Line Signal

I really liked the short Line Signal that was highlighted on io9.  Although perhaps for different reasons than the plot line.  The area where she's jogging looks quite a bit like the C&O/Cumberland Trail in West Virginia/Maryland/DC.  Enough to give me a slight sense of deja vu, right down to the picnic table.  I can picture having a ghostly encounter out there all alone, even if I don't believe in ghosts.


LINE SIGNAL - Short Film from Meat Bingo on Vimeo.

The Creeper Creeps

My co-worker has been releasing some of his tunes on YouTube.  Yesterday I came home and found my daughter playing this one, so he's famous at our household, if no where else.  For your enjoyment, The Creeper Creeps (Steve).

Vacation: Part Last, the Video Journey

Ah, nonsensical videos from vacation, mostly devoid of people, so you can feel like you're sharing the grandeur of Colorado with me first person shooter style.  If you feel like looping, you can hang out in the windy mountains at 12,000 feet virtually forever, embedded in a New Age Scooter video.



Or spend 22 seconds watch a river in blackbox.  Watch for Jen's watch!


This is The Mist, coming to get you.  It just needs spooky music.  I should put spooky music behind all my vacation videos.  They'd be more interesting.


Moving camera and more river.  If you're easily nauseated, prepare for fast movement.


A river near Vail that's not as noisy as a river in the Rocky Mountains.


See, Rocky Mountain National Park rivers are noisier.  Do you have to pee now?

Minnedemo 16

I didn't get to go - it's Eryn's acting class night.  But a reminder to myself to watch the videos out at TECHdotMN:

http://tech.mn/news/2014/02/14/video-minnedemo-16-presentations/

Pi

Eryn was watching videos today, so I recommended she watch this one featuring Danica McKellar about Pi and Math (she was at a Lego League competition in Rochester Friday and Saturday and her team got the judges award and placed third in programming - she's very STEM oriented).  She liked it a lot and I explained to her that I remembered when Danica (Winnie Cooper) was a little kid and that she's 39 now - almost 40.  For a non-math-related video, you can see Danica making out with Avril Lavigne in Avril's Rock N' Roll.  A very very strange video.

10 Most Offensive Board Games and Many Other Things

• Good list of the ten most offensive board games from io9.
• The best science fiction and fantasy of 2013. - a lot of things I haven't read, although MaddAdam is in my library pile on the counter and Ancillary Justice is in my iPad.
• 5 films the Dallas Observer thought were worth streaming on Netflix.  I saw 237 and enjoyed it.  I'll have to stream the rest when I'm done with my latest Bollywood film while cycling (Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola)
• Learn to Play 16 Easy Guitar Riffs from Music Radar - I have got to learn to play Supermassive Black Hole.  I'll be set if any exotic dancers want to suddenly dance in  my space.
• A very stately and organized flash mob by the USAF at the National Air and Space Museum courtesy of Larry (the father in law Larry, not the other one).  Not exactly flash mobby when it involves violins, cellos, and everyone in dress uniform.  But still neat.
• Ten Things You Didn't Know About Voodoo from Listverse - primarily for Eryn who's very interested in Voodoo, although she's still not allowed to watch Coven.
• The Scientific Seven Minute Workout - it's become my laptop wallpaper.  I intend to make it part of my new year's resolutions.
• How To Motivate Yourself at Any Time - I do almost all of these.  I'm naturally a fairly non-motivated person.  But I tend to just do things because I know there's a domino effect to getting more done and, in the end, I'll expend less energy by not worrying about something more than once.

YouTube night

It was Youtube night at our house.  Primarily because I was bored with Netflix (I watched a documentary on lead tailings leading to a superfund site and it depressed me), so I flipped over to Youtube on the Xbox.

We enjoyed the Barenaked Ladies song, Odds Are.  Great video.



And Samuel L. Jackson's CommonSense.org commercial.



The Minecraft parody of Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball:



Proof your senses are lying to you:



Insane domino tricks:



If No One Came to the Monster Mash:



And the 11-17-2013 Tornado in Washington, IL:

Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?

For anyone who missed it, the TED talk "Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?"
via Topless Robot.

