Happy New Year!

Just a quick happy 2007 to everybody. Wow...between all day practices and throwing up in a bucket the last few days have been really busy. Its all good.

Remember:

• Channel 5
• Around 9am
• Pasadena City College Tournament of Roses Honor Band
• First rank of clarinets (rank 13)
• Center

Right after the parade I'm flying out to Colorado then coming back for All Southern on Sunday, then...School! Oh well.

Happy New Year!

My Elfamorphosis

By popular request, click here to see the elf version of me. The things I do for you people. Enjoy.

Merry Christmas!

Just wishing a happy Christmas to everybody.

In the spirit of Christmas, here are a few links for you:

• Be sure to track Santa this evening utilizing the technology from NORAD. As I type, the most recent sighting was London, England. Check out the video.
• Leave it to Americans. Prisoners and suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay are receiving holiday greetings. Some of the better ones could be, "Dear Avowed Enemy of America: Merry Christmas," or "Dear Friend of Usama Bin Laden: Happy New Year."
• Finally, last but definitely not least, you now have the capability to turn yourself into an elf thanks to OfficeMax's Elf Yourself. I'll let my dancing elf counterpart tell the rest.

I'm off to go play bells in church then make some tamales. That warm and fuzzy Christmas feeling is already setting in.

AV3 News

Winter Break

I guess I'm a little past due on a post. I apologize for the delay; stuff was really getting busy. Hopefully this will make up for it.

It's finally winter break, so there is 3 weeks of freedom ahead. That will be really nice. There is still T of R, so we get to look forward to marching in circles for hours on end. Apparently I'm the tallest clarinet so I get center guide. The odd thing is that I happen to be the shortest center guide. Oh well. Just watch channel 5 (locally) towards the middle of the parade for PCC and the person behind the Goliath trumpet player in the center is... me!

Apparently the 16 of us T of R folks from around here are getting a little press. There should be a piece running in the AV Press soon (I'll post it when it runs) and we have an interview scheduled for good 'ol AV3 news. So if you're home Monday morning around 9:30, watch channel 3. Or don't. It's up to you.

Finals were last week. Everything went pretty decently. The cat test for anatomy was a tad moldy but otherwise cool. Honor band auditions were on Thursday as well. I didn't feel to hot right after the audition (the sight reading was a bit impossible) but apparently I did pretty well getting first chair again. Everybody else (Julian, Tani, Holly, Shivani, Tiffany, etc) was right up there to so that's cool.

This has to be one of the coolest videos of all time (with the exception of the one posted above). This dude plays music by rolling by stationary bottles on roller blades. Pretty awesome. I should try that. Then again with my balance I'd probably fall on the bottles.

These are pictures of the most unusual buildings. Some look photoshoped, but I believe these are genuine. Interesting.

Be glad you weren't in Taiwan recently when a dead whale exploded all over the street. I'm sure that was a very pleasant experience for observers. I wasn't aware that whales actually exploded, but I'll keep that in mind.

A few weeks back we brought you Will it Blend? Marbles! Here is a new segment: Will it Blend? I pod! One question: Why?

That's it for now...I think I'm going to go take a nap.

Download the Internet

Black Friday

Even though we were in Vegas over Thanksgiving, tradition had to be continued. So, Karl, Jon, and I woke up at 3:30am and ventured to wait in extremely long lines and deal with chaotic crowds. Fun stuff. While we weren't out for anything huge, we did score some pretty neat stuff. I came home with 100 DVD-R's (that should last a while), 50 Cd-R's, a 2GB flash drive with U3, and a few other Christmas items that would not be in my best interest to mention here. In all, despite running on three hours of sleep, it was pretty awesome, as usual.

Thanksgiving was great; there we're 15 of us at my Uncle's house and we ate a lot of good food. The tomato jello thing wasn't my favorite, but otherwise the food was great and it was nice to spend a great Turkey Day with family. And yes, that's our turkey.

I mentioned above that my new flash drive supported U3. While I always knew this technology existed, I never realized how cool it is. You can customize applications on the drive, so when you plug it into any system that system basically becomes your custom system. Very nice.

Too bad no stores had this mega-monitor on sale Friday. I could definitely go for one of those suckers.

Hungary? Make a sandwich. Oh, wait... sorry, you can't do that. At least you can't if McDonald's gets their way and puts a patent on the sandwich and, more specifically, the "simultaneous toasting of a bread component." I'm sorry, but that is absurd. One more reason to boycott McDonald's.

