Recently in Passions Category

LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities

I was such a Lego freak when I was a kid. They were my first nerd love before computers and code and a real blast looking at the packaging of the space sets here. My brother and I didn’t just build the sets and play around with them. Oh no — we used to “hack” the pieces make much larger and meaner creations with a totally different scale. The names of the ships and weaponry where named after ships in an early Japanese anime cartoon called Star Blazers that was in syndication after school. Star Blazers was originally called Space Battleship Yamato before it was dubbed and watered down for the states. Our ship was The Andromeda and at one point was over three feet long and 18 inches wide and high. I had a picture of it that I wish I could still find.

Those were the days — and look where it’s brought me. I’m certain that a big large part of my ability to work with abstract concepts, develop mental models of logic and break a larger complex system into small parts as I do when coding goes back to what I started to develop as a boy then. It’s amazing what some plastics blocks and molded pieces along with the motivation to have the biggest and baddest Lego space battleship on the block can be turned in to.

I’ve written about commercial music every so often on this blog over the past 5 years. I’ve got a small list of recent sightings I thought I’d publish in addition to a commercial music mystery solved.

Herbie Hancock - Rockit

Talk about blast from the past. This track was a hit when I was in grade school. The commercial that is currently using it for Visa and features all these old school breakdancers locking and popping all over some stylized shop that fits the music theme.

Microsoft is using a pair of tracks I’ve been listening to in their Zune commercials.

The Shins - Sleeping Lessons

This Zune commercial features a hipster male who is “tripping” through some psychedelic dream.

Rogue Wave - Lake Michigan

This Zune commercial begin with a female at a a rather French looking covered sidewalk cafe where its pouring rain just beyond her table. A similar trippy dream sequence ensues to this track.

Postal Service - Such Great Heights

UPS is running a series of “whiteboard” commercial that features a male actor explain some innovative service the company offers while illustrating his point on — whiteboard! The airy synth droplets and mechanized drum you hear in the background are from the open of this track.

The New Pornographers - The Bleeding Hearts Show

This track is being used for some time in commercials for the University of Phoenix that shows flashes of people in different walks of life working towards a better life. At least that is the impression I get. The clip used from this track supports that notion well. I can’t help to raise an eyebrow to a virtual university though. This is a great track though an interest thing to be associated with. The blogs have spoken.

In other commercial music news, I solved the mystery of a track I heard in a commercial years ago. I can’t recall the car other then it was a luxury sedan in black where the camera pans over slowly from different angle. It was a jazzy rhythmic piece with a bit of sax and a female voice saying “how do I look?” sampled in. Some time after I saw that commercial, I was sitting in Bard’o in Manhattan’s West Village when I heard what sounded like that track. I asked the DJ and she told me it was the theme from The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Thing was that album that. What I found out recently was that Dmitri from Paris featured it on SacreBleu in a track called “Une Very Stylish Fille.” (It was this track that I had heard in the commercial which explains why what I heard in the cocktail bar didn’t quite seem the same.) Further, the actual The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. theme was featured on a few somewhat obscure compilations that have been released including one called Expresso Expresso by a favorite of mine — The Karminsky Experience. (That disc is also out of print and a bit hard to find. I’m still trying to find a reasonably priced one or a sugar daddy to buy it for me.)

Oh and that female voice Dimitri from Paris used? That would be Audrey Hepburn from a movie called Breakfast at Tiffany’s. (argh!) I should have picked up on that sooner.

[This post goes out to Danny Gumport.]

My blog feels so lonely. As it should. It's been a long story to how I let things fall off here. I really miss blogging and resolve to get back to it. So here something that has me so excited I could burst.

The Police, a band I had loved since I was in 6th grade, is getting back together to tour. The inner child in me is screaming with delight and playing air guitar. I never got to see them live because the band had stopped touring by the time I was old enough to attempt to sneak out to a concert.

Like Sippey I was a bit worried that Sting's tendency for pretenious sophistication (he just released an album of middle-age lute music afterall) would mess with the Police legacy. When the band performed at the Grammy's Sunday I was ellated to see just Sting, Andy and Stewart on stage -- no back-up singers, string sections, multimedia explosions. Not even a lute! It was just The Police as I remembered them and loved them. OK they are older looking, but quite frankly have aged quite well. I can only hope to look half as good when I reach their age. Check it out in case you missed it:

As if seeing them together wasn't enough the band held a press conference where they told reporters of their long rumored world tour. The quote that made me happiest was Sting confirming that the tour would be more of what we saw at the Grammys. From the AP article:

"It's going to be three guys on stage, that's all," Sting said. "The show is going to look simple but spectacular."

I have to admit to I feeling like a school kid again when I met Stewart Copeland and he told me how he was considering a documentary made out of Super8 film he shot years ago during the band's rise to fame. (And he did. See Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out. It is marvelous.) I think I might start squealing like a little girl if I see them live. Despite that prospect, I'm already "in line" for tickets.

UPDATE: I GOT TICKETS!!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (faints)

This is priceless. I have a big soft spot for Charlie Brown's Christmas. The pathetic little christmas tree that "needs him" embodies the whole tale and its moral. I'm tempted to make this our tree this year.

You've heard it a million times. Hip-hop, techno, and drum 'n' bass were practically built around it. Nate Harrison's story behind theThe Amen Break.

A fascinating listen woth your 18 minutes. I never realized some much music riffed on the same one sample. I had always assumed it was just a very popular sound from a piece of gear. How extraordinary.

Engadget notes that Lego has launched a service for designing your own custom brick designs.

