Author: Thom

Alright, I know most of you guys already hang on every little post by CuteOverload as though it were spilling from a bottle of 18 year old Macallan… wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, just in case you missed these two posts, I give you the most heartbreakingly adorable videos known to man:


If you don’t exclaim “OMG!!!” at least 3 times while watching these clips, then I must presume thy heart be made of the blackest coal…

Let’s start with a roundup of kottke links and see what else we got:

• This cruise ship is unreal. I actually want to take a cruise now – but it sure looks like it would be more fun with a bunch of friends. (thanks)
• How many states can you name in 10 minutes? What about countries? I’d like to say that I completely ripped through these, but I’m a tad embarrassed by my country score (I was struggling to break 50). In my defense, I missed a number thanks to misspellings or putting a “The” in front (e.g. The Ivory Coast). As for the states, I didn’t realize it started ticking right away and didn’t start until 8 minutes were left. I still managed to name 49 in about 4 minutes – and spent the rest of the time unable to figure out the one I missed. Can you figure out which state that was? (thanks)
• I still can’t wrap my head around this guy’s tour of the US in one week. (thanks)
• A blog that rips CNN on insipid news? I am so there! (thanksthom)

Alright, I swear, no more links from kottke for today!

• I’m not sure what kind of geek I am that I think this is such a cool idea. Maybe it’s more of a pack rat thing, since I’m just now shredding receipts from 1998 – and I almost regret it even now.
• Do you like music? Could you not make it to SXSW? Have your own virtual music festival thanks to these (completely legit) torrents from the past three years. (thanks to Dave Winer
• 30 Days of Sloan – 30 videos about the making of their latest album, “Never Hear the End of It”, which just happens to contain 30 songs. These guys are one of the most under appreciated indie rock bands of the last decade – unless you’re Canadian.
• I figure my bibliophile friends will enjoy this list of the top 1000 books owned by OCLC member libraries. Here’s some fun facts for those who don’t want to just read a very long list.
• Hey Mark, can you believe “Put the bunny in the box” was actually singled out as the worst action movie one-liner? Here’s a top ten of the best. (thanks to Photo Matt)
• Hmm, a college suing the RIAA for wasting their time trying to sue students? Maybe there is hope after all. Cause at this point, the MPAA has already convinced me that piracy is the best way to go. I came back from that thinking with music, but that’s a tenuous position. Especially if the rumor of eMusic being up for sale comes true.
• MIT (among others) will be offering its entire curriculum for free on the web by the end of this year. HA! Looks like I finally get to dig that rejection letter out of storage and throw it back in their collective faces! (thanks to Ed Bott)

And although I’m trying to avoid politics on this site, I was impressed to read Brian Wood’s take on the generic “Do you support the troops” question. Khaleed’s take is even more in line with my own feelings, as my answer has clearly changed after the last year or so as I’ve re-evaluated the situation. For those of you who would balk at a contrary response, I have a little story. A student at the school my wife teaches at joined one of the branches of the military (I forget which one, and don’t really care) so he could head out to Iraq. His goal wasn’t to “save freedom” or “promote democracy”. No, he wanted to become a sniper so that he could kill people. So I ask you, do you support him?

These kids are going to get so much action in college:

Seriously, if that doesn’t do it for them, I give up. And that kid in the back? I plan on stealing all of his moves the next time I need to break out a dance… which will probably be in the middle of the grocery store… much to the chagrin of my wife…

(thanks to defective yeti)

Last night marked my first concert of this rapidly aging new year. A few years ago, live music had become a rather rare occurrence for me. Gone were the days of random Friday night appearances at Maxwell’s to check out bands. No more semi-monthly runs into NYC to catch a hot new act. For awhile it was just picking up tickets for the latest Pearl Jam concert and watching the rest of the musical world pass me by.

