Answer 5 questions to see if McCain will make a better President than Bush. There is an extra set of questions after that quiz that I highly recommend signing in for as well. I didn't do to well with 2 out of 5 correct answers. Clearly I am an optimist.
This year's minnebar (or Barcamp Minnesota) is going to be great. In addition to a session from your's truly about doing more with small teams and a panel discussion about the practice of "design coding" or designers who also do their own CSS/XHTML and sometimes more, there will be a greater emphasis on design and creative tech at this year's event. I want to make a concerted effort to get more people who are on the visually creative side of things into the mix. If you are one of them and want to present, lead a session, or just come and participate, please sign up on the wiki site for this outstanding free (un)conference.
Who: You! Everyone is welcome, and the event is free. Add your name to the list below.
When: Saturday May 10th, 2008 starting at 8:30am. Registration begins at 8:00 please come early.
Where: Coffman Union at the University of Minnesota Campus (Minneapolis)
Address 300 Washington Ave. S.E. Minneapolis, MN 55455-0110
Parking: There is metered and street parking around and also several large ramps.
It's not too late to come by the Refactr offices tonight for the Groovy/Grails Users Group meeting. It's at 6pm and you can learn about some sweet technologies, if you are into that sort of thing. Get the details at groovy.mn.
Radiohead has released the pieces and parts (or stems) of their song Nude on iTunes iTunes Store URL you can remix the song however you wish and submit it to a contest at RadioheadRemix.com (more than 400 so far). If you buy all 5 stems by the 8th of April you will be given access to download special GarageBand project file to make it easier to get started.
It was hard to take the latest blaspheme hurled in the Beatles direction with American Idol contestants, by and large, butchering Beatles songs for two straight weeks. Sure there were some standouts such as Brooke White's rendition of Let It Be, Carly Smithson's version of Come Together, A Day In the Life and Across the Universe by Michael Johns, and Yesterday by Syesha Mercado but nearly all the other performances were bizarre? What do all those songs have in common? They are good. Hello? Why pick the crappiest Beatles songs to sing? If I Fell, Michelle, I Should Have Know Better, Day Tripper, The Long and Winding Road, She's a Woman, Back in The U.S.S.R., and Eight Days a Week are all terrible.
I've Just Seen A Face (Chikezie) and You Can't Do That (Amanda Overmyer) are two possible exceptions, as I thought they took poor songs and at least made them interesting.
Almost without variance the judges and the call-in voters like performances more if they like the songs being sung. That is why there are cover bands. That is also why, according to the Guinness Book of Records, "Yesterday" has the most cover versions of any song ever written. The song remains popular today with more than 3000 recorded cover versions.
As I sit in the office today listening to the songs I have heard thousands of time before, I am reminded of how good the Beatles were and how good their music still is. Here are a few achievements, feats, and fact from various Wikipedia entries on the Beatles and their music:
The Beatles are the best-selling musical group of all time, estimated by EMI to have over one billion discs and tapes sold worldwide.
The Beatles have notched up the most multi-platinum selling albums for any artist or musical group (thirteen in the U.S. alone).
The Beatles have a record six diamond-selling albums (10 million copies): Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, Abbey Road, The Beatles: 1962-1966, The Beatles: 1967-1970, and The Beatles 1.
The Beatles have had more number one albums than any other group (19 in the U.S. and 15 in the United Kingdom).
The Beatles spent the highest number of weeks at number one in the albums chart (174 in the UK and 132 in the U.S.).
The most successful first week of sales for a double album (The Beatles Anthology Volume 1, which sold 855,473 copies in the U.S. from 21 November to 28 November 1995).
The Beatles have the fastest selling CD of all time with 1. It sold over 13 million copies in four weeks.
The Beatles have had more number one singles than any other musical group (23 in Australia, 23 in The Netherlands, 22 in Canada, 21 in Norway, 20 in the U.S., and 18 in Sweden). Ironically, the Beatles could easily have had even more number ones, because they were often competing with their own singles.
In terms of charting positions, Lennon and McCartney are the most successful songwriters in history, with 32 number one singles in the U.S. for McCartney, and 26 for Lennon (23 of which were written together). Lennon was responsible for 29 Number One singles in the UK, and McCartney was responsible for 28 (25 of which were written together).
During the week of 4 April 1964, The Beatles held twelve positions on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five positions, which has never been accomplished by any other artist. The songs were "Can't Buy Me Love" , "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please Please Me". Furthermore, two Beatles tribute records appeared on the chart: "We Love You Beatles" by The Carefrees (at #42), and "A Letter to the Beatles" by The Four Preps (#85).
The next week, 11 April 1964, the Beatles held fourteen positions on the Billboard Hot 100.
