:skyecade online

Anyone remember JenniCam.org? JenniCam was one of those Internet phenomenons that spread across the web like wild fire. Probably one of the first in fact.

The JenniCam has since gone dark, but not before firmly cementing itself into Internet lore. There is a new phenomenon sweeping through the net now. This phenomenon is called justin.tv. Who’s, Justin? Justin is a guy who strapped a video camera to his head 11 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes ago, and has not shut it off since. It streams live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He claims he will wear it until the day he dies. That would be interesting to see. :0

I watch it on and off while I’m at my computer and I have to tell you, it’s pretty cool (in a weird sort of way) and surprisingly addictive. I reminds me of the Truman Show with Jim Carey where anyone could turn on their televisions at any given time and see what Truman was doing, even if he was just sleeping. In fact, Justin is sleeping right now. It’s soooo wierd! Don’t worry, he’s not lazy — he’s just on west coast time.

     

Filed under: TV / Video, Web 2.0, Cyberculture, News, Internet
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A recipe? On skyecade online? What will people think?!

Yeah, I was surprised I was posting this myself, but I feel it is my duty to the human race. A friend of mine gave me this recipe because MLL told her how much I love sweet potatoes. By the way, I also really like casseroles. What a coincidence? This recipe is really easy to make and it’s sooooo gooood. But be warned! It’s about as healthy as shooting heroin into your veins. Actually, heroin may be slightly better for you. Did I mention this is sooooo gooood though?

Ingredients

The Filling:

• 3 cups sweet potatoes (peeled, steamed, and mashed)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, beat them like there’s no tomorrow
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick — ouch)

The Crust:

• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup flower
• 1 cup chopped pecans (I prefer them crushed)
• 1/3 cup butter (melted)

Directions

1. Combine all the ingredients for the crust into a medium sized bowl and put aside.
2. Combine all the ingredients for the sweet potato filling into a large bowl in the order listed. Mix thoroughly.
3. Pour sweet potato mixture into a greased baking dish. (I used Pam)
4. Sprinkle the crust mixture evenly over the sweet potato filling.
5. Bake for 30 minutes on 350 degrees. Allow to set for at least 30 minutes.

Eat it warm, eat i cold, some people even melt marshmallows on top of it (in case it wasn’t unhealthy enough). Bon Appetit!

     

Filed under: Recipes, Random Bits
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It was 70 degrees out Wednesday. The sun was shining, birds were chirping. Needless to say, my spring fever had kicked into high gear.

This was taken last night.

/sigh

Oh well, back to reality. Gotta love New England.

     

Filed under: Life, Random Bits
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I saw this little trick on Digg this morning. It actually sorta, kinda works.

Cut and paste the following text into Google:

{-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "DIGG"}

Replace the word “DIGG” with the name of your favorite band and voila, a listing of open indexes containing downloadable music files. Of course you could just go here and let them do the dirty work for you, but where’s the fun n that?

     

Filed under: Google, Links, Music, Internet, How To's
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I visit dozens of new websites every week and a lot of them are absolutely fantastic. Instead of hording these Internet gems all to myself, I’ve decided to share some of them with my fellow netizens. Here’s the deal, I will pick one website a week that really stands out amongst the rest and then write about it here. I shall call this segment……..WEBSITE OF THE WEEK! I know what you are thinking, how did I ever come up with such a brilliant an original title? One word,… laziness. And there you have it. Let’s move on.

This week’s Website of the Week choice is musicovery.com. Like Last.fm and Pandora, musicovery is a music discovery site which helps to match listeners with music that they might be interested in based on their musical tastes.

The first thing you see when you go to the site is a control panel of sorts on the left hand side of website. From here you can choose what you want to listen to, and there are multiple ways of doing this. The first set of options include LoFi and HiFi. To listen to HiFi you need a paid subscription. I don’t have a paid subscription, so LoFi it is. The next set of options include Hit, non Hit, and Discovery. You can choose any combination of the these three options, but at least one must be checked. Hit and non Hit are pretty obvious as to what they are, the Discovery option isn’t so clear though. I assume it grabs independent or otherwise lesser known artists and adds them to the play list. I can’t find any documentation to confirm this though, so I could be wrong.

Up next is an interactive time line. If you leave it as is, it will simply tell you the era in which the song being played originates from. For a little more control, you can use the time line to narrow down your music discovery session to a specific decade, or even year.

