The Party Don't Stop

I favorited this video on YouTube back on June 22nd, and I'll be genuinely surprised if any of my readership hasn't already seen this. But it's been stuck in my head all day, so much so that I watched it twice on my iPhone over the course of the day, and once again on my PC just now.

The song is catchy, I'm embarrassed to admit, but it's even more so with Scotty and Uhura and Bones and the gang hamming it up.

On a serious, technical note, though, the editing on this is fantastic. Love the synchronization to the music and the selection of oddly appropriate clips. Some bits are barely a second of exquisite facial expressions or reactions that really work well with the song.

Getting Shit Done

I have lots of to-do lists. I have a Moleskine Piccadilly notebook full of itemized tasks I want to do sooner or later. I have an archived version of my old Palm Desktop with leftover to-do items. I have text files where I tried to consolidate some of my old scraps of paper full of lists, and I still have said scraps of paper full of lists from years ago.

I haven't found a satisfactory way to organize all these maybe-somedays and to-do-this-weeks. Maybe Epic Win will save me.

From the Epic Win website:

Our lives are full of quests. Remember that birthday card, send that email, or drag ourselves to the gym on a regular basis.

Trouble is, sometimes we’re having too much fun doing other virtual stuff like hunting down rare items in World of Warcraft or leveling-up in Facebook games to remember the stuff we’re supposed to be doing.

EpicWin is an iPhone app that puts the adventure back into your life. It’s a streamlined to-do list, to note down all your everyday tasks, but with a role-playing spin.

Rather than just mentally ticking off your chores, completing each one improves and develops your character in an ongoing quest to level-up, gain riches, and develop skills.

By getting points for your chores it's easier to actually get things done. We all have good intentions but we need a bit of encouragement here and there. Doing the laundry is an epic feat of stamina so why not get stamina points for it?!

Watch as your avatars stats develop in ways to represent your own life. Will you be a Maiden of Juggled Priorities, or a King of Win? The lifestyle you lead will decide.

This app will either be Epic Win or Epic Fail. I'm not sure which yet. I can see me either finding it amusing for a week, then deciding it's dumb; or getting WAY more into it than I should, and breaking down my tasks into stupid little sub-tasks, just to level up my guy.

Until Epic Win is released, though, I think I'll stick with the Piccadilly-to-Google-Tasks method I'm using now. As long as I can get one little thing done a night (e.g. cleaning off the dining room table or changing the bed linens), I feel pretty good about myself.

Now That We're Back

I have several ideas for relatively short, Wil-Wheaton-esque vignettes from our recent vacation. The only thing that's stopping me from writing them is my desire to get all my photos posted first. After that, I'm sure I'll want to edit together the small amount (less than an hour) of video we shot, and hopefully integrate the snippets of video from our iPhones and my point-and-shoot digital into the DV footage.

It's all about priorities.

So, in the meantime, enjoy this short snippet of how we spent much of our vacation.

T-minus 20 Days and Counting

YouTube user alexkelowna1963 has uploaded several videos of the Royal Playa del Carmen, including this one of the resort's beach. They're only serving to make me even more excited about our trip.

We're really not beach people. I swear. We spent one afternoon sunning and swimming at Waikiki back in 2008 before we got bored of it. Granted, this was after we'd already experienced things like parasailing and snorkeling, and had walked up and down the beach both by day and by night.

As for this trip, we have one tour already booked — on my birthday, no less — and are planning to do some other excursions on the fly: snorkeling, maybe parasailing, and definitely exploring Playa. And exploring the menu options at the Royal — it's all-inclusive, after all.

As for now, though, we're focusing on the little things. Making sure our shorts still fit, and buying new ones if necessary. Procuring swimsuits. Making sure the sunscreen we bought for Hawaii is still good. For me, getting a haircut (and getting my nails done). Finding cute sundresses at the thrift. Getting new glasses (and prescription sunglasses). Checking to see if any exit-row seats have opened up on our flight. Refreshing our rudimentary knowledge of Spanish.

The build-up is half the fun of vacation! So, while I might seem like I'm wishing the days away, it's really kind of like Christmas — the waiting is what makes it exciting.

