The Year In Review

Lot's of blogs have a year in review best of type of post today.

I'm still working on mine.

What were your favorite posts?

I hope this is a good thing

Get Well Amelia

John Perry Barlow writes on his blog, A Tale of the Uh-Oh's: Amelia Takes A Fall

I got a phone call from Stephan Zaffalon, the sweet young Austro-Italian with whom my youngest daughter Amelia has been knocking around Europe for the last several weeks. Anxiety palpable in his soft voice, he said, "First, I must tell you that Amelia is ok." That didn't sound good. I had been assuming that Amelia was ok. To be told that she was forced me to the immediate conclusion that shortly before he placed this transatlantic call, she might not have been.

"Uh-oh," I said.

Get Well Amelia.
via [ Joi Ito ]

Smart Food

Explore The Science of Cooking.

The Office Meets The Simpsons

The Office's Ricky Gervais is writing an episode of The Simpsons, following an invitation from its creator Matt Groening.
via [ J-Walk ]

Donate

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Oxfam America.

Donate now, I just did.

Go Danny Go!

NBC announces identities of 'The Apprentice 3' contestants:

Danny Kastner, a 39-year-old marketing technology firm owner from Boston, Massachusetts. Danny grew up in Cleveland where he left high school early to accept an academic scholarship to Cleveland State University. After earning his BA, Danny's creativity began to drive his academic and professional direction. He completed graduate coursework in music composition at Boston University, where he later joined the faculty, and studied at MIT's famed Media Lab. Danny's vision for combining art with commerce led him to develop several successful media and technology ventures. He is the founder, CEO and chief visionary for POPstick, a leader in innovating new media technologies. When Danny is out of the boardroom, he can be found writing and performing rock operas and symphonies. His musical talents have earned him four national composition awards.

Danny is cool because he wears his tie inside his collar instead of outside. I hope he stays in the show for a long time.

I'm in BusinessWeek

Heather Green writes in BusinessWeek, Let a Million Videos Bloom Online:

EVOLVING CONNECTIONS.
In Boston, Steve Garfield is practicing his own brand of citizen journalism.

His video reports at stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog are as local as they come, ranging from coverage of this summer's Democratic National Convention to a video of a downed power line on his street. At human-dog.com, run by Chris Weagel, a St. Clair Shores (Mich.) video producer, visitors can watch a spare, silent film showing an anonymous person removing a John Kerry yard sign from its metal posts after the Presidential election and taping an upside-down flag in its place.

Ryan Hodson, a 25-year-old film editor, specializes in videos that mingle the absurd with oddly touching insights. In one clip, she tours her house. In the kitchen, the camera focuses on a pot on a stove as Hodson describes the night her roommate tried to cook Dinty Moore Stew without -- as the camera pans up to recreate -- pouring the food out of the can. In another video, she created split-screen montages of her brother racing bicycles, showing him crashing, and then out ahead of the pack.

The trio are among the pioneers spearheading a fast-evolving grassroots movement. It's an amazing process to watch as creative pockets begin to interact around the country. Garfield, Hodson, and Weagel are all part of a Yahoo! (YHOO) group dedicated to video blogging that was formed in June by Jay Dedman, a New Yorker who works at a public-access TV station.

This is very exciting.

Join us.

Start your own blog today.

Learn how to make a video blog.

server-error-service-unavailable

In Mac OS X 10.2.X if you get the error message server-error-service-unavailable when trying to add a printer, here's how to fix it!

SOLUTION:
Create a New Folder on the desk top by pressing Shift+Command+N.
Rename the folder cups.
Click Go in the menu bar then Go to Folder
Enter /var/spool
If there is a cups folder, drag it from the folder and into the trash (if there is no folder, go to Step 6).
Hold down the Command key as the folder is dragged out of the finder window. Release the Command key as the folder is about to be deposited in the trash. This removes the need for authentication.
NOTE: You must be an administrative user whoever for this function to work
If there was no cups or you removed it, drag the new folder into the /var/spool finder window, authentication might be required.
Reboot the Mac
Open the Hard Drive and go to Applications, Utilities and open Disk Utility.app
Select Partition in use
Select the First Aid tab.
Press the Repair disk permissions button and allow it to complete.

