

.....Zagreb Grimsby Stirling Cheltenham Whitehaven Turku Helsinki Budapest Istanbul..oh, all of them, really (except Gateshead!@! And IMOLA!@) ... the final London Palladium night left me in a bit of a dream state.... However, I'm sorry the sound wasn't quite anchored for the first London Palladium or the first Dublin Olympia. I am only a spout.

The tour, I hope, has kept the right people in touch with one another. I am honestly thunderstruck to see so many familiar faces night after night.

We hope to place a final August date in Luxembourg City - we are still trying to prove to the promoter that we're worth the gamble.

Thanks to everyone who bought Ringleader of the Tormentors; I'm sorry it remains classically ignored by radio, not to mention those delightful awards events - but, if you really think the Mercury or Brit awards have anything at all to do with musical merit then your brain is probably 75% plutonium-proof concrete. Yes, it's a snake pit.

I remain very happy with Ringleader of the Tormentors; it has the demeanor of distinction and pleases me more than anything else I've done. It's the Scottish terrier I'll never have.

I'm sorry that the press is frozen in time; open at the bottom but jammed at the top. It is an eternal conundrum. God forbid the world ever moves on! God forbid I can ever refer to "the audience" without it being printed as "my fans" - a term I would never use - not even under anesthetic. It's annoying how each interview bounds its way into print emerging as, in fact, a Smiths piece. I wish this wasn't so, but there it is. It's doubly annoying because, if the Smiths reformed tomorrow, the loudest yawn would come from the press. Similarly frustrating is the way in which each solo album is compared to Smiths albums. This would only make sense if the solo albums and the Smiths albums had been recorded during the same period. We are eight lifetimes away from the 1980s and earth is now a completely different planet. On the subject of the Smiths, I thought it was very lazy of Warners not to commemorate the 20th year of The Queen Is Dead without a special edition CD - or boxed CD, or tea towel - or something! We can only assume that those highly paid and magnetically talented people at Warners are far too busy rolling their own tampons to allow art and creativity to take them away from their work. As always for the Smiths, another poignant moment wasted.

I have heard that the CDs Viva Hate, Kill Uncle, Your Arsenal and Vauxhall and I are to be re-presented/re-mastered/re-whatevered. I have no involvement with this project, and whatever I learn about it is via the delightful gossip chain. I am sorry to hear that Bona Drag is not included because it is such a complete body of work and one of which I am most proud. However, if The Very Best of the Smiths is anything to go by I think we are all justified in expecting the worst. Having said that, I am not even sure whether it's EMI or Warners-Reprise who are doing the re-issues, but neither company are particularly bright when it comes to such things - as they consistently prove. For example, when Warners in London sent me the final proof of the Very Best of the Smiths I wearily pointed out to them that there were 18 typo errors on their artwork and that, in any case, they shouldn't release the CD in such an awful sleeve. They completely ignored me, of course, but they corrected the 18 errors. Typical!

Back to the tour:

Thanks, as always, for the military rigor of the band; the best yet, the most enjoyable yet; they magnify me and I'm honored. Anyone who tells you that previous line-up's were better probably has hormones that can't settle down.

Thanks to the mesmerizing Kristeen Young, and also to Sons and Daughter and Tiger Army and The Boyfriends for filling in the gaps. Kristeen, I think, will soon be bigger than life. To me, she already is.

I am writing this in the city of Barcelona where, many years ago, I discovered the American writer James Baldwin sitting alone and somewhat lost in the darkened lobby of one of the city's oldest hotels. Surprised at being inches away from such a great man, I froze in sheepish clumsiness, circled him eleven times, before I realized that he could not possibly have any interest in being approached by someone who had spent all 25 years of their life locked in an attic because too awful to look at. So, I did nothing, walked on, and shortly thereafter he was dead. Yet another lesson.

Thanks as always to Julia for facing all of those check-ins and checkouts so squarely and bravely; I honestly have no idea what could possibly make it worth it.

I recently had a film offer to appear for roughly 20 minutes in an American film starring Alec Baldwin wherein I'd play the part of a potty music teacher. It's ideal casting, of course, but hampered by the slightly minor detail that I cannot actually act. I couldn't even convincingly play the part of a dead person even if I were actually dead. So that, sadly, is that. The world is spared.

Finally, and most trivially, thank you to the British television person (I'm not exactly sure what it is he does) Richard Madeley who, at least, made me laugh recently by referring to me as an "insufferable puffed-up prat". This comment may or may not be true, but I think it's a bit much coming from a man who actually married his own mother. But that's life ...

