Exactly this awesome:

1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. (if you don’t have it, here’s an online photo editor: pixlr.com/)

5 – Post it to FB with this text in the “caption” and TAG the friends you want to join in.

My result:

Get Carried Away Should Be

Thanks to Jordan, Wikipedia, and Flickr User Dalla* for giving me the most fun I’ve had on Facebook in a long-ass time.

I’m thinking of doing one of these a day for a week. Or a month. Or a year. SO MUCH FUN!

PS: I linked to Jordan’s website three times now cause it’s new and awesome. And he’s one of the best web designers I know. So for the seven and a half of you that read this website, check him out

I chalked most of that up to having A) a TiVo that records ridiculous amounts of free television for me, including enough West Wing and Law and Order reruns to make my head spin, B) being broke as a mo-fo, and C) having not a ton of free time.

But it’s quickly coming to the point where I’m over DVDs. They’re dead to me.

Over Thanksgiving, I saw a total of four movies, and only one of them was on DVD. (Kung Fu Panda is funny as hell, by the way.) And that was from Netflix, not something out of my own collection. The rest came from a variety of online sources and were all MUCH more convienent than a DVD: no going to the video store, no waiting for something to come in the mail and then sending it back, and no having to figure out where to plug the damn DVD player in because we ran out of TV inputs two video game systems ago…

TiVo with Amazon on Demand is my favorite so far. The collection isn’t stellar yet, but it’s the largest of the bunch and it’s pretty darn good. I rented “Get Smart” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the What the fuck was George Lucas Thinking” for a buck each (on sale), and sent them to my TiVo instead of watching them in my browser. When I tried this a few years ago, it took an hour for the download to start, two hours for it to finish, and you couldn’t start playing until it was done. Last night? Two minutes to start downloading and you could watch right away. Fucking brilliant.

Netflix Streaming isn’t half bad, either, although the collection is very limited right now. There’s a lot of old favorites that I haven’t seen, and now that it’s FINALLY Mac native I can watch it without waiting for my already overstressed MacBook Pro to boot Windows along side of OS X. It also just came out for TiVo, although I’ve found that to be a little buggy too (it won’t let me watch stuff in widescreen, just full.) It also has a nice collection of TV on demand, including the entire current season of Heroes. Even more than episodes than…

Hulu, the beast of free online video. They’re kicking YouTube’s ass up down and sideways right with their giant collection of free TV shows and movies. Things disappear (sometimes quickly) but it’s a great way to catch up on shows you may have missed last night or a week or two ago. And the movie collection doesn’t suck, either (Can you believe I’ve never seen “A League of Their Own”? Have now…got a little teary-eyed in the end…)

But then, there’s the one place DVDs still seem to kick ass: quality. For Christmas, my parents got a Samsung 46″ LCD TV with 1080p and 120Hz refresh, which makes things look…well just scarily real. I popped in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” on DVD to test the machine and turned on all the fancy settings. It felt like I was hiding in the bushes spying on Frodo. The details were incredible. Of course, I also tried it with an episode of “The Office” through Netflix streaming, and it looked just as good…

So mabye DVDs aren’t quite dead yet, but they’ve got a foot in the grave as online media gets better and better.

Don’t get me wrong, Google Calendar is my PDA BFF; it’s made keeping track of my life so much easier than it used to be. I love that my boss and his family use it as well, it makes keeping track of work stuff a breeze. BUT: scheduling events is still a giant pain in the ass. Who’s free when? Who can’t do which time? The more people, the harder it gets.

So I got really excited when the Digital Marketer (a podcaster who’s a part of the Quick and Dirty Tips series that I love so much) mentioned a number of new web applications to help with this problem.

The best by far looks like a neat tool called Time Bridge. It’s so ridiculously simple that I’m a little shocked it hadn’t been developed previously. You enter the email addresses of your invitees for a meeting, lunch, get-together, conference call, whatever. Time Bridge links to your Google Calendar or your Outlook Calendar, loading data on the fly as you create the invitation. It shows which times you’re free, and which you’re booked, based on your existing calendar. You can then pick up to give time slots when you’d be free to have the meeting.

