Color Me Badd meet Jimmy Fallon’s Barbershop Quartet

90's R&B meets Jimmy Fallon's Barbershop Quartet.

You're the best at Prancercise

Words cannot express the sheer awesomeness of this video.

Bill Dance's Classic Bloopers

Nothing like watching another person's repeated misfortune to help cheer you up on a down day...

Bri Traquair - You and I - Cover

Enjoy this bit of cover music by the one and only Bri Traquair.

Can't Hold Us - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ray Dalton

The official music video to Can't Hold Us by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis is out. I am enamored with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's videos. The music is great (seriously a drum and brass section breakdown) and they really do video wonderfully.

Enjoy!

Trebuchet Challenge Game

I have had a number of friends build trebuchet's for fun and science, but I have never managed to get up the gumption to exert the energy required to build something that impressive. Thankfully the internet pulls through with an opportunity to make me feel as though I built a trebuchet.  You can put your skill to the test by tweaking a virtual trebuchet to gain points in a triathalon of trebuchet terror!  First you get points for launching the ball as far as you can, then as accurately as you can, and finally as powerfully as you can (by knocking down a wall).

Trebuchet Challenge

If you are the type of person who wanted build your own trebuchet but don't have access to the saw and woodworking tools necessary. Oakland Ballistics (I know... right?) has released a Wooden Trebuchet Kit that can help you be up in operational just in time to lay siege to that new picket fence you neighbor put up. Oakland Ballistics: Wooden Trebuchet Kit

Presidential Car Wash

Make it rain! Don't hate the player and don't hate the carwash also. I'll emancipate the dirt from this hatchback! Rhett and Link strike again with a great local commercial for Presidential Car Wash.

Inflatable Evil Unicorn Horn for Cats

Thank you Archie McPhee for creating the perfect gift for my cat.
Inflatable Evil Unicorn Horn for Cats

And to Amazon for carrying the more peaceful: Accoutrements Inflatable Unicorn Horn for Cats

I Knew You Were Trouble - Walk Off the Earth Featuring KRNFX

This video is my daughters favorite right now. So much so that if the Taylor Swift version comes up, she asks when the beat boxer will start.
Enjoy!


Walk off the Earth's album Revo is available now. Sadly it doesn't have this song on it, but in my opinion Sarah Blackwood's vocals are worth purchasing the album.

Fur Elise Slightly Different

Fur Elise as a jazz version that would make Mozart* Beethoven proud.



* - Edit: because dwightk is smart.

Draftmark Tap System

I was selected a few weeks ago to try out the Draftmark Tap System and I think the darn thing is pretty cool. It fits in your fridge has a rechargeable battery to help dispense the beer and really puts out a product that tastes delicious at a decent price. Each kit can get you 11 servings at about 12 oz. each.  The real kicker is that the refills are not available everywhere, so you have to double check their store locator to see if you can get them. I still have to pick up a refill to give it a full test, but I am very excited to see that Shock Top Belgian White is one of the first beers in their lineup. They are generally a pricier beer and in my experience it tastes best from the tap. I also just spotted that you can get a travel kit for the Draftmark: The Draftmark Gel Wrap so you can keep the brew cool on the move.
The only real competitor (apart from brewing your own) that I can find on the market is the KRUPS / HEINEKEN BeerTender B100 with Draught Keg Technology (what a name) which is just to pricey in my opinion, plus it has to take up space on your counter as well as a power outlet. Anyhow, I'd encourage you to check the Draftmark out. I am hoping to post a video in the near future showing the tap system in all its glory. So stay tuned.

I received the Draftmark Tap System for free as part of BzzAgent. Bzz hasn't exactly sent me a torrential downpour of free items to try, and they do not inform my opinion in any way apart from giving me the opportunity to see if I like this product or not. I haven't received a lot of these things in the past, but I like beer, so I figured why not.

We Are Young - Fun (Alex G & Jon D Acoustic Cover)

I love a solid cover song. This is a solid acoustic cover of Fun's We Are Young by Alex G and Jon D. I highly recommend it... of course I do, I wouldn't blog it if I didn't.

Wealth Inequality in America

This topic has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I think they do an exceptional job of taking quantitative data and displaying it in an accessible manner.
Wealth Inequality in American

Paste Magazine Sampler for SXSW

I am very happy with this album via Noisetrade. Because I won't be at SXSW I can at least pretend a little.

Thrift Shop Remake - Grandpa Style

An old time, jazz remake of Macklemore's Thrift Shop. The original album: Mackemore & Ryan Lewis: The Heist is available as well.