With their performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, The Beatles set new world records for concert attendance (55,600) and revenue. This was the first time in the history of popular music anyone had played in a proper stadium as opposed to a theatre or concert hall.
The Beatles broke television ratings records in the U.S. with their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show with over 70 million people viewing.
I don't know how I didn't know about this sooner - how everyone doesn't know about this already - but there is a huge, continent-sized, pile of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean. Or actually there are two masses that sometimes join together to create, by some accounts, an area that is twice the size of the entire United States. Why isn't this something that we care about! Why aren't we doing something about this? Who/what is to blame? Well, for starters, plastic. Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all garbage floating in the oceans. And there are garbage patches in most of the world's other oceans too. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.
This is having devastating effects on marine life. In addition to blocking sunlight from getting down into the ocean which can affect algae production (and thus be a contributor to global warming), marine animals can ingest or become entangled in the debris like this photo of a deformed sea turtle who likely crawled into that plastic ring when it was much smaller. From GreenPeace's website:
The larger items, however, are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. A turtle found dead in Hawaii had over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.
The garbage patch can even provide a mechanism for invasive species to travel to parts f the world they would never normally get to by floating on the plastic.
This actually has led to action, with some governments, like the city of San Fransisco putting an outright ban on the use of plastic bags. Many countries are also following suit, with Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, Taiwan, Tanzania, Uganda, and perhaps most surprisingly China banning plastic bags. Found out about most of these from last week's ZapRoot videoblog from ViroPop (which I get through the increasingly impressive TiVoCast downloads functionality on my TiVo). Completely coincidentally ZapRoot has a feature about the garbage patch or Gyre on this week's show.
Here are some excerpts for the laziest of my readers:
Senator Obama's political opponents tend to try to paint him as some kind of lightweight, which he most definitely is not. Two, I think he's at or near the top of the scale of intelligence of anyone in political life today.
You can see how smart he is in his background -- for example, lecturer in constitutional law at University of Chicago; before that, president of the Harvard Law Review.
But it's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with one of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart.
Then when asked if voters should be concerned that Obama hasn't had a lot of experience as a manager or leader, he said this:
Watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.
At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?
Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.
Finally, when asked about his foreign policy experience - on whether voters should be concerned he said this (paraphrasings of poster):
First, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.
Think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.
One of the biggest legacies Bush Jr. leaves behind is one of distrust and dislike of Americans by other countries. Even in places where we have traditionally been viewed well, our image is tarnished. Pre-emptive wars, ignoring diplomacy, and overbearing trading rules will do that. I hadn't thought mush of it before but, Obama has a better chance than anyone to mend those relationships simply by being who he is. That is a powerful idea for me.
I could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what songs are being referenced by the charts at the Song Chart Flickr group pool. Now so can you. The image at right is my simple submission. Some are much harder to figure out. Most are much more clever.
Some may remember the photos I took at my friends Brent & Annette's wedding cake. They are among my most popular photos with this one having 82 views yesterday, 528 views this week, and 156,585 views in total. 564 people call it a favorite! The cake has appeared in several magazines and online stories and now the makers of the cake, Gateaux, Inc. will be appearing on the Food Network Challenge this Sunday at 7pm. They are competing with 4 other cake makers to make the best Dr. Seuss themed cake. Nerds, set your TiVos!
On Monday night Jena and I took my Dad to see Rain: The Beatles Experience, or less cryptically, a Beatles tribute band. Year's ago I had the opportunity to see Paul McCartney in concert thinking that was as close as I would ever come to seeing my favorite band live. Turns out Rain is a hell of a lot closer than I thought possible.
Joey Curatolo is amazing as Paul. There was never a moment when he was off, from melodies and more guttural sounds to the banter between songs. Just about the only flaw I could find was that John played guitar left-handed and so it was a little weird seeing him up there playing with a right-handed guitar. Joe Bithorn (aka George) was also great. George Harrison doesn't get to sings as much but there were still some great songs, with the stand-out being While My Guitar Gently Weeps, in which he is also wonderful during the longest and most difficult guitar solo to appear in a Beatles song. John and Ringo were performed well, but Steve Landes (aka John) and Ralph Castelli (aka Ringo) had perhaps more difficult tasks. John's vocals changed so much from the early years through to the end that I imagine (no pun intended) it would be hard to be dead-on throughout (though he was mostly on - Come Together being perhaps the weakest in the set). As for Ringo, with only one vocal part, and only drums, it is hard to tell how accurate Castelli's renditions are - though there was certainly nothing that came to mind.
