It recently came to my attention that UC Berkeley offers many courses for free in audio format. Although the different courses use different file types, and access options, the service is quite good. I was able to download an entire Calculus course in m4a audio format. It was really impressive. Some classes don’t let you download the audio, and require you to stream the information. And others share the information and also include powerpoint presentations. So this is a seriously good resource for anyone who is interested in subjects from Math, to Art History and beyond. Some classes go as far back as 2003 and earlier. The cool thing is that the courses are separated by lecture, so it is easy to organize the information. The service is free and it looks like Berkeley is asking for donations in order to keep their archives alive.
Chris Marrs Piliero is the innovative and creative director that won an award a couple months ago for his direction of a great video for The Black Keys called “Tighten Up”. Now, Piliero has been always a strong promoter of things that are awesome and sometimes ironically ridiculous on his blog marrsattacks.com (which is now has been changed to imgonnablogalloveryourface.com)marrsattacks.com is a type of music video portal for his work. What is interesting is that his lust for critically eye-opening imagery and laser-beam-focused humorous symbolism, quite literally penetrates the hearts of Unicorns and the viewers of Ke$ha’s latest music video alike.
What I like most about the video for “Blow” is that it matches perfectly with the lyrics and pacing of the song. Ke$ha is very confrontational and aggressive in the lyrics for the song. Let’s face it, she’s telling people to drink her Kool Aid. And most of us know this may be a pretty serious reference to that athletic shoe group that sacrificed their lives for their faith. So it is quite fitting that Piliero used Unicorns at a party to portray a 4 minute story of mythological proportion.
Wikipedia says that this song is about hitting the clubs…maybe. But this track seems to be more about conflict between titans than anything else. I would have thought that without the video, but seeing Unicorns in suits and dresses, drinking champagne only confirmed this suspicion. Notice that it doesn’t seem that the Unicorns are the primary targets for the conflict. They appear to be destroyed in a form of collateral damage, that leaves them spilling forth rainbow waves instead of blood. This was especially enthralling because I recently purchased Highlander 2: The Quickening (unfortunately DVD version…I wish my VCR was up and running). And in Highlander films the destroyed powerful beings eject a tremendous amount of energy when they die. Although, Ke$ha didn’t hover in the air when they died, while absorbing the power, maybe that was because she was using a gun instead of a sword? More on that later.
Chris Marrs Piliero sealed the day with how he had, Van Der Beek pronounce “appreciate” in the middle of the song. That was my 2nd favorite part in the whole thing.
One creative directing technique I noticed was that Piliero chose at 3 minutes and 32 seconds to have the champagne glass shatter and explode when it was hit by the laser gun. This was impressive because my first assumption was going to be that since the weapons were firing lasers (made out of light), the energy would pass through the champagne glass in a translucently diffused fashion and boil the alcoholic beverage into gas. It is decisions like this one that really makes Blow stand out among modern music videos in a class of its own.
Big thanks to vevo for allowing websites to embed this great video “Blow” by Ke$ha:
Here’s a cute video of a small kitty munching on some watermelon. The cat seems very happy and is making adorable eating sounds. From what I can tell, the cat’s name is Cooper. And it is a Persian cat. If you want more information on this cat and want to see more pictures, you can click HERE to visit the sweetfur blog at blogspot. Here is the video below so you can see Cooper in action! Big thanks to the owners for sharing this cute video with the world!
Today there were a bunch of pedestrians on the road of Avocado here in Corona del Mar. I was on my way back home from the gym and I noticed there were 2 pairs of teenagers walking up the hill that seemed to be in separate groups. And then a minute or so I saw a couple in their late 30’s walking up the hill. I walk home from the gym all the time, on the weekends and during the week. So this was odd seeing 6 people in such a short frame of time on Avocado. This is especially strange because the construction of the government building near the library makes the walk slightly dusty and not visually appealing. So it isn’t really a scenic walk. The first thing that comes to mind is that with the increased price of gasoline people are considering other options for transportation. And I guess walking is the cheapest form. This is, of course, if you don’t count the extra snacks one needs to eat as a result of the exercise.
Another factor may be the nice weather. It was a cool yet very beautiful morning. And there really was no excuse for people to stay indoors. (unless you were stapled to the floor)
Could this be some freak fluctuation in pedestrian based traffic? We will monitor this situation closely and report back with our findings.