Interviews with Hamsters

Oh McSweeny's how I love you...
For example:
"If I don’t go on the wheel, I bulk up like it’s winter and it’s bad for me. I don’t enjoy it, as such, but I do feel satisfied afterwards."
Read on reader:
Interviews with Hamsters

Gangnam Style - Flip Book Animation

You thought you were sick and tired of Psy and his Gangnam Style... well, I've got news for you.
You aren't! Now watch this:


Gangnam Style Flip Book Animation from Timothius Martin on Vimeo.

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

I really enjoy this song. The video is pretty slick as well!

The whole Fleet Foxes album is really solid: Fleet Foxes

In Your Arms - Jellybean Video

Easter is pretty far way and I don't enjoy jellybeans, but I love this video.

You can buy the MP3 of In Your Arms from Amazon's MP3 store. Youc an also buy 4lbs of Jellybeans and begin your own video career.
 

Simply Amazing - Pumped Up Kicks | Dubstep

I danced like this once... but then I woke up.

Netflix Crisis is sweeping across affluent white America! Act now to help.

Netflix Relief Fund with Jason Alexander from Jason Alexander

This story makes me feel all sorts of happy about the future of our world.
I know it is just a baseball, but as a kid who went to "Lutheran Night" full of hope that a ball would come my way at Tiger Stadium. I am blown away.


In reality it would have taken an act of Luther to have sent a ball my direction, seated at the back row of the first deck behind a pole or two.

Sesame Street plus Beastie Boys

Don't Stop. No, really. Don't. Stop.

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Just in time for back to school!

Hipsters are roaming the campus!



via: Urlesque

Jim Meskimen

An excellent collection of celebrity impressions.

Scala & Kolacny Brothers' perform Creep

I've heard this in the trailer for The Social Network, but never really placed it as a group that actually does awesome covers. So here we go. Awesome.

Kitten attacks two very scary objects

Another reason to move to Portland

Ah west coast. I would love to head that direction right now. Somewhere safe where I can retire. :)

via: BoingBoing

First Movie Filmed Entirely by Cats

Cats, Video Cameras, and officially an item added to Kala and Billie's Christmas Wishlist.

Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)

The below video has a few language moments, so I'd call it NSFW, unless you have some quality headphones.

I wandered across this great video by the Axis of Awesome tonight on the DistractoMatic site. It reminds me of an old band I used to play with in Minneapolis. We went by the name The Loyal Yokefellows. It was a fun group that had some pretty mixed musical influences. Pat O'Neill used to have a routine where he could take any Christian Praise and Worship Song and connect it to Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison. Ah, those were the days. Anyhow, Video:

Double Rainbow: The Song

This was pretty fun. Perhaps I have an attachment to rainbows given my stint on the Youth Encounter team to India/Nepal named Rainbow of Promise back in 2002-2003.

via BoingBoing

Post-It Mario

Post-it Note Mario really makes me happy.

Why I love The Onion

Found at Failbook.


see more

MC Chris Video - Twin Peaks

MC Chris is great. There is a bit of NSFW language in the song, but the video is well worth it. So throw on the headphones and rock out.



I found this great video for his song Twin Peaks over at Urlesque.

That man can dunk

I think my favorite part of this video is that his friends quickly rush over... with camera-phones.

KittehRoulette

Somedays you just aren't intended to be productive in the off hours. For those days, there is KittehRoulette.

Exercise Ball Mayhem

This looks like the best way to use exercise balls.

Hoverball Cat Sleeps

Remixed Again

http://www.flickr.com/photos/turtlemom_nancy/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Hoverball Cat Ocean

A peaceful sunset.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronnie44052/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Cat Sun

I was inspired by Cute Overload's Hoverball Cat post today.

Movie Review - New Moon

My wife sent me this... it was too good to not post a link to.

Movie Review of New Moon

Adorable

What can I say... I am a sucker for cat videos

via boingboing

Thanksgiving

One Hundred Million Years Ago, the Pilgrims landed on top of Plymouth Rock. They proceeded to take their belt buckles and place them on their hats in reverence for the great fortune they had. After a harrowing year of settling in what they rather carelessly called "The New World" they realized, winter was a-coming. Since they were the first settlers of this new world, they were quite surprised when the people they had yet again carelessly referred to as "Indians" (we now know that is a baseball team) came to them bearing gifts of Honeybaked Ham (tm), mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (with the onion crispies on top), and of course the main dish Cool Whip (tm) to top the pumpkin pie. After the party ended and the years of massacre between these new settlers and the non-baseball playing "Indians", and a few rather touching cartoons about Pocahontas, and other heroes were made... We sit down to remember that if you put your hand on a piece of paper, spread out all of your fingers, trace it with a crayola, it looks a bit like what elementary school city kids are told turkeys look like. If you put a belt-buckled hat on that turkey you have a Thanksgiving Centerpiece. Happy Day of Thanks everyone.

