View Over Scratch St.

This video is delightful.

Back From The Far Midwest

With even more than this to show for it, including 327 digital images, many of those taken by Laura, the greatest travel companion. She took these great shots at Carhenge, and one of a beautiful Sandhills sunset.

Quick trip synopsis:

Corn Palace
Badlands
Wall, SD (Home of Wall Drug)
Black Hills
Rapid City
Mount Rushmore
Devil's Tower (In the dark)
Deadwood & Lead, SD (all-you-can-eat snow crab legs at the Silverado Casino for my birthday dinner.. they even had some crawfish, which were not very good, but still, crawfish on my birthday is pretty great...)
Jewel Cave
Custer National Park (turkeys, buffalo, prairie dogs, & deer)



Toadstool Park
Carhenge
The Sandhills

We covered the entire state of Nebraska today. I'm going to bed. Much more soon, and be sure to refresh this page when you visit as I'm likely to update quite a bit. I planned to moblog, but Sprint doesn't have any towers in South Dakota or northwest Nebraska, meaning I didn't have Vision access. Pooh on that. Hundreds of pics will hit Flickr in the next few days, so stay tuned.

Scooting Down

This post is merely to scoot the too-wide robocricket pic down the page where it won't clutter the sidebar. Christmas morning stroboHorizon.



Christmas morning stroboHorizon.

The Cutest Little Robots

Dylan Tinlun Chan makes little dancing, singing and intrument playing robots and they are just the cutiest little things. I think Xunzi the cricket is the cutiest of all.



His electro-mechanical toy designs are pretty neat too.

LOL

The Best Blonde Joke Ever.

1-2-3

R-I-P



Na na-na-na-na na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-na
I need somebody to help me say it one time

Goodbye KM3

It really has been great working with the folks at KM3 News Omaha. I've been damn proud to be a part of the product this station is putting out. KM3 is top notch and I'm sure Nielsen will notice eventually. And if any of y'all are ever short on cash, you'd be surprised at what Ted Brockman pays for juicy tidbits.

That last part's jokes, just to be clear.

Magical Garden part 6

The small lovely yellow flowers are now clearly presenting a beautiful picture of flowers and snow. No other strange noises to report.


See previous:

Magical Garden part 5
Magical Garden part 4
Magical Garden part 3
Magical Garden part 2
Magical Garden part 1

Main Course to Main Man

The AP sez:

TOKYO - Gohan and Aochan make strange bedfellows: one's a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster; the other is a yard-long rat snake.

Zookeepers at Tokyo's Mutsugoro Okoku zoo presented the hamster — whose name is a tasty rice dish in Japanese — to Aochan as a snack in October, after the snake refused to eat frozen mice.

But instead of indulging, Aochan decided to make friends with the furry rodent, according to keeper Kazuya Yamamoto. The pair have shared a cage since.

Link to more.

Kronos Quartet

Indescribable beauty. Unbounded nuance and range of expression.

They opened with the disagreeably enthralling, avant garde, short attention span theatrics of John Zorn's "Cat O' Nine Tails (Tex Avery Directs the Marquis de Sade)," a song that allows them to flex all of the muscles and loosen the joints, then in the next two songs, quickly jumped from Mingus to Bollywood.



Wynton Marsalis' "Many Gone" hauntingly filled the Holland and moved me very much. That and the raga were my standouts of the first set. Hank played an Amazing solo on the viola, imitating the sarangi for the "Raga Mishra Bhairavi." They also inserted another Scandinavian number that isn't on the setlist, a beautiful, longing, slowly evolving song that honestly made my eyelids droop a bit after the hypnotic, raga-trance subsided.

I finally glance at the program notes during intermission to find Steve Reich closing the second set. "Triple Quartet" no less. I smiled broadly. The piece is written for three quartets, which Kronos accomplishes by playing over two tapes of themselves playing the other parts. Impeccable and pulsating, then slowly shifting through various dissonances before returning to the near-frenetic reprise.