Here's to the future when all's ..... well?

Morrissey
Barcelonely, July 2006.

Richard Butler

The Psychedelic Furs were one of my favorite bands growing up. The lead singer Richard Butler has just released a new solo album. You can read a review of it here.

I'm digging it.

Here is a short clip of him performing recently.

An Outsiders View of Digg: There is a Flaw in the System

Since becoming fascinated with digg.com I've spend some time there.

Just to re-cap for the sake of this article I'll try and explain how Digg works. Digg is what is known as a "social bookmarking" site. The concept is that we all keep a "favorites" or "bookmark" list in our browsers so why not share these lists and index or rate the bookmarks in some way. Digg consists of entries of bookmarks in the form of news headlines and these entries are submitted by users of the site. The headline is a link to something on the internet and then the user can provide a small description as well. Once the entry has been submitted, it can be voted on (dugg) by users. Once an entry receives enough votes it will be promoted to the front page. The front page is the output of all this activity, viz., a current and evolving list of the hottest links on the internet. Each user's activity is tracked and a rating generated mostly based on the percentage of your entries that become promoted. I've so far had 3 entries promoted and my rating is 2301 (not bad!). The community is so tuned in that its very difficult to come across something interesting on the internet that has not already been submitted (more on this later as it is the crux of what I want to talk about).

There are basically three roles available in interacting with digg:

1. You can submit entries (Journalist Role)
2. You can vote and comment on entries (Editor role)
3. You can read the front page (Reader Role)

I have been engaging in Journalist and Editor roles because I wanted to try and get a better understanding of what I think is probably the coolest experiment happening right now on the internet. I also think that what is happening at Digg will soon become standard practice, indeed, AOL has now relaunched the Netscape Portal as a Digg clone. In related news, AOL has offered the top Digg users $1000.00 a month to quit Digg and use their site.

Ok, so now for my thoughts on this. I think the concept is amazing when compared to traditional news methods because the output is much more organic than any new organization could ever hope to achieve. In addition, the speed at which information is obtained is startling. Since I'm now tuned into to Digg, I'm seeing stories that will show up on cnn.com 3 to 4 days later. It is without a doubt the best way to get news of everything the quickest.

The implementation is awesome. There is Digg Spy which is a live scrolling page of all the entries that are coming in or being voted on. You can customize to show any and all of the following: new entries, recently voted on entries, recently commented, promoted, or upcoming. The Spy interface is where the inside work gets done. Once a story hits the front page it takes on a new life. It is really difficult to get a story up to around 50 votes but once its promoted then the votes rapidly increase.

My first story to get "dugg" was submitted before lunch. When I came back and checked it was on the front page and had 800 votes. I currently have a 10% success ratio. The big mystery is: what does it take to get a story promoted? Thinking about this raises questions about internet memes and marketing and human nature. Very interesting. From what I've seen its half what the story is, how you write your headline, how you write your description, when you submit it, your popularity amongst the community and half mystery.

There is a flaw in this system however. The flaw comes from human nature and I'm not sure that any kind of software fix to Digg could change this. The core idea is that the resulting output of news stories should be generated by a large community of users. This is essential to what makes Digg different from traditional news organizations in that they have a small editorial staff. Digg is supposed to be more "democratic" you might say.

Because of the rating system and the addicting nature of trying to get your own stories promoted, personal interests starting taking precedence. This is to be expected because the "staff" are not paid; they do it to do it. I have to say there is a certain high to getting a story promoted and this provides the motivation to keep doing it. Doing so generally means you were the first person to discover something, you wrote a good headline and the something you discovered was just confirmed to not be lame. There is a feeling of engaging in the cutting edge of the net ... or something.

You can imagine then that the problem is that people will go to any length to get promoted stories. Cheating is handled through how Digg is coded so that's not yet a big problem although sites have popped up that have tried. The idea is to build a community of users on a separate site that all vote on each others entries. Generally they haven't been too successful.

What has been successful is that a core group of diggers has formed, a clique if you will, that will all vote on each others entries. Other people have written about this that in fact most of the front page stores come from a small subset of Diggers and so the end result is a more traditional news editorial system than rather than the cutting edge social experiment it is thought to be. My thought is that it is somewhere in the middle. Yes, there is a core group who vote on each others entries, but they still need non-core people to vote too. They do get an advantage because they can get to 50 votes much easier. There are some users in the core group with success percentage in the 90's. That is just not possible for a regular user like myself.