Birds on Water

Birds on Water
Originally uploaded by newcoventry

I snapped this picture of two barn swallows in Lucerne, Washington.

Reinventing Risk Ratings: Notes

Notes from the session titled:
I just don’t trust you: how the Tech Community can reinvent risk ratings.
by: Toby Segaran (Metaweb), Jesper Andersen (Open Data Group)

There are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. There’s the US and there’s moodyu’s bond rating service… And believe me; it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful. – Thomas Friedman 1996
Credit agencies are broken safety net.
Our economy is fueled by debt. Moody is the gatekeeper to that debt. Credit risk measures trust. People are good at fufiling their obligations.
Our system promotes gaming.
4 most important problems facing. Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch provide ratings. You pay to get ratings. Companies will pay to get the best rating. This is a lot like bribery. But it is pricing.
Our Risk Rating System has a patent without the disclosure. They have no incentive to say who’s method is better. They just want us to trust their ratings. What does AAA rating really mean? It doesn’t really tell you what risk factors are involved.
After Lehman declared bankruptcy Moody’s downgraded them from AAA to C. This is not good. We need transparency. We need to know the method. We need full disclosure of how companies get ratings.
Lack of Ecosystems create bad ratings. Risks are hidden. Good predictions are ignored because our system rewards the ignorance of problems until it is too late.
Beverly McClean. Celbrated after the fact. She wrote for Newsweek for 6 months at the rating agency took notice. John Paulsen: He made the single biggest Hedge fund return in 2007. He figured out that the ratings on CDS was wrong. We have incentives for secrecy.

Single Sourced Information Creates Bad Ratings.
$45 Trillion problem. It has to be solved now! A lot of dangerous problems. A lot of big problems. Engineers don’t have problems, they have requirements.
FRS: Rating creation needs to be accessible, open, diverse, and transparent.
Ratings should be a commons. Risk management is way too important to be a competitive advantage for a company.
Freerisk is an… Authoritative Data Source, User Contributed Data Source, Set of Contributed Algorithms, Testing Frameworks.
Open Data: Consume data that’s on the web and publish it for others to use.
Becoming a nationally recognized statistical rating organization requires national recognition. We don’t need cash, we need passionate people.

http://freerisk.org/

Low-cost & Low-power computing - Mary Lou Jepsen from Pixel Qi

97% of adolescents alive today live in the developing world. What are we doing to serve them? If you want to change the world we need to figure out a way to give them a chance. Get the cost of computing and access to computing down. OLPC – thought to be impossible (Jobs, Gates, Dell). 1 Million children across the developing world have laptops as a result of OLPC. Who cares what CPU is inside of it, we just need a low cost, low-power machine with decent battery life.
Innovation: High-end, Hight-Tech Research at the top of the pyramid.

OLPC/Pixel Qi: Innovation at the bottom of the pyramid. If you can pull it off you can increase the base of the pyramid. Sort of like trickle down economics is high end innovation. Work at the bottom of the pyramid to help the bottom of the pyramid.
Low power is the real key. ½ the world lives without steady access to electricity. How to design something that can be human powered. 1-watt laptop (10x lower than next laptop up). Redesigning the screen. Why not just self-refresh the screen? Why is the CPU/Mobo/fan on in every computer in the room. Until you get a keyboard event or internet packet. Screen and audio are our interaction point. Human computer interaction.

OLPC is greenest laptop ever made (Someone tell Apple). Keys for designing efficiency are things you would do naturally for the developing world. Make it user serviceable. All screens should not be HDTV quality. Keys for portables – low power, sunlight readability, high res for reading, paper white. You don’t want to stare into a flashlight.
3Qi screen. 3 displays in 1. Full color LCD TV mode. Low –power, highlight color, sunlight readable transflective mode. Very low power, paper-white, sunlight readable, reflective e-paper mode. This is beyond the XO screen. Fully saturated color option. Reflectivity is key.

People want TV even if they don’t have power to sustain it.
The CPU wars are over; it’s the screen wars now. iPhone is basically a screen. That is where the future of hardware.