Meet Linda

Linda, my Weight Watchers Leader, was featured on 13abc last month in their "4 Ways To Lose 100 Pounds" series. In this interview, she shares her before and after pictures (which still amaze me) and a very abbreviated overview of what losing 120 pounds meant to her — and how she did it on Weight Watchers.

(Incidentally, the interviewer, Rebecca Regnier, was also in one of Linda's Weight Watchers meeting groups, so I understand.)

TV Nostalgia: Barnaby

When I was very, very young — around 4 or 5 years old — I remember watching Barnaby. It was a children's show, locally produced, as many television stations did up until about the late '80s. (As I understand it, the local children's show in Toledo was Patches and Pockets.)

Barnaby talked to an invisible parrot, Long John, and had a few puppet and human character friends. During his show, he also cut to Popeye and Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon segments, and I think those are really why I watched Barnaby. His bits just weren't engaging to me as a child, not even in that mild-mannered children's show host kind of way.

At the end of every show, as he was leaving his "house," his parting line was, "If anybody calls, tell 'em Barnaby says hello. And tell 'em that I think you're the nicest person in the world! Just you."

The above clip is the end of Barnaby's final show, in 1988. I never saw this clip before tonight, and now I find it so sad. Not just that a children's show did its final wrap — that inevitably happens, just like children inevitably grow up — but that he was so obviously sad to be ending it.

It turns out that Barnaby (a.k.a. Linn Sheldon) was a talented early-television-era actor-comedian in the Cleveland area. He also wrote an autobiography, Barnaby and Me, which I'm unlikely to find locally (but I might be able to find in Cleveland) is available used on Barnes & Noble if I really want it.

Linn Sheldon died in 2006, eight years after retiring from television, in his Lakewood home.

You don't see locally-produced content like this anymore. People just five years younger than me probably don't remember watching shows like this (or, a little later in life, waking up in front of the TV to the Star-Spangled Banner or a test pattern). YouTube is great for trying to convey these memories, but today's 20-somethings can't really relate to this any more than I can really relate to sitting around the radio set and listening to audio dramas or radio plays.

Only The Best

I forget where I found this video, but I marked it as one of my favorites on YouTube a couple of months ago. Japanese commercials crack me up.

This Too Shall Pass

[OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.]

Found this as a link posted on my high school band director's Facebook page. His comment: "I like it! Of course, now I am pondering how I can dress my kids in camouflage that will work on astroturf! Hmmm... show ideas abound!"

As for me, I've decided that I really need to check out this band a little more, beyond just this and Here It Goes Again.

We Are All Connected

We are all connected
To each other biologically
To the earth chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

...

I'm this dot
Standing on a planet
And really I'm just a speck
(I'm just a speck)
Compared with a star
The planet is just another speck

To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
And billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks

...

The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff...

symphonyofscience.com

Now Is The Season For Action

Thanks to blurb (a.k.a. Jon Armstrong) for making his readers aware of this video that the White House posted today on YouTube: The Obama Plan in 4 Minutes.

This answered many of my questions about the proposed health care reform. All except one: why does any of this seem like a bad idea?

News In Our Neighborhood

I hadn't known what happened that afternoon. All I knew was that I was trying to get home from work, and my dead-end street was blocked off by a fire truck and a couple of police cars. I contemplated going off-road and getting around the fire truck by driving through the field across the street; there was a cop car hanging out in the field, though, so I just parked the car a good five houses down and walked the rest of the way home.

I started out quite irritated, but felt my face soften when I saw the family huddled together on the sidewalk. Something had happened, I knew — something tragic.

I didn't find out exactly how tragic until two days later, when a neighbor came to our door and asked for a donation for the family. Aaron and I were taken by surprise, and told the gentleman that we didn't have any cash on us, before it occurred to us that we probably could have written him a check.

Fast-forward about six weeks. This evening, right before Aaron left for work, the 13 ABC remote van pulled into the field across the street from our house, near the tree where the incident occurred. Let me tell you, it's a surreal experience to be watching a live remote on the local news, then to look out your front door and see the live remote happening right there.