The first encore was an amazing Sigur Ros tune, translated as "A Thousand Thoughts" I believe, with that Radiohead sort of gear-shifting from melancholy to fist-pumping.

Second encore started out with the most spastic polka I've ever heard, composed by Igor Stravinsky, supposedly for an elephant, during the darkest days of World War II. Take the soundtrack needed for a Tim Burton movie about psychopathic mass murder and hypercube it, and you'll have a vague idea what it sounded like. It was precision spasticity, mind you, but it wouldn't compare to the show closer.

Jimi's "Banner."

It may very well have been better than the real thing, which is a big compliment coming from me, Hendrix is not something to be screwed around with if you aint got the goods, but then again, they are screeching to the power of four, dripping with gainy overdrive every one. The lightshow flashed along with the bows, tension mounting as the quartet swirled in one electrified tornado, the melody divebombing through barb wire clouds. Our meager crowd erupted in an equal cacophony and I whistled as loud as I could. It felt good to bust out the loud-as-hell, find-you-across-the-back-pasture whistle for a string quartet at the Holland.




I snagged a seat in the first tier boxes, right over the third row of the audience but in that little balcony that rings the stage.

Setlist:

John Zorn "Cat O' Nine Tails"

Charles Mingus "Myself When I Am Real"

R.D. Burman "Mehbooba Mehbooba" (Beloved, O Beloved)

Wynton Marsalis "Many Gone" from At the Octoroon Balls

Hildegard Von Bingen "O Virtus Sapientie"

Ram Narayan "Raga Mishra Bhairavi"

--Intermission--

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh "Mugam Sayagi"

Steve Reich "Triple Quartet"

--E1: Sigur Ros "A Thousand Thoughts"

--E2: Igor Stravinsky "Circus Polka"

Jimi Hendrix "Star Spangled Banner"

I need it

Turns any screw-top bottle into a tripod.



Or maybe I'll try to make one, as gizmondo suggests. Now that I have a trusty new hot glue gun, all I should need for the project is a screw that's the correct size. Or maybe some junque-shopping is in order. I'm sure Joe's Collectibles down the alley near my apartment has a tripod rusting in a corner somewhere.

Although.. my birthday is next Friday, so if you've been wondering what to get me... I will have reached the ancient and decrepit age of 28! Watch for moblogging at the 10-year high school reunion this fall.

Go Wampus Cats!

More Horizons

I thought it would look nice against the green background, and this is the first of the Horizon's to be favorited by a flickrite. Extra points if you know what's wrong with this picture?

Magical Garden part 5

I heard strange drumming when I came upstairs for a midnight snack. I closed the fridge and stared at the Magical Garden until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I could see bonfires in the distance, at the foot of Mt. Fuji. The photos could not capture these, as I do not have a telephoto lens. I turned on the sonopak, but the drumming had grown faint, the bonfires dimming.

You can see the snow is even more abundant. The lovely flowers are still sparse.



See previous:

Magical Garden part 4
Magical Garden part 3
Magical Garden part 2
Magical Garden part 1

Beauty...

is where you find it. Link.

Who knew looking at an animation of every airplane with a flight plan over North America would be so mesmeric? Not only does the FlightAware site holds such soothing beauty, it is also quite useful, allowing you to enter your airport, airline, flight number or the tail number of a private plane. It then spits out maps and graphs to show where all the airplanes are, which direction they're headed, the hourly flight volume of the airport, departures/arrivals, delayed and cancelled flights... and its free, without requiring so much as a registration.

Digital Vinyl

Saddle Creek is among the indie labels trying out a new courtesy to customers. Imagine this: instead of harboring an overarching desire to cripple your ability to enjoy legally purchased music, how about a company that actually wants you to give you options in reaching an ideal listening experience... a company that embraces high fidelity and digital portability at the same time. I feel the incredulous looks, I hear you shouting "this goes against everything we've been forced to accept!"

