Strumming with his toes

[Mark] Goffeney, lead guitarist and vocalist for the band Big Toe, (...)
Born without arms, Goffeney has been a performer as long as he can remember. Some of his earliest performances were between ages eight and thirteen, when he helped host Easter Seals and March of Dimes telethons. “I was their poster child,” he laughs. “So I think I got over the fear of performing. Well, actually, I never really got the fear of it.” He always knew he wanted to be a musician, but playing trombone in the school band didn’t satisfy his desire to rock. So a friend gave Goffeney a guitar demonstration, and he just imitated what he saw his friend do—only he imitated with his feet.

Click for Mark Goffeney's Site
Click for Video
Click for Article

Golden Fish Circus

Is this for real? Seems so, but how do you train fish like that?

Redbull Can Art

Very creative. By "slackdave". Apparently because of technical trouble his entry was never seen by them.

"Redbull Art of Can" was open for any entry inspired/ using their cans. It took me a week sketching for a rythm (since all the sounds where in the same frequency range..)After that I had three days film and edit the video, which I started at Sunday midnight. 6 hours later I had completed 20 seconds of the cans dropping. And I continued like that editing nonstop for three days. On the third day without any sleep I started to go a bit mad,  (...)

 

Zune Zoom Zoom

This video looks real...

I was wondering how the clickwheel-looking controller was used and it seems it's just directional buttons (left-right-top-bottom-center) in a circle... so it looks like an iPod?

No comments on the brown color.

I'm not betting this Zune will be a huge success.

High-Rise Syndrome

Very interesting. Cats that fall from high enough
to reach free-fall relax and tend to have less serious injuries than
cats who fall from lesser heights.

Unscreened windows pose a real danger to cats, who fall out of them so often that the veterinary profession has a name for the complaint—High-Rise Syndrome.
(...)
It is a misconception that cats won’t be injured if they fall from one- or two-story buildings. They may actually be at greater risk for injury when falling shorter distances than by falling from mid-range or higher altitudes. Shorter distances do not give them enough time to adjust their body posture to fall correctly.

The video on NG is very interesting. Photo from here.

Yadda-Yadda-Yadda

I find that listening to talk does not interfere with my (left-brain) work, mainly programming. So I've been listening sometimes to talk radio or podcasts while working. Here is some of the stuff I like to listen to:

• Paul and "Young Ron", funny local Miami/ Ft Lauderdale morning radio show, with live streams and audio/ video clips available (here's a real funny Lisa Lampanelli bit roasting a producer who left the show);
  
• TWiT with Leo Laporte, as well as most of his other podcasts, especially
• The Daily GizWiz with Mad Magazine's Dick DeBartolo;
• Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvorak (available as audio or video);
• NPR's 7am News Summary and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!;
• Real Time with Bill Maher;

I think podcasts area better experience because of time-shifting, you can listen to them any time you want, rewind, fast-forward, etc.

Hey, if anyone does not know yet, podcasts DO NOT require an ipod or even iTunes to listen to, they're nothing more than an RSS feed that lists MP3 files you can download. There's software out there that makes it easy for you to get the ones you want on a frequent basis. I do use iTunes though. They should adopt another name, like Netcasting or Audcasting before Apple sues...

Mad props to Leo Laporte. He's the only podcaster who can giggle on the air and not ruin the podcast for me (BTW, please listen to this all would-be teenager podcasters out there: Do... not... giggle...).

I'm still trying to find a good podcast in Portuguese (Brazilian)... haven't really found one.

Just listened to this once (really!), but it's sickeningly interesting in a The-Onion-Savage-love-meets-Jerry-Springer-meets-Dr-Phil kind of way... LoveLine with Dr. Drew

Enjoy.

Unbellyfeel - Do not bellyfeel the truthiness!

My friend Shawn has started a blog, and it's bound to have good stuff in it.

The name is pretty interesting, read about it there.

It does remind me of the word coined by Stephen Colbert, "Truthiness" :

(...) the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts(...)

In other words, the way people who want to manipulate you want you to behave. Are we living in 1984?

Bookmarks

A while back, I wrote about bookmarks. Since then, I've found del.icio.us.

I don't love the name but the service is great. Basically you create a (free) account and post your bookmarks to their system. Not only is it available on any browser but also it's available from any computer connected to the Internet.


Moreover, you tag bookmarks so it's easy to search through them.

It's also Web 2.0'ish, so it encourages "social bookmarking", for example sharing bookmarks with others, seeing what others are bookmarking, or flagging a bookmark for someone else. You can share (or not) your bookmarks with anyone else.

Check it out, my bookmarks are here.

Vajra Mushti/ Kalarippayattu

I practiced this martial art from India for several years, very few people even heard about it. Good times.

Here's a not very positive review, but an interesting video here.

Good article on Wikipedia, with photos.

My former teacher's site, also with photos.

Brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill

We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and wonderful' rebirths

Pretty amazing. You gotta wonder though, do they even really know what the drugs do and why or do they just go by trial and error? Judging from House, probably the latter. Oh... and Viagra was a heart pill, right?

Why Terrorrists have Won

While we're on the subject... good article by Bruce Schneier.

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

Opera Canceled Over a Depiction of Muhammad

BERLIN, Sept. 26 — A leading German opera house has canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears stirred by a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting a storm of protest here about what many see as the surrender of artistic freedom.
(...)
The disputed scene is not part of Mozart’s opera, but was added by the director, Hans Neuenfels. In it, the king of Crete, Idomeneo, carries the heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon on to the stage, placing each on a stool.

Sorry, but I think this is too much. People are obliged to abide by a country's laws, not by any particular group's (perceived) religious laws.

Interestingly, a search on freedom shows that it is a very complex subject. IMHO, one's freedom can only go as far as it doesn't impose on someone else's freedom, and can never go as far as trying to control how other people think or feel.

So, if radicals -- from either side of the fence -- are trying to control what others can think or feel, that is an imposition on someone else's freedom, and should be fought against.

Change of Style, Change of Pace

I think I've nailed down my ambivalence with blogs.

I hate the "Dear Diary" journal blogs. I don't care about the rantings of navel-gazers (pardon me navel-gazers, nothing against you personally, maybe my navel is either too ugly or too uninteresting, but I don't care for the art of navel-gazing).

On the other hand, I like finding bloggers that tend to have the same interest as me posting links and comments about interesting things.

A great example is John C. Dvorak's blog. I go there everyday and almost everything is of interest to me. Great place to get new information, at least for me, and something I'd like to emulate... So I'll try, why not?

Come back for more soon.