WITNESS: Capturing Crises – Sameer Padania (NOTES)

Technology now is more fitting for documenting crises as they emerge. Technology is much more affordable and portable now than it was. Sousveillance vs. surveillance. Building new social media communities for activism is not necessarily the best ways forward. Govt. of Burma used activist videos to track down and imprison hundreds of activists. There is power in stories. It is important to train individuals in developing countries and beyond how to best use social media tools to report on unfolding crises. The Hub

Etech 2009

I am at Etech 2009 in San Jose, California. I plan to post some raw notes from sessions here. Potentially I will tighten them up later.

Notes from Alex Steffen's talk

The following notes are from Alex Steffen's Keynote at ETech 2009. These are raw notes just dumped here. I hope to edit and create a polished post soon.

Alex Steffen from World Changing took the stage for this morning's keynote. Here are my notes from this event:

World Changing – Bright Green: A world changing guide to a future that works. (delivering prosperity to more people)
There are many young people in the developing world. ¼ people in the world are under the age of 18.

Most people who will be alive in 2050 will be living in what is currently thought of as the developing world. In places where prosperity has been kluged together

We got rich by using resources to build the stuff that (a lot of our wealth is societal wealth) most of the problems (environmental have been the result of

We have built our wealth on the problems our children will face. Massive inter generational ponzi scheme.

We are the brittle rich. Many of the things we have built our prosperity on are dependent on the developing world supporting our over-consumption.

The dirty secret is that the American prosperous are demonstrably less happy than people who were here 20,30,50 years ago. Wealth is not serving us well. We are utterly depended on the rest of the world doing the right thing for us to do anything. If we sail ahead we will destroy the planet. We need the world to agree to make changes. World divided into 2 groups “poor and frugal” and “rich and wasteful. “ We need to bring people into sustainability. We need to think of a lifestyle that returns value to the planet. Ecological handprint versus ecological footprint.
We need low carbon clean energy. We need more sustainable food (Local, sun-food, traceability) We need to get off coal... and cows.

Root cause is that we don’t understand our prosperity. It is hidden. We need political transparency. From the people and from the government. FUH2 pictures of people flipping off hummers. Transparency is also holding one another accountable.

Revealed useage: That which is measured and shown is used differently. When you know the backstory, people chose the better thing. Tell good backstories!

Smart – Connect things and people and information flows. A lot of our impact comes from stupid waste. Having to have a lot more things than you need. Wasting energy due to lack of attention.

True costs taxation – Price on CO2. In the next few years. The more carbon costs, the more things start to make sense.
Smart Infrastructure – smart grids to allow detailed control of energy. Allow us to have a more finely grained understandable read out of energy used. Bringing an energy meter into the house reduces energy use by 10%. Just seeing it makes you use less energy. When you see it, you can demand responsive energy. Level out the amount of energy people use through the day. Distributed energy, home energy systems.

Finance for transformation – PG&E sell energy services and not just supply. – Location efficient mortgages, (if you live in a place where transportation is efficient you should pay less on your home). pay as you go – car insurance. Bundle car insurance into mileage and/or gas prices.

Compact – create more dense communities and design them better. When you put people close together you dematerialize things. Shared infrastructure – costs less per person.
10 units per acre would put most Americans within transit supportive density. Affordability is out on the fringe. When you factor in cost of driving (direct cost) to the cost of living, suburban fringe is actually more expensive.

The biggest shift will be smarter buildings. Sunlight for passive heating, breezes for cooling. We are capable of building buildings without thermostats, but we don’t do it. We treat water that hits our roofs as pollution. Big storm means water mixes with waste and gets dumped to sea. That is crazy! We need to harvest rainwater.

Lunar-resonant streetlights.

Preserve natural capital. We are utterly reliant on ecosystem services to support our civilization. We are losing 2-5 trillion dollars in ecosystem services. Climate change is ony 30% of that. We need to think of flows and not stocks.

Nobody realized how depended on bees we were until they went away due to Hive Collapse Disorder. Having to pollinate by hand is pretty expensive. We need bees.

Water needs for Seattle and Portland. Water supply problems are based on lack of beavers.
Topsoil is important.

Shared goods, building lasting quality. Not owning a car takes ecological impact away. Closed loops and zero waste.

Real happiness and knowing what makes us happy is the key. Flying private home theaters.
We need to share innovation across borders. We are all in this together. What is not right
We need a sense of obligation beyond ourselves. If our triumphs are only our own they will turn to dust in our hands.

World of World of Warcraft

This cracked me up this morning:

Craigs List of the Week - gaming pc - $200 (SW MANNAPOLIS)

I submit this week's most interesting Minneapolis/St. Paul Craig's List posting.

gaming pc - $200 (SW MANNAPOLIS)

original content - (preserved for posterity)

I have a computer. it has issiue with its hard drive, but who cares. That thing was a twat anyway. What is sweet on thie rigg is SLI"d with two 7800gt's They are liquid cooled.... FTW/
I can ge the machibn ready in a moments notice.{

Punch and Pie.