Our neighborhood isn't exactly close-knit. I only know the first name of our next-door neighbor's son because he dropped his driver's license in the street one day a couple years back. The gentleman who came to our door, who lives a few houses down, has offered to snowblow our driveway for $20 in years past. After about five years in our house, that's about all the contact we've had with our neighbors.

Even so, even though I don't know them personally, I feel for this bereaved family, and I do hope that they learn the truth about their son's death soon.

Sucked In By YouTube

All it took was a tweet from Talcott: "How wrong is it that I find the analog signoff montage from the PBS station I grew up with kinda touching? http://tinyurl.com/putgp6"

And, damn it all, that got me YouTube surfing. That's never a good thing. Well, it is, but not if there's anything else you want to get done. I've been surfing YouTube for an hour now.

First, it was analog sign-offs. I was looking for nostalgic or classy ones, but found a lot of Action News-style ones that ended with, "push the button, Fred—"

Then, I started looking for my favorite version of the PBS ident montage.

(The one at 0:35 is the one I remember from my childhood.)

From there, of course, I moved on to Sesame Street clips, discovering by reading comments along the way that I was not, in fact, the only kid to be scared by the "funky chimes" ending credits.

Then I found this one, with Olivia and Linda (although I usually think of Bob and Linda doing this one — they were a couple, after all). I'd be willing to bet that my Mom still knows all the signs to "Sing."

I also had never heard Luis sing it en Español while playing the guitar.

Aaron thinks it's bizarre that I remember so much music from kids' shows. I could still sing you any regular Mr. Rogers song, or most of the standard Sesame Street songs (late '70s to early '80s, and some mid-'80s when my cousin Michael watched).

Watching all these old clips makes me kind of misty. I hate to think I'm nostalgic for the days of half-day Kindergarten, when I'd come home and have a lunch of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and a naked hot dog, and lay on the floor in front of the tiny color TV in the living room to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers (and The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact). Age five or six is an odd age to be nostalgic for, don't you think?

Chicago Illinois Is Like A Shiny Toy

So, Aaron and I are planning a quick getaway to Chicago over Labor Day Weekend. We decided that there's enough interesting and fun things to do within a day's drive of Toledo that there's no excuse for us not to get out and experience them. Right?

We have a few ideas of things to do: check out the view from the Sears Tower, eat some pizza, walk around Millennium Park and enjoy sounds of the jazz festival, and hit Mitsuwa Marketplace, the giant Japanese market northwest of town. One friend suggested the planetarium, which sounds totally cool. Another friend is trying to convince us to go see Blue Man Group, too, but we're not totally sold on it yet.

In order to generate ideas for things to do and places to visit, I decided to Google the phrase, "in Chicago, you have to..."

Here's what I came up with, vacation-appropriate or not:

• In order to brave the elements in Chicago, you have to dress yourself accordingly—three fleeces layered on top of each other and a ski mask.
• If you are in Chicago, you have to go here [Giordano's Pizza] for dinner at least one night.
• You're in Chicago- you have to pay a visit to River North.
• When running in Chicago you have to run along the lake.
• But [Sears Tower]'s the third tallest building in the world and once you are in Chicago you have to go!
• I still don't understand why in Chicago you have to pay for parking at the hotel you are paying to stay at.
• Are you still in Chicago? You have to make a pilgrimage to Hot Doug's! Gourmet hot dogs.
• (In Chicago, you have to ask for ketchup on your hot dog.)
• Also, when you're in Chicago you have to try chicago style hot dogs and Italian Beef.
• In Chicago, you have to pay double tolls if you don't use the automated system, and it's a lot slower.
• If you are in Chicago, you have to go and see a concert to get the real summer in Chicago experience.
• In Chicago, you have to get the deep dish.
• If you're in Chicago, you have to visit Michigan Avenue, and since you're seeing Michigan Avenue, you have to amble down Oak Street.
• I started out in Chicago. You have to learn the business.
• If you are in Chicago, you have to try Goose Island and it's even better if you drink it at one of their fine establishments.
• If you're in Chicago, you have to have a potbelly [sandwich].
• Now, since you're in Chicago, you have to get a flame broiled steak at the Weber Grill (yeah, sounds touristy, but the quality is excellent) and a stuffed pizza at Giordano's - just don't have the pizza for lunch before a game.