The second part of the flaw is duplicate entries and I'll show how this relates to the core group problem. The instructions for submitting an entry are clearly displayed each time you do it:


* Quality Content: Is your story on topic? Make sure your story is appropriate for the topic you're submitting it to.
* Link Directly to the Source: Save people time by linking directly to the original news story.
* Search First: Avoid duplication by searching to ensure nobody has submitted the same story.
* Be Descriptive: You're the story's editor, so explain what it is and why it's cool.


The "Search First" rule is the big problem in that it is very rarely done and Digg Spy is full of duplicate stories. The Editors can label ("Bury") something as a dupe and if it gets enough of those it disappears. I'm seeing that there are too many duplicates and the editorial system is not working. If you try and submit a duplicate story the system warns you and tells you to vote for the existing story. Because you can ignore that and just go ahead and submit and because the community of editors can't stay on top of all the duplicates, this rule has to be followed on the honor system. Human nature dictates that the honor system generally doesn't work.

In my view, the basic honor system should be that someone makes a genuine effort to search and make sure they are not submitting a duplicate. If they find it is a duplicate, go ahead and give a vote to the existing story. This to me reaffirms the basic idea that Digg is about finding cool stuff first.

This is not what happens. People submit duplicates constantly. This causes the situation where you submit a story and it is getting votes slowly. A few hours later someone will submit the same story (rather than voting on the existing one and bringing it more attention) with a different headline and it catches on and becomes a front page story.

There is not much that can be done about this. The first time it happened to me, I posted a comment asking why, if I had submitted this story 3 days before, is everyone voting for this new one and they didn't for mine. The answer was that my headline sucked and that I shouldn't whine about it. Instead, they said, I could simply make a comment that this story was a duplicate, mark it as a duplicate and provide a link to my entry.

The next time this happened I followed the advice and put a link to my original entry of the story. I still got blamed for whining and people marked my comment as bad. I continued the discussion and found out that the person who submitted the duplicate was in the core group and that he has a large following of people who vote on anything he submits. You'd think someone so experienced would know how to search before entering. And of course he does and I'm sure he did. I'm sure he saw my story entered 3 days previous with 30 votes and figured he could resubmit it and get a front page with his army of voters. And he was right - it worked, the story went front page. Here are the two different headlines (I won't tell you who wrote which one - the point is that they are very similar and so the headline couldn't be why my story was growing slower):

"Role Playing Game Inspirational Posters"
"Gamer Inspirational Posters (Photos)"

Can you guess which one made it the front page?

It seems obvious now how the core group have such a high percentage of promoted stories. Probably many of their entries are duplicates but get promoted anyway.

Whenever you have an honor code you will find people exploiting it so in that way Digg is microcosm of the world. Since it is software, there may be a coding solution to this. My suggestion is that when the system discovers that the URL you are submitting has already been submitted that it does not allow the entry. This would solve some of the problem to a small degree although not all of it because the same story can usually be found at many different URLs.

My question to the Digg community is: do you want to operate with a code or will personal success win out over the goal of the experiment?

Speaking of honor, I am going to submit this story into Digg. By doing so I will be violating a social code which is that it is is not cool to submit stories you wrote on your own blog. I guess the story should be "found" be someone else. But in the spirit of how the honor code is broken at Digg I will submit it. Below is a link to my Digg story that you can click and vote for it. Let's call this my own little meta-experiment and see what happens.

|Digg This|

Pizza Research Institute

We ordered a calzone from Pizza Research Institute tonight. It came decorated to look like a sort of crazy face. This is the best pizza place ever. It's run by a family, they always have reggae music playing in there, they cater to vegetarians, and the food is tasty. We always order the "vegan chef's choice". Often times our pizza has peaches or pears (the eyes in the picture below are each made of a peach and an olive), a small slice of corn on the cob with a spiral of hot sauce, and all kind of interesting and seasonal vegetables.

Forever Young

I can remember my freshman year of High School and I had a Walkman and the tape that was always in there was "Forever Young" by Alphaville. Since my formative years were in the 80's, music from that era is always special for me. I listened to "New Wave" and "Alternative" stuff and Alphaville was especially exotic because they were a German band.

The early 80's was also the beginning of the video era. I love the way they were shot and how they captured the style of the time and the newness of the video medium. Many videos from that time are available on the internet now and I'll be putting some of them on my blog.

