1. The Mysterious Case of Ohio's Voting Machines | Threat Level from Wired.com - e-voting "irregularities" may be a lot easier than normal voting, but they tend to be (so far) more obvious than "old school" voter fraud. Speaking of which (and I'm sure you'll find this shocking): Whistleblower: Voting Machine Company Lied to Election Officials About Reliability of Machines | Threat Level from Wired.com.
2. Five Things We've Learned From D&D from 1UP.com - The influence of D&D on Video Games.
3. Obama on ‘Renewing the American Economy’ - New York Times - Inspirational and erudite? Yeesh. I can't imagine either Clinton or McCain talking about economic renewal and regulatory reform by putting it into an historical context.
4. YouTube - Under the Tusken Sun - Star Wars fun in the sun!
5. Anti-Emo Riots Break Out Across Mexico | The Underwire from Wired.com - Anti ... emo ... riots?
6. Earth Hour US - Earth Hour 2008 - Turn off your lights for an hour on Saturday night at 8 p.m. Doesn't say anything about turning off the computer or TV ...
7. Restaurant Names - Amusing restaurant names, that is. Or, rather, an academic paper about amusing restaurant names.
8. Speed Racer trailers and video clips on Yahoo! Movies - Go, Speed Racer, Go!

Filed under :: Elections 2008 :: Food & Drink - Restaurants :: Gaming :: Hi-Tech :: Media - Music :: Politics & Law :: Potpourri
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1. How a cockroach got 30 people fired. It's good to be the king ...
2. Lesson from the Heathrow baggage snafu -- don't upgrade both your redundant systems at the same time.
3. That River certainly is a creepifying girl.
4. Using Google Spreadsheets to run a survey. I might have to try this.
5. Blogger gets fired for having a blog. Corporate myopia, employee naiveté, or both?
6. The risks and costs of using the Internet as your hard drive. That remains, honestly, why I keep so much of my online stuff on my own domain (where, if it goes away, it's probably my fault). Though, even there, I still host my mail on Google ...
7. Satellite spotting sounds like a fun hobby -- even if (or perhaps because) it causes the government security fits.
8. Now that security has made air travel even more miserable (and perhaps lethal), let's start ruining train travel, too.
9. I didn't do an obit for Steve Lieber Steve Gerber because, honestly, I was never much of a Howard the Duck fan. Thundarr the Barbarian, on the other hand ... (via Scott)
10. Exporting contacts from Outlook to Gmail is a fine idea -- except that it doesn't transfer snail-mail addresses. *sigh* 
11. One of the coolest things about the Internet is that if Katherine is trying to sing along to the lyrics to a favorite TV show, I can probably find the text for her online. Of course, it's usually transcribed, and so subject to individual interpretations.
12. Disney's Night Kingdom? If it saves the Adventurer's Club from oblivion, I'll fork over my money.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Blogging - Technical :: Hi-Tech :: Homeland Security :: Job Jollies :: Media - Cartoons :: Media - Music :: Media - TV :: Potpourri :: Travel
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An iTunes meme via John Kovalic:

How many songs total: 8,269
How many hours or days of music: 18.5 days
Most recently played: "Recoil" by Kevin Riepl
Most played: "Dr Who - Opening Theme (Eccleston)" by Ron Granier, Murray Gold (19 times)*
Most recently added: "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks

Sort by song title:
First Song: "A" by the Barenaked Ladies
Last Song: "99 Luftballoons" by Nena

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: "Star Trek TOS - End Sting" (:05)
Longest Song: "Gwilan's Harp" by Patrick Ball (30:05)

Sort by album:
First album: "Aa! Megami-sama - the Complete vocal Selection"
Last album: "The '80s Hit(s) Back"
First song that comes up on Shuffle: "When You Dream" by the Barenaked Ladies

Search the following and state how many songs come up:

Death - 23
Life - 131
Love - 299
Hate - 5
You - 637
Sex - 13

Most Represented Artist:  The Beatles (151 songs)

Filed under :: Media - Music :: Personality Tests
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1. MT Open Source 4.1 is now available. I still have no idea whether to stick with the free MT or the free MTOS. Need to ponder this some time I have some spare cycles.
2. Old valentines.
3. The TSA has confirmed that some locations were asking for people to pull all their cables out of their bags, and that this was not official policy -- and that it won't happen again.
4. Keeping your home Wi-Fi strong and clear.
5. We played some more Galactic last weekend, which was great fun. Whether it's playing Latin romantic pilot Tomas, dreadfully earnest and presently mind-controlled Brad, shrewish and clever Sonja, or even my own Captain Alyssande, it's always a hoot. Never any wandering attention at that table.
6. Online tools to help you prepare for death, including obit/tribute sites, "last e-mail message" sites, wills, perpetual site licenses, etc.
7. While I am deeply suspicious of any pricing scheme that the music labels come up with, the idea behind Total Music sounds good (it's a parallel to the movie industry getting a slice of VCR sales): an incremental charge for music playing devices, in return for a lot less DRM. We'll see where the catch is.
8. I enjoy the new Backward Compatible webcomic by Aaron Williams (Nodwick, FFN, PS238), but what does the man have against RSS feeds? If I can't get it in my reader (or at least a reminder that a new one is up), the chances I'll remember to go back and read it drop close to nil.
9. Guillermo Del Toro will be directing The Hobbit under Peter Jackson's executive producership.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Blogging - Technical :: Gaming :: Health :: Homeland Security :: Media :: Media - Comics :: Media - Movies :: Media - Music :: Media Moguls :: My Computer
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Playing Lord of the Rings Online of late, I've been thinking a lot about the movies (and trying to decide if Kitten is ready for them).  Thoughts from listening to some of the soundtracks this afternoon.