A click of the send button not only sends the invitation to your recipeients, but also blocks your proposed meeting times on Google Calendar so you don’t double book yourself (who hasn’t done that; told two people you can meet on Monday and they’ve both confirmed for the same time). The recipient (and you can send it to multiple people at a time) chooses whether or not they can meet at the various times you’ve proposed, and can choose which of the available times would work best for them. Once the’ve replied, TimeBridge schedules the meeting for you. It adds it to your calendar, frees up the other times you’d blocked off, zero work on your end. Freaking….awesome.

And, for your signupphobic friends who don’t like giving out their info to every new web startup: the recipient doesn’t have to sign up to confirm the meeting. Only the sender has to have an account.

At first I was thinking this would be great for scheduling meetings for my boss, but really I feel like this is going to work even better for personal stuff. Ever tried to get five of your friends together for a dinner out? Ever have all of them work in politics and realize their schedules are fubared beyond reason? This can make that soooooo much simplier.

So yay for Time Bridge. I’m thinking of using you right now

And that’s when I realized that blogging, just as a personal medium, is dead.

It used to be when you found something cool online, or you had something you wanted to share, be it a website or a video or even just a personal thought, you posted about it to your blog. But why? I’ve twittered hundreds of times since my last blog entry. I’ve posted tons of items to my Facebook Posted Items feed, three today alone. Between those two mediums alone, more people have seen things I’ve posted than have visited this website.

I’m not bitching, mind you; frankly, it’s a more effective method of spreading things online, and better targets it to your friends and family. The blog is almost an afterthought. “Blogging is dead” might be a somewhat incendiary headline. Political blogs, news blogs, tech blogs, etc. aren’t going anywhere, and they shouldn’t. But having a personal blog is quickly becoming an afterthought. Why bother when a twitter feed and facebook page are so easy to set up?

So there’s my tri-weekly post. We’ll see what happens next

And, I heart Gmail. I really do. I would never go back to any other service. The threading of messages, the quick and easy search results and labeling, it’s top notch. Hell, setting it up as IMAP on my iPhone was even a breeze, and lets me clear crap out of my inbox when I’m not in front of my laptop. It’s great.

But when it comes to contacts, ya’ll really need to start getting along.

A while back, Google introduced a way of syncing your bookmarks between your Apple Address Book and your Google Contacts in Gmail, but only if you had an iPhone (or iPod touch). Great! Now when someone emails me, their email is automatically added to my Google Contacts and, by syncing, my Apple Address Book and my iPhone!

…only, not so much. For some contacts, it just can handle shortened names (Pete vs Peter, Dom vs Dominic) and creates duplicate entries. For some, even if the email is already in my address book, it goes ahead and creates a new entry with JUST the person’s email address.

And while the whole “adding anyone who’s emailed you” think sounds like a great idea, it gets old very fast. Ever emailed back and forth with someone on Craigslist trying to buy or sell something? Yeah, I don’t need a permanent record of the person who bought my old desk lamp. We’re not buddies. I’m not hanging out with them at Murky Coffee anytime soon.

(Conversely, if my roommate of a year and a half sends me a text message, don’t delete his number. Tell me it’s him. Don’t make me hunt down who’s phone number I’m looking at. He’s a person, not a number.)

So seriously, Google, Apple, get together, make this actually work. Sergey Brin is on Apple’s Board of Directors, I’d think y’all would be chatting here and there!

(* – I assume that the correct way of saying this is “Why does Google Contacts suck…” and not “Why do Google Contacts suck.” It’s a single product, just named after something that’s inheriently multiple…I guess…any help Grammer Girl?)

His latest review covers Twin Lotus Herbal Toothpaste, a Thai herbal toothpaste that looks like just about the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. You can read the full review here, but he also includes the following actual ad for the stuff:

What the f*&% is that racist bull$h#t?!?! Seriously?!?!

Far and away, my favorite has to be Zero Punctuation, which lives up to it’s name. Yahtzee Croshaw delivers often scathing and always hilarious reviews of recent releases speaking faster than the Micro Machines guy from the 1980s, but with the sarcasm of Dennis Leary on a caffeine and cigarette binge.

