one last thing before I quit

As a self-proclaimed dork, I use Google for quite a lot. Searches. Gmail. Maps. I absolutely love it. During one of my many quests of random internet searching, I found out that Google actually has a blog. I decided to skim through a bit and I found a posting by a man named Dennis Hwang. His official job is Google's International Webmaster, which as Dennis says, means that he's responsible for managing Google's international site content. But he also does these:

It all starte din 1998, before Dennis started working there. Google inventors Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They went to the Burning Man festival and decided to put up this stick figure of the Burning Man in case the site crashed and people didn't know why no one was answering the phones. Such a stupid reason.

Dennis started in 2000 and has taking over these doodles. Here's a couple of my favorites from this year. But go here if you want to see all of them. Many are made for specific countries, so chances are you haven't a lot of these.

April 27, 2009 - Samuel Morse's Birthday

June 6, 2009 - 25th Aniversary of Tetris

July 20, 2009 - 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

September 21, 2009 - H.G. Well's BirthdayOctober 2, 2009 - Brazil Wins 2016 Olympics

* Interlude; Them Crooked Vultures

I've been extremely busy at work these days. Not too much has inspired me lately, as I haven't spent much time freely surfing the net and looking at new things. But just last week, Them Crooked Vultures released their self-titled album and I've yet to put it down. I find that it's just an extension on Queens of the Stone Age, which works for me. Here's the second single that they released: Mind Eraser, No Chaser.



I can only wish that they'd tour closer to home.

Last Friday, my beloved Foo Fighters decided to put on a show for all of their fans via the internet. Yep. They advertised it on Facebook and Twitter merely a handful of days and they were able to get a good 440,000 people watching it.

It was a nice surprise to see that they had a laptop set up on their equipment that was constantly updating with song suggestions from fans, and in between most songs, Nate or Dave would take a peak and read some out. There was even more that made this show special. One, the fact that the advertised one hour show ended up lasting around two and a half hours. Two, they pleased the 'hardcore' fans by playing many oldies and rarely heard songs. And three, there was one fan as well as myself who requested that they play the Ghostbusters theme song. Dave said that they'd play it and when it seemed like they were just about to start the song, he ended up telling a story about how Ray Parker Jr got sued. So close.

The show was in no doubt a way for them to get out word that their greatest hits album was just about to be released, but they hardly ever mentioned it and just seemed genuinely happy to be playing a practice-style show in the comfort of their own studio. It's hard to believe that the bands' been playing for a solid 15 years already.

Here's what they played:
01 The Pretender
02 My Hero
03 Times Like These
04 All My Life
05 Cold Day In The Sun
06 Skin & Bones
07 Word Forward
08 Generator
09 Young Man Blues
10 This Is A Call
11 Learn To Fly
12 For All The Cows
13 Hey, Johnny Park!
14 Monkey Wrench
15 Big Me
16 Up In Arms
17 Long Road To Ruin
18 Enough Space
19 New Way Home
20 Stacked Actors
21 Breakout
22 Wattershed
23 Everlong
24 Low
25 Weenie Beenie
26 Aurora

It might be obvious for them to do so, but I actually really hope that they release this on DVD. It was something nice.