It is unfortunate that far too many movies feel obliged to include a non-orchestral, usually "pop" track in their end titles, so as to provide a "hit single"  that will add additional sales revenue and perhaps even ticket sales ("Hey, that's that song from that movie -- we should go see it!").

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was no exception to this -- but was exceptional in coming up with some pieces that (a) weren't jarring pop music Top Ten hit sorts of bushwa, and (b) actually worked well with each of the films.

Fellowship of the Ring has Enya lilting "May It Be."  Enya may be an acquired taste for some, but her celtic, etherial style fits in quite well with the world of magic and elves and the like that Frodo's found himself thrust into.  The lyrics are a bit pedestrian, but Enya's voice is as much an instrument as the Howard Shore-conducted orchestra in the background. 

I'd probably have been satisfied with more Enya in The Two Towers, but instead we get Emiliana Torrini with a near-gasping "Gollum's Song."  It's not a singing style I'm fond of -- but here it works.  It's a plaintive, nearly painful ode to the whole Gollum/Smeagol tragedy, written by Shore and Fran Walsh.  It added to my movie experience, rather than distracting from it.  Or, at least, listening to it now it does. 

Shore and Walsh teamed up for Return of the King's closing tune, along with Annie Lennox (who co-wrote and sang it), "Into the West." Lennox's voice isn't as polished as one might initially hope -- but it lends a bit of human (or hobbit) heart to this song -- mostly drawing from Tolkien's own words -- about the passing into the Uttermost West.  (It also, I discovered, made a great lullabye for Katherine, once upon a time.)

Three very different tunes, three different singers, in a single movie trilogy.  And they all work (YMMV, of course).  Pretty nice.

Filed under :: Media - Movies :: Media - Music
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Coolness.  Sony is the last of the major labels to finally offer non-DRMed MP3 tracks for sale at Amazon.  That's spiffy both because it means, well, music available without PC- and fair-use-crippling DRM, but it sets Amazon up as a serious competitor to Apple's iTunes store. 

The trade-off:  Apple's music has DRM in it, but it's all 99-cents per track; Amazon's music is DRM-free, but is offered at variable prices based on what the music labels want.  (That price variability is almost certainly why the labels have hopped on the Amazon bandwagon, both because it lets them charge what they want  and to pressure Apple to do the same).

Competition.  Non-crippleware music.  It's all good -- and I say that as someone who never buys tracks online.

Filed under :: Media - Music :: Media Moguls
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So Katherine's 2nd grade class is doing biographies. 

She's chosen as her subject Ludwig van Beethoven.  Very cool.

I've already set up an iTunes playlist, and told her she needs to consult with her grandfather with any questions.

As to the inspiration -- I'll credit my plying her with classical music in various forms since infancy, though the album she likes best is (no surprise) Beethoven's Wig.  And ... huh, there's more of those albums, and t-shirts, available.  Hmmm ....

Filed under :: Media - Music :: School Daze
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Margie's family is in Wikipedia.  To wit, the entry on "With Every Heartbeat."

"With Every Heartbeat" is the second UK single released from Swedish pop singer-songwriter Robyn's 2005 self-titled album. A collaboration with Kleerup, it was released as a non-album single in Sweden and reached number 18. With Every Heartbeat Video Clip

A physical single was released in the UK on 6 August 2007. It was named as both Jo Whiley's and Scott Mills' "Record of the Week" and has been A-Listed on BBC's Radio 1. Robyn performed the song live on Radio 1 during the Jo Whiley show (although hosted by Sara Cox at the time) on 8 August, 2007. It has also received strong support by Popjustice.

The "Kleerup" referenced is Margie's Nth cousin, Andreas Kleerup, one of the "Sweden" Kleerups.  This is much more impressive if you realize that there are probably all of a dozen or so "Kleerups" in the world (and I've met all the ones in the US, I believe).

The single release cover art (above) is interesting.  According to Jim, Andreas was impressed that my brother Eric's alarm system showed their last name on it, so he took a picture of it, which then got turned into the "KLEERUP" LED display cover.

Kleerup (Andreas) has a MySpace page (where you can listen to the tune in question, along with others).  Interestingly, over thanksgiving I got an e-mail from his music company (or perhaps his agent) asking about my ownership of the kleerup.com domain.  I suggested back that he get in touch with Jim & Ginger (since they're the ones I maintain the domain for; I'm sure we could work something out), but they've not heard anything as yet.

So ... my most recent brush (very indirectly) with fame.

Filed under :: Love and Marriage :: Media - Music
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Filed under :: Media - Music
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Rather, Name That TV Theme Song.  I ran three 10-question rounds and averaged 657.

Filed under :: Media - Music :: Media - TV
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