The Black Horse of the Blog World

We have some big news to share.  It’s a big deal, and a big change for us.  It’s going to mean some changes to our social life, and to almost every aspect of our life, actually.  Some of you we’ve told already, and some of you have probably suspected (or possibly feared?).  We’ve been thinking about it and planning for it for months now, and now that we’ve reached a certain stage in the, um, developments, we’re ready to tell everyone (after the cut).

…Read on to solve the mystery. I bet it was the Butler…

Back in the early 90’s, with the release of the SNES came a ‘game’ called Mario Paint.  One of the extras included with that was a a basic music sequencer/composer thingy.  It generated chirpy cheesy 8-bit style sounds, which, lets face it, were part of the hallmark at the time. Game consoles and computers (even ones with sound cards and speakers) could barely generate more than those simple sounds.

This morning I discovered that someone recreated this tool, and released the Mario Paint Composer.  And in the spirit of those who traded midi files in the old dial-up Win3.1 days, people have composed song covers, and using camtasia to screen record and stack several smaller tracks (limit of the length of any one stretch of music in the program), have uploaded them to YouTube.  After the cut I’ll include a handpicked selection of the good ones. Please note that if you are reading the crosspost of this entry, you won’t see the embeds, you’ll just get link to YouTube.
…Read on to solve the mystery. I bet it was the Butler…

Some time ago I realized that one of the unforeseen advantages (at the time) of having my entire CD collection ripped to my computer for use on the iPod was the ability to drop the physical discs into deep storage and save some space.  So I did. I got some DJ style storage units, and there my discs sit, happily out of the way.

Recently, upon noting that the DVD cabinet was, indeed, on the full side, and having assembled a new DVR with a terabyte hard drive, I decided I could start to do the same with my DVDs.  So I’ve started ripping those as well.  Video takes up a lot more space, and I’m not doing any (re)conversions, so each dis takes about 5 GB.  Without counting the discs, I figured I would be ok, or at least to get most of them done.  I’ve half filled the drive, and I’m only up to Chef! (going alphabetically).

Time to think about repurposing an old system as a NAS, and to scope out some 2 TB drives.

I blame Babylon 5 and Buffy.  And I’ve got all of Stargate SG-1 somewhere in the future…

Addendum to the video roundup:

I forgot to include this one, recently sent to me by dromeda, which totally made my day, and may in fact, make yours as well.

It’s a cappella pinball wizard performed by a ukelele playing octet at the Royal Albert Hall.  Tell me that it isn’t awesome.

Rounding up a few more videos that caught my eye this month…

First, a TED talk.  TED videos are some of my favorite. Speakers on a wide variety of topics.  Usually worth watching, generally on the shorter side, interesting and thought provoking.  Here’s one that came out today on the legal system. Are we drowning in laws? Are we paralyzing ourselves? Do we need more green lights and less red?

Next, although still on the side of erudition, but much more in the direction of entertainment, a Keynsian Rap introduced to me by the folks over at Planet Money.

Lastly, a video of pure amusement and smiles, a clever interactive advertising project for Coca-Cola, called The Happiness Machine:

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