Worked for me!

Get the record albums out of the garage

Dylan got a record player for Christmas.

She's an 11 year old video blogger, so she can show it to you.

Eugene is #84

Whitney Matheson gives us her list of the top 100 people of 2004:

84. Eugene Mirman. In an ideal world, Eugene would become the next Seinfeld, dominating airwaves with his deadpan humor (it doesn't get any funnier than drugs and death and sex and children!). For now, though, I'm content with a couple comedy shows a year and the occasional rerun of the Cartoon Network's Home Movies, on which Eugene voices a Russian kid named, simply, Eugene.

Eugene's on Conan tonight!

Other notables:
99. Aamer Haleem.
75. Ellen DeGeneres.
69. Regis Philbin.
34. Amy Poehler.
29. Lindsay Lohan.
7. Natalie Portman.
5. Zach Braff.
via [ Rick Jenkins ]

Waiting

Lauren Feldman is featured in this video I edited from footage that was shot by Mark Wuerthner.

The concept and design was initially used for an orginal video by Adam Grinovich called Looking Glass.



What does it mean? you ask.

Hey, it's art!

Earlier this year I was working at MoovLab Boston, producing videos for VOOM's MOOV channel. ON the VOOM network everything is in HD.

The MOOV channel was an arts channel that was like, dare I say it, video wallpaper. Everyone's idea of what is art is different. When I first walked though the door I had my own ideas as to what was art and at the end of my time there, my definition had expanded to include everything.

Part of my job was to digitize the HD footage as part of the process of putting together half-hour segments for broadcast. As I was going through the source tapes of this shoot, I was mesmerized by Lauren. So I took the footage and edited my own piece. Adam liked it an gave me his permission to post this remix of his original idea. He said:

It looks great, I love it, totally changed the feel and pace of the whole thing, real masterful.

Thanks Adam.

Bank of America: Making it harder

Dear Bank of America,
It's nice to see all your pretty red signs go up all over town. You sure can't miss your ATM locations!

One thing I'm not happy with is your change to my ATM Fleet Cash feature. It's not fast anymore.

The way it used to work is that I could key in my PIN # and press the Fleet Cash button from the ATM login screen. Money, cash and a receipt would pop out and I'd be on my merry way. The amount of money that popped out was set by me ahead of time.

Now you've done away with a user defined amout. You must log in, select Fast Cash, press the amount you'd like to withdraw, and if the amout you'd like is not listed, you have to push 'other' and then enter your amout and 'enter'.

So a step that used to take the press of one button, now takes many more steps.

The Fleet Cash feature that allows Fleet customers to withdraw a single, preset amount of money from ATMs will be renamed Fast Cash, and will give you the option of withdrawing several preset amounts.

Please bring back 'Fleet Cash' and while you're at it, let us buy stamps at the ATM again.

Sincerely,
Steve Garfield

Shoveling

We got a foot of snow overnight, so I'm off to shovel it all in the -1 degree RealFeel temperature.

Faster Internet Browsing

How to speed up Firefox.
via [ Adam Curry ]

Shopping

Best Bartender in Boston!

Last night we went out for an early dinner at Smith & Wollensky. Whoa! That place is nice.

We sat at the bar and were served by Michael and another bartender, who I think was Christy. We had the best time.

First of all, The National Scrabble Championship was being rebroadcast on ESPN. How lucky can you get?

We ordered a few drinks and split a meal. A salad split in two was huge! We had hte special house salad which included those cute little pear shaped tomatoes, potato croutons and warm mushrooms. Hello?

The bread basket had to be the best bread basket ever delivered. In addition to an amazing flat bread, and warm Irish Bread, they had pretzel bread! Yup. Soft, warm, and salty pretzel bread. The mustard butter that you spread on that really topped it off nicely.

After eating all this I was thinking about cancelling the dinner. Not.

Then we had a split filet.