Due to the no photography policy at the Orpheum for this show, I only had my little point and shoot with no flash. Needless to say the photos I got were not good. Luckily Flickr user hddod has come through with the wonderful photos included in this post of a show in England.
If you are going to be at SXSW next week you can catch one of their six scheduled shows there. For those in or around Minneapolis, you can catch up with them at their CD release party on Tuesday, April 8 at the Electric Fetus, where they will also play a free, short acoustic set or see them at First Avenue on April 26th.
And now for your viewing and listening pleasure Cloud Cult playing at the 89.3 The Current studios last year:
Perhaps this one of him doing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is more famous/impressive but I just liked the one above because I liked how well farting hand noises can approximate Axel Rose's vocal stylings, plus the guitar solo is pretty amazing/good for duck hunting.
DO NOT watch this 4 minute recap of the first 4 seasons of The Wire unless you are ABOSULTEY POSITIVE you aren't going to watch the full seasons - serious spoilers are in effect.
Where it took about 4 hours for me to beat Guitar Hero III on Easy, Medium took a couple nights this past weekend - a couple of nights and something I call note triage - to pass. The most difficult songs for me on this level were Slayer's Raining Blood (which I skipped until the end) and Metalica's One (which I played for about 45 minutes straight one night before giving up) The next night I beat it on the first time through using my new strategy of triaging notes - or just choosing any three notes for the toughest sections of the songs and ignoring the fourth. You can do this on virtually any song (like Raining Blood)
Like Jason, I find that Medium is exceedingly difficult because of my pinky's level of coordination and uselessness. I don't think I can, or will be able to move up a level and play with any success. And while I felt a bit like that after playing my first two easy songs, I don't want to memorize the notes. My favorite song to play is actually one of the hardest in the game (and longest): DragonForce's Through The Fire And Flames. If you can fight through the fatigue that can set in it is actually pretty fun, despite it's cheesiness. This dude makes it look pretty easy - check his concentration!. Playing it on Guitar Hero is pretty impressive but check out the actual video of it being playing in "real life". And just look at all that hair. Dang.
On another GH3 Note: This hacked together "Scratch Blaster" is pretty cool - though it really should have a different game to go along with it.
I watched the first two episodes of the new season of The Wire and it was great as always. It is good in ways that are overt and in many ways that are more subtle. The parallels between characters struggling with things in their lives are often shown sequentially. Cuts from one scene to the next underscore many of these similarities without being in your face about it. It is simply brilliant. One of the best things about the show is how they are not afraid to add new elements and change up major aspects of the show. This year for example they have added a newspaper/media angle. In the past they have had a large union storyline, a story involving schools and kids, and they continue to emphasize the political aspects of the story in addition to the street crime and police/detective bits. This continual evolution of the show is one of the main reasons why it could last for years. That is why it is particularly disappointing that they have said this is the final season.
Besides it ending too early, there is one more gripe I have with the shoe: it's name. It should clearly be called The Game. There are references to playing the game or being in the game constantly by all types of characters. It is a much more broad name that can be used by gang members, cops, politicians, and the like. I have tried to tell myself that "the wire" can refer to more than the surveillance that is being done, like these people are living on the edge (of a wire), so to speak, but that is more than a little weak.
Hi, I'm Ben Edwards and I have been
posting my thoughts and ideas online
since 1995. Alt Text has been a place
for writing and experimentation with the
web as medium of communication.
Currently, it resembles what has
been (unfortunately) termed a weblog.
// read more
Answer 5 questions to see if McCain will make a better President than Bush. There is an extra set of questions after that quiz that I highly recommend signing in for as well. I didn't do to well with 2 out of 5 correct answers. Clearly I am an optimist. 
May 06, 2008; 04:13 PM Discussion
0 comments
Radiohead has released the pieces and parts (or stems) of their song Nude on iTunes 
It was hard to take the latest blaspheme hurled in the Beatles direction with American Idol contestants, by and large, butchering Beatles songs for two straight weeks. Sure there were some standouts such as Brooke White's rendition of Let It Be, Carly Smithson's version of Come Together, A Day In the Life and Across the Universe by Michael Johns, and Yesterday by Syesha Mercado but nearly all the other performances were bizarre? What do all those songs have in common? They are good. Hello? Why pick the crappiest Beatles songs to sing? If I Fell, Michelle, I Should Have Know Better, Day Tripper, The Long and Winding Road, She's a Woman, Back in The U.S.S.R., and Eight Days a Week are all terrible.
This is having devastating effects on marine life. In addition to blocking sunlight from getting down into the ocean which can affect algae production (and thus be a contributor to global warming), marine animals can ingest or become entangled in the debris like this photo of a deformed sea turtle who likely crawled into that plastic ring when it was much smaller. From 
