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Friday, July 08, 2005

Tech Navigator is up and running!

Tom Johnson has launched a tech-oriented podcast and blog at http://www.technav.org/. W00t!

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 11:43 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Pagans Behaving Badly

I'm not a Pagan or anything, but several of my friends are. I can understand someone's quest for meaning in nature, and I'm the first to extoll the virtues of running naked through the forests singing "la ti da, la ti da, I'm an ancient tree-elf communing with the Ents and the Green-Man." But I'm also a big fan of charity works, and I just haven't seen Druid's Charities listed in the yellow pages next to Catholic Charities or Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

But there is one critical aspect of organized religion that my Pagan amigoes have got down cold. Just about all of them look down on someone else. So just like the Babtists look down on the Methodists, so do the Unitarian Pagans look down upon the "Church of All Worlds" guys. I was happy to find a student of such relations in Ashley Yakeley. Ashley's "The Pagan Hierarchy" at http://seapagan.org/pagan-hierarchy/ does a great job of explaining who looks down on whom.

It was also made with OmniGraffle. W00t!

(Oh... as a clarification... let me simply say that I do not personally look down on the Church of All Worlds guys or the Unitarian Pagans. You're both great, guys!)

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 12:10 PM 0 comments

Music Non Stop

I have some relatively "open" taste in music. If it's melodic and has a good beat, I can find something to like in it. If it's chromatic and arrhythmic, I'm like totally all over it. In my old age I've taken a liking to the more ethereal stuff. I guess I've finally caught up with Bill Laswell and early Eno. One of the more recent artists I like is J. Ralph ( http://www.jralph.com/ ). He's the guy that did the "Million Miles Away" song for that Volkswagen Jetta commercial a couple years back. You've probably seen it: girl waiting at the altar, guy in a tux desperately rushing to the church, encounters all manners of obstacles, reaches the church to find she's wed the best man. I just loved the music. It's now available on his CD "The Illusionary Movements of Geraldine and Nazu." No. I don't know what the title's supposed to mean. I just dig the music.

Now related to all things ambient. Every couple of years I go back and re-view Tron. The 20th anniversary edition was released a couple years ago and there's an ad on the DVD for Tron 2.0 which is apparently a video game designed to capitalize on the anniversary and DVD re-release. So I did a little bit of web searching, and the game looks okay by modern standards, but keep in mind that I still love to play the old Infocom text adventure games. But I found the Tron 2.0 website ( http://www.tron20.net/ ) and noticed it's got this great little background music generator. I suspect it's a Flash something or other, or maybe it's a WAV file. I'll eventually figure out how to turn it into a Dashboard widget so I can have a nice background drone all the time.

And what discussion of music would be complete without a reference to Morrissey's recent concert at Earl's Court ( and all this time I though Earl's Court was just an underground station. ) iFilm has a video of the world's saddest boy singing "First of the Gang to Die" (one of my personal favorites.) You can find it at http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2644115?refsite=7063&ns=1.

And for everyone who enjoyed Pat Boone's "In a Metal Mood," you might want to check out Paul Anka's ROCK SWINGS. I've already ordered my copy, heaven knows you won't see this at the local FYE's. ( http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/product.aspx?ob=n&src=art&pid=11276&fp=qt ) Go to this web page now. Download Paul's interpretation of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 12:25 AM 0 comments