After we were done, I asked Michael if he was the best bartender in Boston. He said that actually he was voted as the best in boston for something like five years in a row. We asked him how they decide these things and he told us that there is a ballot in the last Improper Bostonian magazine. There's a link on the Improper Bostonian Home Page.

I'm off to vote for Michael! If you end up at the Smith & Wollensky bar, tell Michael that Steve sent you.

Better than your average brand?

Superbrands.

Merry Christmas: Magic Dust For Everyone

Believe it or not, I am posting this from my PowerBook!

Santa must have visited overnight and sprinkled some magic dust around here.

Last night, as per the instructions over at the .MAC support page, I booted up my Mac in Single_User Mode and went into UNIX and moved over my /SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist and /com.apple.loginwindow.plist to *.old

Not something your average Mac user should ever have to do. I've used UNIX before so it wasn't a big deal to me, but if my mom had to do it, it'd be a big deal. I've still got to talk her through Repairing Disk Permissions. That really should be part of the upgrade procedure automatically, if as I hear, it's a required step before and after upgrading.

So this morning I turned on the Mac nad it booted up, so I ran MacJanitor and Repaired Disk Permissions.

Based on what I read in the .Mac forums I changed my Internet Connection from Automatic DHCP to Manual and plugged in the correct IP Address, but then the internet wouldn't work, so I had to change it back.

I'm going to rest easy and enjoy the day.

I hope everyone gets some magic dust of their own. ;-)

Losing my religion

Maybe losing all my bookmarks, subscriptions and RSS feeds is a good thing.

I'm sitting here this morning, visiting a few of my favorite web sites. When I get there, I save the bookmark. Then I take a look at their favorites and see a few of mine. So, I go visit and save a few more bookmarks.

Now I've started to set up a few folders for my favorite bookmarks. There's News, Blogs, Video, Macintosh, and TV and Radio. But wait, I really should be saving these site's RSS feed to add it to my feedreader. Going to a web site to read it is so 2004. Ha!

But not really. I enjoy viewing the sites, with all their happy holiday graphics.

Tabbed browsing allows me to automatically open up all my favorite sites, yet RSS feeds allow me to see only those sites that have been recently updated. Hmm. A dilemma.

I guess I'll set up just a few of my favorites in my feedreader. Btter yet, maybe I'll finally start using and do it all online.

All is not lost

I had to reinstall my Mac Operating System yesterday.

Now my custom desktop and all my document folders are missing.

Do you know how to help me get back, get back, get back to where I once belonged?

When I reinstalled the OS, I had to create a new user. This new user can see all my applications, but has no access to my old settings for my desktop or document folders.

My next step is to use MacBackup to get all my backed up information, but I was wondering if there's an easier way.

I'm on WZBC 90.3 today

I'm on WZBC 90.3 today from 3-5 PM. Tune in to hear some new music. There's an internet stream too.

Two Straws

My Mom likes using two straws.

Blogging is so 2004

James Lileks writes, The Blog of the Year, or the Year of the Blog?:

In a sense, blogging is so 2004. The next big thing will be videoblogs. You can fit a rudimentary TV studio in a suitcase -- a laptop, a camcorder, a few cables, and a nearby Starbucks with Wi-Fi you can leech onto to upload your reports. This too will be good. One hundred thousand pairs of eyes looking high and low, versus CBS' staring monocular orb. We'll all turn to the nets to see what they think we should think. And then we'll hit the blogs for the rest of the story.

Start videoblogging.

Bellissimo

"Bellissimo" is the latest single to be taken from Ilya's debut album They Died For Beauty which is to be released on March 1st on Virgin Records.

The video is a short film directed by The Guard Brothers and stars Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) and features him racing across London during rush hour to meet his girlfriend who is on her way back from Paris. This is a beautiful and well produced film and is one of the best videos we've seen in a long time.

2004 -- the year bloggers made a difference

Bloggers, Citizen Media and Rather's Fall -- Little People Rise Up in 2004.

Paula was Maude

I went to a funeral today for Paula Schultz, the sister of my best friend, and heard an amazing tribute by a young cousin, Brett.