And it si a 3.4 GHx P4 machine.

Perhaps I should end all my posts with "Punch and Pie." I just might...

Wednesday Video - Christians and the Pagans - Dar Williams

We are nearing Christmas and Solstice. This song makes me think of the Holidays.

Simon's Cat - "Let me in"

Another animated cat adventure. Apart from the glass door, this is exactly what mornings sound like at my house thanks to our cat, Billie.

Change - Lessig

A great little presentation from Lessig regarding change and where it comes from

Tags: lessig08, change, politics, washington, obama

A History of Evil by Ole-Magnus Saxegard

Thanks to Laughing Squid for pointing this out. I am getting caught up on my feeds today.



I love the animation style and the message is quite interesting as well.

Tags: video, evil

Shatner Rap

That is all.

Tags: shatner, video, rap, conan

Yes We Can

I have been undecided for as it relates to this upcoming election. I have been listening excitedly to speeches from Barack Obama and every time he speaks I can feel emotion rise in me. I have never experienced that listening to a politician. There is a hope and an earnest belief that we can become a better nation than we are.
I listened to his New Hampshire speech the night it aired. I loved the tone of his voice, the way the words rolled, and the passion that he invoked. I am sure this speech must have been written by a speech writer somewhere, but the delivery had me captured.
Today I saw the "Yes, We Can" Video through seesmic and it was phenomenal. The fact that Obama's tone, message, and delivery can easily be transformed into a song is excellent.

Here are the links:
http://www.dipdive.com/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/2/04722/24305/353/448138

Month of 100 Things: Conclusion

As you may have read, this past month has been my Month of 100 Things. Our friend Dawn Rundman proposed the idea not that long ago and Erin and I have been purging as the weeks have gone on.
Erin gets rid of stuff much easier than I do. I love things, regardless of value or functionality. Erin had no problem completing her list of 100 things, which if she had a blog I am sure she would inform the world of. I made a list of 68 things. As a couple we pulled together a list of 20 things. I know I am behind on my initial list, but I can assure you there still is a giant box of books in the basement that are headed towards half price books.
Here are the highlights of my list:
1 Wireless Router - broken
3 Pairs of Jeans - Old, ripped, faded, and not wearable
4 Alvin and the Chipmunks Waterglasses - I had high hopes for these being antique some day
9 T-shirts
3 boxes of mini-discs - my mini-disk player was stolen years ago
2 CD cases - since I bought my iPod I just don't travel with CDs any longer.
3 belts - every belt buckle I have bought recently has come with a free crappy belt. For some reason I kept them.
There was much much more.

All in all, I would rate this as a great experience. It has certainly added to my goal word for the year of "direction." It has also helped me prepare for our Frugal February.

Tags: SimpleLiving, Monthof100Things

Hallelujah Chorus

Thoughts on WoW: Two Days In

So, I finally did it. I installed and began a ten day trial in the World of Warcraft. I have developed some thoughts on this universe and felt compelled to share them through the interblags.

Disclaimer: These are my immediate reactions. I reserve the right to change opinions at any time, because my brain allows me to do so.I began playing MMORPG's about two years ago through a game called Dofus. It is a relatively simple design, that deals with things in turn base fashioned. This is where my roots are, you must give credit to the roots, no matter how silly they may seem. So some of my initial reactions may stem from the fact that WoW is just different that Dofus. I appreciate these differences.

WoW is clearly a pretty pretty pretty gaming environment. I love to look at it. WoW has an endgame in mind. WoW for me at this point does not require mindless grinding and appears to have a mature community for me to experience.

WoW is difficult to start playing. I selected a character and I don't think it is quite right. I have read descriptions of all the other characters and they just don't seem quite right. How I wish it were fixed: a quiz about how I prefer to play the game. i.e. do you like being a primary damage dealer?, Do you like long range spells? Do you like being relied on as a primary healer? Are you tall, short, bearded, like the cold. etc... People keep telling me to choose a character based on my playing style. I need something to help me figure this out. I know I could create a million and a half characters and test them out, but how do I find the time to do that?

I guess that is it at this point. I know discussing opinions on WoW is probably pretty sensitive, and people might think I am crazy... who knows in 2 years I may still be playing and wishing I could rid the blogoverse of this post. Meh.

