Anyone who’s spent any time clicking randomly around YouTube will know that people are wont to post videos showing off their musical skills, be it their latest band video, the fact that they can play Pachelbel’s Canon really well, or just singing a few warbley notes in that horrid R&B “hunt-a-note” style that still seems so popular. (Mariah Carey has a lot to answer for…)

Imagine, then, that someone took the painstaking time to hunt down loads of videos on YouTube, and remix them into new coherent – and viable – musical entities. Brand new songs, composed of unrelated pieces of music, played across the globe by people who never met.

Imagine that this person cut together not one, but seven of these songs, and that they all work beautifully.

Imagine no longer. I stop talkee, you clickee watchee. It’s called THRU YOU, and it rocks my socks. (That link goes to track 3, which is my favourite, but you should really take the time to check them all out.)

–c.

Just now I discovered, entirely by accident (I was cleaning the glass while listening to Phill & Phil’s podcast), that while the phone is locked and you’re listening to audio, you can double-press the main button to access the ipod controls – volume, next, previous, pause – without unlocking the main phone.

It’s just a nice little tweak, and it’s stuff like that which keeps me in love with the thing.
–c.

–c.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wow.
–c.

Awesome?

–awesome.

What, that you say? The intro to Beethoven’s 5th? Computer says no.

It’s from a piece called “Gran Valse” by Francisco Tárrega, and it’s the tune that comes as the standard ringtone on Nokia phones. Yep, that one.

Bit dull, though, n’est-ce pas? Well not any more! Now you can download a short MP3 of me playing those 13 notes in a rock styley, and use that instead!

Rockia.mp3 [113Kb]

As always, you’re welcome.
–c.

Step 2: Go to moo.com and use your photos (imported from Flickr or uploaded or whatever) to design a box of 100 Minicards. I did 10 designs x 10 cards each, but you can have 100 different ones or all the same or any ratio you like.

Step 3: Put your contact details on the back as part of the design. Then order the cards. They cost £9.99 for a box of 100. Here are mine.

Step 4: Go to Muji – either in store or online – and buy a “Portable Ashtray” for £2.95. Here is mine.

Step 5: Wait for your cards to arrive, then put a few in the ashtray, which you will be overjoyed to discover is the perfect size. (Moo Minicards are an odd size and not at all compatible with regular business card holders). Here are mine.

Step 6: Bask in the wanton adoration of all around you.

–c.
PS. Other guides are around featuring other containers found in other countries. Starbucks chewing gum containers and Altoid mint containers have also been mentioned.

In 1989 I started playing electric guitar, having finally convinced my parents that I was serious about it and having received my first guitar (a Maya strat copy) for Christmas 1988. When asked I always say that I started playing because of Mark Knopfler. I was a huge Dire Straits fan for years, and while I was also into Brian May and Eric Clapton at the same time, it was Mark Knopfler who made me actually want to get up on a stage and play in front of people.

Similarly, when I first got online in 1997, it was the work of Derek Powazek that made me want to build websites. I built my first homepages very much in the mould of whatever he was doing at the time, I read his self-effacing journals (there was no such thing as blogging at the time) and his bleedingly honest stories in his storytelling site Fray. I submitted stories to Fray, and I even started a site called Interpret which was also driven by reader submitted works, and which won cool site awards back in the days when they meant something.

Then yesterday I was at the first day of the Future of Web Apps conference, and Derek was presenting a talk with Heather Champ (of Flickr, among others). I watched these two elegant eloquent San-Francisco-ites (they’re married, by the way – also I suspect that Heather is Canadian in origin, from her accent, but that could be wrong) talk passionately on the subject of web (and other) communities and I knew I had to go and be a fanboy.

After the talk we were hanging out waiting for the next session and the two of them wandered by so I ran over and buttonholed Derek (I must apologise profusely for effectively blanking Heather – I was in dribbling fanboy mode), telling him a shortened version of the first two paragraphs of this rambling post. He looked pleased to have made such an impact and asked me my name, so I told him, and he said “Oh, I know you, Clive – I thought you looked familiar!” He remembered me from my Fray submissions, and a couple of other vague contacts back in the day, and seemed genuinely happy to have made a difference to me.

It might not mean that much to most of you who read this, but believe me when I say that made my fucking month.

Colour me smiley.
–c.

—————-
Now playing: Whitesnake – Wings Of The Storm

Forget pirates – peep Time Traveler Day!

I told you I had an awesome for you.
–c.

First of all read this edition of that fantastic webcomic, XKCD.

Right – as I posted a while back, the numbers featured in the panel of that comic do indeed correlate to an exact geographical location and an exact time. The first two numbers are longitude and latitude, and they correspond to a street corner in the Somerville district of Boston – the corner of Dudley Street and Cedar Street to be exact.

The other numbers are 2007 09 23 14 38 00, which obviously translates to 2.38pm exactly on 23rd September, 2007 – which is this coming Sunday.

I personally cannot afford to fly to the USA this weekend to see what happens, but please – if anyone reading this is going to be in the area, or knows anyone who is, then please please please go there at the appointed time and report back to me on what happens and/or who is there.

For the record, the writer of XKCD is Randall Monroe and he looks like this:

If he’s there, tell him “Hi” from me.

–c.