The title track seems to be about how short life is. The backdrop is the cold war and living with the idea that nuclear holocaust could happen any day. "Forever Young" was also the original name of the band before they changed it to Alphaville.

Stem Cell: The Veto

Bush cast his first veto against legislation to expand stem cell research. His basic argument is to error on the side of life. The specifics are debatable as highlighted in this article:

The issue has become ethically and politically volatile because extracting the cells entails destruction of an embryo.

Bush believes that is destroying a life. His opponents say the research, which would be done only on excess embryos from fertility treatments that would otherwise be destroyed, is potentially life-saving.

My first thought when hearing about this was about the deep hypocrisy in his argument. He supports the death penalty and holds the record for overseeing the most executions of any Governor. How is this being on the side of life when it is well documented that our justice system is not perfect and innocent people get executed? What about the war he started in Iraq? Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths range from 40,000 to well over 100,000. Whatever the specific number might be, many Iraq civilians have been killed as a direct result of Bush's decision to invade. How is this being on the side of life?

From a pure logic standpoint hypocrisy doesn't matter when evaluating an argument - one evaluates the argument on it's own terms. In this case, I think his argument is weak on it's on terms and an equally compelling argument can be made that doing stem cell research helps to save lives. It is a complex issue which raises some big questions and the specifics of the issue (how embryos are obtained) do matter. Evaluating this issue requires more finesse than an appeal to an undefined moral line.

From a political standpoint hyprocrisy does matter because it undermines the decisions of leaders. If Bush makes one decision based on a principle about respecting life, but makes other decisions that do not respect life then we the people need to know where he truly stands on that principle. Does he care about respecting life or not?

Here is John Stewart's take on this. The humor approach is very much welcomed.

The Green Chefs

The Green Chefs (Eat Green Be Happy) have published a complete online vegan cookbook. The site design is top notch. Got to love it.

The Carrot Cake looks yummy.

Bikely

Bikely is a social networking site that focuses on sharing bicycle route information around the world. What a great idea. Right now there are no Eugene Oregon routes. I think I might have to add some.

Husk

The band that I play bass in is called Husk. The singer/song writer/guitar player is Stephen Mathys. Shawn is on drums.

Here are some demo tracks you can download (Right Click -> Save As):

Alibis
Any Old Thing In The World
Bonny & Clyde
Corva Lay Down
Roman Candles at Walnut and Main
Where Lunch Counter Divas Go To Die

This is a picture from our first gig in Portland:

Bionic Man

Sometimes when I ride my bicycle I pretend that each peddle stroke is one of my legs taking a large running stride. The sensation is that I feel I am running really fast; that I am a bionic man.

This is when I realize what a true marvel a bicycle is.

Earth From 300 Miles Out

Here are some amazing photos of the Earth from 300 miles out. Well worth the look.

|digg this|

South Africa Hosting the World Cup in 2010

I'm really happy to see that South Africa will be hosting the Football World Cup in 2010.

I remember back in the Apartheid days when South Africa was banned from most international sports. I spend my first 8 years there during the 70's which were some of the roughest years before Apartheid was abolished. We moved to California in 1978 - I'm blessed to have such wonderful parents who made sure that I would be able to grow up with opportunity and peace (thanks Mom and Dad!). Because South Africa was mainly known for racism by whites, for many years I was embarrassed about my country of birth. Travelling there recently for the first time since we left in 1978 showed me a country that has come a long way in short time but still has a long way to go. It takes many decades for countries to recover from being colonized and South Africa is doing great.

Hosting the World Cup is yet another sign of recovery and it's just great to see South Africa coming back together with the world community.

Here is a view of Cape Town from half way up Table Mountain:

The first 3-D crop circle

The world's first 3-D crop circle has arrived. It looks sort of like a top down view of skyscrapers.

Conspiracy stuff aside, I think crop circles are really cool art - especially how they are done without anyone seeing it happen.

1984: The Smiths on a children's TV show

This video is incredible. The Smiths are one of my favorite bands of all time. In high school they were my favorite band.

This video is amazing and sort of bizarre. Morrissey and Johnny Marr are on a children's TV show in 1984 taking a bus trip to meet Sandie Shaw (one of Morrissey's heros). The background song while they are traveling is "Heaven knows I'm miserable now". The opening line from the song is:

"I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now"

On a children's show??

