Over time I’ve gotten sick of Hiary, and Mc Cain soured what little respect I had left from Bush of the Republican Party.  I normally don’t talk politics, but you’d have to be blind not too see the similarities of Barack Obama and some of the greatest (most memorable) Presidents we’ve had.  as one who originally thought he was just another car salesman… I’ve been pleasantly surprised at his strait forward, “honest,” campaign.

And as a geek I loved this mashup of he democrat electioneering and Star Wars.

Here is a story that would probably only work in Britain, where there is a Close Circuit TV Camera on every corner, and being Government owned cameras you can demand the photoage. What government ones that are around the states would hold onto their tape for “National Security.” But what this band did, that must of taken a lot of time and I’d love too see some of the outtakes… but it came together nicely.

Got a band but can’t afford to shoot a video? Use public CCTV cameras and then demand the footage!

The Get Out Clause are an upcoming UK band who are currently unsigned. They took a brilliant and I’m sure soon to be much copied method to producing their own video. Unable to hire a production crew for a standard 1980’s era MTV music video, they performed their music in front of 80 of the 13 million CCTV “security” cameras available in England, including one on a bus.

They then used Britain’s Data Protection Act to request the footage that was shot of them. Grab some decent and inexpensive video editing tools (say. . . an iMac) and presto! They got themselves a unique and in my opinion quite interesting music video.

[via ArsGeek]

Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.

From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.

The year is 2018. Things are looking good for Renate on the Nazi moonbase. For all her life, she has worked hard to be a productive member of the Fourth Reich, and now, her dreams are coming true.

Renate is to travel to Earth on a secret mission with her fiance, the handsome and high-ranking Klaus, a true Nazi down to his jackboots. Their mission: to assassinate the president of the United States, Jenna Bush.

Renate finds Earth not to be the pit of depravity Klaus had described. Suddenly, bombing this world back to the stone age doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.

But the Nazi invasion is on its way, and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom.

[via Boing Boing]

View this teaser of the upcoming Creative-Common Film Iron Sky. And join me in looking forward to this different twist on history.

I’ve been asked before what this DRM thing is, or why they can’t listen to their music anymore. Well Mark gets asked to explain it to his dad and linked is the letter… To give you an idea on how well written this was, read this one paragraph that may just answer your question on what it does.

So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already “purchased” through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter “the victims”) will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they’re both giving you the finger.

[dive into mark talks about The day the music died ]

That said, I will note that Steve Job many times has said he’d rather sell the songs DRM free, but has been required to by the record companies.

Earlier when talking to a friend we had come across a list of rarely used words. And in most cases I could think of another more widely used word, that was used in its stead. But there was a word used to explain “being aroused by the study of knowledge” that we both had gleamed upon… and 2 weeks later I got this message that brought it home.

NameWithheld: i am such a nerd. i am so impressed and in awe reading about the scientific revolution. these men made the foundations for trigonometry, developed logarithms, discovered that the planets moved in elliptical not circular patterns around the sun, discovered gravitational pull. such brilliance. I think I have that word that I told you before… what was it… becoming aroused by the use of knowledge. lol

So if you ever start to feel stirrings when doing studying on a topic. Or you find something extremely interesting and you can’t figure out why it seems so addictive or why you can’t stop, almost like sex itself is. (I know bad analogy) but still, there is that word out there for you too.

In Searching i found many words that came close… but wasn’t exactly that word. I found:

Kindle to become aroused, or arouse feelings or interest in knowledge

Amazon used Kindle to sell their little toy/can’t live without ebook reader. But that still wasn’t it. Finally adjusting a few words I came up with:

Erotomanescientia: Someone having excessive sexual desire brought on by science or knowledge.

But it wasn’t exactly it, so if you know or remember, please let me know. Its now going a well over a week. The walls are starting to show dents from me banging my head in frustration…

VALLEJO — A man has been arrested for allegedly punching a camel on a dare at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

Vallejo police say 24-year-old Christopher Allen was dared by a friend to enter a restricted at the theme park where the camel was kept, and punch it.
He did, police say, and got arrested for his troubles.

Police say Allen was detained by park security, but soon escaped and ran from the park with his friends.  Police finally caught up with Allen and arrested him and the driver of his getaway car, Chrissy Thatcher of San Rafael.

[Napa Valley Register]

I saw this article right after reading about a friend who ran across this humorous license plate earlier today.  But seriously that sort of thing is one of the bad things about Marine World… well that and how little room there is there.

Here was a cool video that aguy shot while parachuting and reaching over 900 miles an hour and the speed of sound.  The whole time unprotected… but for his suit.  And amazing video about something I sorta heard about but didn’t fully understand.

A baby bird fell out of its nest in the tree in front of my parents house. See how small it is? I had to be quick to get that close a picture. We’re keeping away from it, and hoping no cat finds it. Damn I wish I had a real camera, or better one.

When you think kick ass expensive super cars, I normally think Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and similar.  Though company’s like VW, Mercedes and BMW make fast cars… they fit into a different class normally.  But this BMW Concept has me drooling and wishing they went into production (and I’m sure onto a Napa Street).

Here is one Photo, but to see a number more, look too this photo shoot of the BMW M1 Concept to appear at Villa d’Este Concours.

I’ve been hosting with Dreamhost for a good long while, and they have been doing their bit to be a green host for a while (meaning this blog is sorta green if not in content).

Heck here is how Dreamhost put it:

DreamHost is carbon neutral. We’ve calculated the impact of everything that DreamHost uses and leaves behind in the course of our daily work. All of the resources that we use - paper in the office, electricity for our servers, even the gas in our cars that bring us to the office - leaves behind some kind of soul-sucking residue in the world.

When we learned that running DreamHost generated as much carbon dioxide as 545 average-size homes we realized we had to do something to neutralize our emissions.

With a bit of research we found the most effective approach begins with resource conservation: turning off the lights, reducing travel, printing on both sides of the page. Efforts are being ramped up here daily to do what we do with less. The next step is to use clean, renewable energy. Without the option to put up solar panels or connect with a green power utility for us this means purchasing Renewable Energy Credits. Finally, to neutralize those unavoidable emissions we’ve invested in Emission Reduction Credits (a.k.a. “offsets”) which guarantee our remaining impact is effectively erased. A third-party-certification? Never fear. The credits we use to green our energy consumption and neutralize the rest of our emissions meet the highest standards in the industry

So… there I’ve said my peace about that. I know there are many hosts out there, but for decent shared hosting with a heart try Dreamhost. And what’s worse about this sales pitch, is that I mean it.  And the reason I’m posting about it, is that I got into a conversation about what we did for Earth Day… and how little it seems we did.  I had switched us over to CFLs a long while ago. And power saving with computers is almost automatic.

That brings to mind a question.  What have you done?  Any simple ideas come to you?