Thankfully a couple friends helped pull me out of that funk, and over the last year and a half I saw plenty of awesome shows. To kick off things off this year I met up with my sister Maureen over at the beautiful Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Jersey City to catch the first night of The Decemberists’ tour. For some reason I put off really listening to this band, but once The Crane Wife came out, I just couldn’t ignore them anymore. Not only are they brilliant with their complex songwriting and conceptual themes, but they are fun and completely lacking the pretentiousness you might expect from such music. And that shows up most in their live performance.

The opening act, My Brightest Diamond, had some real highlights (most noticeably Shara Worden’s exquisite vocals) as well as the occasional meanderings that you come to expect from a good (but not great) opening act. I’ve been meaning to check them out after seeing her perform with Sufjan Stevens, and this was a decent introduction. But there was no way for her to compete with the main act. Not that this is a competition… which is good, because they would have lost…

Anywho, I just can’t say enough good things about The Decemberists these days. Unlike so many of the recent indie sensations, they seem to be improving with each release. That’s not to say that their old material was weak – on the contrary, I downloaded their first two albums from eMusic after already getting the last two and am enjoying them. Still, it’s undeniable how much they seem to have grown with The Crane Wife.

To give you a sense of the show, here’s a clip from the fall:

That was a great opener, but it was a couple songs later when they played “The Infanta” that the audience was brought to their feet. Colin Meloy (and Chris Funk) has a great stage presence and really gets into it with the audience. You can’t help but feel like they are just as excited to be playing the music for you as you are to hear them play it. My point is, if you haven’t checked them out yet, do it. And if you’re thinking about going to see them live, do it.

And to answer Jess’s question, apparently their bandwagon isn’t quite full yet. Last night (and tonight) didn’t sell out. Thankfully New Yorkers are too snobbish to take a 15 minute train ride to see a great show because it’s in Jersey… No problem by me – we picked up some good seats about 15 minutes before the show.

You all know that today is free iced coffee day at Dunkin’ Donuts, right? All day long, just walk right into a Double D and get yourself a free 16 oz. iced coffee. It’s in celebration of the first day of Spring or something. In reality it’s just to thumb their noses at Starbucks who only did it for like 2 hours.

Now why is this the greatest promotion ever? BECAUSE IT”S 31 FRICKIN” DEGREES OUTSIDE! WHO WANTS ICED COFFEE TODAY?!?!

Regardless, I already got mine. I asked for caramel, but she gave me amaretto instead. That’s fine by me as it’s good, too. Besides, I’ll just go back and get a free caramel one later. And maybe a hazelnut one later. Who cares, they’re free! And if they recognize me at this one, there’s like 10 others within a 2 mile radius. I have to imagine that someone is running a contest to see how many Dunkin’ Donuts you can hit up in one day…

I managed to screw up my sessions yesterday despite my cool setup in Firefox and closed over 20 tabs that I was checking out and possibly linking…

Oh well, there’s too much crap on the Internet anyway. There is at least one link that I can’t forget – this weekend zefrank posted the final episode of the show. I wish I had watched it more regularly, because it was one of the best executed ideas on this wacky thing called the Internet. At least the archive will remain for those who want to go through it.

I never even thought to check before, but it turns out that zefrank does maintain a blog. I was very excited to subscribe, only to be confronted with a partial feed (i.e. the entire entries do not show). What’s even more bizarre is that his entires are only little snippets to begin with! So I have to click out of Google Reader to go to his page to read the last few words. That’s just silly.

I’ve recently just been unsubscribing from sites that use partial feeds (The Sneeze and finslippy are two examples) because it interrupts the flow of reading. If you really want me to visit your site, make the content good enough that I’ll feel compelled to comment or give me some other added reason to click through. If you really need the advertising revenue, just throw one on at the end of the feed anyway – that doesn’t bother me at all. But I skip reading half of those entries anyway because I never get around to reading it at the site itself. So either way, you’re losing me as a reader.

This morning I was woken by the phone. Lisa answered it, but I decided to get up anyway. While she spoke to her friend, I checked my e-mail and found a message from my sister. Her father-in-law passed away. Lisa then told me that it was a good friend of hers calling because her father was killed in an accident yesterday. That is not the way to begin a morning.

