Bill Watterson was asked to draw 3 strips for Pearls Before Swine, a comic drawn by Stephan Pastis.
The first one, the second one, and the third one. What do you think? I really enjoyed seeing them.
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Introduction to Music Playlist
I saw this article where a deaf woman (since birth) asked a friend to create a playlist to introduce her to music (she had just receive a cochlear implant). What a challenge. Her friend decided to find one song from each year of her life.
What I understand about recipients of cochlear implants is that nobody really knows what it sounds like, because the people who are creating the technology can’t really use it on themselves. Of course, they can ask people what it sounds like, but from everything I’ve heard it’s less than satisfactory.
Out of curiosity, I thought I’d listen to all of the songs, and found them on YouTube. Here’s the full list:
- Ken Boothe – Everything I Own
- Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – She’s The One
- Paul McCartney – Silly Love Songs
- Joni Mitchell – Black Crow
- Steely Dan – Peg
- Electric Light Orchestra – Mr. Blue Sky
- Gary Numan – Are ‘friends’ Electric?
- The Specials – Do Nothing
- Soft Cell – Tainted Love
- The Jam – Town Called Malice
- Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
- Prince – When Doves Cry
- Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)
- The Smiths – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
- Fleetwood Mac – Big Love – Live (Lindsey Buckingham solo acoustic version)
- Tracy Chapman – Fast Car
- The The August & September
- Deee-Lite – Groove Is In The Heart
- Ozric Tentacles – Sploosh!
- INXS – Baby Don’t Cry
- Nirvana – All Apologies
- Richard Thompson – King Of Bohemia
- Pulp – Common People – Full Length Version / Album Version
- Everything But The Girl – Missing
- Foo Fighters – Everlong
- Massive Attack – Teardrop
- Jimmy Eat World – For Me This Is Heaven
- The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist
- Daft Punk – Digital Love
- The Streets – Turn The Page
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
- Beastie Boys – An Open Letter To NYC
- Nine Inch Nails – The Hand That Feeds
- Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
- Radiohead – Jigsaw Falling Into Place
- Elbow – One Day Like This
- Maximo Park – Tanned
- Gruff Rhys – Shark Ridden Waters
- The Joy Formidable – Whirring
- Bat For Lashes – Laura
- Haim – Don’t Save Me
Personally, I think an introduction to music playlist should contain some classic music as well as other popular music, but it’s certainly interesting to see some music from another point of view. This list could more accurately be called: Introduction to Modern Music Playlist & Hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today! It’s like listening to a pop radio station in many ways.
What music is missing from this list, and why?
You’ve probably seen that cool video that’s circulating with the brave/crazy helicopter pilot that is transporting Christmas trees from a field to a truck. I initially thought that it must be fake, since it looks so unreasonable — I mean, the guy was flying crazy fast. But, it turns out that they really do harvest Christmas trees using helicopters.
It sounds completely crazy, but by some estimates it only costs a few dollars in fuel per-tree to do so, and allows for many other benefits. For example, Christmas tree farms grow new trees alongside old trees, and transporting the cut trees out to a road would be difficult. Plus, they would need to save space for lanes. In addition, now they can grow trees closer together.
It sounds very efficient once you think it through, and also considering the time they save. And, when you look at how many Christmas trees need to be harvested each year (millions!) it makes a lot of sense financially. Everybody wants fresh Christmas trees.
Anyways, it’s an awesome thing and I found a few more videos on YouTube showing helicopters harvesting trees. Enjoy and happy holidays!
Christmas Trees 2011 – Stirring The Stick
Christmas Tree Harvest Jet Ranger Helicopter Withrotor Aviation
Oregon Christmas Tree Harvest With Helicopter. Amazing Pilot!
Categories
Managing a photo library
Well hello there, I’ve been managing a photo library for some time and today was reading a discussion online about how people manage their collections. I thought I would share how I manage mine.
The solution I found for my photo workflow is that I’ve installed AeroFS on my computers and I store my latest photos from the last several months in that folder. It syncs across all of my computers, that way my wife and I can use Picasa or Lightroom and the photos load fast since they are on our local drives.
Since we store folders in a /year/month/ file structure we can easily move those to an external hard drive.
The whole thing backs up to CrashPlan. My entire collection is over 1.5 TB of photos.