Tag: Cool

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Coincidences

I had one of those strange series of coincidences today. This woman from AFLAC was at work today and was taking my information for some insurance crap I was enrolling for (the one where they pay you like $5000 for each finger you lose…hmmm). She was asking me my birthday, and I told her when it was. She said that was her father’s birthday too. A moment later, she asked my address, and she said, “Wow, my mom and dad live on your street”. So the next thing that made it all really weird was when I looked at my watch to see what the date was, and I noticed it as 2:22 on 2/22. Far out, d00d.

Aside from those types of things happening, I went and saw Mastodon at the Orange Peel the other night. I was mostly excited to go out and see a show in the first place, but these guys rocked the jams, which made it even better. I’m not usually into metal, but it was great nonetheless. The only downside was that the sound was not mixed very well at all, and often, it was really hard to distinguish what was going on.

That brings me to my next coincidence, which happened when I first got to the show and was mingling through the crowd trying to find a good spot to stand before the band started. This guy walked up to me and stopped, pointing at me. My first thought was it was someone I knew from Louisville back in the day, but I didn’t think that was very likely, so I dismissed it. I was like, “Dude, who are you?”

It turned out my first impression was correct. It was Andy Tinsley from Louisville, a guy that was part of the Bardstown Road crowd back in the day. I asked him what the heck he was doing there, and it turns out he was the sound engineer for Mastodon. Go figure.

I promise I won’t wait for more strange coincidences to happen before I do some more writing here. I’ve been slack, I know.

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New Music!

Back in August I was in Louisville and got to record some tunes in an airplane hangar with Jeremy. It was too much fun. Check out the free tunes to hear them. Jeremy provides the guitar and bass, while I do the drums and other banging of things. Listen closely on one of the tracks for the jet plane taking off, which cleverly disguises an error in the song we made.

On another note, Jeter completely rocked my world this week by sending me the previously mentioned 7″ recording of Bastro doing My Dad Is Dead’s Nothing Special, a song which is very important to me because of its awesome drumming. Not to mention the fact that it’s just an awesome song, and I have been dying to hear it since 1992. I couldn’t believe it when it showed up in my mail, and my wife and kids looked at me funny when I shouted with glee and jumped onto the coffee table. Thank you, Mr. Jeter. I owe you one. Or 100.

Now, I must go buy a turntable. This 7″ has pushed me into deciding to delve in and get the Ion iTTUSB, which will allow me to start converting my 400+ vinyl albums to digital format. This will take a while to do, but there is so much vinyl I have that never came out on CD that it will be worth it.

Lastly, I’ve decided to start a new band. I’m going to put an ad out soon seeking one guitarist and one bass player to form the power trio from hell. If it doesn’t leave my ears ringing and my knuckles bloody, then I will have to try again. So, who wants to play?

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Fingernails and Toenails

For all you sick weirdos out there, here is the video of my toenail and fingernail licking ceremony. This was submitted by popular demand. One person asked me to do this.

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Odds; Ends

From The “That’s So Disgusting” Department
Found a rather hilarious writeup about my Fingernail and Toenail Collection today over at I Am Such a Child. The pics aren’t working on that page, but you should be able to follow along.

I was contacted by MyHeavy.com about doing a video of myself performing my toenail licking ritual and submitting it to their site. June had originally mentioned that idea a couple of months ago, and I’ve just been waiting until the moment feels right. Stay tuned.

From The Online Web Tools Department
Check out this huge list of online generators for generating things such as 3-column CSS layout and accessible forms.

From The Tooting My Own Horn Department
Someone has erected a Myspace page for Crain. Nice job of collecting stuff.

From The Crucial Apps Department
If you use multiple monitors on your PC, then you must get Multi Monitor Taskbar, a freebie tool that puts a taskbar at the bottom of your second monitor, saving you mouse mileage and window confusion. It also has a nifty clipboard memory tool built in.

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I Love The Series Of Tubes

The series of tubes known as the Internets by our nation’s educated leaders, never ceases to amaze me.