Tags: WoW, MMORPG, Dofus, Opinion, Games

Microsoft Surface Parody

I am intrigued by this service that just bounced into my inbox. Anyone know anything about Xobni?

January: The Month of 100 Things

Erin and I both read Dawnline, the blog of our friend Dawn Rundman. Dawn has declared January "The Month of 100 Things" in a recent article. Erin and I will be participating in this exercise in simplification. We are going to each eliminate 100 things from our life as well as 100 things of our families. So essentially we will be beginning this new year without 300 things. I am excited about the challenges that this will bring as I am a person who really likes things.

Tags: life

Holiday Parties

Today was the annual Help Desk Winter Semester Extravaganza at my house. I realized tonight how nice it is to get together with co-workers and employees outside of work. It really helps disconnect from the daily grind and remember how great it is to work together.
That is pretty much it.

The Cool Kids

I have a great friend named Nate Houge. He happens to be the front person for the band I play in Nate Houge & the Honest Folk. I am "the Honest Folk" along with Micah Taylor. When we get the chance to play music it is awesome. I love playing good music with a message I believe in. That, however, is not what this blog posting is about. This blog posting is all about Nate Houge's awesome recent posting entitled, "God save the Cool Kids." You can and should read it... now. I have attempted to summarize it a few times and I always go back to the fact that the original is just too good and too short for you all (all 2 of you) to not read.

Enjoy

Extra Ubuntu Eye Candy: AWN

Avant Window Manger is all the fun of a dock style task bar without the closed system. I found a walk through on Ubuntu forums, but it needed some tweaking to work in the latest release.
This requires a bit of advanced editing of your apt-sources and whatnot, but the end result is quite pretty as you will see here in the screen shot to your left.


Here is the installation walk through:



1. Open Terminal and type: sudo nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Type the following at the bottom of your sources.list file.
## AWN
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator
deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator
3. Save your edited sources.list by typing Ctrl-X in order to save your edited document.
4. Type the following in terminal:
wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/reacocard.asc
sudo apt-key add reacocard.asc
rm reacocard.asc
sudo apt-get update
5. Now install AWN by running the following command in Terminal:
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr
6. You can run AWN by going to Applications>Accessories>Avant Window Navigator.
7. I highly recommend removing your bottom panel when running AWN. You can remove it by right clicking on the panel and selecting: Delete this panel.
8. If you like AWN enough you can add it to your auto-start by going to System>Preferences>Sessions. Click Add, then type avant-window-navigator to the command field.

Many thanks to all the folks at Ubuntu Forums for providing the information for this posting in the post titled: HowTO: functional eye-candy with Avant Window Navigator and Affinity.
Enjoy

Zen and the Art of Linux Installing: Part 1

I have been playing around with Ubuntu 7.10 lately in my free time. I thought it would be interesting to archive a bit of my set-up process here for your enjoyment (perhaps). I noticed on Day 1 that my repository downloads were running very slow. My office is connected up on Internet2, so changing my repository to point to another University with Internet2 access would certainly speed things up.

Change Repositories for my local mirror:

1. Click on Applications
   
2. Select Add/Remove...
   
3. Click Preferences
   
4. Type your Password
   
5. Select the Download From: drop down box. Now select a mirror that you know is going to be fast. Sometimes it is the closest mirror. I chose mirror.cs.umn.edu because I know our Internet2 connection will deliver fast response.
   
6. Uncheck the box for Installable from CD-ROM/DVD. I never carry my CD with me, I prefer to pull everything off the local mirrors.
7. Now you can simply close the window and it will update your repository. Things should load much quicker
   

Use Add/Remove... in order to Install Fun Stuff
There are three programs I know that I want right off the bat. Add/Remove... makes this very possible. I know I want the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings, Xchat IRC, and Amarok. Installing is super easy with Add/Remove Applications. All you have to do is search, check the box and apply the changes and your ready to roll. With my repositories adjusted properly downloads are quick and everything installs wonderfully. Best of all no restart required!

Enjoy

Video: My Mornings

This is a great depiction of how my mornings have been lately.



Thanks CuteOverload

The U.S. is not a 'Christian nation'

Today in my ramblings through my e-mail I found the following article by Jon Meacham. I think it is a great review of the founders of the United States and the role Christianity played. Probably one of the more meaningful quotations in this article is,

They grounded the founding principle of the nation - that all men are created equal - in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country's tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

As a person of faith in the United States today, I find it difficult to see my own Christian faith reflected in the American Civil religion that is invoked continuously by the leadership in this country. It is refreshing to read Meacham's statement that the intent of the federal framers was not to create a Christian nation but instead to create a nation full of religious freedom.

