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Music Diary, News & Features February 10, 2011

Music Diary Quickie: Attend the Worlds Largest Guitar Lesson with Steve Vai on March 3rd!

If you list out the most amazingly talented guitarists working today, Steve Vai is sure to be near the top of that list. Now look at the best places in the world to get a musical education, and you will certainly have Boston’s Berklee College of Music on your short list. Now Berklee and Steve Vai are teaming up to put on the ‘world’s largest guitar lesson’ on March 3rd. Check out the official site for more details, and if you are so inclined tune in and help them make history! I know I will be there with my kids!…

News & Features February 8, 2011

Roman Catholic Church Sanctioned Confession App Leaves Me Scratching My Head

I’m not a Catholic, however I can’t help but be fascinated by the church’s ~2000 year history. I’ve even attended a midnight mass or two on Christmas Eve with friends over the years, and I’ve got to tell you — for sheer pageantry, tradition and eye-candy, it is hard to beat a Roman Catholic service performed in a beautifully decorated cathedral complete with full portions spoken or sung in Latin; it’s really impressive. However there are rites and procedures expected by those practicing Catholicism that I don’t fully understand, and one of them is confession. From what I have observed…

Gear Bits, News & Features February 8, 2011

GD Quickie: It’s Getting to be THAT Time of Year

I keep professional contacts with loads of folks in different industries all over the country, and after a couple of years of them being divided between ‘I’m happy to still have a job’ and ‘oh crap, I no longer have a job’ … this is the first year folks are starting to discuss raises. Having talked to several people in the last few weeks I have found a few basic themes: there are ~1% companies like Google who are saying ‘we had a great year – here, have some money’. Then there are the companies that are still struggling –…

Gear Bits February 8, 2011

Grammar R Us: Facebook Drama Battles!

In a text I sent yesterday I inadvertently used ‘here’ when I intended ‘hear’ … but of course, once it is gone you can’t edit it! Now we have a Facebook battle celebrating an even more epic battle: the use of ‘your’ versus ‘you’re’. Just in case you were wondering … Emma has it right, and we love her for her patience and diligence trying to help her friend. Source: Buzzfeed

Gear Bits February 8, 2011

Here is Every Password You Will Ever Need!

Someone at Gear Diary recently had one of their personal accounts hacked, which should be yet another reminder to everyone that you never know when or why one of your accounts might get compromised. Last year I had an issue with my Facebook account, and several years ago my Steam account got hijacked. It can happen to anyone, anytime … but the passwords you use can help keep you more secure. Last week there was a interesting infograph about the 20 top passwords of all time. Here is a snip from the graph: Amusingly this week there was an article…

Gear Bits February 5, 2011

GD Quickie: Torture Your Cat? There’s an App for That!

photo credit: Trish Hamme Off&On/FlickringSlowly/ThankYou When my Siamese cat Shika was alive I would often play with her by shining a small flashlight on the wall in a dark room. Shika, always on the prowl, would then try to swat what she thought was a fly. I thought it was hilarious… My spouse found it less so. Well fast forward to A.i. (after iPad) and there is a whole new way to “play” with your cat. And we aren’t just talking house cats. No we’re talking king of the jungle cats.

Gear Bits February 4, 2011

GD Quickie: The Continuum of Caring

I just heard someone say ‘I could care less’ … and for some reason it drives me insane! So, as a public service I am putting this up as a reminder: ‘I could care less’ means that you could, in fact care less. I couldn’t care less, on the other hand … The image is one I always have at hand since I found it a long time ago … sort of like ‘Captain Obvious’ and the tin-foil hat ‘conspiracy’ guy.

Gear Bits February 3, 2011

GD Quickie: Politics and the Power of Image Cropping

What is going on in Egypt is powerful and scary stuff, and I don’t seek to demean it in any way. Nor do I seek to diminish or trivialize anything that happened or is currently happening in Iraq. However this contrast of images is simply stunning. The image above is a split of top down pictures of supposed ‘democratic revolutions’, one in Egypt right now, the other from 2003 in Iraq. In the upper left of the lower image we see the focus on the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein – this was the widely shown image at…

Gear Bits February 3, 2011

GD Quickie: Can You Guess Who Is Buying Google’s Priorities?

When I first heard that Google wasn’t going to auto-complete searches for Bit-torrents and other file sharing methods I was pleased. But then it became clear that it was less a matter of taking an anti-piracy stance, and more about satisfying the corporate interests of those who feed Google loads of cash. So this image was very telling – and it also shows where the priorities are at Google … if you have the cash, you get to set the moral compass. Source: Techi via Buzzfeed

Gear Bits February 2, 2011

GD Quickie: Yeah, it IS That Kind of Day!

For a large part of the country, this image pretty much sums things up. It is from the stretch of I-93 on the New Hampshire side – 93 runs from Southern NH straight into downtown Boston and is one of those infamously clogged highways. For more images, check out page at BuzzFeed!