Today I learned that there have been over 485 user comments and reviews of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz on amazon.com, a fact that amuzed me. The way people latch onto things like this, then spend a lot of creative time and effort to contribute to its longevity, make the Internet such a novel piece of human existence. Take, for example, this quote from the Tuscan Milk reviews:

Jug of Milk, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, & bid thee feed
The children & lay o’er the cereal;

Gave thee whitest of white color;
Softest velvet taste, smooth, and soothing;
Gave thee such a pleasant after-taste,
Making sleep to soon over-take?

Jug of Milk, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Jug of Milk, I’ll tell thee,
She is called by her name,
For she calls herself Elsie.
She is meek, & she is mild;
She is as dumb as a box of rocks.

I a child, & thou a bowl of cereal,
We are called to use her milk.

Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz , God bless thee!
Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz , God bless thee!

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Farked

Yesterday was an exciting day. One of my project sites, The Best of Youtube, got Farked by the popular news site Fark.com. Someone posted a link to my recent Star Wars on a Banjo video.

By the end of the day, I received over 32,000 visits to my site, which witheld the onslaught of traffic with grace (thank you, Dreamhost).

For a while, I was featured at Youtube on the “Most Viewed Today” page, rising to the 35th spot, and my video received an “honor” for this status. Strangely, my video suddenly vanished from this listing though, and the “honor” vanished, which I have yet to figure out.

The second comment on the posting at Fark.com was from none other than Drew Curtis, the creator and owner of Fark.com:

“This video pretty much sums up the entire Internet”

The rest of the feedback I received, through comments on fark.com, youtube.com, and thebestofyoutube.com, were mostly positive and funny. A few people didn’t seem to be able to hear the melody in the banjo picking, which is difficult sometimes for an untrained bluegrass ear.

I’ll be eagerly watching this over the next few days to see how much traffic I continue to get.

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Dots What I’m Talking About

Having always been a big fan of cool scientific and mathematical things that make you go, “Whoa”, I have been enjoying Getting a feel for big numbers.

Start by taking a look at what 10,000 dots looks like.

Next, take a gander at what it looks like when you have one dot for every second of the day.

Feeling overwhelmed? Wait until you see what one million dots looks like. That puts in perspective exactly how big one million really is.

So what about a billion? Billions and Billions puts this impressive number in perspective:

“To visit every web page on the internet would require a page a second for thirty two years with no time to eat or sleep(1).”

“A billion dollar bills laid end to end would circle the globe at the equator four times.”

“A trillion dollar bills laid end to end would stretch from the Earth to the Sun.”

Wow.

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Fun With Google

Google never ceases to amaze me. I am now a GCal addict, having organized my life for the next 55 years, WITH text messages being sent to my phone to remind me of upcoming events. I have been smitten with Google Adsense, I am a big fan of GMail, and I cannot get enough of Google Earth.

So maybe Google really is trying to take over the universe, but doggone it, I am OK with that as long as they keep the steady supply of geek toys flowing. And if they offer me a job some day.

While revelling in my little Google stupor, I discovered a cool, free PDF called 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google, which to my amazement, introduced me to 55 entirely new reasons why Google rules. If you care anything about the next hour of your life, you will read this PDF.

The book is offered by 55fun.com and can be purchased in print from their site.

And for those of you who still can’t find something on Google, come tell me about it.

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The Death Star

“It would take 10^21 United States-worth of generators–as in a billion trillion Americas–to generate the same amount of energy that the Death Star superlaser released in one second.”

That’s insane. Some guy decided to figure out how much energy it would take to blow up a planet in a similar fashion to how the Death Star blew up Alderan in Star Wars Episode IV. As it turns out, it would be much easier to liquify an entire planet than to disinegrate it. Read the whole article

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Gnarls Barkley

I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have MTV, or I don’t have my ear to the streets of current top-40 music, but for some reason I have never heard of Gnarls Barkley. But now that I have witnessed the following video, I have gained a deep respect for him/her/it/them. Check it out:

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