one last thing before I quit

Wired is by far my favorite magazine. Their features and articles are always very informative as well as entertaining. They also change up their design from issue to issue, which makes for a nice treat every time you crack open the pages.
On top of that, they've got a tremendous blog roll. They cover all of our modern interests, cars, sports, photography, space, business, web and even one for the geeky dad.

While catching up on some of old posts from their Gadget Lab blog, I came across a very neat story covering the history of common computer symbols. Here's a few of my favorites:

POWER
Back during WWII, binary was used to label individual power buttons, toggles and switches. "1" meant "On"; "0" meant "Off". In 1973, the International Electrotechnical Commission put the two together to represent "Standby power state". That was later change by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to our present day meaning of "Power".

USB

I listen to a ton of music spanning many genres, and something I rarely find to be mediocre, and either just awesome or crap, are covers, remixes and sample songs. Sample songs and 'artists' seem to be constantly growing for the last 10 years or so thanks to the internet and its fun time download freedoms. So, curious as to who's playing whos song? Check out Who Sampled? It looks fairly new and just getting going, as sample artists like Mike Relm and Hot Chip don't have much info yet, but some more seasoned bands like Van Halen and Foo Fighters have some more songs going for them. Yes, this site certainly isn't close to perfect as Wikipedia is or anything, but maybe quite possibly it can blossom into a nice little gem of a site. And if it doesn't, oh well.

I get to go on an official bon voyage this Saturday as me and my lovely are both experiencing our first Europe adventure as we'll be hitting up Paris for a week. Chances are you shall be seeing some of this trip as it unfolds.

Can't say that I'm the biggest Nicolas Cage fan, though I do enjoy most movies that he's in. Weird, I know. Regardless, he remains very popular with some.



For a whole lot more, visit Nic Cage As Everyone. I quite enjoy these.

Kevin Smith is my all-time favoritest person from New Jersey. And also someone that I look up to a lot. I've admired his starting point in film since I started shooting my own films, as well as his ability to stay true to who he is: a fat comic-book nerd from New Jersey that should've been born in Canada. It's not an insult. I'm envious in many ways.

Now, I could go on and on, but I won't. All I have to say is that one of the websites that I check daily for my dose of movie and television updates is Ain't It Cool News. One of their larger bloggers, Capone, was able to do a 2-part interview with Kevin Smith the other day. It's a bit of a long read, but it's what any Smith fan loves, his brutal honesty. Oh well, enjoy.

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

Music-potent post. Watch out. Here we go.

Pearl Jam played in Toronto the past Friday night. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists were scheduled to open. But their singer, Ted, was stuck at the border. So what to do?! Well, Pearl Jam decided to open for themselves. Eddie came out and played Neil Young's 'Sugar Mountain' and 'The Needle and the Damage Done'. Acoustically. Alone. Gah. Unbelievable. McCready and Stone each played a couple of their own songs, then The Pharmacists played a couple tunes as Eddie stepped in to sing.



While in Toronto, Eddie sat down with Alan Cross for an interview. Any Pearl Jam fan should take time to listen.

Their new album comes out on September 20th. But here's a new song that's made it's way out. It's called 'Supersonic'.



Next. Weezer was in T.O. as well, but on Sunday and opening for Blink-182. Their new album comes out on October 27th. It's called Raditude. Rainn Wilson, yes, Dwight from the Office, actually came up with it. Anyways. The ever amazing Alan Cross managed to also sit down with them for an interview.

Them Crooked Vultures have now played 4 gigs. Reminder: They are Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones. Video is now being released from these shows, and it's got potential. I'm very much looking forward to their album coming out. Here's a song called 'New Fang':



And lastly. Guitar Hero is making more and more band-specific games these days. And they just released the tracks for their Van Halen version. This will be a must-buy for me. I'm extremely happy that they're including 'Atomic Punk', 'Ice Cream Man', 'Hang 'Em High' and 'I'm The One'. Also, there will be 'Best Of You' by Foo Fighters, 'Master Exploder' by Tenacious D and 'Dope Nose' by Weezer as additional songs. This'll be fun! December 22nd. Hello Christmas!

I had heard a quick story about a cover album a couple weeks ago and I finally remembered to look into it the other day. The label that put this album out is called Pterodactyl Squad. They got a bunch of different DJs/artists to redo a bunch of Weezer songs. But not like you'd think. They're totally done in the old 8-bit NES/GameBoy-esque style. I can only recommend you to listen to it. It's even a free download.

*In My Head; Queens Of The Stone Age