He spoke of their relationship as being like that of Harold and Maude. It was their favorite movie to watch together. Brett talked about how Paula lived each day at a time and always looked to help others.

That speech, at that moment, was so real. It's moments like that that Jay wants to capture in video blogs.

I spoke to Brett later and found out that he didn't even write it beforehand. It was in inspiring moment.

On the way up to the funeral I listend to Adam Curry's most recent podcast through my iRock, which plays the iPod on the car radio. It started getting static. How could an iPod get static? It was the station I was tuned to, 88.1 A local college radio station was cutting in.

So here's an audio post, made this afternoon about all that.

Reality TV - Not Real: Part IV

Professor Eric from The Real Gilligan's Island speaks out:

He also reveals behind-the-scenes secrets. For example, he says that when Skipper Jim collapsed during the first challenge, "I specifically asked 'can we go back' but a producer said no and told us to finish. They filmed the 'victory' celebration 8 times, against our protests."

Hmm.

I wanna believe!

Playlist Community

Eric Rice just said that Webjay is back online, so I went over to try it out.

I listened to Hideout Show 2 for free.

Pretty cool.

Podcasting in Japan

In Japan, the term used for podcasting is dedio (pronounced as DIGIO) which is somewhat of a rewording of digital radio.

via Dennis A. Amith of Metro Media Complex via [ Yahoo! Podcasters Group ]

IM Session: How to start a blog

Chip (12:32 PM): i thought you'd be the best person to ask about starting a blog!
Steve Garfield (12:32 PM): I am
Steve Garfield (12:32 PM): shoot
Chip (12:33 PM): ok
Chip (12:33 PM): where do i start?
Chip (12:33 PM): is it easy to upload images and video?
Steve Garfield (12:33 PM): do you have a hosting service
Chip (12:34 PM): not any more
Steve Garfield (12:34 PM): ok so there are a few options
Steve Garfield (12:34 PM): if you want to try out a blog for free you can go to blogger.com
Steve Garfield (12:35 PM): then you can use a free web app to load images and post them to your blogger blog
Steve Garfield (12:35 PM): flickr.com is a great way to do that
Chip (12:35 PM): cool
Steve Garfield (12:35 PM): then when you want to host video, you'll need to decide where, archive.org is a free place for video
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): and they are going to be coming out with a new url for video ourmedia.org in the next few months
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): so that's the free way of testing the waters
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): other things to consider would be typepad.com
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): and blogware.com
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): those cost money and I use both of them too
Chip (12:37 PM): damn, you're good
Steve Garfield (12:37 PM): clear and consice
Chip (12:37 PM): you saved me many hours of surfing

Virtual Band Needs Drummer

MyVirtualBand.com Takes Open Source Music to the Next Level:

MyVirtualBand.com has launched a new service that allows musicians to write and record songs over the internet through "virtual bands." By swapping recorded audio tracks of original instrument and vocal parts, MyVirtualBand.com projects are created from the ground up as open source, continually evolving songs with an emphasis on online collaboration.

via [ bifurcated rivets ]

Blogs: Not Person of the Year

Blogs weren't named Time's Person of the Year, but they did teach us some things.

Time Magazine: 10 Things We Learned About Blogs.
via [ blogumentary ]

An unsolicited commercial love

Rob from Cockeyed.com found a Love Story in his inbox.

Podcasting Article in Boston Globe

Peter J. Howe wrote up a nice article on Podcasting in today's Boston Globe, Computer, microphone, iPod make broadcasting personal.

Peter interviewed me for the story and writes:

''The cool thing about podcasts is I listen to them when I want to," said Steve Garfield, 46, a video producer and editor from Jamaica Plain who has tuned into a podcast called ''Trade Secrets" since it went live on Sept. 1. The show is co-produced by Adam Curry, a former host on the MTV music video channel, and Dave Winer, a software developer who has produced a Google-style search engine called iPodder. Winer's service not only tracks down podcasts, it arranges for new ones to be automatically syndicated to listeners' devices, which can just as easily be personal computers as iPods.