The first video is an older wrap up of the so-called “console wars” between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

After an attempt to take it to the Commerce Bank up the street (which we then discovered wasn’t actually…ya know…open…yet…), we took it over the Harris Teeter, which has one of those Coinstar machines. Normally, I’d never recommend this: 8% fee to get the money I already have? Seriously?

BUT: They now have a new feature! If you turn in the cash as a gift card for things like Amazon.com, iTunes, or Starbucks, they waive the fee. Epic.

We were making bets about how much it’d be worth. I think my original bet was $250.

Results:

Yep. $494.25. So, Jordan’s 40 inch Samsung just got upgraded to a 46 inch

Lets go.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Clinton is the smart choice because she is the only person who would help Obama get more votes.

“And if he’s going to say, ‘One people, one nation,’ he can raise the banner of unity with her as his vice presidential running mate,” he said Thursday on “American Morning.”

Nader also told the Politico Web site that Obama wouldn’t be “that dumb” to pick Bayh or Biden to be vice president.

….could someone explain to me how RALPH NADER is suddenly an expert on choosing Democratic Vice-Presidential candidates?!?! Seriously? Paul Begala, James Carville, Al Gore, how many people would be infinitely more qualified for a quote on this? Was Bobcat Golthwait not available for comment? Cause I’d of even appreciated his take on the race more than Ralph Nader.

PS: Ralph…listen…

PPS: Obama totally makes me cry sometimes…

This somewhat HILARIOUS article from CNET describes how “The Daily Show” gets their footage for each show from various news outlets and entertainment programs: 15 rack-mounted Tivos, many of whom are the old school ones that go wayyyyyyyy back before the fancy stuff you can get now. One classic quote from the article:

…because there’s a limited number of remote codes, when a staffer operates one, he has to hold the remote directly against that box’s IR receiver so that the beam doesn’t hit any of the other boxes (i.e., so he’s not inadvertently controlling multiple boxes at once).

Seriously guys? Wow.

Then to actually use the footage, they dub it onto Beta and carry it by hand to the editing room. That’s old school Sneakernet action. Nice.

Veronica Belmont posted this photo on her Flickr account of her and Felicia Day, commenting on how people think they look alike. One commenter posted “My Geek Dreamgirls!”

And I couldn’t resisit:

Geek Dreamgirls

Yessir, it’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s getting there..

…what I CAN’T do now is something demonstrated in the article: wireless external monitor. The article shows a large external screen being used with a MacBook Air as a secondary monitor. SUH-WEET!

One of the things I’ve disliked about my MacBook Pro was that, despite how portible it generally is, every time I sit down at my desk, I find myself plugging in a million things. USB for the iPhone and keyboard, FireWire for my backup drives, Ethernet for a faster connection than WiFi (when you’re uploading high res photos, it really does make a difference), and a big clunky pain-in-the-ass DVI port for my external monitor. Make a couple of those wireless for me and you’ve got a happy Jagalicious.

I stumbled upon a site called WikiMapia, which appears to be a sort of Wikipedia for mapping (and by stumbled upon, I literally mean StumbleUpon…it’s a service you can sign up for and hit a button to find random sites online).

So they use satellite imagery and let you map places online. It’s helpful for things like Tysons Corner, which only sort of exist in terms of mapping: there’s no town called Tysons Corner, it’s just sort of an area…so just for fun, I clicked Arlington, and apparently you can comment on areas too. One comment for Arlington:

ARLINGTON FUCKING RULES!

ITS THE SMARTEST COUNTY IN THE U.S.

GOOGLE IT, BITCH

–by “notgivingafuck”, 7 days ago

Just, wow.

That is high-freaking-larious.

I’m going to have to work on my reaction; if any of my roommates were home, they would have been awoken with me shouting “DUDE! Fuckin yeah!” as I scrolled down the post.

Behind me, at the Apple Store, from my iSight…and the line I’m in! I’m getting an iPhone, baby! ;-D

UPDATE:

W00t!

Gus is an older Arabian pony, jet black with a mane longer than you’d believe (or can see in most of these since they’re in black and white). Difficult to shoot some of these cause it was mid-day, and Gus’ dark coat really messes with the metering, but had some fun with the post-processing to give them an older look…