Enjoy the article: The U.S. is not a 'Christian nation'

Happy Rocktober!

Let's kick off Rocktober the right way with a little Rock.

Religions of the Founders of the USA

I was listening to NPR earlier today and there was an interview with someone who was speaking about the Christian faith of our Founding Parents. I always wondered, just how Christian were the founders of the USA. I found a great link that divides up the religious beliefs and gives backgrounds into the personal faith lives of the first people who created the United States of America. I was excited to see that 5 Lutheran made the cut.

Faiths of the Founding Fathers

Tags: Religion, Faith

Inspirational Commercial

This is one of the better commercials I have seen in a long time. It is for a great product and features and amazing percussionist.

Cold Press Coffee

This summer the Dunn Brothers Coffee Shop in St. Paul started serving a drink named Vanilla Iced Nirvana. It is made with cold press coffee. These days I have attempted to order lattes and mochas made with cold press instead of espresso. This is usually met with a weird look from the barista and a lot of confusion when it comes time to ring up the coffee.
I have decided that it would be great to try and learn how to make cold press at home. This weekend I made my first attempt. I did my research, but I found a lot of conflicting recipes. I am working with this cold press recipe at the moment. The basic gist is coarse ground coffee, 4 parts water, 1 part coffee, steep for 3 to 24 hours. My first attempt was a 24 hour steeping (is that even a verb?). I'd love to hear tips from anyone who has attempted this. My goal is to avoid purchasing a Toddy Maker if possible.

Tags: coffee, cold press, caffeine

Game: Grow Island

I believe the original "grow" game by eyemaze is the first flash game that I was ever addicted to playing. They have pulled through with another excellent sequel.

Grow Island

Tags: flash, games

Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Noise

Here is a joyous little video featuring a great beat, puppets, and Harry Potter. In other news, I've just returned from vacation so expect a rash of posts in the near future as I attempt to play catch up.
Here is your Video:

Tags: video

Video: Mitch Hedberg

I love Mitch Hedberg. 'nuff said.

Tags: comedy, video, Mitch Hedberg

I hate my writing

So, I read my photo post and realized that I hate the way I sound when I am writing. I just plain old don't like it. It feels like fingernails on a chalkboard. This isn't a new issue for me. When I traveled with Youth Encounter, we each had to write a journal entry and submit it online to some sort of forum database thing. (Think blog but slow and less pretty.) The first two months all of my journal entries sounded as if I was possessed by some sort of writing demon. The lowest quality of my journal entries was about one of the more memorable experiences I had stateside. The overall unimpressive nature of my writing has been preserved at the archive section of the Youth Encounter pages. I managed to turn a great experience into something trite. I feel as though I am doing this again and I am now issuing a call for help.

Here is what I am reading right now: If you write like you talk, readers will listen
Any critique out there for me? Help me sound human again.

Update: 4/6/2013
Anne Lamott's text Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life has been very helpful.

Tags: writing, blogging

Photo Post: ACTC

ACTC - Andhra Christian Theological College
Originally uploaded by newcoventry

I traveled to India and Nepal in 2002 essentially as a church tourist. I went with a group of friends to visit the churches and learn about differences and similarities to the churches in the United States. The first place we visited in India was Andhra Christian Theological College. This is a seminary located in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. I ate the hottest meal of my life at this school in the cafeteria.

Throughout all of India people did their best to accommodate our westernized taste buds. ACTC gave us the opportunity to eat dinner with the students in the cafeteria after our evening program. I was excited by our first opportunity to spend time with Indians our age. They appeared to be very excited by watching our reaction to un-westernized curry. My friend Debbie began sweating profusely. My lips became numb and I drank about 32 oz of water. it was almost 6 hours until I could taste anything again. I was glad to see that dorm food could unite two very different cultures.

New Feature: Photo Posts

Erin and I recently went Flickr Pro, so I have begun backing up tons of images from my computer to Flickr. As a result, there are tons of images that have great stories that I would love to tell. I am planning on posting a new Photo each Monday with a story. The first round of images will be from India and Nepal.
Enjoy!

Movie Review: Once

There are a few movies that I have seen that I instantly know I want to own and watch over and over. They are in no particular order: Walk the Line, Garden State, The Motorcycle Diaries, Almost Famous. Once has now been added to this list. The movie is by far one of the most "feel good" movies that I have seen in a long time. The soundtrack was awesome, the acting was sensational, the filming was casual and created great depth.
I strongly recommend this movie to anyone and everyone.
Here is the trailer to whet your proverbial whistle:

Mindless Fun: Acrobots

Every now and then I love a well designed game that has absolutely no point. Acrobots remind me of all the fun of wacky wall walkers without ending up with a hair covered sticky plastic thing after your done playing.