Garfield loves loading up his iPod, before taking a long walk around Jamaica Pond, with the latest edition of ''The Dawn and Drew Show," the real-life and often off-color bantering of a husband and wife in rural Wisconsin. He also likes downloading one of the few mass-market shows now being podcast, ''Morning Stories" on Boston's WGBH-FM public radio station.

A couple of points in the artcle should be clarified, I really said that I've listened to the 'Daily Source Code" since it's first podcast, August 13, 2004.

Dave's iPodder.org page isn't a search engine, it's a resource page for the ipodder platform and provides links for downloading the iPodder application and a podcast directory. His http://audio.weblogs.com/ lists the last 100 podcasts.

iPodderX is a podcast receiver and directory.

You know, it would be nice if the Boston Globe made the links in their stories clickable.

I sent an email to Peter and he replied:

I am sorry I botched the name of the show to which you listen. Also trying to explain ipodder to a non-hip non-with-it readership ...

The web page to which I was referring I think got mangled by the editors

This is the thing I was calling a pseudo-Google of podcasts:

http://ipodderx.com/directory

That's reassuring.

Boston's Top 10 - 2004

My Top 10 Local Songs of 2004.

WZBC DJ Top 10s of 2004.

A couple of videos

City Jumping. [ Video ]

Baby Ballet. [ Video ]

Whatever floats your logo

The Floating Logos project is inspired by signs perched high atop very tall poles so that they may be viewed from a long distance away. When standing next to these poles, the signs loom over us in such a way that we must crane our necks to see them. The elimination of the poles helps to accentuate the ominous feeling of being beneath these signs as well as serve to disconnect the signs from the ground and reality.

via [ Bifurcated Rivets ]

Penguin Diving

Happy Holidays From Macromedia.
My penguin's best dive was a 26.1 ( Height 9.4, Rotation 6.7, Dive Entry 10 )

Rotating is fun and Dive Entry is hard.

Hi, This is Millie

I helped my mom set up her answering machine.

Here's a video of her new outgoing message: Hi, This is Millie.

Rocketboom Delivers

Today's Rocketboom video shows us what's going to happen when all our personal information gets stored in a central government matrix, and the local Pizza Palace has access to it.

Ape people with iChat

Chuck is excited about what Jay Dedman did last night on Manhattan Neighborhood Network:

He summoned a handful of vidblogger brethren to the teevee via iChat.

I don't know why this is so exciting. I mean, really it's like videoconferencing. But it feels like we're ape-people stumbling into a pile of polaroid cameras and cell phones, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is blaring out of an iPod somewhere, and we just start freaking out.

That's what it looked like to us apes at home.

Get me 1,000 DVD's

Discmakers - online short-run CD-DVD duplication and more.

Mashing for Beginners

Phillip Meehan shows you how to mash-up:

The term "mash-up" or "bootleg" (or, more commonly, just "boot") describes the result of mixing together two or more records to create a whole new track. Though originally performed live using turntables and DJ mixers, recent advances in sequencing software have taken this art-form to a whole new level. This document outlines how mash-ups can be made using the software package Tracktion.

Here's his mash-up of Frozen - Madonna, Hot in Here - Tiga and I'm a Slave 4U - Britney Spears.
via [ del.icio.us Jared Dunn ]

Dead air, um, dead air

an email from strongbad about radio.

A Mac Specialist's Essential Software

Apple-centric Adam Jones has created a list of Essential Mac Applications for you.

I gotta have more cowbell!

The Cowbell Project.

SNL Behind The Music: Blue Oyster Cult transcript.

Bruce Dickinson: I'll be honest.. fellas, it was sounding great. But.. I could've used a little more cowbell.

Confessions of an Indiegirl

Listen to Bari Koral's new single Aspiring Angel [ mp3 ] for free!
via [ Adam Curry's Daily Source Code ]

Coffee?

Rocker by Alter Ego: Music Video [ QuickTime ]

Meet Boston Bloggers on Wednesday Night!

December Boston Blog Meetup:

When:
Wednesday, December 15, 7:00 PM

Where:
Grendel's Den
89 Winthrop Street Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA

What:
Join fellow Boston area webloggers for conversation, food and drinks.

