Dance this mess around

Even as I type this at my desk, there is one big ass tow behind Ingersoll Rand air compressor firing two jack hammers about 20 feet away. They are replacing the front stairs, they have ~4’ rise and are ~10 wide, thats a lot of concrete to remove. First they pulled off the field stones, then the jack hammers, this is day three.

I need a way to stay at my desk and not go crazy. So I pull out the Bose noise cancelling headset, and fire it up. Nice, the active noise cancellation takes out the air compressor completely and slightly attenuates the jack hammer.  Fire up The B-52’s first album, start with “Dance This Mess Around” and all I can hear is Fred and the girls demanding that you “remember, when you held my hand?”

AHHH, solitude in the B-52’s. I gotta go dance this mess around, round, round!

The Venture Brothers

I can NOT say enough positive things about The Venture Brothers. Its the only show on my DVR that is set to record new episodes AND repeats, its that good…

So what is “The Venture Brothers”? You ask? It is an homage to all that was campy in the 60’s and 70’s, and specifically, the animated series “Jonny Quest”. The series follows Dr. Thaddeus S. Venture (known as “Rusty” or as he called himself in college “TS Venture”) his two sons Dean and Hank, and their hyper-macho body guard Brock Samson (“The Swedish Murder Machine”.) The basic story is that Dr. Venture’s father was none other than the heroic, heart throb Dr. Jonas Venture, he can’t live up to his fathers legacy, but he tries his best. Dr. Venture is an emaciated rat faced little whiner with delusions of grandeur and a trust fund that just wont quit.

The show is loosely based on “Johnny Quest” as illustrated by these two images.

I love Jonny Quests hair in that image, it looks like it must weigh 10 pounds. There are several episodes of The Venture Brothers that feature Jonny and Hadji, and the animators faithfully captured Jonny as a big haired meth addict; good stuff.

The Venture Brothers is what happens when you let smart, creative people get too far off leash, and its awesome. In the series Dr. Venture’s nemesis is “The Monarch” (as in butterfly). The Monarch has been authorized by the “Guild Of Calamitous Intent” to arch Dr. Venture, and of course The Monarch has henchmen to help him out with his arching tasks, so The Monarch’s  henchmen are members of the henchmen’s guild. Brock Samson, the bodyguard, has been assigned to Dr. Venture by “The OSI” and has a license to kill, literally; he has a laminated license with his photo, in one episode Brocks license expires and he is required to get it renewed again before he can kill anyone.

All in all, its a very funny show, full of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) cultural references. The theme song and soundtrack for the series are excellent. The music is available on iTunes and is also included on a companion CD in the Blue-Ray product.  Note that The Venture Brothers airs on Adult Swim, and as such, its a bit much for anyone under the age of 18.

And of course they have Venture Brothers ACTION FIGURES!!!!!

How did Torchwood miss our collective nets?

BBC America will be premiering Torchwood:Children of Earth this July. Here is the trailer:

It has a “Fringe meets Children of the Corn” feel to me, but the interesting part is that this will mark the beginning of season 3 of the series! How did this make it into season 3 without me noticing? Weird. Apparently it airs on BBC America as well as HDNet in the US.

Guess that I am going to have to set a season pass for Torchwood and catch up on the first two seasons before season three starts.

Sham WOW!

I can’t POSSIBLY talk about Vince Offer Shlomi (thats his real name) aka “Mr. Shamwow” of late night infomercial fame without doing a little  history. So Vince was a Scientologist, yup, he believed in a religion that was made up on a bet by a science fiction writer. Scientology is a religion that is steeped in stupidity, you should Google it, it’s SUPER funny.

SO, Vince is a Scientologist, he gets into a fight with his “church” for  whatever whacky reason, they basically throw him out. Vince counter sues, in the Church’s court. Pretty lame. So Vince is living large doing Sham wow commercials and loving life. This is Vince loving life:

THEN Vince hooks up with a hooker and gets arrested, but not for soliciting a woman for sex, no he goes to jail for assault. It seems that Mr. Shamwow, sorry “Mr. Shlomi” was kissing the hooker  (eeewwwww) and she bit his tongue, and wouldn’t let go. Why, oh why would she DO such a thing? I mean for the love of Xenu, let his tongue go you ho! Which I am sure is similar to what Vince was trying to scream at her, but she couldn’t understand, as a ho’ had his tongue. So when she wont let go of his tongue (with her teeth) Vince starts throwing punches at her. I wonder if Vince’s attorney will plead “self defense”?  All in all pretty dam funny.  So here is Vince after a night of beating hookers.

BUT, that’s all old news and is not why I called you here. That was just something that I felt like I had to get off my chest. The real reason that we are here today is to  enjoy the work of DJ Steve Porter and his remix of Vince’s late night infomercials, he calls it “Jam Wow”.

Enjoy.

 

And of course, the “Rap Chop” also featuring Vince.

Garmin Handheld GPS

I was at Staples today picking up a replacement mouse and they had the new Garmin nuvi 500’s out. These rugged little units do it all, they come preloaded with topo AND road maps for the lower 48 and you can upload maps for other areas. They are waterproof rated at IPX7 which is “Immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter”, so it can certainly handle rain or a wet backpack. And since it comes with the topo maps preloaded you will almost certainly get it wet hiking or walking your favorite city.