So yeah, I’m a tad distracted…

I totally expected to have 3 or 4 posts up since we returned Sunday night, but life picked up at an even faster pace than when I left it. But I always find the first post is the hardest to get up. Then the rest will all follow in their own glorious inanity.

As for the trip, it was a magnificent jaunt across way too many southern states. Since Lisa’s parents are snowbirds (you know, retired northeasternly types who fly south for the winter), we have a place to stay in Florida if we want. We went a couple years ago and decided it was time for another visit. But rather than fly, we wisely chose to drive over 3000 miles so that we could tack on some other stops.

First up was Alabama – which is much further away than you might expect. Not your typical vacation spot, but I’ve got a sister down there whom I’ve never had the chance to visit her house. So why not go the day after vicious tornadoes devastate the neighboring town? We certainly know how to plan! Believe it or not, ‘bama was very nice. Depressing when comparing real estate prices, but still very relaxing. Of course it’s also way too easy to make fun of, so I’ll just pass on that. While I would never do that drive again (thanks to bad weather, road construction, multiple traffic jams, and plenty of cops it took us about 20 hours), I will definitely look at alternative methods for the next trip. Like a transporter…

Florida was lovely, and we did a lot of the same things as last time – eating at buffets, touring model homes, and watching Lost. We sure know how to live it up. Actually, the big highlights were getting to visit the same camera shop as last time and spending time in two different wild life areas – both of which I’ll talk about later. I’m not a big Florida fan, but Delray Beach is a nice area and I enjoy the visits.

After all of the moving around, we decided to book two night at The Red Rocker Inn out near Asheville, NC to help us really wind down before heading home. And boy was it needed. I love the Asheville area and would move there in a heart beat if I had no ties to hold me here.

Believe it or not, it’s good to be back home. Does anybody else get paranoid that when they turn that last corner on the road back from vacation they’ll find a smoldering wreckage where their house once stood? That’s one reason I don’t always relax well on vacation. But it also feels good because I was rushing through so much at work and home just before we left, and now I can get back into the flow without feeling like there’s a deadline.

Alright, I’ve already written way too much about nothing, let me get to sleep…

It’s not even 5 AM and pouring rain outside. Perfect time to start a vacation. Lisa and I are headed down south, because we’d like to chase tornadoes in Alabama. Posting will be light as I have no idea when I’ll have Internet access. Don’t make a mess!

Holy crap do I have a lot of tabs opens! And for that reason I’ll start by pointing out one of the awesomest Firefox addons – Session Fix. All it does is ask me if I want to save my session when I close down the browser. No more worrying about losing the 30 tabs I’ve had open all week!

• This weekend I was excited to see Eric Meyer address the whole “not enough women speakers” issue at web conferences by pointing out that he felt expertise and content were more important than genitalia. Unfortunately he got toasted for it. I wanted to write more on this subject and link to all of the craziness going on, but screw it. If you read his post and don’t get the idea that picking someone based on actual qualifications over gender, race, creed, etc. than I think there’s a bigger problem…
• As a side note, I went to a technical college. My class had one of the largest female enrollments at 25%. If you looked at the number who were actually in computer fields, it was far below that. Why is it still a surprise that there are fewer females in technical areas?
• The wallpapers installed in Windows Vista are awesome. And now you can get everything Hamad Darwish submitted for free. (thanks to Ed Bott)
• For the politically-minded, check out OpenCongress. Looks like a good way to keep track of what’s going on.
• I may use Wikipedia regularly, but I do not his my disdain for it while doing so. I would love to see the co-founder’s new project, Citizendium take off. It certainly sounds like a better alternative than Conservapedia (which already appears to be offline).
• In case you hadn’t made up your mind about David Caruso, this is all you need to know. (thanks to Jess)
• For those with a shoe fetish (my personal faves are the 4th pair). (thanks to Kottke)
• And, finally, if you’re looking for some new music, why not go through the SXSW line-up day by day and get some free mp3s!

That’s all for now kids…