For St. Patrick’s Day, the Muppets Sing ‘Oh Danny Boy’
In between your corned beef and cabbage and green beer, enjoy a good laugh. Have a great day! Source: GeekDad
Articles by Michael Anderson
Cupertino, Start Your Photocopiers! Oh, You Already Did?
For many who have watched Apple and Microsoft for decades, the mantra of an Apple product launch leading immediately to new ‘innovations’ from Microsoft that are remarkably similar has become beyond a cliché. There are certainly inspirational elements to the point that Microsoft has even occasionally admitted to copying from Apple (legally, of course, unlike Trash/Recycle, QuickTime/Windows Media, Widgets/Gadgets, Aqua/Aero, etc), but as many also note – Apple is not immune from the occasional ‘peeking at Microsoft’s paper’. But all of that stuff is serious … and this is just fun. The Microsoft Zune – it was a ‘MP3 player’…
Walmart Will Offer to ‘Upgrade’ Your DVD to Ultraviolet Cloud Movies for $2 on April 16th
Have you ever thought: I wish I was able to get digital versions of my DVD movies? I mean, without using HandBrake and feeling like the movie industry is going to have you star in their next ‘You wouldn’t steal a car …’ promo? If you are concerned about the legality making a digital copy of a movie, you are not alone. Recent rulings seem to indicate a reversal in prior findings that came down to ‘it is legal to have a digital copy, but not to make one’. The new ruling says that being lawful owner of the disk…
The Island: Castaway HD for iPad Review
Statistics are very much in my mind now – not the least reason for which is due to my profession. First off we have March Madness kicking off, and I employed a non-linear regression technique to try to predict my way through the tournament rather than just guessing like I normally do. We also have the release of ‘The Hunger Ganes’ movie next week, which uses the phrase ‘may the odds ever be in your favor’. What does this have to do with The Island: Castaway? Well, before I started playing I was thinking – G5 has had a really…
Don’t Worry … There are PLENTY of New iPad Specific Apps Available!
Do you remember when the iPad first came out and there were basically no apps made specifically for it? Even a bit later we were writing about the issue, wondering where the iPad specific apps were? Of course, now it has gotten to the point where if you see an app that claims to support the iPad app you’ll be surprised if you find an iPhone app with 1x/2x mode. Some were concerned that the new iPad would launch with only the Apple specific apps and a couple of showcase apps like Sky Gamblers that were shown off last week…
New Report Says Mammals Rise Began Before Dinosaurs Demise
Image courtesy of MSNBC.com One commonly held belief is that dinosaurs became extinct before mammals began to flourish – that the events leading to the mass death of dinosaurs allowed mammals to develop fully. Now a report in the journal Nature – and an accompanying one in Science Magazine – seek to prove otherwise. From Nature: Here we show that in arguably the most evolutionarily successful clade of Mesozoic mammals, the Multituberculata, an adaptive radiation began at least 20 million years before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and continued across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. Disparity in dental complexity, which relates to…
Nick Brignola Fans Prove that the Internet Makes the World Smaller
Nearly 8 years ago I posted the following as part of a forum thread entitled ‘What concerts have you seen?’: – Nick Brignola (this one is a club show, but I enjoyed getting to see this jazz giant of the baritone sax playing ‘at home’ many Thursday nights at the Italia restaurant in Troy NY) Nick Brignola is no stranger to fans of the music generally called ‘hard bop’, straight-ahead jazz form that took the core of bebop and brought in blues and soul and other elements to form a fusion made popular by the recordings of Miles Davis’ first…
Learn Music With the Artists Using Jammit’s Unique Layered Approach!
When I was first learning to play guitar and bass, picking up songs meant rewinding a tape over and over again or manually repositioning the needle. Then you would have to pick out the part you were learning in a typically heavily layered production. With the digital age you can at least manipulate the playback to only hear the sections you want and repeat at will … but the rest gets tricky. Enter Jammit. Jammit is a service that provides you with everything you need to learn a song – sheet music with full professional transcriptions, tablature as well as…
Hope You Bought the 64GB iPad … New Apps are 2.5 – 3x Larger!
I was checking out some screenshots and photos from the new iPad over at Macrumors, which all hailed from the much-reported early delivery 3rd generation iPad from Vietnam that is getting loads of press … and I noted a quote from Vietnamese site Tinhte.vn regarding the size of the original apps: The sizes of these Retina-enabled apps appear to be about 2.5-3x the size of their original counterparts. These applications are developed by Apple has been upgraded to support the Retina screen, for example with Keynote (iWork software sets), this application previously only 115MB capacity but its latest version is…
Prepare for The Hunger Games With the Book Trailer for … The Hunger Pains!
If your family is like mine, everyone has read the Hunger Games trilogy and is anticipating the film release next week. Perhaps you have even re-read the first book more recently to refresh your memory (though you also likely skipped the last book to leave the memory of THAT rushed mess out of your mind), but were you aware that the Harvard Lampoon had just released a parody book? Released just a few weeks ago, my son got it for his birthday and both my boys have already torn through it and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you have checked out…
NASA 5 Rocket Launches in 5 Minutes (Late) Tonight
Last night was unseasonably warm (still above 70F after sunset), and as I looked into the clear night sky I could see planets visible amongst the stars. If I was to stay up well past midnight I might catch sight of five rockets in the night sky, fired one minute apart by NASA. Here are some details: NASA is scheduled to launch five suborbital sounding rockets in just over five minutes March 15 from the Wallops Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream. Based on the approved range schedule, the launch window for…
The End of a 244-Year Era As Encyclopedia Britannica Goes Out of Print!