You can get the windshield mount for your car, then just pop it out when you want to go for a hike and throw it in your pocket. The screen is 2.8” x 2.1” and the unit is less than an inch thick. It has a user replaceable, rechargeable battery with a mini USB port for charging. It has all of the standard road features like calculate route, “avoid this road”, shortest time, shortest distance, find address, find food, find gas, etc.

For $254 you really can’t beat the price. I don’t need a new GPS, BUT if I did, this unit would be at the top of the list.

Update: When viewing this unit at the TeamPaulC store, note that the related items list on the left has a handlebar mount for your bike as well. Wery cool.

Why Evernote Is the Coolest Thing Ever

Recently I have started using Evernote, and it is by far, the coolest thing ever. In short, it turns the camera in your cell phone into an OCR capable scanner and then it helps you to organize all of your data. (plus it does web  clipping, twitter integration, blah, blah, and of course blah)

For example, lately I have been visiting LOTS of Doctors (including Kerry!!!!), it’s no biggy, everything is fine, I just had a bunch of crap hit me all at once. For example: sore jaw turned into cavity turned into root canal turned into a cap now I still need to see a periodontist. No big deal, its just a lot of visits. Little sore on my back turned big, had it biopsied, its no problem, but had to have it removed. Had a physical, Doctor said “Your cholesterol is high, take this twice a day.” Pregnant chick rear ended me.

SO, its tough to keep track of all of this, and EVERY Doctor says “what did the other Doctors say/do?” Like *I* have some clue. So, Evernote to the rescue. I installed the Evernote client on my cell phone (this will also work with any old digital camera, but the phone makes it easier) now I photograph everything and tag it for easy retrieval. For example I took a photo of my prescription and tagged it “medical, prescription”. Now I can find it by those tags, but the prescription also has the word “tablet” in it, so I can search by that as well because evernote does OCR on the image.

Yesterday my cute dentist (and she is) asked “are you an any meds?” I am, so she naturally asks “What are they?” As if I know. Sure the Doctor told me, but I don't recall the name, hell, I cant pronounce it, how do you expect me to remember it? So I whip out my phone, fire up evernote and search on “tablet” (I could also have searched on “cvs” or “daily”) and there is the high resolution photo of my prescription which includes the drug name, dosage, issuing Doctor, etc. Very nice.

When I go to the Doctor and he fills out one of those nice insurance forms that says what he did? Yeah, I take a picture of it with my phone. Now I can easily recall what he did.

This feature should also work handily on business cards. Create a new notebook called “business cards” and as you collect those cards scan them with your phone and optionally tag them. Now you can do a search based on the tags or on the content of the business card.

If a pregnant women rear ends you, take photo’s of the insurance documents. Now you have them with you all the time.

Evernote also tags stuff with the Lat/Lon where applicable which is pretty cool. AND it will also clip web pages. Look, its a great, FREE organizer with a web client, and clients for Mac, Windows, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows  Mobile. The pay version is only $45 a year and gives you more upload capacity. When I get a job I will prolly upgrade, but for now the free version is fine.

Give it a try!

Thor’s Unemployment Blog

It has come to my attention that SOME of you have not headed over to “Thor’s Unemployment Blog”. Really, you should. While Andy doesn’t post as much as he should, his blog is still young and its coming along nicely. Anyway, its  a good read and you should add it to your RSS reader or your list of sites to visit daily.

Google Groups search results as RSS feed

Joe Lichtenberg asks via twitter
“Does anybody know if/how to get an RSS feed from a Google Groups search?”

First install Chrome. Ok, that’s not a requirement, but Chrome is a great browser.

This will require Google Alerts which is a pretty cool service. Log in to Google and go to http://www.google.com/alerts and type in your search term and under “Type” select “Groups”, then under “Deliver to:” select “Feed”.

Now click “Create Alert”, this will create the alert and take you to “Manage your Alerts” where you will see your new Alert. You can then access the feed raw, or read it in Google Reader.

Hey, be alert. The world needs more lerts.

Quigly Shoot?

The Harvard Ghost Riders are sponsoring the 2009 SASS MA/CT/RI State Championships on June 4th – 7th. On Friday they have an event titled “Quigley Shoot (offhand)”, I have never heard of such a thing before, but its certainly clear what that must be (long range, no support allowed, small target).

Last years overall winners were “Jimmy Spurs” and “Appaloosa Amy”.

According to the Harvard Ghost Riders, there will be “Food and cowboy vendors” at the event as well as a “Cowboy swap table”. I assume that means that you can buy a Cowboy or find someone to swap your current Cowboy with.

This really sounds like a fun way to spend the afternoon, PaulC will be there!

(As I am sure Dragon will, he’s probably on the planning committee, ‘cuz that’s the way that Jim rolls!)

Cat Yodeling

This video makes me want to borrow a cat so that I can test it. Its a longish video at 6:31, but WELL worth it.