Well, deal with it.

No more compromising, my fellow audiophiles, we will soon have it all. Get hip to the new trend of Digital Vinyl. Buy the long-player, get a free side of mp3's.

Horizons

Comments

Sometimes the comments are better than the posts.

Here's the background. I end up on a page about old library cards, the ones that you have to sign and they stamp your due date with one of those stamps you can change the date on. Well in this person's collection of old Princeton U. library cards, one is signed by Sam Alito in 72. Its The Philosophical Quarterly v.6, 1956, 6000.7163. Then the writer writes, 'how odd,' and ends it. For some reason I continue into the comments, and I run into one known as serendipity. Start reading at the top, #3.


Scroll on down to Samuel Adams' comment, #18 for the other end of the spectrum.

APoD

I pause to enjoy today's APoD, the Tadpoles of IC 410. The denizens of the glowing gas cloud are remarkable.

New Mix

I'm calling it 'ode to a gum sole.' If you're nice to me I'll make you a copy. Its heavy on the 2005, directly and indirectly. If you're curious take a peek at the tracklisting. I wouldn't. I'd listen to it first.

Beware

Tomorrow is Step In A Puddle And Splash Your Friend Day.

Its also Slim Harpo's birthday.

Garfield Zen

The Garfield Randomizer, or something. It picks three cells, and you get a lock feature to hold on to the ones you like. Good fun.

AutoGene, as in Kelly

Umbrellas choreographed to Singin in the Rain. Link.

We Make Money Not Art is a very good blog. You can tell because robots and gadgets are displayed prominently in the tagcloud.

Leg Up on Best of 2006

This just hotly dropped today. And allow me to reference an entertaining tale on my other blog about my love for Titt.. Chantal.

Colr Pickr

For Flickr.

Warning! This application is so very stimulating it could very well induce a click-coma.

The Experimental Chia Pet is also quite fun. The little chia-squiggles remind me of the magic worms from the live-action/stop-motion James and the Giant Peach.

6955

I ran into this entity when I was researching chiptunes to see how I could create and apply them to my live DJ work. After being inspired by 6955's work, I snapped up a couple of GameBoy Cameras on Ebay and started making my own stuff, which I will upload and share with yout as soon as I suss it out. In the meantime, check out 6955's page, particularly the Gear, Projects and of course the MP3 section.

You'll find stuff like this as you poke around:



Link.

Califone

Amazon popped this up based on what I've bought there. I remember liking Red Red Meat, and the samples on iTunes were intriguing, so I went for it. There are some moments where you can't see the noises for the songs, but if you're patient, its more like you pass through them on the way to wonderful melodies, fringed with rustic spasms. Similar, but different to a perception of Medeski, Martin & Wood shared with me by a friend of mine, just after his first time seeing them live. Its like its all one expansive, droning song, with different messages and conversations resolving amidst and replacing the drone of the chaos. You could also compare it to the noisy, art-rock tangent Wilco has taken, but more calculated and subdued. Califone is (nice enough to include a slew of mp3's for download) hard to pin down, painting expansive songs using broad palettes. Sometimes electric and electronic, sometimes organic and tribal, and often all at once. And... they can get funky when they wanna.

Update: After listening to both Quicksand/Cradlesnakes and Heron King Blues, I can say I'm a fan. Heron King Blues is a very good album. Let me know what you think, if you're familiar. I guess that goes for everything.

Nice Flow

David Byrne's new radio playlist is a nice mix you should listen to. I am right now.
Emmylou, Lucinda, Waylon, Willie, plus stuff from that Wilco & Billy Bragg album, Gillian Welch, Roseanne Cash. Go get it streaming and I'll save your place for you.
Link.

Magical Garden part 4

The cherry blossoms I can see, but the garden is only just beginning to present its beautiful picture of flowers, which should have occurred 10 hours in. There's somethin not right.