WSJ plagiarizes Time?

Rob Sama sent me an email saying that John Fund is talking about me in WSJ.com's OpinionJournal article, How Daschle Got Blogged:

Technology is moving so fast that there are now a growing number of video bloggers, or "vloggers," who look toward the day when they can produce original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable channels. Dan Rather may have done more than legitimize the blogging community with his scandal. He may have helped accelerate a radical decentralization of media power that will turn bloggers into future anchors of their own mini-news programs.

Hmm. That does sound familiar.

So I looked up the Time Magazine article that mentioned me:

"Garfield belongs to a small but growing legion of video bloggers, or vloggers, who are turning the Web into a medium in which someday anyone could conceivably mount original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable outlets."

I submitted a comment on their web page asking about this similarity.

Let's see if they post it and a response.

The Continuum

You start out as a watcher, then become a learner, then a producer and finally a teacher.

Crossing the Digital Divide

Digital Divide Network website:

An interactive online community featuring an array of interactive collaboration tools to help digital divide activists around the world to work together. DDN offers its members free blogging, news and articles on the digital divide, event announcements, discussion boards and other tools. Membership is free and open to anyone interested in bridging the digital divide.

Sunflowers

This online Van Gogh Gallery has it all.

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers is my mom's favorite.

We used to have a copy hanging in our living room.

Imogen Heap is singing new song

Imogen Heap - Goodnight and Go [ mp3 ]
Exclusive pre-release download
Price: £0.79 GBP (Approx $1.50)

What is cool about this is that she's selling the song directly from her own website.

"Goodnight and Go" (Sample Clip)

Here's what Imogen says about it:

This song was featured in the OC on 9th Dec...You'll hear some crazy guitar from the middle section to the end...that's my mate Jeff (Beck!). He came into my studio in the last few frantic days of me finishing the album. I just HAD to get him on there somewhere! He's totally amazing....

Imogen Heap is my favorite artist. I am so looking forward to her new album when it comes out next year. This track is amazing as is Imogen.

You might have heard her song Let Go on the soundtrack from the movie Garden State.

Imogen Heap's album Details at amazon.com

Zach Branff's Garden State Blog.

Just Kick It!

Mark St. Amant writes in today's Boston Globe Magazine, Semi-tough:

I'm 37, short, out-of-shape, and happily married. Never did I imagine that trying out for a semipro football team in Boston would lead to the most unlikely bonds among young and not-so-young men -- black, white, and Hispanic, struggling and successful, from Beacon Hill to Roxbury, all still clinging to their dreams.

Join or Die!

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

In a groundbreaking book based on vast new data, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures-- and how we may reconnect.

Putnam says, "Joining one group cuts your odds of dying over the next year in half."

What? No Roulette!

This is how mad I was after I found out that there wasn't any roulette at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood Florida yet. They are working out the legal issues to try and get roulette set up.

There's no blackjack either.

The slot machines are funny too. The don't accept coins nor return them when you cash out. The machines accept $1 - $100 bills. When you cash out, the machine makes a coins hitting the coin tray noise, but a paper receipt prints out.

Another funny thing is that when you go to a 5 cent slot machine, the minimum you can play is 9 coins so it's actually a 45 cent slot machine! False advertising I'd say.

Dimebag Darrell's guitar

Dimebag Darrell's guitar displayed in the middle of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood Florida. People are already leaving rememberances....

Going to Hollywood

I'm going to going to Hollywood... Hollywood, Florida that is.

There's a new Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Florida near Ft. Lauderdale.

When I was in Las Vegas, I liked the Hard Rock Casino best because of their casino music.

Have you every actually listened to casino music? It's usually bad elevator music.

But not in the Hard Rock. They play hard rock! Ha Ha!

I'll be over at the Roulette table if you want to come by and say hi.

Steve Garfield's How to win at roulette
1. Leave the table when you're ahead

It works!

Scotch Egg

Ricky Gervias explains what a Scotch Egg is.

He also explains tons of other things we don't understand.

Home Delivery

Home Delivery [ QuickTime ]
I was down in Florida with my mom, getting her all set up in her condo for the winter.