Below the time line is the matrix. There are four points on the matrix: calm, energetic, dark, and positive. By clicking on the matrix, you are telling musicovery what kind of mood you want the music to reflect. Experimenting with this is half the fun of musicovery. Once you click a spot on the matrix, a variety of songs will appear to the right. These songs are all color coded by genre, but all share the same characteristics of the matrix, i.e. calm, energetic, dark, positive. So, if you clicked somewhere in between energetic and positive, all the songs that are displayed will have these specific traits in common, whether they be reggae, blues, funk or disco.

What if you want to listen to something energetic, but you’re only interested in one specific musical genre such as rock? No problem. Below the matrix are color coded buttons which list specific genres. When you click on one of these buttons, a mini-matrix is displayed for that particular genre. This mini-matrix works the same way as the main matrix, but only the results of that specific musical genre will be displayed. You may have noticed that the songs displayed to the right of the control panel are now all of one color, in this case dark blue. Dark blue represents the musical genre rock. Pretty cool, huh? They do seem to be missing some popular genres though, but we’ll chalk that up to them being new. All in all this is a very fun website to play around with.

Another great feature is the ease in which musicovery lets you purchase the songs you are currently listening too. Each song has an iTunes and Amazon link associated with it that will take you directly to that product for an easy check out. Actually, it’s probably not a great feature for impulse buyers, but for everyone else it’s great.

I could write more, but I don’t think I’d do the site any justice. It’s one of those things that you just have to try out for yourself, but if you love music, you’ll most likely love musicovery.

http://musicovery.com

     

Filed under: Web 2.0, Music, Cyberculture, Technology, Internet
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I’m not gonna lie to you, I’ve been bored silly with my gaming options as of late. I’ve played all the major first-person-shooters to death, e.g., Call of Duty X, Battlefield X, Unreal Tournament X, CS:S, DoD, TFC, blah, bah, blah. I need something new!

Just when I was about to abandon all hope, two amazing mods grabbed my attention and they are both worth checking out.

Dystopia - This is a Half Life 2 mod that takes place in a cyberpunk environment. One thing is apparent, the developers put a whole lot of time and thought into this mod. You can choose from various weapons, armor types, and implants — each combination with it’s own strengths and weaknesses. What’s really cool is that it takes place in two separate worlds, cyberspace and meatspace. Meatspace is where the real action is, but if you equip yourself with certain types of implants, you can jack into cyberspace and help your team out from within. There is a pretty good preview of Dystopia over at Planet Half-Life explaining the game in more detail. Check it out if you get a chance.

Project Reality - This is a Battlefield 2 mod that focuses more on realistic gameplay and less on traditional run and gun tactics. I’m not usually a fan of this type of game because they tend tooo drrraaaaaag, but Project Reality really broke the mold. There are no cross hairs, no health meters, no little messages that tell you who you killed. In fact, the first hour I played I didn’t see a soul, but the bullets were flying by my head nonetheless. Sounds play an important role in this mod. You can easily tell the difference of an M16 and an AK-47 rattling of rounds in the distance. The developers of Project Reality are really trying to promote teamwork and caution. I spent more time in the prone position than actually walking. Squad members can be rewarded with specialized kits too, such as pilot kits, crewman kits, or sniper kits. Because of this, there are far less lone wolves roaming about. IGN wrote a very flattering write-up for Project Reality called “Why all BF2 players should download this mod“. Another good read if you have the time.

There you have it. I was going to post some screenshots of my fragging adventures, but I didn’t think you guys would want to see pictures of my corpse over and over and over again. Maybe I’ll post some when I can manage to stay alive for more than 30 seconds. Until then, hope to see you on a server.

     

Filed under: Reviews, Gaming
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I had such a weird dream last night.

The dream began with me coming out of a big ol’ church and making my way to the church parking lot to get into my Jeep. When I got there, I found that my Jeep had been stripped of all valuable parts (rims, running boards, lights, etc…) I was furious. I was so mad in fact, that it woke me out of a dead sleep. I was sitting in bed, wide awake for a good minute just fuming. It felt so real.

Here’s the thing. I don’t even own a jeep. I have no desire to own a jeep. Still, the dream was so realistic that when I woke up, I had to convince myself that I didn’t own a Jeep. I remember saying to myself, “I just bought that damn thing!” After my head cleared and I realized it was just a dream I had to chuckle. I felt so stupid.

I’ve had strange and realistic dreams before, but none that have evoked such emotions. I’m sitting at my desk now and I’d still like to get my hands on those sleazy Jeep wrecking bastards.

     

Filed under: Life, Random Bits
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