One Thousand Reasons: Documented failures of the Bush administration

Here is a list of 1000 documented failures of the Bush administration. It's kind of depressing to see it all in one place but it's important that we remember.

|digg this|

Biodiesel vs. Ethanol

From this article it looks like both fuel alternatives have different advantages. The study says that biodiesel from soybeans is more deserving of subsidies.

I'm thinking that there won't be a smoking gun when it comes to getting away from oil based fuel - it will be many options and biofuels and electric are a good start.

Here is our biodiesel machine.



|digg this|

House Passes Online Gambling Ban Legislation

The House passed legislation banning online gambling. Next it will go to the Senate althought it's not a high priority for them at this point.

My thoughts on this issue:

1. The legislation comes from Republicans. I'm constantly amazed at how the party that claims to be for small government so often proposes legislation that is big government. Or shall I say big brother. On top of that they claim the legislation is about protecting people when really it's about what powerful lobby groups want.

2. It is a complicated legal issue since most of the Internet gambling sites are located outside of the U.S. yet people in the U.S. can gamble there because of the Internet. Reconciling existing on-site gambling laws with Internet gambling will be tricky as with many other new issues raised by the global nature of the Internet. When you gamble online, where are you gambling? At home? Where the gambling server exists? These kind of questions deal with what and who's laws should apply.

3. My views on freedom are libertarian in that I believe people should be able to do whatever they want (even if they harm themselves) as long as the don't harm others. Personal responsibility is the key. While it is a sad thing when someone becomes addicted to gambling and loses all their money, as an adult, that is their choice. If they endanger their children because they lost all their money, then the crime is endangering the children. You can't outlaw everything that has potential to be abused. If that was the case, then the republicans better start proposing legislation to outlaw guns.

4. The proponents of the legislation also claim they want to protect children from gambling. Banning Internet gambling will not achieve this goal. The sites will still be available on the Internet even though it will be illegal to use them. From doing a bit of online poker, I can tell you that the gambling sites have many systems in place that would make it very difficult for a child to be able to get money into the account. These are they types of measures that help this potential problem.

Memediggers

I'm totally fascinated with digg.com. Here is an article that explains how it works. Digg is one of the types of sites I was talking about in this post. I saw that this type of site is called a "memedigger". It's pure genius in the idea and the implementation. One of those ideas that you wish you would have thought of.

Top 10 Ways To Lose The War On Terror

The majority of a bi-partisan panel of 116 foreign-policy experts agree that the US is not winning the war on terror. I heard an interview on the radio with one of the people behind creating ths panel and he said that they decided to use the phrase "War on Terror" because that is what the Administration calls it. Whether or not that phrase is accurate is another debate but it's clear that by the Administration's own definition, most foregin-policy experts agree that it is failing.

This article explains 10 rules for how to lose this war.

read more | digg story

Gitmo Detainees To Get Geneva Convention Rights

According to this article, the Pentagon is going to release a memo stating that the Gitmo Detainees will get Geneva Convention Rights. It's about time!

read more | digg story

The Return to Innocence

"The Return to Innocence" is my favorite Enigma song. I find strength in the lyrics. The music is great and so is the video.

Enigma - Return To Innocence Lyrics


Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion

Don't be afraid to be weak
Don't be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself

The return to innocence

If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny
Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and miss the chance

To return to innocence

That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence
Don't care what people say
Follow just your own way Follow just your own way
Don't give up, don't give up

To return, to return to innocence

If you want then laugh
If you must then cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny

That's the return to innocence



Via: VideoSift

The Bass

Irie Woman took some cool photographs of my Christopher 3/4 Upright Double Bass that I love so much next to the roses in our garden.

Nice shot Irie! The lighting and reflections on the bass look really cool. And the composition is primo.

No wonder my laces come undone

I came across a web site devoted to shoe laces. It has all kinds of details on different ways to lace and tie your shoes. Reading this article, I realized I've being tying my shoes wrong all my life - I've been creating a slip knot by making my starting knot and finishing knot both in the same direction (the article describes it much better). So now I make the starting knot the other direction and my laces are more secure.

Pollground

Speaking of new kinds of web sites, I just came across pollground.com. For a long time now, web based forums have had poll functionality but this site is all polls. You can ask the world any question and have people select from your pre-set answers and also they can leave advice and comments. Very cool idea.

The Ever Evolving Web

I love watching the internet evolve. What they call "Web 2.0" are sites that are based on user generated content and focus on sharing and collaboration. The very nature of these sites generates useful and relevant content.