Poor PearLyrics

So this is why my iTunes Lyrics Widget never worked...

PearLyrics still offline -- shame on Warner Chappell.
Remember the sad saga of PearLyrics -- the iTunes helper app that acted like a specialized web browser, searching the internet for song lyrics while you play music in iTunes?
Walter Ritter, the Austrian tech researcher who coded it in his spare time for fun, received a forceful cease-and-desist letter in December from music publisher Warner/Chappell. They demanded he take the popular app offline, and cc'd Apple, insisting they also remove links to the software from apple.com.

Link to story on boingboing with more links.

It Ain't Pinball..

but he sure sounds like a wizard...

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - An 18-year-old Lincoln East High School senior is heading to Japan to test his gaming skills against that nation's best.
Brice Millen has been blind since birth. His skills at playing video games have earned him national exposure on programs such as N-B-C's Today Show.
Later this month Millen and his father will will compete with some of Japans best Mortal Kombat players as part of a special for Nippon T-Vs Power of Memory Part Three.
A film crew from Nippon T-V was in Lincoln over the weekend to shoot footage of Brice.

If he's been blind since birth, I don't see the relevance of the Power of Memory. Maybe the power of furious button mashing.
and the championship is Mortal Kombat? The faster you can mash buttons the better on this one. I can't count the number of times a noob beat me by picking Baraka and going Baraka on the gamepad. Lets see Brice try and play GTA, or even Tetris.

But good for him anyway. I'd bet he uses audio cues and a little bit of The Force, in addition to the rapid digital dexterity to pwn all their base.

Neep-neep!

Newsvine

Get Smarter Here

I'm still trying to figure out what its good for, but so far it seems nifty. Comperable to del.icio.us for news, but you can 'seed' anything. You can also write articles yourself, make money on ads, and your part of the vine becomes a conglomeration of self-produced content and stuff you've dredged up on the net. I'll report back as I get the hang of it, or you can follow my path through the vine by visiting my column.

200 Visitors

Sweet.

Dropkick The Faint

Just do it.

Know Your Rights

"If you can see it you can shoot it & chances are you can publish it."

I too have wondered what you can and can't shoot in public, going back to the Festival of Fins in New Orleans. I was shooting a documentary on the fishes for the Real 7, the access TV show starring the cast of MTV's The Real World. Some of the fishes were in front of the federal building and we were shooed away.

USA Today's Andrew Cantor has done the leg work so you don't have to when it comes to your rights as a photographer. Link.

Magical Garden part 3

"After 10 hours, the garden will present a beautiful picture of flowers and snow. Notice: Avoid moving the garden. If necessary, please be careful."

Magical Garden part 2

The liquids is spreading.

Magical Garden part 1

The mountain and trees have been thusly made, branches bent slightly as desired, liquid packets poured into marked positions and trapezoid. Now we wait for the beautiful cherry blossoms and small lovely yellow flowers.

Unfortunate

The Cream of Nut Flyboys. Storming barns across Middle America since, well, you know. The pilot looks like he just got caught spilling a little Cream of Nut in the cockpit there.

Special Note: You can view this photograph in person at Omaha's Eppley Airfield, upstairs between the terminals.

Mondo Cockroach

I found this guy on my deck Christmas day. One of those amazonian suckers you see at the zoo or on Fear Factor... not on your deck. Hope he's a loner.



There are a couple more portraits of this fella on flickr. Just click it.

Gorillaz for Xmas

Check out the cool action figures my Dad got me for Christmas. Amazing detail, and big. Russel's waistline is almost 12 inches.



Very well-made. Noodle can hold her guitar in one hand.



This is apparently the limited, 'red' series, sold out on toytokyo.com. They still have a special edition Noodle. If you run across this, and you know more about the significance of the 'red' series, drop a line.

Resolved

To post more in 2006.

But in the meantime, I've updated my Myspace profile with my top albums of 2005: