Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category

Keepon Dancing – Don’t You Evah

1 Comment
Posted 30 May 2008 — by nick
Category Friends, Fun, music, Videos

I owe props to Ben Chase for pointing this out a while back, but thought I’d take a chance and post something light and easy to get back into the swing of posting more regularly.

(Click on the image to watch the video on YouTube)

In the past year or so Spoon has launched themselves into my standard music rotation and proved worthy of being listed in my top ten list. They do a lot of fun and interesting things with beats, breaking your expectations and fun vocal stuff – allowing them to catch my ear and spark my interest. If you don’t have any of their albums, I’d suggest starting with their newest: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Check them out on iTunes or eMusic.

Current Favorite Spoon Tracks:
Don’t You Evah (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
The Way We Get By (Kill the Moonlight)
Sister Jack (Gimme Fiction)
Finer Feelings (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
Stay Don’t Go (Kill the Moonlight)

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Now playing: Spoon – Stay Don’t Go
via FoxyTunes

BSG Season 4 Premier

1 Comment
Posted 04 Apr 2008 — by nick
Category Fun, News, Television, Videos

(dramatic music builds – trumpets, low rumbling drums, a choir of angelic voices)

Tonight it happens. The forth and final season of Battlestar Galactica begins. If you’re like me and don’t have cable you can stream the episode from scifi.com at 11:00AM CST. I won’t be watching tonight or online today – pesky work and no cable. That means don’t go spoiling nothing!

Good News and Bad News Today

2 Comments
Posted 01 Apr 2008 — by nick
Category Fun, News, Running, Technology

Good news:
Google and Virgin are teaming up to colonize Mars in the next 20 years, sounds exciting! You can read the details here. Also, you can take a quiz to see if you should go. Here are my results:

Well, you’re distressingly normal and could conceivably adjust to life as a deep space pioneer, though we recommend instead that you leave the Mars missions to the serious whack jobs who scored over 130 and instead finish year 3 of law school, tuck your toddler into bed, design Web 2.0 applications, run for Congress or do whatever other normal, healthy, middle-of-the-road thing you’re currently doing with your normal, healthy, middle-of-the-road life. If you’re determined to give Virgle a try, though, you can submit your video here.

So I guess I’m just not whack enough to go.

Bad news:
Looks like I might have to start wearing a helmet in future races, check out Runner’s World for that story.

New Toy, I Mean Phone

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Posted 13 Mar 2008 — by nick
Category Apple, Fun, Movies, music, News, Technology

This has always been more of an inevitable thing, my friends asking “when are you going to get one?” instead of “are you going to get one?”

It’s been about 3 weeks now since I purchased my iPhone, it’s sexy 🙂

Overall I’m happy with it, though it definitely shows the signs of an early product still being developed. Biggest complaints: iCal doesn’t support multiple calendars, wireless has known issues which make it interesting here on campus, and there is no way to delete learned wireless networks.

Apple announced the iPhone SDK last week for developers to be able to build custom applications for the iPhone as well as promised support for Microsoft Exchange making the iPhone more corporate friendly.

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Now playing: The Fratellis – Flathead
via FoxyTunes

I’m So White

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Posted 12 Mar 2008 — by nick
Category Blogs, Friends, Fun

Recently Amy brought it to my attention, with the help of this blog, that I am white. Examples of my whiteness: being a vegetarian, running marathons, snowboarding, listening to public radio, a love for indie music, a love for the outdoors, the list goes on and on. Basically reading this blog I feel pretty pegged.

They nailed it today though: Outdoor Performance Clothing.

I walk around with a smile wearing my ARC’TERYX fleece or my Mountain Hardwear conduit softshell, knowing my jackets are super sweet even if others don’t know the logo or the brand and that I paid more for them than you would think reasonable. A grin and kinship sparks when I see another gear nerd sporting their outerwear and we sigh at the frat-boy strutting in his North Face fleece oblivious to the fabric technology and engineering that has gone into his pop culture status symbol.

A related blog, I’ve found pretty hilarious: White Whine, IE things white people whine about.

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Now playing: Snow Patrol – Chocolate
via FoxyTunes

The passage of time

5 Comments
Posted 19 Feb 2008 — by nick
Category coffee, Creation, Fun, Technology

EDIT: Me apologies and deep embarrassment for the inaccuracy of the original post, my Calculus skills are a little rusty these days. This should be correct now as well as including a caffeine variable.

Some days the time seems to pass with exceptional quickness, others with exceptional slowness. Today happens to be one of the latter.

I’m sure the slowness of time relates to how much I’m accomplishing and/or my enjoyment of the time. Maybe something in the form of this:Assuming this as true and that Schrödinger’s Cat lol’d… we’d find the rate at which time passes by a good ol’ derivative WRT time.Thus we see if no accomplishments are made the passage of time is merely constant, however should there be accomplishments made and their enjoyment be negative, time will appear to slow. Conversely when an accomplishment is enjoyed time would appear to move faster and when more caffeine is involved time speeds up.

This might explain why 8 hours at work can pass so slow, but how 8 hours at home can pass so quickly – also why the last 40 minutes I’ve spend working on this post has passed by so quickly. Leading me to conclude, I must accomplish less at work to quicken the rate time passes (assuming it’s a negative enjoyment factor of course).

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Now playing: Death Cab for Cutie – We Looked Like Giants
via FoxyTunes

Dost thou Pisseth Against the Wall?

6 Comments
Posted 10 Feb 2008 — by nick
Category Blogs, Fun, Jesus, Scripture, Videos

I usually avoid posting twice in one day since it can tend to cause posts to get lost as the noise floor of your daily input raises. This post will be brief:

I first saw this video on Walk The Razor, one of Noel Heikkinen‘s blogs and then later on Tall Skinny Kiwi. Can you say viral video?

I laugh when I watch this but later I find it just sad.

Photos: Icy Night

3 Comments
Posted 21 Jan 2008 — by nick
Category Creation, Fun, Photos, Winter

Amy and I took a couple quick shots of the Abbot cooling towers tonight. The cold weather has left them, as well as their surroundings, entombed in ice. I’ll do some editing of the shots and post them up on picasa but for now, here is one that didn’t need much editing:


(I upped the contrast a tad and the exposure a smidge)

Once

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Posted 21 Jan 2008 — by nick
Category Friends, Fun, Movies, music

This weekend I had the chance to watch an excellent film, a rarity, the excellent part. Receiving high praise from friends whose musical taste I trust I decided it worth the adventure and rented Once to watch with Amy on Friday night. The film had been sold to me as a musical romance between two budding musicians, complete with a soundtrack begging to be purchased.

You need to see this film.

At first, describing the film as a musical left me uncomfortable. (This can probably be chalked up my general distaste for genre and misunderstanding of how everything is classified as either a “comedy” or “drama”). Thinking about it now, I am more content describing it as a musical. In all honesty, the story is told through the music. The characters lack names yet feel complete enough to be a good friend – we learn about them through their music and bond with them as their pain pours through their voices. After all, isn’t this part of the draw of music, the stories songs tell, the emotions they invoke, their empathy.

In honor of not sharing plot points or ruining the film for others, I’ll end on this note. My enjoyment resides strongly on the amazing soundtrack but also in the themes presented. Watching, I was reminded of the goodness of remaining faithful to commitment, the pain and worthwhileness of forgiving, the beauty of romance and the honor in being a person of moral character.

PS: The film has a low budget or indie film feel due to it’s minuscule budget of $160,000. More interesting back story, including how neither of the main characters are or plan on being professional actors, can be found here on the ever helpful wikipedia.

More Caffeinated Fun

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Posted 17 Jan 2008 — by nick
Category coffee, Fun, Jesus, Technology

“This is like turning water into wine!”
~ Josh, my officemate while making our morning pot of coffee.

Strange, I’m actually sort of proud of the fact that I ranked so high in this quiz. I understand my dependancy on the bean juice and I can quit at anytime… really I can, but why would I want to do that :-)?

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Now playing: Chicago Public Radio – #303: David and Goliath
via FoxyTunes

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