File this under “wish we had this when we were kids”: LEGO is starting a new program called LEGO Factory where you can download a desktop application that allows you to create a custom brick design. You can take the designs you create using the LEGO Digital Designer software, upload them to the LEGO website, and actually order a kit of LEGO bricks that will make the design you spec’d out.

I used to be a Lego junky. My brother and I would built a 3 foot+ long space battleships by hacking pieces together. We'd do things like erase the faces off of heads and turn them into turrets and things like that. It was Lego Hacks just back in the 80's when the pieces were more generic. The scale of our creations was total different then the happy little sets of today -- these things were flying fortress.

A bunch of kids in the neighbor hood used to built ships and have pretend battles (hey, we were 8 years old.) The ship names and weaponry was adapted from a early japanese animation series that was in syndication then called Star Blazers. Ours was named the Andromeda (here is a picture of the cartoon ship) and like the cartoon it had two wave motion guns (two non-Lego plastic tubes that was salvaged off of something from a grocery store), detachable battle satellites, fighter planes and dual missile launching turrets in the back.

Most of the fun was figuring out what set gave you the most bang for your buck and how you could use every piece on your ship. I can remember shopping in the toy section of stores for what $5 mini sets we could buy to upgrade our ship. A mobile lunar rover gave us radar dishes and antenna to upgrade our communications stack. A space scooter gave us an exhaust piece to boost our array and wing pieces we could mount more weapons on. Every so often you'd get bored with your or needed to "refactor" to better use the pieces you've collected since the last design.

It taught me a lot about design and engineering. I credit a lot of professional skills to my hours of time I spent building and creating my own science fiction.

If only this service was available back then. What damage could we have done if Lego sets could have been built to our exact specifications!

I'm going to have to dig out my old Legos stashed away somewhere at my parents house.

There is a commercial running for Pepsi One where the cans spin and morph like a kaleidoscope. For all you wondering about the music behind it, the track is called Exploration by Karminsky Experience. Incidentially this is yet another track from the Thievery Corporation's DJ Kicks album which I cited as the source of numerous other commercial music gems.

I finally got to see George Lucas's final Star Wars film, Revenge of the Sith last night. I may be the last person in the blogosphere to finally see it, but I did and I can now comment.

After seeing it and reading a few posts by others I must agreed that it was much better then the previous two. That isn't saying much though because I thought they were rather poor. I wasn't as enthralled as others though. It was fine, but I don't need to ever see it again.

The action made it more interesting to watch and made up for the poor script we've all come to expect. It was just so anti-climatic knowing how everything should end. I was just there for the details and a sense of completion. Well – I had hoped to be pleasantly surprised, but I wasn't.

Driving home from the theatre I commented to my wife that if George wanted to tell the fall of Anakin Skywalker so much he should have taken a cue from his friend Francis Ford Coppola and created movies with the characters we all know and love while flashing back to the past like in Godfather 2. That would have been tremendous.

Yes people are going in droves to see the movies and yes George is making a ton on promotional marketing of nearly everything you can. However I have to wonder what the these movies would have been like had Lucas not be been such a megalomaniac and instead acknowledged the fans as having made him what he is and made the films for them.

Looking forward to the summer movie I really wanted to see – Batman Begins.

PVRBlog notes the rumor on the street is that Apple is looking at acquiring Tivo. What a wonderful reality that would be if true!

As weblogs such as PVRBlog have shown, a Tivo can be rather easily converted into a home media entertainment system encompassing digital music, photos and more – not just TV. Buying into Tivo would give Apple million of potential fans… er, customers, to buy the next generation of products and add a certain sense of geek chic to those who have not. Given that Tivo's problems have been the management of their company and not the brand, in this light I think it make total sense. Apple seems to have a very good handle on its business matters and when it comes to innovation, a place where Tivo has stagnated, Apple has a never monoply on the market. Consider Apple's more recent moves such as the iPod Photo and Mac Mini and successful ventures like the iTunes store (movies via the iTunes anybody?) and having a Tivo-like device fits like a glove and the miind runs wild with the possibilities.

What what such a union produce in the area of PVR? I would think an iPod click wheel on the console and/or remote control in addition to AirPort Extreme (Wifi) capabilities and perhaps Bluetooth (for the remote) built-in right in. I think higher-end versions could feature a SuperDrive. Probably that would mean some type of digital rights management being built-in – sigh, oh well. A Firewire port so a external hard drive could be plugged in for aditional storage would rule.

Oh and in other news, Apple lowered the price of the iPod Mini 4GB model to $199 and introduced a 6GB model at the old $249 price. They also dropped the iPod Photo down $150 to $450 and introduced a model with only 30GB of storage for $349. Soon the whole world will own an iPod, oh yes.

Friends of the Birth Center, the not-for-profit organization I sit on the board member of, is hosting a screening of a documentary Madame Tizo this Thursday (2/24/05) at Tribeca Cinemas.

MADAME TIZO
a film by David Belle

The inspiring story of a 100 year old Haitian midwife/leaf doctor known as Ms. Little Bones in the town of Jacmel.  The portrait of Madame Tizo is one of rare matriarch who embraces tradition and whose great influence resonates throughout her community.

Please join us:
Thursday, February 24th, 7pm
at Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street (off Canal)

Q&A with the director following the screening $15 contribution/proceeds benefit Friends of the Birth Center and Ms. Tizo. 

Please show you support for our organization and what I'm sure will be a fascinating and inspiring film. Tickets can be purchased in advanced using PayPal here.