Reddit is an example of a new type of Web 2.0 site. Using a system of link submission and voting, this type of site generates a list of the best content on the internet that is constantly updating.

This has prompted a new type of site that compiles the output of sites like Reddit. Popurls is one such site. Check it out and let the coolness of this sink in.

Thanks to Seth Godin for his post on this topic and for turning me on to Popurls.

Matthew

Here is a picture of my nephew Matthew. I was noticing how much he looks like me in the old picture below when I was his age. And now we both play large stringed instruments. He's got a huge headstart on me though :)

Time is fun when you're having flies

The family gathered pictures of Gary for his funeral and I was emailed some of them. This picture is a gem that I didn't know existed. I would estimate it to be taken around 1979-1980.

Photographs are pretty incredible when you think about it. We are able to actually capture a part of the past. I have no memory of this photo being taken or why we were all together. I can only guess that we were together because Leslie was visiting. Without the photo it would be a moment completely lost to time. Now I know there was a moment when the 4 of us stood together and peered into the future.

From the left going clockwise we have my dad, Leslie, Gary and then me.

Leslie and Gary are my dad's nephews. My dad was the youngest sibling of 4 and he waited to have children until his 30's. His older siblings all had children when they were in their 20's. The result is that all of my first cousins are much older than me so my relationship with them is more like uncle/nephew. Adding to the strange dynamic of the relationships is the fact that all of us were born in South Africa and moved to the States at different times and to different places. The diaspora from South Africa segmented our family all over the world. Some of my first cousins have had children who are now in their 20's and having kids of their own. My sister and I are sort of in an inbetween generation.

Meetu the Cat

Meetu is our other cat. We adopted her on the same day we moved into our house. She is small cat with huge fur. In the winter she seems to almost double in size when her fur comes in. Check out the fur on her ear.

She got her name because she has a tendency to learn from Morgan how to do stuff around the house. She often gives us a look that says "me too". As with Morgan, Meetu is a blessing to have in the house.

Gary

Sadly, my cousin Gary passed away on Saturday. He was 49. His death was shocking and premature but he died while doing what he loved.

Lawnmover Bicycle

Check out this lawnmower chopper bicycle. What a cool idea. Brings new meaning to the word "chopper".

You can see photos of other bikes this guy has made here.

Morgan the Cat

Morgan is our cat who we brought back from Ireland. Iriewoman took this photo today and I love it. The macro really captures lots of details. Morgan is as sweet a cat as you'll ever meet. We're blessed to have her in our family.

Soon I'll post about the other cat.

Double Bass

I've been playing electric bass for about 10 years and it's time to try the upright double bass. A local store has a cool rental policy that allows me to apply my fees towards buying an instrument. This gives me the chance to try it out without investing a large amount of money and if I decide to buy I'll be able to "rent-to-own".

YouOS

How about a web-based Operating System? There is one now called YouOS.com which is kind of early in its development. I tried the demo and it's pretty cool. The idea is that you only need a device capable of browsing the web and then you have a computer. I wouldn't be surprised if Google bought this company or created something similar - they already offer many web-based applications.

eefoof.com

There is a new video sharing site similar to youtube.com called eefoof.com. The new thing with this site is you get paid a share of the advertising revenue that your video brings in.

Spin

I saw this video a couple of years ago. It's compiled from footage of "Wild Video" which is basically raw satellite video feeds when the camera is rolling but not being broadcast on TV. The video explains it and then shows examples of things that you probably aren't meant to hear. It's fascinating.

Derren Brown

Derren Brown is one of the best magicians going these days yet he has very little exposure in the States. I'm not sure why this is. Here is a clip that shows his classic style combining magic and chess. At the end he gives away half the secret. Brilliant.



Via: VideoSift

"Take on Me"

The "Take on Me" video by A-ha that came out in 1985 was definitely innovative using rotoscoping.

In movies like "Waking Life" (a must see) and the upcoming "A Scanner Darkly" we see where this art form has arrived today with computers.

I love this video and this band. The 80's rule! Enjoy.



Via: VideoSift

My Blogroll

I've added my blogroll (a list of all my blog subscriptions) on the left (scroll down to see them). I use Bloglines as my reader. It's web-based, free and works great.

Blogroll's are a cool insight into a person's interests. Seeing all blog subscriptions in a big list reminds me that I need to do some clean up on them.