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When He Goes To India For Six Months…

…his friends promise to have a six-month party in his absence.  This is the video that was waiting on his Playstation when he got home along with an instruction to “push play”.

(via MetaFilter)

Posted 24 March 2011 § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Lending Bodies To Books

This site is pretty cool – people place a book cover in front of themselves in such a way as to make their body part of the cover (for example, if the cover shows a face, it will appear to be their face.  Hmm, maybe instead of explaining it, you should just go look at it!)

 

Posted 23 March 2011 § Library § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Too Many Tabs Tuesday

  1. What Man Understands That He Is Dying Daily? – great carpe diem article about life, love and fatherhood (via RM Facebook post)
  2. The Economy of Cuba and Cuban Convertible Peso – insight into how the Cuban economy works
  3. 2011 : The Year of the Librarian – The Atlantic makes the connection at SXSW 2011
  4. Behind The Scenes at a Five Star Resort in the Mayan Rivieria – how do these mini-cities operate?
  5. Manage Blocked Sites With Google – in response to criticism about increasingly spam-filled results, Google now allows users to block certain domains and will use that crowdsourced info to improve results for everyone (via MetaFilter)
  6. Asians in the Library – not cool
  7. 40 Best Augmented Reality apps
  8. #higherstakeschildrensbooks – a trending Twitter tag the other day
  9. How Do You Accept That Some Things Will Never Change? – AskMetaFilter
  10. Mumpsimus – my new most favourite word!
Posted 22 March 2011 § Library § Politics § Technology ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , , ,

Music Monday – “And Sunday comes afterwords!”

Last Friday, I wrote about Chat Roulette Love Song which was the extremely successful proof of a guy’s Masters thesis on viral video.

Speaking of Friday, another recent viral video that blew up even bigger than Chat Roulette Love Song is the video for “Friday” by Rebecca Black which has gained over 30 million (!) views in about two weeks!

This one was a product of Ark Records, a company in Southern California which allows parents with a couple grand burning a hole in their pockets to have a song and video professionally produced for their child.  (Is that anything like my parents buying me a magnet with my name on it when I was a kid? ;-))

Originally coming into the spotlight via the web site of Comedy Central’s Tosh.O who labeled it as “the worst song ever” (and currently with 20 000 likes and nearly 200 000 dislikes on YouTube), it spread like wildfire across the Net with people debating its “merits” – is it cheesy or just good fun?  Lyrically vapid or no worse than any other pop song?  Auto-tuned to the extreme to cover an untalented singer or just reflecting modern pop sensibilities?

Beyond the enormous number of views, it’s had some other success – entering the Top 20 singles on iTunes, gaining some time on some morning talk shows and even helping provide justification for Ms. Black to make contact with the original tweener YouTube star, Justin Bieber (although the love wasn’t apparently reciprocated.)

(head over to MetaFilter to catch up on all the ins and outs)

 

 

 

Posted 21 March 2011 § MusicMonday § PopCulture § Technology § Uncategorized § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

2011 Havana Book Fair Tour for Librarians, Writers and Bibliophiles

I missed it this year but I think it’s an annual event so maybe I’ll get to the Havana International Book Fair someday?

Posted 20 March 2011 § Library § MemoryLane § Politics § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Saturday Snap – Varadero Beach, Early in the Morning

Our first morning in Varadero, Shea, Pace and I woke up early (well, we woke Mr. Sleepy Head up!) and made our way down to the beach which we ended up having pretty much to ourselves.  One of many special moments from our trip…

 

Posted 19 March 2011 § Family § SaturdaySnap § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Friday Fun Link – “At first I was just happy you weren’t another naked guy” – ChatRoulette Love Song

If you’re not familiar with ChatRoulette, read this old post first.

As I say in that post, a good portion of Chat Roulette’s participants appear to be young men looking to expose themselves to unsuspecting (although if you’re on ChatRoulette, it won’t take long to become “suspecting”) viewers.

Occasionally though, Chat Roulette breeds some incredible creativity – whether it’s a person doing mime for whoever pops up on his screen or someone creating ad-libbed songs or, as shown below, doing a full-on musical production (along with many customized live elements as the song goes on!) to “propose marriage” to an attractive young woman.

I gotta say, the first time I saw this, my “fake” radar started beeping like crazy – it was too intricate, too well-done, had too many customized elements.  I thought it was most likely some indie band trying to create a buzz video to help their career, like OK Go or Atomic Tom on the NY Subway.

But looking into it further, it appears to be totally legit and was created, with two months’ preparation by a Dane who did his Masters in Social Media with a focus on viral video who wanted to see if his theory could work in reality.

It obviously worked – as I type this, it’s over two million views on YouTube and growing!

(via MetaFilter which has lots of other speculation and insight.)

Posted 18 March 2011 § FridayFunLink § Technology § Video ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , ,

And Now A Message From Shane MacGowan…

…Happy St. Patty’s Day!

But as someone points out in the comments, “Shane will be drunk temporarily but the interviewer will be a twat forever.”  (Though that’s admittedly a pretty broad definition of “temporarily”!)

Ah well, he’s always been a gooder, addictions or no.

Posted 17 March 2011 § MemoryLane § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Movies That Are Better Than The Book?

We all know that most books are better than the movies that they inspire.  Books give much more depth and insight and allow you to actively create a world for yourself rather than having one created for you passively.

But a recent Reddit thread asking this question led me to do a general Google search which finds all kinds of places contemplating the question of which movies were actually better than the books they were based on.

Posted 16 March 2011 § Library § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

In More Cuban News, Alberto Granado Dies and Tourists Don’t Notice

We started to watch “The Motorcycle Diaries” the other night and a Google search during the movie ended up leading to the sad news that Alberto Granado, Che’s companion on the voyage that gave the book and movie its name, passed away in Havana during the time we were in Cuba.

He died on March 5 and we were in Havana on March 9 but Cuba doesn’t have newsstands on every corner, flashing billboards or street-mounted LCD screens so we didn’t realise this Cuban here had passed away until we got back to Canada (and to be fair, we may not have noticed even if they had.  Lots of times in Canada, if I miss the evening news on TV or don’t glance at the newspaper, I don’t catch some of the latest local happenings either.)

Posted 15 March 2011 § Politics ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,