I happened to be cleaning out my gear closet this evening when I found my old external studio hard drives… on them I have the original – very first and very rough takes – of my first Arrangement for Sex series of songs. To hear what they sounded like with no production and slightly arrangements is really cool.

Also included were a number of other rough demos that I never followed up on but sure as hell should have… Frankly, I’m blow away by the work that I said “eh, this doesn’t have potential…”  I truly don’t know what I was thinking. On that really sticks out to me is called “Your Soft Touch”

I’ll convert the old demos (and “junk tracks”) into MP3s and post them shortly.

Click on the picture for the high res version.

Original found here.

Ok, I found another place to waste time.  It appeals to my inner history buff.

Letters of Note – http://www.lettersofnote.com/

The basic concept is a blogger has tracked down letters from famous, or significant, people and posted them for us to read. A great time waster and a nice way to peak into the personality of another.

Check this link out – it is the Hubble Deep Field image. In the image there are roughly 3000 objects; almost all are galaxies.

The image is a composite of 342 separate images, and only covers two parts in a million of the whole sky. Just to give you a bit of perspective…

The outline above is the section of the sky in the original picture.

Remember that galaxies have solar systems, the milky way has roughly 300 billion solar systems alone. If we assume the milky way is representative of galaxies throughout the Hubble Deep Field image, that means you and I are looking at 900,000,000,000,000 solar systems – that is 900 Trillion solar systems.

If we assume that every galaxy has only one solar system that supports life that means  there are 3,000 other instances of life (on some level) at the minimum with the potential of up to 900 Trillion others…. and, again, this is a fraction of the sky.

Anyone who thinks life is confined to planet earth needs to look at the image above and then do some reading up on probability theory.

I am a fan of history, and if you are as well I’m sure you’ll enjoy this site - shorpy.com. From simple pictures of people to high resolution photographs of the early 20th century this site has it all.

Well worth spending time over there!

A friend sent this to me today, not sure where they found it but color me impressed.

How cool!

Well, I guess you can’t but your name sure can (thanks to NASA)!

The Mars Science Lab has opened up a form where you can submit your name.  That info will then be included on a microchip that is heading to Mars next year.  Yea, sure, it’s a fun little thing to do but let’s face it, this is the closest I will (most likely) ever get to space.

Now if we can actually overcome 40+ years of space exploration neglect, maybe a person could actually walk on mars some day.

From the “This is just really cool but rather useless to me in everyday life” file come the top 10 species discovered in 2008:

1.    Pygmy seahorse: Classified by its Latin name, Hippocampus satomiae, this species measures about half an inch long and was found near Derawan Island off Kalimantan, Indonesia.

2. A plant that kills itself: Found in a small area of northwestern Madagascar, a rare genus of palm — Tahina spectablilis — produces huge, spectacular flowers and then dies and collapses. Fewer than 100 have been found.

3. Decaf, please: Known as Coffea charrieriana, this plant found in Cameroon is the first record of a caffeine-free coffee species from Central Africa.

4. Spray-on species: An extremophile bacteria, Microbacterium hatanonis, was discovered in hairspray by Japanese scientists.

5. A stick that moves: The world’s longest insect, with a body length of 14 inches (22.3 inches including legs), Phobaeticus chani resembles a stick and was found in Borneo, Malaysia.

6. The Barbados Threadsnake: Leptotyphlops carlae measures only 4.1 inches long and is believed to be the world’s smallest snake.

7. A pale “ghost slug”: Selenochlamys ysbryda was a surprising find in the densely populated area of Cardiff, Wales.

8. A very limber snail: This unique species, Opisthostoma vermiculum, is found on a limestone hill in Malaysia and has a shell that twists around four axes.

9. Damsel in the deep blue sea: Chromis abyssus is a beautiful species of damselfish found in deep-reef habitat off the coast of Ngemelis Island, Palau.

10. Fossil mama: A fossilized fish, Materpiscis attenboroughi, is an extremely rare find from Western Australia and shows a mother giving birth 380 million years ago.

If you would care for very specific info and pictures, check out the source – ASU. Otherwise, there are picture of these over at the CNN site.  I have to say the pygmy seahorse and the Barbados Threadsnake are very fascinating.  Admitedly, the “Barbados Thredsnake” sounds quite…intimidating…but isn’t even as big as a quarter. Also does the “extremophile bacteria” form because of the hairspray?  Wouldn’t it make sense that the bacteria existed before hairspray ever came along?

All of these things just go to remind me how little we actually know about the world around us.

It was just a few days ago when I commented that there really doesn’t seem to be anything “new” on the Internet these days. I started to get the feeling that everything has gotten really, really old… you know, that “been there, done that feeling”

I remember back in early 1998 when flash websites were all the rage.  While the technology was available since 1996 (hardcore fans, do you remember the original name?) very few developers actually decided to make full websites based on the technology.  Once people made the switch to flash development it seemed as if there was a new world waiting.  It was one of those rare “wow” moments. 

Since that point there have been a number of those “wow” moments, not many, but enough – Audio Galaxy, Google, XML, Twitter.  Sure, the innovations would ebb and flow, and the volume of “wow” moments would diminish as it becomes harder to impress, but still I would keep an eye out for new things.

Thanks to Devhands Blog I now have another little Internet gadget to add to the “keeping things new” category.  It is not a full blow “WOW! That’s going to change the world” but it is cool (and simple) none the less.

Those smart people at Google  have created the “Translation Browser Button.” If you often visit sites that you would like to translate, head over to this page and drag the language of your choice browser button to your bookmark tool bar.  Next time you are on a page you need to have translated, just simply press the button.

Not a “Wow!” moment, but cool none the less.

You need to check this out – Dailymail has some amazing images of Saturn.

Enjoy.