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I have to hand it to Microsoft… if this is a supposed to be a serious tool (the promo seems to sell it as such) then they should just throw in the towel now before they tarnish their image anymore. The idea behind SongSmith is that you sing the melody and it will auto-generate the backing music… I’m sure you can already see where this is going. Many people have run the lyric tracks from popular songs through it with funny results. I’ll let you find the actual SongSmith demo video on YouTube yourself… I’m posting my favorite SongSmith results below.

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

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My friend Nick brought this video to my attention. It shows how small $100 million dollars is compared to the entire US budget. What really stood out to me was how much of the budget is dominated by welfare handouts… looks like over 80%. I guess we are “all socialists now.”

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

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I found my Charlie Hunter CD recently and I’ve been enjoying listening to him again. He’s an amazing musician apart from the fact that he plays the bass and guitar simultaneously. YouTube didn’t exist when I first got into him, and it’s nice now to be able to watch him play. Enjoy!

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

If this video ever gets deleted from YouTube, you can download it HERE.

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I’m sorry, but this is too funny not to post…

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

If this video ever gets deleted from YouTube, you can download it HERE.

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I finally found the full Marcus Miller concert that includes the song “Blast” which I linked to earlier. Unfortunately, the video has been removed from YouTube. Here it is from FabChannel.

UPDATE 3-17-2009: FabChannel is no longer around Click HERE to download a clip from another concert (*.mp4 file playable in QuickTime).

Click HERE to visit Marcus Miller’s website.

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I like things that make sense. I’m definitely a pragmatist. Regardless of the principles behind the abortion debate, I’ve always had a problem with the inconsistent definitions of life and death. So I put this question to a friend (and fellow musician) who happens to work for Central California Right To Life.

Josh,

An important issue in the abortion debate is the argument over when life begins; at conception, at birth, or somewhere in between? I’ve heard many opinions over the years, but one (from a fellow engineer) has always struck me as a possible solution. The logic of the argument goes like this: ‘life’ and ‘death’ are inverse states of existence. Therefore, the set of criteria that define ‘life’ and ‘death’ should also be inverse quantities. Thus, we should define ‘life’ by the inverse of the criteria we use for ‘death’, since those criteria are pretty well accepted both legally and morally (of course there are always edge-cases). For example: if someone is pronounced dead when their heart and brain consciousness stop, then life is defined as conscious brain function and a heart beat (over-simplified of course).

This is a very pragmatic argument. It view’s the woman’s body as analogous to a life-support system, thus rendering null the argument that life begins when the baby can exist outside the mother’s womb. This is an important step, because technology renders this a moving target… at some point, an artificial womb may be able to carry an embryo to full term. I’d be interested to get your thoughts on this.

-Tom

Josh responded to my question on his video podcast LifeReport.

Thanks Josh for the response, but you are too gracious with the praise!

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

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I’ve been meaning to post this video for awhile (been busy). Stanley Clarke is one of the most amazing bass players I’ve seen. He really explores the instrument and is not afraid to push it to new sounds. This upright bass solo is just awesome!

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

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So, we’ve been developing a slick cross-platform media framework to standardize or products on (proprietry, of course), and I couldn’t resist building an ASCII text renderer. It was surprisingly easy using our SDK and a free library called libcaca… seriously, that’s it’s name. It looks okay small, but of course it breaks down as you scale up. Anyways, now we can watch video using xterm via ssh… use case? Who cares!… it’s ASCII video

Okay, now the large size (video source: D1 MPEG-4 30 fps):

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Okay, this is classic… a parody on Tickle-Me-Elmo. It’s hilarious if you’re familiar with the Emo movement. Enjoy!

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

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