The Weather

Hey Bloggers, and this is one of those postings that just happens to be about the weather. And not just any weather, but the weather in Scottsdale Arizona. And did you know it's somewhere around 80 degrees there right now. Now that's some sunny weather. And if you happen to be looking for Scottsdale real estate to enjoy that sunny weather, you can find it at Scottsdale Fine Properties. You can find Eagles Landing Luxury Condos to enjoy that sunny weather at their website as well. With Scottsdale Fine Properties, finding those fine properties in Arizona that you may be looking for has never been easier.

The Buskers

Hey Bloggers, and I have been reading and hearing about buskers and the best of the buskers lately. Maybe it's because those friends I know of play underground as part of that Music Under New York Program, or maybe it could be because a lot of those busker websites such as The Saw Lady or that blog that seems to devote itself to all busking all the time Undercover New York or maybe even because The Naked Cowboy, another one of those buskers, is running for Mayor. And for those of you who happen to be wondering what busking even is, that internet bible dictionary Wikipedia says it has something to do with the practice of performing in public places for tips and gratuities. People engaging in this practice are called buskers or street performers, and also that the word busking derives its name from the Spanish root word buscar, meaning "to seek, to look at". And Wikipedia has this list of famous buskers such as Joan Baez, Edith Piaf, Roni Benise, The Blue Man Group, Pierce Brosnan, Jimmy Buffett, George Burns, Cirque du Soleil, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Stephane Grappelli, Woody Guthrie, Bob Hope, Jewel, Steve Martin, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Page, Penn and Teller, Gerry Rafferty, Simon and Garfunkel, Pete Seger, Rod Stewart, Joe Strummer, Stomp, and Robin Williams. And in addition to that Wikipedia list there seems to be many busking bands and performers to be found in that city of New York and beyond that go by the names of Dagmar, Theo Eastwind, Natalia Paruz, Susan Cagle, The Jazz Collective, Yaz Band, Thoth, Quintet Tarantino, The Collins Huggins Show, The Xylopholks, those horns under ground, The Positive Brothers, Tin Pan Blues Band, Yogi Laser and the list is long and beyond. And so I thought to post a photo of one of those busking bands in New York City above. Have a great busking day.

Kids

Hey Bloggers, or at least whoever may be reading this blog post. And I am not exactly sure how I came across this one in my internet travels in internetland, though it seems to be from that publication WIRED, and I sure seem to find it sitting in my email inbox as if it could be waiting for me to post it on this blog or something. And the following is one of those postings I find myself posting that I thought was interesting to repost, and besides, hey it's less writing sometimes... Have a great 100 things your kids may never know about day.

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to todays teenager.
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio bork this concept.)
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.'

Computers and Videogaming
18. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
19. The scream of a modem connecting.
20. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
21. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
22. Using jumpers to set IRQs.
23. DOS.
24. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
25. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
26. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.
27. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.
28. Counting in kilobytes.
29. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
30. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
31. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
32. Joysticks.
33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
34. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
35. Recording a song in a studio.

The Internet
36. NCSA Mosaic.
37. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
38. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
39. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
40. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
41. Phone books and Yellow Pages.
42. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
43. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
44. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
45. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
46. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
47. Archie searches.
48. Gopher searches.
49. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
50. Privacy.
51. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.
52. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.
53. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
54. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs
55. The time before PC networks.
56. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.

Gadgets
57. Typewriters.
58. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
59. Sending that film away to be processed.
60. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.
61. CB radios.
62. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
63. Rotary-dial telephones.
64. Answering machines.
65. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
66. Pay phones.
67. Phones with actual bells in them.
68. Fax machines.
69. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.

Everything Else
70. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.
71. Remembering someone’s phone number.
72. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
73. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
74. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.
75. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
76. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
77. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
78. Neat handwriting.
79. The days before the nanny state.
80. Starbuck being a man.
81. Han shoots first.
82. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
83. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
84. Trig tables and log tables.
85. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
86. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
87. Swimming pools with diving boards.
88. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
89. Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil of break off the first finger
90. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).
91. Having to manually unlock a car door.
92. Writing a check.
93. Looking out the window during a long drive.
94. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
95. Cash.
96. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
97. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
98. Omni Magazine
99. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.
100. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.

My thanks go out to all of my fellow GeekDads for their contributions to this list.

An Art Show

And so in my attempt to blah blog and find content for this blog whenever possible, I came across this email in my internet travels throughout internetland today that says someone is having an art show. And I know someone is having an art show because that email I received today says so. And I plan to dust off a few pieces of artwork and take them out of the closet to put in this art show as well. So instead of blaghing my thoughts about this show, I thought I would just repost that we're having an art show announcement that was sent today as follows:

After the Gold Rush: Recession Art Sale

NEW YORK August 13, 2009 - From September 17 through October 10, 2009, one hundred out-of-work professionals will try their hand at selling art at After the Gold Rush: Recession Art Sale, in a 50,000 square foot gallery at 679 3rd Ave. at the corner of 43rd Street. A series of events in the glass-walled space fosters a return to the days when art played an integral part in the life of the community.

The objective is to create income, comment on current shifts in the market economy, and create a sense of community involving the artists and sellers. Unemployed individuals from all walks of life will be engaged as sellers to market the works on exhibit. They will be trained as art consultants, taking a 30% commission on each transaction.

