Guillermo Del Toro to direct The Hobbit

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh announced that Guillermo Del Toro, directory of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth will be directing the 2 movies of The Hobbit, coming to a screen near you probably starting in 2010.

Unique Animal Body Part of the Week: Eimer's Organ

I'd love to say that I've come face to face with a star-nosed mole and taken this picture, but then I'd like to say a lot of other things that also aren't true. Yet. These nearly-blind burrow-dwelling moles, the only moles that can actually swim, have 22 small independently movable appendages covered with 30,000 Eimer's organs at the tip of their noses. They have about six times as many touch receptors as humans, all on their nose, and they don't even need to use soap.

22 Ideas for Earth Day

Here's a list of 22 ideas written by Joe Mohr of CleanTechnica for April 22, a.k.a. Earth Day. When my oldest daughter comes home from school and asks how she can help us recycle, some of my faith in the world is restored.

Will Ferrell as George Bush

Will Ferrell as W. - with Jon Stewart as the straight man. Almost as funny as this one.

Set List - Saturday 4/12/08

I thought I'd post the set list of my solo show from Saturday, the originals are marked *:

Too Creative *
April Come She Will (Paul Simon)
My Winding Wheel (Ryan Adams)
Sister *
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
Don't Think Twice, it's All Right (Dylan)
It's Only Love (Beatles)
Where do the Children Play? (Cat Stevens)
The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
On the Inside of Your Circle *
Friend of the Devil (Garcia, Hunter)
Just Like a Photograph *

Me & Bobby McGee (K. Kristofferson)
Getting Better (Beatles)
In Tall Buildings (John Hartford)
Sitting by the Dock of the Bay (Redding)
Girl (Beatles)
Sunshine (J. Edwards)
Flake (J. Johnson)
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing (J. Johnson)
I Am the Walrus (Beatles)
Late Night Traveling Friend *
Stand By Me (King) > Redemption Son (Marley)
On Alexander Street *
Glass Onion (Beatles)

Truth in Advertising

This is from If Advertsing were true, 5 Popular Products on the Panda page.

ELF's The Manual

Patrick Wilson of Weezer spoke about ELF's The Manual, the cultish irreverant British guide to getting a #1 hit in a week. As this sells for over $150 for a rare print copy, I thought I'd post a copy of the PDF version here. This is also a pretty good episode of Mac Break Weekly (#82 - The Double Album) if you've got the time, with a lot of banter centered on the dilemmas of modern music distribution.

Using a Wii controller with Max/MSP

At the SEAMUS 2008 conference in Salt Lake City, Jeff Stolet of the University of Oregon did a fun piece using 2 Wii controllers to control a Max/MSP patch which in turn processed live video and sound. Here's a useful Max object developed by Masayuki Akamatsu which uses the Bluetooth API to let you use a Wii remote with Max/MSP 4.6.

Alta's Serene Scenery

Here's a picture I took while skiing at Alta on Thursday. Several times I had to stop for views like this while resting my lungs from the adjustment to being 10000 feet up.

Polygamy Porter

Brewpubs are apparently thriving in Salt Lake City - how could I resist Polygamy Porter whose slogan is "why have just one?".

SEAMUS 2008 in Salt Lake City

Tomorrow I'm off to Salt Lake City for the 2008 SEAMUS conference, a conference of electroacoustic music and video. Andrea and I are showing the video work I Open The Window which we made during our stay in Gothenburg, Sweden last Spring — it was commissioned by Gothenburg University as a site-specific work based on the Jonsered Manor house, an Italian style manor used as a conference center by the University. I hope to sneak in a few hours of skiing at Alta, which I still fondly remember from a ski trip to Utah 10 years ago.