Well, then. That should keep us busy.

To wrap up, I'll leave you with this little number from the 1982 movie Victor/Victoria:

Video: Trip to Nikko

While I didn't get our entire vacation video edited in time for last night's party, I did manage to get our Nikko video edited down to a brisk four minutes. Expect more shorts from our Japan vacation in the coming weeks!

Winnie the Pooh Worships Satan

Back in college, this teensy video took an hour to download over 10base-T ethernet on-campus. It was TOTALLY worth the wait, though.

Ah, Courtship.

Aaron and I had been dating for less than a year when he moved out of his dad's house at age 22. After that, we were finally able to spend weekend nights together (as the twin bed in my dorm room wasn't terribly conducive to overnight stays, and I couldn't exactly sleep over at his house with his dad around).

Those days were lean for Aaron, monetarily speaking, so he'd make food for us most Saturdays, except when we went to the $5 Chinese Buffet for lunch. There were a couple of years, one in particular, that I remember spending entire Saturdays in his apartment, eating Chicken Helper Shake-N-Bake for lunch or dinner — rather, the more generic but still tasty Chicken Bakin' Magic or Chicken Bakin' Miracle — and playing video games ALL DAY LONG. Broken up by rounds of snoo-snoo, of course.

Recently, Aaron ripped the audio from the Puyo Puyo Sun PlayStation game, and we listened to a few select tracks on his computer, including the intro:

We played the shit out of this game back in the day, so I didn't even need the visuals. I pantomimed everything that went on during the intro, even though I hadn't played the game for years. And when the track got to about 1:35, I made the funny face I used to always make, mocking the main villain character (who, incidentally, is named Satan).

Yep, those were the days.

So, what else did we play? Let's see... we started out on Saturn and SNES, mainly, then moved to Dreamcast and PlayStation. I remember playing Bust A Move, and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and Dr. Mario. [Edit: And how could I forget Tetris Attack? We played the shit out of that one, too.] We didn't just do puzzle games, though; I held my own quite well in Soul Calibur and the occasional Bushido Blade. Later on, we got hopelessly addicted to the Tony Hawk games, with 2 and 3 being our favorites. As we got a little less rabid in our gaming days, we'd play Cool Boarders 2 and SSX Tricky and the later Tony Hawk games and Dave Mirra.

These days, we don't do a whole lot of gaming together on the weekends. When we do, we tend to stick with Carcassone on Xbox 360, or Boom Blox, or sometimes Wii Sports or Rock Band.

We should really get back into gaming together, though, even if we have to drag out the Saturn or the Dreamcast to do it right. Those days were so much fun.

Prop 8 - The Musical

First brought to my attention via Wil Wheaton:

This is fan-freaking-tastic.

Playing For Keeps

Today is the official release date of Mur Lafferty's novel, Playing For Keeps. My husband, Aaron, was a big fan of the podiobook version, so I gladly purchased the print version today (published by Swarm Press).

Mur held a contest, asking all her fans to record a video clip for a portion of the book's theme song by Beatnik Turtle. Alas, I forgot that Mur is a Mac girl, and sent my submission in WMV format, so my clip didn't get included in the final cut:

I'd like to imagine that my submission would end up as an extra on the (fictitious) Playing For Keeps promotional DVD:

The Pop-Up Video version of my clip might include trivia such as:

• Diana recorded this in the evening in her basement, with ambient light. This is why the video is so dark.
• Diana moved the Rock Band drums into the basement specifically to record in front of her husband's video game collection.
• Note that Diana is not actually playing the offbeats during the first half of the clip, but corrects herself after her "cymbal" crash. She did not notice this error until after the video was complete and submitted.
• Diana had considered tying a blanket cape around her neck to tie in with the superhero theme of the book. It's probably best that she didn't, as she had to do four takes, running over to her computer to restart the song each time.
• Watch closely, and you'll see the drumstick fly out of Diana's right hand at the very end of the clip.

