My friend, Ryan Parker, is a pretty good singer/songwriter who is also a huge Bengals fan. He has been a fan of the Bengals for pretty much his entire life and has followed them through all the crappy years upto this point where he has a moment of glory. However, he is distrubed that he is forced to share the moment with so many fair-weather fans who suddenly love his team. In honor of the wannabe's he recorded a new song - Bengal Bandwagon. It's a great track and well worth a listen even if you aren't a Bengals fan because you can laugh at the bad years the Bengals had as well as appreciate what they have accomplished recently.

The link to the song is a mirror of the file that I am hosting becuase his website RyanParkerSongs.com is hosted on a very small machine and may not be able to handle all the traffic he will/is getting due to the songs popularity with football fans. If the link above stops working then please try this alternate location.

#Music #Sports #FunStuff

Carson Williams of Mason Ohio put together a fabulous Christmas Light display but had to turn it off after two spectators crashed their cars into each other. He used over 20,000 lights and synchronized their movement to three songs; Jingle Bells, God Bless America, and Wizards of Winter (by the TransSiberian Orchestra).

Here are some links of interest regarding the light show:

• 
  
• Google Earth Placemark of the House - 8047 Winding Creek Ct
  
• Snopes.com details of the House and its Light Show
  
• Instructions for doing this yourself
  
• Video of Wizards of Winter light show
  
• Video of Jingle Bells light show
  

If you have trouble viewing any of the video footage in firefox try it in IE as well; its worth the extra load!

Minor Update: I just saw the house footage used in a Miller Lite beer commerical. I hope Mr. Williams was paid well!

#FunStuff

Lately I have been using a neat little application called the "Last.fm player" which is available from the website last.fm. You enter in a band or artists name and then it creates a streaming radio station for you with bands similar to that which you selected. Pretty neat overall.

Today I was turned on to an even cooler site that does the same thing, but so far, it does it better. It's pandora. So far I like it better because it runs in my browser (no new app to install) AND it seems to give me music that better fits style of the group I entered. For instance when I entered "Pink Floyd" it gave me some really cool music by The Smiths and Scott Walker which both have a similar feel to different periods in Pink Floyd's musical history. The Scott Walker song is kind of like real early Pink Floyd and thus a little wierder. The Smiths are more refined sounding and are closer to the "Division Bell" Floyd that appealed to a wider range of music fans than the real early stuff did.

The one thing both do well is they let you skip over any song you don't like. Most streaming radio you listen to forces you to listen to the entire stream so you're stuck listening to the crap along with the gems. That isn't the case with last.fm and pandora. Hear crap? just hit skip and bam you are on a new song. Very cool

#Music #FunStuff

I don't know if I will keep both of these features but they seem fun at the moment so we shall see. First is a "upcoming event" list. The list is generated from a website called "Planzo" which lets you manage your calendar, todo's, etc all online for free. It seems like an OK site though I wish I could add my own event categories. The second item is a little more peculiar and may not last. We shall see. It is a "Frappr" which means "friend mapper". Basically it lets anyone who visits this page to put a mark on the map where they live (well I think the map is geographically restricted to the US and Europe). You can, if you wish, add a photo to your marker on the map and make a comment. In the bottom right corner of this page I have a "frappr" section which shows a small slideshow of the images that have been put on my map.

The upcoming events thing is kind of neat and I will probably use it to show things I don't mind the world knowing what is going on. The frappr thing seems like it maybe a new way for spammers to abuse my blog so we will have to see how that goes. But in the meantime feel free to add yourself to the rawlinson friends map.

#FunStuff #Geekiness #ThisSite

Ok, I am still pretty proud of the pumpkins we carved this year however I also man enough to admit that my carving skills suck compared to others. First off, we used templates that you trace onto the pumpkin and then simply follow the lines cutting at a single depth the entire time (all the way through baby!). Now, some pumpkin carvers are more dedicated to the craft than others and they use a variety of techniques to acheive gordish nirvana. I am not one of those carvers.

One cool technique that can generate neat effects is leaving different depths of rind in place because the candle light can travel through some thicknesses so you get a "shading" effect when the pumpkin is illuminated. However, some people don't even settle for this simple effect. These pumpkin artists use the soft mushy shell of the pumpkin as their sculptor clay and create works of art that are better to look at in the light of day than at night. One such sculptor of all things pumpkin is "Pumpkinggutter" - check out his work, it is pretty darn impressive.

#FunStuff

I doubt the movie at this link will be up as long as my blog is - but it is FUNNY! I set it up so my brother Ed and I crashed the trailer for the movie "Wedding Crashers". Update: Sadly, newline cinemas removed this feature from their website. You can check out our trailer here: http://www.weddingcrashersmovie.com/crashthistrailer/index.htm?id=208718.

For a special bonus check out Chazz Reingold's Homepage for a list of the 50 "Wedding Crasher" rules. Just scroll down on the homepage to see them. Perfect!

#Family #Movies #FunStuff

Emily, Shannon, Lisa, Joe, and I carved pumpkins tonight using some cool patterns we got as part of a pumpkin carving kit. Take a look at the photos and guess who did each in the comments. The five pumpkins are wolf, wicked, evil, happy, and kitty.

#Family #FunStuff

I have posted about iTunes and their free songs before. Each week Apple gives away at least one song to anyone who logins and downloads it. An "Apple Week" currently runs from Tuesday-Monday meaning the new free songs show up on the site starting on Tuesday and are gone by the following Monday midnight.

Apple doesn't really advertise the fact that you can get more than one free song per week though. They have one featured as the weeks free song - but almost every week I get 3. I login on fridays typically and look for the "Free Downloads" section of the iTunes Store homepage. Well, this week, the "Free Downloads" section moved.

Prior to this week the "Free Downloads" were listed on the bottom of the right column on the homepage. Now they are on the bottom of the left column. Not a major move really but enough where I was nervous that they had done away with the free music program when I didn't see it in it's accustomed location. Currently, this week, there are two free songs: Fast Life by Jackson and HIs Computer Band (an Electronic song) and Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray (a rock song). I haven't listened to either yet but typically I like all of the free songs I get and heck, in the end, who cares if they are any good. They are free so it doesn't hurt you to download it and delete it if you don't like it.

#Music #FunStuff

So, I'm selling out some space on this blog to play poker. I'm weak. I will try to not put stuff like this in the blog in the future - but I thought playing in this tourny might be fun. I hope the add doesn't screw up my layout with it's fixed width markup - finally for my own reference the tournament is on: October 23rd, 2005 – 4:00pm EST / 1:00pm PST - the day before my birthday.

#FunStuff

The advertising folks for Guiness have crafted a very cool commerical featuring evolution. To view it you need to have the Apple Quicktime player installed (most people do). It's a pretty well done piece, but I imagine, due to the nature of the commercial, that it wouldn't get air time here.

#FunStuff