 

The Sudden Lovelys

I did my first Kickstarter funding the other night and sponsored a musical duo and an calendar project by Altered Aesthetics. The duo, The Suddenly Lovelys, raised the money they needed, as I received 3 CD & 3 records (yep, records) in the post today, personally signed with a thank you. They've created three albums this year. That's a lot of music. I'm very interested to go see them at the Acadia next Wednesday if anyone is interested. Dirty Rotten Apple:

Stereo

On the way home today I was listening to Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall and realized as I stopped the convertible at the stop light that the fidelity was absolutely amazing. The sound of the children hubbubbing was downright creepy. Then I realized they were being supplemented by real children playing in the church playground near the car. Fortunately, I could see no meat grinder.

What's a Horse's Favorite Band

Why, Snow Patrol of course.  And I'm sure they're very excited about Called Out in the Dark. Excellent tune.

Songs to drive home to

I love my convertible.  Even as it rolls into fall and the temperatures drop, I leave the top down close to midnight and turn on the heat for my toes and crank up some music.  It's like discovering senses that have been shut down for a while.  I get to enjoy the smell of back yard fires, smores, and all the things dogs stick their noses out the windows to savor.

Nine Inch Nails - Terrible Lie


Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman - Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine

99 Problems

For Ming. He and I went to a late showing of Fright Night on Monday and 99 Problems by Hugo was the closing tune. It's a cover of the Jay-Z tune - definitely needs to be loud with lots of bass. And no, this isn't a clever cover for Ming and I going to No Strings Attached, which also featured the song.

The Muppets and OK Go (for Eryn)

Wombats

My song of the moment, The Wombats Anti-D

The Horrible Crowes

I'm not sure yet if I like their other music, but this song is great. The Horrible Crowes doing "Behold the Hurricane", a side project by Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem.

Jubilation Day

This was on CMT this morning. Sometimes having background noise on is great when it delivers up something worth listening to. A great song and a funny video by Steve Martin (yes, The Jerk Steve Martin).

Harrey Podder

Courtesy of Geek Chic Daily, Harrey Podder.  Eryn tells me it's dumb...but she has little tolerance for mockies when it comes to Harry Potter.

Porn Gun

Eryn kept asking me if I wanted to see the porn gun. "Dad, do you want to see the porn gun?" "Do you, it's cool?" "There's a video of the porn gun!" "It's a real life porn gun."

Wow...no thanks honey.  And maybe it's time to have another talk about what you're looking at on the computer. She showed it to me anyway.

Software Links V (and other articles of interest)

• 5 Books to help you become a better software engineer - I disagree about The Pragmatic Programmer, but I did enjoy the others.
• Beer Archaeologist from Long Reads - Dogfish is so freaking cool. "But will the za’atar—a potent Middle Eastern spice mixture redolent of oregano—clobber the soft, floral flavor of the chamomile? And what about the dried doum-palm fruit, which has been giving off a worrisome fungusy scent ever since it was dropped in a brandy snifter of hot water and sampled as a tea?...The truest alcohol enthusiasts will try almost anything to conjure the libations of old. They’ll slaughter goats to fashion fresh wineskins, so the vintage takes on an authentically gamey taste. They’ll brew beer in dung-tempered pottery or boil it by dropping in hot rocks. The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess."
• Nailing down non-functional requirements (Infoq) such as "General 'ilities' of the system such as scalability, interoperability, maintainability, portability, performance and security".  I fully agree about the trickiness of making this work as well as getting it in the backlog and in front of the business unit.  I'm particularly sensitive to the issue, because lately I've been tasked with handling our Open Source tracking for the department, including porting the scripting of the process from AntHillPro back to Powershell scripts (AHP keeps failing on us), considering the OWASP scanning schedule, including writing up a standard "bundle" for partners interested in our security stack, and determining the best way to automate some of our testing within the constraints of two development FTEs for half a dozen products.
• Why Most IT Departments Are Modeled After a DMV (Even Yours!) -  How to codify saying "no".  "Campaign rhetoric aside, governments have a bit of a vested interest in slowing down change in the way government works. Governments are meant to be stable, reliable and predictable -- and change opposes those goals...My problem is that ITIL pretty much abhors change. No, not on paper -- on paper, ITIL manages and controls change. In practice, IT organizations use ITIL as a blunt instrument to halt change."
• It's getting real...in the Whole Foods parking lot.   Thanks to Betsy Burton (@betsyphd). I wonder if I should form a competing gang over at Kowalski's.