As it is, I'm fine with the fact that my video didn't make it into the final cut. It was fun, anyway, and I'm still looking forward to reading Playing For Keeps when it arrives.

Hey... maybe you should order one, too.

Schnuth Summer Luau 2008

Time to post something besides Twitter updates, cool as they might be.

In my own inimitable tradition, I planned a luau in honor of a.) the onset of the first day of summer and b.) our Hawaii vacation last month. Parties are a great excuse to get everyone together and drink and play video games, and I've hosted a couple successful ones since we've lived here. (Aaron hosted a few successful New Year's Eve parties at his apartments before that, too, but that was quite some time ago.) Our circle of friends hasn't been as socially close as we were, say, eight years ago, and a formal invitation to come over and see everyone all at once seems to have appeal.

read more...

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

This is a fascinating and powerful talk. I will warn my normal readership that the content drifts from the interestingly scientific into what some would call... well, I'm not sure what some might call it, but if you don't consider yourself a spiritual person, you may scoff at Dr. Taylor's interpretation of her experience.

Still, if I had felt I had achieved Nirvana and lived to tell the tale, I would probably share it in quite the same way.

TED releases this video under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives License. Please download and share this video freely in its entirety.

Take Five

Even if you already know the tune, watch the video. It's a quicker tempo than the standard recording that all of us jazz / band / jazz band geeks know and love, and the drum solo? To die for.

If you don't know the tune, shame on you! Watch this video and get your jazz on. (Non-music people: it sounds all groovy partially because there's five beats to the measure — hence the title, "Take Five.")

[thanks for the heads-up, Wil!]

New Year's Eve, 1999

New Year's Eve 1999: Four couples converged at Kris's apartment for a Y2K celebration of food, drink, music, and Trivial Pursuit. It's fun looking back on these home videos and seeing how we used to spend our New Year's. This year, it sounds like it'll be Fries and Connie spending a little time with Aaron and me at our house. Any of our other friends are certainly welcome, assuming you don't have a concert to attend, or you don't live way far away, or you don't have cooler friends than us to hang out with...

</guilt trip>

An example of fortuitous timing: I hadn't realized that night how low my camcorder battery was, and ended up just barely catching the midnight festivities. That was a lesson to me to always charge my camcorder battery AND bring the adapter with me whenever I used the camera.

Please forgive the crackly audio — I could get it to export either with decent video and blown-out audio, or crappy video and decent audio, but not with both. Hopefully, I'll get the hang of Premiere soon enough.

Christmas in Parma, OH - December 22, 1999

I'm not going to make a habit of posting my home videos to my blog, but I did want to post this one. This is the first part of a belated Christmas present for my family, wherein I'm taking the footage we filmed during Christmas 1999 and putting it together into a properly-edited DVD. I managed to take eleven minutes of gruelingly boring footage of me and Philip decorating the Christmas tree and edit it down into three fairly inoffensive minutes with a soundtrack. Granted, my video editing skillz aren't what they used to be, plus I have to get used to using Adobe Premiere, but I still had fun and turned out a decent home video.

Well, the first part of one, anyway.

RCC Commercial, August 2001

I bought a new toy this weekend: a Mini DV camera. Why Mini DV instead of some other format? For the express purpose of getting the above video out to the masses.

This was filmed and edited by Yours Truly during late July and early August of 2001. This video was to be aired on the closed-circuit campus cable channel during and shortly after move-in weekend, for the purpose of educating the on-campus student body Residence Life Staff about the purpose of Residential Computing Connection (RCC).

When I was done editing and distributing the finished product, I did two things. First, I created an "outtake reel" of all the funnies that happened during filming. Second, I output the final commercial onto the end of the source tape, and snagged said Mini DV tape for my own. I've carried that tape around with me for the past six and a half years, waiting to get my hands on a Mini DV camera (or deck).

The first thing I did when I got my new camera home this weekend was hook it up to the HDTV and watch ye olde RCC commercial. I'd forgotten most of the details of the filming, and it was great to see some of my old RCC friends as I remember them. It was also heartwarming to see the late Tim King again, and hear his voice.

