Vigilante Parking Patrol!

Leslie showed me this site.  I love it!  If someone parks like an ass, now you can leave them a little citation with an explanation of what they did wrong.  It is so much nicer than dinging their door or letting the air out of their tires...

Apparently, though, some people who get these notes don't take it so well...

Time to fire up the printer!

Today I Learned... I have cancer!

Sure, most of these posts are nerdy, but this one certainly fits the category of something I learned today.

Rather than fill this blog up with details about it, though, we've started a new blog called the Mutant Kidney and you can read all about it there.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled nerdiness.

DeepRockDrive on TechCrunch

Our public launch is at CES next week. TechCrunch has picked up the story here.

Next week should be really a blast with a couple of good shows during CES.

The Maine on Tuesday at 8:00 PM Pacific
Big B on Tuesday at 10:00 PM Pacific
One Pin Short on Wednesday at 7:00 PM Pacific

Join us for the fun!

:)

Your love is like what?

Bon Jovi - Bad Medicine

When I first heard this song, I could've sworn they were saying:

Your love is like bad venison

And bad venison is what I need

I just checked and guess what, it still sounds like that.

Really!

Today I Learned... Tapioca Loaf

Tapioca Loaf.

That's actually a thing. It's sitting in our pantry.

Seriously.

A Christmas Milestone

Around Christmas time, the Seattle suburbs work to chase away to early darkness with lots and lots of Christmas lights. Most houses have some lights on them, and a few houses go all out with crazy amounts of lights and displays from the rooftops to the front lawn.

Each year, we like to take a drive in the evening around Christmas to just see all of the lights. This year was no different and last night, on Christmas Eve, we all piled in the car and drove around for about 30 minutes oohing and aahing at the neighbors work. There was one difference this year though - a difference that clearly marks a milestone in our Christmas tours and a big indicator that time is passing.

Kate drove.

Today I Learned... Norad Santa

For that last few years, we've occasionally kept a web page up on NoradSanta.org as they track the big guy across the sky on Christmas Eve. Today's Seattle Post Intelligencer has the back story on how a huge military site got involved in the annual radar tracking of Santa Claus.

The story is here though my favorite part was about the first phone call they ever received.

"The red phone rang," he says. That never happened, and it meant huge trouble. The red phone was the emergency line: It could only be his commander calling, or the Pentagon. "I picked it up and I said: 'Yes, sir? This is Colonel Shoup.' "

There was no answer for a moment. Then came the hesitant voice of a small boy. "Are you really Santa Claus?"

Shoup was taken aback. "I looked around my staff and I thought, 'Somebody's playing a joke on me. This isn't funny.' I said, 'Would you repeat that, please?' "

The boy asked again if he was Santa Claus. "I knew then that there was some screw-up on the phones."

There certainly was. A local Sears Roebuck store had advertised a Santa line, on which children could talk to the man himself as he prepared for his rounds. But the wrong phone number had been published. Instead of talking to a Sears volunteer, the child unwittingly got through to one of the most important lines in America -- and certainly to one of the most uptight men in the country that Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Today I Learned... Mac Mini Memory Enhancement

I'm going to be using some Mac Minis for running some parts of our shows. Since our animations are pretty busy, and the minis use a pretty low end video chip that uses system memory, I need to make sure there is plenty of memory on the machine, so I bought a Mini at the Apple store and then bought 3 GB of PC2 5300 667 memory and was met with the challenge of sticking said memory into said computer.

When Apple wants to make it easy to change memory, they do a beautiful job of designing their computers so you can put more memory in without using any tools. The Mac Mini is not one of those computers, though, and taking it apart is quite a challenge. Fortunately, there are a couple of good walkthroughs on the web of doing just that. The one at MethodShop is the most specific while the one at AppleFritter.com has plenty of nice pictures which help a lot when you're trying to figure out where that doo dad came from.

While they both cover the fact that you need to pop out the airport antenna to get at one of the screws, neither of them mention that if you aren't careful, the cable that connects that antenna to the motherboard will also pop off and there are no diagrams that show where it might have come from. Fortunately, I did find a picture that kinda sort hints at where it might go and I was able to re-attach it. A few minutes later and BING, I've got a 3 GB, 1.83GHz Mac Mini up and running.

Woo hoo!

Today I Learned... Artist focus

At DeepRockDrive, we are working on creating a very cool interactive experience between the artists and the fans who are watching on the web. Among other things, we have a feature called "Shout outs" which lets fan type a message to the artist and it shows up in the studio on a big screen with their username, picture, location and the message they typed. It is an amazing opportunity to say something to the artists you love and we've known for some time that between songs they read them and respond, but one thing I've wondered is whether the shout outs register with them during the song.

The answer, apparently, is yes! Last night, the Wylde Bunch played a show at DRD. They were awesome - think Earth, Wind and Fire for the 21st century. Tight and funky! They also did a great job of interacting with the fans through the shout outs.

After the show, I was talking with a couple of the guys in the band and I asked them what they thought and they really loved it. They wanted to keep on playing! When I asked if the shout outs registered while they were in the middle of the song he said "Definitely! I saw them coming up and it was great. It felt like the audience was right there! (points at screen)"

I always figured that these would register for many artists during the song, perhaps not with the same focus as between songs, but it was great to get that data point.

Awesome!

Today I Learned... Bozzio & Wackerman

I had no idea that Terry Bozzio and Chad Wackerman ever played together. This is awesome!



Terry's set is chromatic and diatonic - that is one huge kit!! You can actually get a better sense of it here.

And is Wackerman the best name for drummer or what?