Her car was being shipped down, but had not arrived yet, so we ordered out for food.

My idea.

She had NEVER ordered out for food before.

Here's what happened...

This site is dirty

Here's an audio post from outside Panera Bread, using their free WiFi, telling you that I can't access my own site because their filter thins it's dirty.

Hanukkah Unwrapped

My mom schedules Hanukkah at her convenience. So we got together on Sunday.

When I was little, I used to get eight presents, one for each night of Hanukkah.

We don't do that anymore. We've pretty much done away with giving each other big gifts. Now we just exchange fun little gifts.

One of the things that we always do is try to guess what's in the package before opening it.
Back when we used to give lots of presents, I was like a genius at guessing. We used laugh so hard at how I guessed what was inside the gifts.

We still try and guess. Mom mom had a lot of fun opening her gifts this year.

Take a look at the video. [ QuickTime 8.46 MB ]

Hanukkah presents unwrapped by my mom to the music of Oy To The World, A Klezmer Christmas.

Thanks again to Paul Libman of Libman Music for allowing me to use this song in my video.

Broadcasting from KMTZ

Over at the Negativland website, I happened across this slide show of The Weatherman.

This is the best slide. ;-)

I'm heading out to the Coolidge Corner Theatre tonight to see their movie, Adventures in Illegal Art.

Democracy Now!

Democray Now! provides an alternative to big media.

On today's show, they interviewed independent reporter Dahr Jamail from Baghdad.

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches.

Adam has a new logo

If you're not listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code you're falling behind in the search to define the future of radio.

Cool music videos

Anyone can sign up and post links to cool music videos at videos.antville.org.

Hanukkah Wrapping

Watch this Video - Hanukkah Wrapping [ QuickTime 8.5 MB]

For Windows or Real Media versions, click here.

In this video, I'm happily wrapping my mom's Hanukkah presents to the music of Oy To The World, A Klezmer Christmas.

Thanks to Paul Libman of Libman Music for allowing me to use this song in my video.

My Mom's Blog - at 79 years young, the Internet's oldest blogger.

Wil Wheaton - Just A Geek.

Free Speeches: John Perkins

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:

John Perkins was recruited in the late 1968 by the National Security Agency, while he was attending business school at Boston University. From 1971 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm “Chas T. Main.” He is the author of the new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Mr. Perkins has been working on this book for the past two decades. Until recently, Mr. Perkins says he’s been holding back from publishing this book because of very convincing incentives to refrain from doing so. For example, he says, “I accepted a half a million dollar bribe [from Stoner-Webster] in the nineties not to write the book.”

In the book, he writes, “The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldos and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.”

The Lucky Corner Game

I just watched my friend Amy Carpenter's video The Lucky Corner Game [ QuickTime ].

You can see all her videos here.

Ryan's Excited

An internet video blogging superstar is born.

Ryan's got a new videoblog post up on her site.

It is sooo funny.

Jay liked it too.

Hey! She's got three more videos up.

She should be the first person ever given a raise for videoblogging on her job.

Flickr Video

Interview with Caterina Fake from Flickr:

Do you plan to support video in the future?
We would like to support short-form video — like the kind of video you can take with your digital camera.

Cool.

Boing Boing Web Stats

Boing Boing Web Stats.
13 million pageviews and 469.29 GB bandwidth last month.
via [ Richard MacManus's Hotlinks ] who found it at [ waxy.org ]

Free WiFi

Metro FreeFi is a site listing free wireless hotspots.

Plus you can download the list of sites to your iPod.

Quick Search Hint: Panera Bread has 490 WiFi enabled stores.
via [ Nedward ] by way of [ Universal Hub ]

Miss Belgium for Miss World

My vote goes to Miss Belgium, Ellen Perti for Miss World.

Miss Romania, Adina Maria Cotuna was also in my short list.

C. Monks is having his old pair of swin trunks decide.

TiVo-b0rking

I've started a new weblog called TiVo-b0rking, to fight the injustice of TV networks lengthening shows by one to two minutes, in order to screw up viewers' TiVo recordings.

