One of the absolute coolest things on any newspaper's website is the Boston Globe's "The Big Picture." The Globe takes a newsworthy topic and tells the story with many high-quality photographs. The latest "Big Picture" photo essays tell the story of the Greek Riots (37 photos total), the Hajj and Eid al-Adha (41 photos total), and Scenes from Guantanamo Bay (30 photos total), but they are also currently working on a Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar (25 photos eventually), adding a new Hubble photo everyday from December 1 until Christmas. Here's an example...
You can see a larger version by clicking on the photo or see it in its full-sized glory by visiting the website. The caption describes this as "a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. 7,000 light-years distant from us, the soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers tall." I like that -- "a stellar nursery."
If you're a photography nut or a news nut or both, you'll want to stick this site in your RSS reader or visit often. Good stuff!
I get a daily writing tip from, uh, DailyWritingTips.com. A couple of days ago, they had a grammar test. I couldn't remember my intransitive from my conjunction and scored a 65%. Ouch! Try your hand here.
I could be behind the times, but I just discovered Hulu. This looks great. I can't wait to see how it performs. Perhaps I'll take it for a test drive this weekend.
I was watching the PBS show Pioneers of Television the other night. They were talking about The Andy Griffith Show and comparing it to shows that came later like The Beverly Hillbillies. Someone made the comment that Andy Griffith wanted people to laugh with him, not at him. I guess that's why I've always like The Andy Griffith Show more than The Beverly Hillbillies. I've always had a problem with TV shows and movies that portray Southerners as just a bunch of illiterate country bumpkins to be laughed at. Sure we have our share, but some of us can read and write and do occasionally wear shoes.
So I shouldn't like Red State Update. It's just a couple of rednecks from Murfreesboro, Tennessee talking about politics on YouTube. Jackie Broyles and Dunlap (aka, Travis Harmon and Jonathan Shockley) usually sit around a table littered with beer cans and other debris, with the U.S. and Tennessee flags in the background, and talk about whatever pops into their heads (it seems). It's a hilarious act and I know a couple of people just like that. If you got them together and got them started in on politics, it would sound just like this...
This is their latest video, their take on the results of the Iowa caucus.
WARNING: The above video is clean, but they do get carried away with language occasionally.
Last week, the Huckster, who is running low on money compared to Romney and some of the other Repubs, tried to get the news media to run his negative ad for free by trying to turn it into news. He called a press conference to announce that he had a negative ad that he had decided not to run "for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" He then proceeded to show the ad to "prove" that he had one, and even passed out DVD copies to the assembled press. They were laughing at him by the time the dog-and-pony show was over. In another video, the Red State Update boys make fun of this episode, but drop the F-bomb much more than normal in their own negative ads.
Here's more on Red State Update from the Nashville Scene. The cover story talks about their "big break:" a question on the Democratic YouTube debate.
There must be some synchronicity in the air or something. I was talking about Pandora a few days ago. Today, I was web surfing and checked in at Doonesbury.com to catch up on all the comics I'd missed the last couple of weeks. There in the Doonesburys for November 27 and November 28 was a soldier talking about making battle mix tapes from Pandora playlists. To get the gist of what's going on, you have to go back to the beginning of the series of comics.
Toggle touches on an important point about Pandora. Sometimes it goes all random on you and spits out something completely off the wall, but if you use it often and give it a lot of feedback, the randomness goes way down.
One more thing about Pandora before moving on to other topics: I was checking it out after I blogged about it and found a page of Christmas music stations. If you're into that sort of thing, you're the sort of person that's into that sort of thing.
On other blogs I've had in the past, I've highlighted some of my favorite sites. I thought I'd revive the tradition.
I'm not sure how I first learned about Pandora, but I used it for a while, then it got lost in my maze of bookmarks and I forgot about it. I ran across it again a couple of weeks ago and can't remember why I ever quit using it. It's great!!!
On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
What does this all mean to you? Go to Pandora, set up an account, tell them a couple of artists or songs that you like. They have broken down the music into specific attributes which they use to create a radio station just for you. They play you your favorites and other songs or artists with similar attributes. (Right now, on my station, "Malleus Maleficarum" by AFI is playing. The attributes of this song are hard rock roots, punk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, minor key tonality, and electric rhythm guitars.) As your station plays, you tell them which songs you like and which songs you don't like and this helps refine what they play for you. It's a great way to hear new music (or music that's just new to you.)
Lately, I've been listening to Pandora pretty much non-stop while web surfing. Just open it up in a window or tab, then do all your web surfing in another window or tab. Very neat!
I'm not sure how well Pandora would work if you just have a dial-up connection. It might slow down your web surfing too much to enjoy. If you want to check it out, it might be best to put it on and let it play while doing something else.
Maybe I'm just turning into an old codger, but you can add social networking sites to the list of things I just don't get. The wife has been trying to get me to start a MySpace page, but so far I've passed on the proposition. It just strikes me as odd to pimp yourself out to see how many "friends" you can get on your page. That said, I've joined Digg, a social networking site.
The cool thing about Digg is that you surf the web, then when you see something you really like, you "Digg It" or add it to your list of links. If someone beats you to the link, you just add your Digg to theirs. There's supposed to be some sort of networking function there, but I just don't get it. But the coolest news stories, blog entries, videos, etc. I run across on the web end up there on my profile page.
If you're already on Digg, you can add me as your friend...or not. If you're not there yet, but it sounds like your cup of tea, consider this an invitation from me. Or just go to the homepage to check it out for yourself. If you'd like to check in from time to time to see what I'm Digging, you can find my page link on the sidebar to the right.
The Dutch department store Hema is just trying to move some merchandise. One way is with a very cool website. Definitely worth a minute or two of your time.
