sandwichesandapples

Really not good

Yummy

I was searching for the J. Geils Band’s “Come Back” video on YouTube and found this:

which I think is beautiful and a really interesting concept for a video/audio project. Turns out the creator of the video, gregbarrett9, has several videos like this showing his hacked jukebox simply playing records. It seems totally fun until you read this in his info:

Sorry but I can’t take any requests. Recently there have been copyright issues affecting other people who post records playing and I may find myself retricted to what I can upload in the future.

For Christ’s sake, this artful and free project isn’t hampering any artist’s ability to make money with his or her music and it is most likely exposing tons of new people to the music. (After all, had you heard J. Geils Band’s “Come Back” before playing that video?) It’s such a shame that creators like gregbarrett9 have to worry about this kind of issue.

I was just surfing idealist.org’s non-profit job listings which I do from time to time. I haven’t experienced this before but after “previewing” 3 listings, they required me to sign up to view more.

This is bad user experience. It pulled me out of what I was doing, reduced the hits on their website, sent me to my email for a confirmation, and finally led me to blog about the whole experience. I hate being required to sign up for information that really has no reason to be behind a login.

I quite literally laughed out loud when I read this. I hadn’t heard about this deal before but Dr. Pepper has promised to give every American a bottle of Dr. P should Guns ‘n’ Roses (read: Axl Rose and whomever he’s conned into playing his terrible songs) actually deliver their album before the end of 2008.

G’n'R (who bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual G’n'R which existed from 1986 – 1991) has supposedly confirmed a release date of November 23rd.

“We never thought this day would come,” the brand’s VP of marketing, Tony Jacobs, said. “But now that it’s here all we can say is: The Dr Pepper’s on us.”

I still don’t believe it’ll happen. But even if it does, stop calling it Guns ‘N’ Roses. It’ll confuse people into thinking they’re related to the real Guns ‘N’ Roses who made a pretty kick-ass album called Appetite for Destruction more than 20 years ago.

I was riding my bike home today — 5pm in the bike lane, busy traffic around me you know? Up ahead I could see these two kids waving signs and shouting on the curb. I couldn’t read the signs.

As I got closer one of them — 12? 14 maybe? — steps off the curb into the bike lane in my path. His sign — part of a brown cardboard box with text scribbled in ball point — read “Obama is a liar.”

“Liar!” he shouted as I approached. As I passed him I gave him the most sarcastic smirk I do and an ironic thumbs up. I think my meaning was clear: “whatever, dumbass.” He obviously got it because as I rode on I heard him mutter “asshole.”

I just didn’t think it was my place to say, “they’re ALL liars, kid. They’re politicians.” I’ll leave that to his parents.

I can tolerate the naïveté of youth, the cute belief that a politician from one of the two identical major parties will change things for the better. But I won’t stand for shrill children with bad penmanship. Upon them, one must sneer.

I was trying to find my IP address and a co-worker suggested I use: MoanMyIP.com. Brilliant. And quite NSFW.