Podcasts are getting icons

Podcast icons: what's available.

Students say No to 4 More Years of War

STUDENTS SAY NO TO 4 MORE YEARS OF WAR
Sat., Dec. 4th: Citywide Youth March & Rally, 1pm

Democracy is in the streets!
Saturday, December 4th: Citywide Youth March & Rally
1:00 Gather at Boston Common Bandstand
2:00 Street March to Copley Square to say:

* 100,000 Iraqis and 1000 Americans dead is 101,000 too many *
* Bring Our Troops Home Now * Stop the Bombings * No Draft, No Way *
* Education, Not Empire * Military Off Campus * Save Our Civil Liberties *

Initiated by the Boston Student Mobilizing Committee to End the War

(Boston College, Brandeis, Boston University, Commonwealth HS, Harvard, MIT,
Mount Holyoke, Northeastern, Suffolk, Tufts, UMass-Boston & others)

Justice with Peace
International Action center - Boston

Howard Zinn and Chuck Turner to speak at youth antiwar rally.

As your friend I insist - It's time to get a TiVo

TiVo just sent me an email saying that I can get points toward prizes if you enter my email address when you activate your TiVo.

So if you are getting a TiVo, please enter my email address shown below, so I can get a second TiVo for my other TV.

Once you try it, you'll never go back.

TiVo changed my life.

Clinton's Final Days - The Movie

You know how when you're President of the United States, and your term is almost over, and you want to leave something behind?


Bill Clinton left us this, never before seen by me, movie: Clinton's Final Days. [ QuickTime ]

Hilarious, irreverent disco party funk

Needy Girl - Music Video [ Quick Time ]

Needy Girl [ mp3 ]

Chromeo - Vice Records website.
via [ This is a Gang ]

Why do they blog?

Why Do We Blog?
via [ Joho the Blog ]

World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else by Doc Searls and David Weinberger.

Mission 2008: Galapagos

If you go to MIT these days, your classes are like "The Apprentice". This semester: Trying to save the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. (MIT subject 12.000 - Solving Complex Problems) Fall 2004.

Two teams of student's Final Presentations will be broadcast tonight at 7:00, on the web.

Review the details of the students' final websites from Mission 2008 from Las Iguanas Section and from Las Tortugas Section. These websites embody a semester of work.

The Kennedys

"Cape Code Summer" Jackie in Hyannis Port, August 1960, by Jacques Lowe.

Sotheby's, Property from Kennedy Fammily Homes.

Some people have too much time on their hands

I've always hated that phrase. I'd re-phrase is as, "Some people have time on their hands to be creative."

From the results of my Google search for "Some people have too much time on their hands", here are the best links:

Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow.
via [ style.org ]

Escher's "Relativity" in LEGO®
via [ Dean's World ]

24 Season 4 Trailer: Instinct Never Dies. [ QuickTime ]
via [ 24 Weblog ]

From The Pastor's Corner With Dr. Andrew Miller: Paedobaptism Is Wack.

I dropped by our main auditorium yesterday while taking a much-needed respite from some vexing research into the history of Baptist succession, vis-à-vis Waldensian protoanabaptism, to investigate Pastor Fred Hoskins' Cinco de Mayo party, which had attracted quite a few curious people from the local Catholic community seeking to learn more about Jesus. Besides wanting to sate my hunger with some corn chips and avocado dip, I was also curious to hear what sort of music Fred had lined up.

Please go read the whole post.

A very well done parody.

The Bible in Lego.
via [ Pointless and Absurd ]

Record Breaker

Non-Event & the Berwick Research Institute are pleased to present the Boston-area debut of acclaimed UK sound artist, Janek Schaefer:

Using custom built record players and variety of other devices, Schaefer explores the spatial and architectural aspects of sound, as well as the twisting of technology. His work incorporates a hybrid of analog and digital techniques, combining field recordings with live, modified vinyl and found sounds to create evocative and involving environments. His self-invented Tri-phonic Turntable is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "World's Most Versatile Record Player."

Janek also has the world record for most records broken in 30 seconds!