News & Features February 2, 2011

Guns Don’t Save Lives; Skin Guns Save Lives

Now THIS is an amazing use of technology for good. Did you know that the current method of helping burn victims through skin grafts takes weeks or months to heal but that can be brought down to literally an hour? It’s true and a National Geographic program will focus on the innovation that makes it possible. The “Skin Gun” takes stem cells from a burn victim’s healthy skin (not the controversial kind) and mixes them with a solution that then allows doctors to literally spray new skin on. Apparently it is LITERALLY like spray painting but with a far more…

News & Features February 2, 2011

This Chair is More Comfortable Than a Barrel of Monkeys

What do you do when an old whiskey barrel has served it’s purpose and come to the end of life? Why, give it a new life of course. And that’s what the wine barrel chair. Over 99% of the chair comes from recycled/reused wine barrels. In fact, they even use the barrel straps in construction. How cool is that? As the designers explain, a work of art, each piece of the planet rooth barrelly made it line of furnishings is made by hand, by working artisians. every work of art is signed and numbered. Yes, for just $985 this chair CAN…

News & Features January 28, 2011

GD Quickie: Take a Moment to Remember the 25th Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster

Generally speaking, having ‘do you remember where you were when ___ ‘ moments tend to mark tragedies rather than triumphs. And that is certainly true today. I remember that I was completing a Master’s project and contemplating whether to head to work or become a permanent student and living in the fraternity house in January of 2006. We had moved the big TV to the living room in anticipation of the Super Bowl, and a bunch of us were huddled around to watch the Challenger launch. It was a light scene, quickly becoming confused and then quiet when it became…

News & Features January 26, 2011

Updating Your Home’s Furnishings? AUTUM Designs Has a Couch That Is “To Die For”

Apparently Dracula didn’t get the memo… Sleeping in a coffin is passe; it is old school and looks a bit silly. Seriously, in 2011 no self-respecting vampire would be caught alive sleeping in a coffin. Sitting in a coffin while you read, watch TV or chat with company however … now THAT is an entirely different story. Our friends at AUTUM, yes the same design outlet that brought us the AUTUM Straight Jacket sleeve for the iPad and the new MacBook Air, are doing a limited production run of what has to be the most unusual couch we have ever…

Gear Bits January 25, 2011

Borders Gives New Meaning to “Everything Must Go!”

I am going to say up front, I have no idea the circumstances under which this transaction took place…but in catching up with an old Borders co-worker, she mentioned that Borders apparently sold everything down to the studs when they closed down our old store. After exchanging a few jokes about who would want the café display case, she said she’d heard Borders sold a toilet seat and a urinal. Borders is so broke they sold someone a urinal. If that’s not a frightening sign, then I don’t know what is!

Music Diary January 22, 2011

Music Diary Notes: “Save Your Soul, Turn Off Your Gadgets”

Keith Jarrett was a great pianist of some renown before ‘The Koln Concert‘. But with that 70 minute solo recording he created one of the great works of modem music … and he did it all on the spot, fully improvised as he sat at the piano. It is a thing of beauty, and while Jarrett still performs improvised solo concerts, he has gained fame for the demands he exacts on his audience. In fact, just last weekend he walked off stage during a performance at Carnegie Hall … and it certainly wasn’t the first time. The culprits? Coughing and…

Editorials January 20, 2011

Texting Women Falls into Fountain … Ashamed? Of Course Not – She’s Suing the Mall!

Last week when a video of a woman falling into a fountain at a Pennsylvania mall showed up everywhere, it was interesting … especially since I first noticed it on Windows Phone Thoughts where it was highlighted as ‘Windows Phone 7 Ad Comes True’. Microsoft, you might recall, has a new phone generation out (you are forgiven if you missed it, and the 40 people who bought them will probably not notice), and their commercials show people completely immersed in their phones to the point of missing out on real life. Fortunately, you can immediately see that the person wasn’t…

News & Features January 15, 2011

The Internet Needs to Get a Sense of Humor … LOL

All over the internet yesterday there were mentions of Kanye West tweeting the above in reaction to Britney Spears new single “Hold It Against Me” holding the #1 spot on the pop charts this week. OK … now most normal people, regardless of their opinion of Kanye West (I think he is arrogant, self-important, self-absorbed and with way too high an opinion of his skills) should recognize this as a joke based on his now infamous rude upstaging of Taylor Swift at some generic awards show I can’t recall. Yet all over the place folks are getting their knickers in…

News & Features January 14, 2011

Extreme Fanboy (and Fangirl) Alert: Jedi Junkies Now on DVD!

I have written quite a bit about Star Wars, from games to movies to analysis of the prequels. And while I am a fan of the franchise, I would certainly not consider myself a fanboy. And certainly not an ‘extreme fanboy’. But I just got an email about the release of a DVD called ‘Jedi Junkies’, which chronicles some epic fans in their pursuits related to the film franchise. Here are some details: JEDI JUNKIES, the first documentary about extreme Star Wars fans, is now available on DVD effective TODAY, on Amazon. This fun, affectionate documentary profiles some of the…

News & Features January 14, 2011

The Real Crime of Wikileaks? Double Spaces Between Sentences!

A few weeks ago I saw a discussion online in a forum about whether you should use one space or two after a period before starting a new sentence. Apparently some folks felt very strongly that one was correct and two was wrong, while others felt very strongly that two was correct and two was wrong, and still others felt very strongly that the other two groups were getting seriously worked up over nothing. But in that same thread today someone pointed out an article at Slate that takes the issue to a whole new level. Here’s a fellow (Julian…

Events, Gear Bits January 14, 2011

Veruca Salt Had It Right!!!

Gear Diary, Today I was going through some of the pictures Francis took while we were at CES 2011 last week and I came upon one that captures the two words we “instant gratification-loving” tech bloggers like most…

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