I was disappointed to find that I had not, as I had thought, output the outtake reel to tape. Apparently, I only had it on the server, which has (hopefully) long since been replaced and put to pasture. I guess it's a good thing I still have the source material... ;-)

RCC folk, both old and new, are encouraged to comment here or on the Google Video page. I'd love to hear people's reactions almost seven years later.

Spirit of Christmas Past (1992, to be exact)

A day or two after the Holiday Concert in 1992 (my Junior year of high school), I came into choir to find a VHS tape on my chair. Someone had given me a copy of the jazz band, concert choir, and wind ensemble performances from the concert — all of which I had performed in, and in one of which I'd had a solo. It's obviously a copy of Mrs. Albrecht's tape — she was the mom who was at every single performance with her giant late 80's / early 90's VHS camcorder. I'm sure someone else must have been taping, too, but they wouldn't have focused in on the red-headed bass so often. :-)

This video brought back so many great memories of high school. I'd forgotten I had any, honestly; when I think of high school, I think of my being a misfit of sorts. Watching this reminded me of what a great time I had in choir and band, and the great relationships (if not quite friendships) I had with my classmates. Fun times were had, like taking Geometry with the choir president, who claimed he knew a hit man who would break our teacher's leg if we could collect a certain amount of money from everyone in the class. But I digress.

As I reviewed this tape, I also remembered every note and almost every word of every song. As I watched Ms. Beall cue the choir's first note, I found myself singing along, accents and all: "GLO - RY to God in the hi-igh-eeeest—" She was a great director, especially considering that she had to accompany at the same time. (I'm sure she still is a great director, too, although these days she's directing the junior high kiddies.)

The first thing I noticed while watching my solo (bookmarked in the above embedded video — just hit Play to hear my, um, glorious voice) is that the camera really does add ten pounds. As does that damnable outfit — mainly the cummerbund. When I was sixteen, I weighed about twenty pounds less than I do today, as I recall, although you'd never know it from this video.

The next thing I noticed was how nervous I was. It was funny: I hadn't watched this video for years before digitizing it yesterday. Still, as I watched my younger self descend the risers and take her place in front of the microphone, my heart started to pound and my breath quickened with the memory of my nerves. It had definitely shown in my voice, too, as my normally smooth vibrato morphed into a nervous tremolo, and any semblance of breath support whooshed away with every quick catch-breath.

After not having seriously sung for so long, I'm taken aback by how mature I tried to sound at age sixteen. I've been known to sing to myself every now and then these days, and I don't even have that dark and mature of a sound now (unless I'm being silly and singing all "looly-loo," as Aaron puts it). To my ear, so many years later, it sounds a little forced. Overall, though, not bad for a high-schooler.

I won't subject you to the jazz band or the wind ensemble. The memories are fun, but the music is painful. Especially the one *really* wrong note from the saxophones in the middle of Russian Christmas Music. The entire jazz band performance is pretty painful, too, come to think of it. (Remind me later to tell you about Ryan Galmarini, our drummer, aka Eternal Freshman. Priceless stuff. Jazz band rehearsals were awesome.)

I never found out exactly why I was given a copy of the performance, or by whom, or if anyone else was given a copy, too. I'm grateful either way, though, because this is the only visual record I have of myself performing with any of my high school ensembles.

Hope you enjoy. Happy Christmahanukwanzakah!

PS - For the music geeks in the crowd, here's links to the specific songs in the concert:

"Be Not Afraid" — Jacobson/Lojeski
  Bass feature: Bill Coersmeyer and Matthew Albrecht
  Women's trio: Jenny Waddle, Diana Cook, Cheri Burdell, and Amy Gumm
"Pat A Pam" — Simeone
  Flute soloist: Melody Marco
"Christmas Hymn" — Baker/Jungst
  Echo chamber group:Jennifer Waddle, May Ying Thao, Cheri Burdell, Brian Murawski
  Conducted by Bill Coersmeyer
"I Wonder As I Wander" — Niles
  Soloist: Diana Cook
"December Child" — Moline/Hayward
  Soprano duet #1: Jennifer Reisner and Elise Bond
  Soprano duet #2: May Ying Thao and Amy Thao
"Twelve Days After Christmas" — Silver