For anyone under the age of 30, the concept of needing a set of encyclopedias in your home is at best archaic. I remember consulting the books as a regular part of doing homework in social studies and geography classes in particular, but also to feed curiosity for dinosaurs, biology, space, physics and more. Well, Britannica has just announced that they will not be producing a 2012 edition and that the 2010 version will be their last print volume. Britannica president Jorge Cauz said the move is a natural part of his company’s evolution. “Everyone will want to call this…
FoxFi Android WiFi Hotspot App Now Available on Google Play!
It is very frustrating to be sitting with a WiFi-only device, a smartphone with loads of monthly data remaining and the capability to act as a hotspot, only to be thwarted for using the capability because your carrier wants you to sign up for a $20 monthly fee to use the hotspot … and you don’t want to pay. There have been numerous solutions to both tethering and hotspot creation, but most hotspot apps have required users to root their device, something which can have other unwanted effects (such as having to root in the first place).
FREE Readability Android App Launches on Amazon AppStore
Readability was a small app that hoped to make browsing the web better by making it a more simple and streamlined reading experience, but ended up gaining notoriety for publicly taking Apple to task for the in-app purchase revenue sharing system. Now the app has finally arrived on Android, and is launching exclusively on the Amazon AppStore for Android, and for FREE! The app has gotten solid early reviews, and is definitely worth checking out. Here is the overview: Read on Your Terms Readability turns any Web page into a clean view for reading now or later on your computer…
Stream Esperanza Spalding’s New Album ‘Radio Music Society’ on NPR Before Next Week’s Release!
With a ‘Best New Artist’ Grammy and the immensely critically and commercially successful (by jazz standards) ‘Chamber Music Society’ recording behind her, Esperanza Spalding faced the daunting task of producing a follow up. When I heard last year that the title would be ‘Radio Music Society’, I knew that she was shifting her focus from the ‘chamber jazz’ feel of much of her last outing to something more funky and pop-oriented. Of course, that direction can be a dangerous path – you can succeed, but you can just as easily alienate existing fans without making new ones. Fortunately, based on…
Get Your Geek On with the Unicorn City Trailer!
Every now and then you come upon a movie trailer that really gets at your inner geek … well, at MY inner geek anyway! This is one of those moments. I saw a blog post by Jay at Rampant Games about Unicorn City, and simply HAD to check it out!
Facebook Launches Timeline App Platform: Viddy launches Facebook App at SXSW!
Now that Facebook’s new Timeline feature has rolled out to the general public, companies are looking to find innovative ways to use it to provide services to users. Today at SXSW, Viddy in conjunction with Facebook’s launch of the Timeline App Platform is bringing their popular video app to Facebook. With Viddy for Facebook, users can share video content directly to Facebook, and Viddy videos can now appear on a person’s timeline, News Feed and ticker. As noted in the press release: “Watching videos with friends is inherently social,” said Justin Osofsky, Director of Platform Partnerships at Facebook. Viddy is…
Chilling New Home Video of the Challenger Disaster
I still remember sitting in the formal living room of my fraternity house watching the Challenger launch back in 1986 (hard to believe it has been 26 years now). If I had the chance to go to watch it live, I would have done it in a heartbeat – my family was vacationing in Florida a few years back, and the schedule was supposed to have us there for a launch, but it was pushed back. We still got to see the shuttle being moved towards the launch site, and that was thrilling to behold. But of course Challenger ended…
What’s My Heart Rate Measures by Just Looking at the Screen!
This morning I was feeling great after we got a lot of outdoor time and exercise due to the unseasonably warm weather this weekend, and I really pushed myself on my morning jog (based on my speed I can’t bring myself to call it a ‘run’), and so by the time I got home I was really winded. I checked my heart rate to be sure I was in my normal range before doing my indoor workout. Imagine if I could just check my heart rate anywhere I went using my smartphone and just having it look at my face!…
Really Cool Time Lapse Pregnancy Video Shows 9 Months in Under 2 Minutes!
I am really happy that I made my wife let me snap a couple of shots of her while pregnant with both of our kids. A couple of weeks ago when our ‘baby’ turned 14 we were flipping through and it was a sort of time lapse as we looked at my wife as she progressed and then the baby and our son as he grew. But this cool video shows the entire pregnancy from start to finish, one week at a time. It is amazing to watch the personal changes, the move from smaller to bigger space, and so…
Stream Vijay Iyer’s New Album ‘Accelerando’ on NPR Before Next Week’s Release!
While the collaborative recording Tithra didn’t quite make my ‘tops of 2011’ list, Vijay Iyer’s Historyicity remains one of the best recordings of the last five years and a personal favorite. So when I heard that Vijay Iyer’s trio was releasing a new album in early 2012 I got excited … and when I discovered that NPR was hosting the full record for streaming I was REALLY excited. And after listening … I am ecstatic!