After the Gold Rush seeks a diverse group of sellers reflecting the wide economic spectrum of the unemployed. Sellers are being solicited through advertisements in newspapers, online listings and other job opportunity sites and currently include an out-of-work IT worker, a teacher, and a marketing maven. Positions are still available.

Hosting the event is Anita Durst’s Chashama, which has worked successfully with conceptual artist Elanit Kayne on experiments in value and commissioned her to do this new project on the economy. In 2002, Kayne’s Times Square installation, All I Want for Christmas is Nothing: an Experiment in Value, considered sellers’ and buyers’ notions of the relative worth of objects.

Kayne and curator of arts and events Mia Feroleto, creator of ARTWALK NY, and Frank Shifreen, the founder of the Gowanus Art Canal Project, will create a gallery for thirty top-selling international artists. Shifreen, the New York partner of cultureinside, an award-winning exhibition site, currently available in French, German and English, is hosting the online gallery for the project.

Artists will include: Noah Baen, Matthew Beall, Gene de Bartolo, Michele Brody, Peter Cicariello, Thom Corn, Carla Cubit, Shanee Epstein, Ekterina Existart, Mark Grimm & Amy Cheatle, Karen Gunderson, Janusz Jaworski, Elanit Kayne, KK Kozik, Lorenzo Pace, Gila Paris, Susu Pianchupattana, Yulia Pinkusevich, Thaddeus Radell, Mike and Sherry Rader, Robin Ross, Rafael Rodriguez, Barnaby Ruhe, Charles Seplowin, Frank Shifreen, Lucy Slivinski, Tiffany Sum and Lane Twitchell. Have a great art day.

The Web

Hey Bloggers, you've heard of the web haven't you. That new, seemingly recent, modern invention on the internet information superhighway of knowledge, communication, entertainment and beyond out there in cyberworld, cyberland somewhere. And who could have thought that one day everyone could have one of those computers and be connected to that thing called the internet. And then there are those websites that go with that internet. And if you happen to be one of those internetaholic blogaholics that I find myself becoming sometimes, you may every so often find yourself in search of one of those websites to make yourself a website. And so along comes best website hosting. And if you happen to be looking for web hosts, web hosting providers and web hosting ratings, you can find them at Web Hosting Rating. They are a website where you can find the top ten web hosting providers, best web hosts 2009, best budget hosting, best blog, best email hosting, best windows hosting and more. If you happen to be looking for a new web hosting service, Web Hosting Rating can help you find it. They can save you the time of having to compare those websites yourself. And their web hosting articles are really interesting to read as well. With Web Hosting Rating, finding that host for the web has never been easier.

Suzy's Song

Hey Bloggers, Suzy Sellout has got a song. And it's called Suzy Sellouts songs that can be found on her MySpace page and beyond. And I know Suzy Sellouts has got a song because that email I read from her says so. And if I can blah blog that if I had one of those chances to sellout for a song, I probably would want to be one of those sellouts also, maybe. And Suzy Sellout is in a band, and they are Kathrine Becker, Spencer Cohen, Dan Davine, Chris Wengert, Lindsay Haughton, Chris Bonner and Pete O'Connell. And if you happen to be looking to hear Suzy's songs, you can find them on her sellout CD that rocks. And in other thoughts, what the heck are those glaring neon light blaring television screen like advertisements on the side of those city buses to be found in that city of New York that seems to have appeared out of nowhere that one can see from seemingly a mile away they are so blue hue light bright. Is this the MTA NYC Transit everything in that city of New York can be a walking, riding, going my way advertisement. Isn't that a distraction for going ones way? And if the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority could plaster the sidewalks and the air with advertisements, they would probably do that too, maybe. Oh, they may already be doing that also. Have a great music, advertisement going ones way day.

Twitterddiction

And so somehow in my quest to find out how I lost a lot of followers on my Twitter page a while ago in my latest web 2.0 user generated content addiction and encountering Twitteranoia along the way in wondering what happened to them, I somehow came across 10 Reasons you know you're addicted to Twitter. And those so and so many reasons you know you are some sort of internetaholic web cybersphereaddict phenomenon can be sort of funny sometimes, unless if one maybe has all of those that are listed on the list, maybe. And this one is via Tara Stiles. Have a great Twitter net land day.

10 Reasons you know you’re addicted to Twitter

1. You know what at least 3 people you don’t know had for breakfast.

2. You’re obsessed with how many followers you have or don’t have and possess a master plan for getting your numbers up.

3. You search popular news sites just to link information that makes you look smart.

4. You spend more than 2 minutes planning out the cleverness of each tweet and give yourself a hi-5 when you figure out new ways to shrink words.

5. You’ve got regular Twitter, tweet deck, and twitter mobile for complete uninterrupted professional tweeting.

6. You get in frequent back and forth Twitter arguments over senseless topics that you actually don’t care about. This starts to enter your real life.

7. Twitter is your home page.

8. You paid the Wi-Fi fee on Virgin America so you could get extra cool points by tweeting at 36,000 feet. It’s the new 5 mile high club.

9. You’ve already tweeted about this post.

10. You’ve tweeted at least 3 times before getting to #10.