Enjoy Acrobots

Hip Hop Violin

I love a good fiddle player. Every now and then some hip-hop is excellent as well. Thankfully the world of YouTube allows us to connect the two in a visible way.
Enjoy

Game of the Week: City Jumper

You are a small stick figure with a penchant for leaping over tall buildings, bridges, and maybe even catching a seagull or two.
Enjoy City Jumper

Presidential Politics

I am a big fan of Dennis Kucinich. I am also a big fan of the Minneapolis and St. Paul. I think it would be awesome to have him visit. So much so that I created an eventful posting for it. Check it out.

An Unreasonable Man

I've been watching "An Unreasonable Man" over the last few days. It has reminded me how much I can admire the passion and the fervor that Ralph Nader has for pretty much everything I believe and stand for. I have been so frustrated and fed up with our political system for the last few months watching the Democrats sacrifice everything they have stood for.
A few years ago I read "Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender" and began my love affair with Ralph Nader's ideas. It is so frustrating to hear people blame Nader for the Bush regime.

Friday-ish Fun Link: Bloons Tower Defence

If I can find a game that my wife is fascinated with as much as I am, it is usually a sure sign of an entertaining game. Kill the evil bloons! Kill them with dart throwing monkey towers!

Bloons Tower Defence

Wednesday Video: 1, 2, 3, 4

Here is a great video by one of my new favorite bands: Fiest

Sprint Triathalon

No doubt some of you are readers of my twitter postings and may have wondered, why would Jason roll from St. Paul to Fergus Falls. This journey even held me back from posting a game of the week (like Newsbreaker). I am now a triathlete and about two days ago I would never had considered myself anything that has the root word athelete.

About a month ago, Nate Houge contacted me and informed me that he was hosting a sprint triathalon at his house. Which came in handy because it turns out that I had been training for a sprint triathalon for that past two years (just not every month). It was a great time, and I have lived to tell the story.

We began with a 1/2 mile suede (swim + wade) through Otter Tail Lake, then hopped on our bikes for a theoretical 15 mile bike ride, and then walked 3.2 miles back to the Houge Household for Brats and Blue Ribbons. Some of us accidentally took the scenic route and had more of a 18 mile bike ride, but it was so worth it.

Wednesday Video: Young Folks

This is one of my new favorite videos.
Enjoy

Political Link: Pick Your Candidate

I've always struggled with how to pick and ideal candidate to support. As far as I can tell by the conservative media's standpoint some form of mutant that finds just about every Democrat and Republican a little too conservative. I figure it would be fun to post a few political links every now and again.
Here is a tool that allows you to rank your most stances on different issues and weigh them from meh to key. The only downside to this tool is it only includes the republican and democratic candidates.

Pick your ideal candidate

Which-Way Adventure

I loved Choose your own adventure books when I was a kid. This game helps me relive the memories, if only I could hold my finger in the page before I was eaten by a giant manticore...

Which-Way Adventure

Wednesday Video: Internet Crash

The internet crash of 2007!

Fun Link: Quarkz

Own that subnuclear matter! I know you can do it. You show that other Quark who owns this space!

Quarkz

Vensday Video: Neuro

Today I discovered a wonderful short flash based film entitled Neuro. It deals with the struggles of living in apartments near airports... or something.
Enjoy

Neuro

Marketing Manager - Netherlands Style

Here is a rather entertaining Olympic style game that is all about being a marketing manager. I am sure this is some sort of advertisement for something, but on the bright side, I can't translate it, so I don't want to buy it.

Enjoy.

Marketing Manager

The Gnomes are Falling

I play another mmo but someday I think I will play World of Warcraft. I was astounded by the creativity of the gold farmers in WoW as seen in this video. Enjoy.

Rocky's Biscuit Breakout

You are a wiener dog that really loves biscuits, you also happen to have lost out on your life calling to join Cirque de Soleil. Throw the dog around and catch him in the trampoline. This game makes Arkanoid look easy.

Rocky's Biscuit Breakout

An Overdue Video Post

Hey Happy 5th of July, I hope everyone got a chance to revel in their freedom yesterday. My wife and I parked our car in front of our cranky neighbor's house. That made me feel free.
Here is the video:

iPhone = NSA Surveillance Device

A great article evaluating the iPhone and its service provider AT&T. I suppose all telco's are evil when you get to the bottom of it. AT&T is just a little more evil.