This has to be one of the most amazing basketball baskets ever made. That thing seems to defy the laws of physics. One word: wow.

Compliments of my Uncle, here is a comedy on airline pilots. Pretty funny stuff. Scary thing is, I can somewhat see him acting like that.

Well, that's all for now. I'm going to go try and figure out why I'm getting a rash from a fake Christmas tree.

Happy Turkey Day!

Five Days Off!

Finally...a much needed break. I was actually able to sleep in until 7 today, so that was really nice. I think we're heading out tomorrow for Vegas to spend Thanksgiving at my uncle's, so that will be nice.

I just spent 4 hours this morning recording my audition cd for All State. It's nice to get that done with semi-early (unlike last year's day before thing). I think it sounds good now, but I'll probably listen to it later and end up redoing it on Sunday.

Other than that, life has been busy as usual. School's been good, band has been...bandish, and T of R is coming together nicely. Jon's surprise birthday party was at my place on Saturday, so between the people, food, and Karaoke, it was pretty cool/fun.

In case you're new to the planet, the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii were both released last week. Naturally there we're people in line a week before with riots occurring at Palmdale Wal-mart. Yes, we made CNN. It's wonderful to see what our community is nationally known for. William Warford had a column in the AV Press on Friday that puts this whole craze in prospective. I couldn't find it online, so I scanned it in. Pretty funny read.

Continuing on the theme of stupid people, here is what has to be the stupidest criminal in the world (or maybe just the unluckiest). Make sure you watch the whole thing, it's worth it.

This guy photoshoped a picture of his kid to look like famous people. Pretty funny yet sort of twisted. Poor kid. Don't get any ideas, Karl.

That's it for now...have a happy Turkey Day.

Happy Veteran's Day

A nice three day weekend…finally. Definitely much needed break.

Once again I apologize for the lapse last week. We had our first practice for T of R (more on that later), and I didn’t get home until pretty late. I will have to find a temporary new posting routine. It will probably be just whenever I can get to it.

The T of R band can only be described with one word: awesome. It is a true marching band with 21 (no typo) tubas. Yes folks, 21 tubas. That’s a lot. It is really quite nice to play with a hefty low brass section. After one week, it already sounds pretty good. It’s going to be a little time consuming to memorize everything, but it will be worth it.

The QH band played at the Chino Invitational last week. While we could have done a tad better parade wise, we still placed 5^th with the overall combined score, so that was pretty cool. This morning we played for the AV Welcome Home Veteran's Day Parade. It was just a regular parade…nothing too special (besides the B-2 and Apache flyover). I heard it was on national TV or something, but haven’t seen anything yet so who knows.

I got the Copland Concerto! I’m really excited…if you haven’t heard it let me know and I’ll get you a copy, it’s a really nice piece. Too bad I don’t have any time to practice it between the Mozart and T of R stuff.

The new Blogger Beta is available to anybody with a Google Account now. If you already have a blogger, it's worth the move...there's some pretty cool new features.

So the Dems now have control in both the House and Senate. And Rumsfeld is gone. Pretty cool stuff.

Will it Blend? In his latest installment of the wonders of the kitchen blender, Tom Dickson blends up a bag of marbles. One question: why?

This is a pretty cool slideshow of some of the best pictures people have uploaded to Flickr. Some of them are pretty cool...others are kind of "out there."

There are some pretty stupid people in the world. I'm sure you already knew that, but just in case you needed another example, here you go: "A man is in hospital with severe internal injuries after trying to launch a powerful firework rocket from his backside."

Adobe is offering a free beta of a new sound editing program (similar to Audition) called Soundbooth. Looks pretty interesting. Just in time to record those All State CD's.

While you're at it, pick up your free beta of Vista.

Considering tomorrow is another one of those insane days, I think I'm going to go sleep.

Happy Halloween!

Hart

Yesterday was the annual Hart Rampage. As always, it was really big and really cool. We didn't place (not that we were really expecting too), but the experience was still fun. We got back around 1 am...this morning. That wasn't real fun. We also had a football game on Friday which was Jr. High night, so that's always interesting. I got to lead a line of our future clarinets onto the 50 and they actually figured it out by the 3rd time which is pretty cool.

Other than that, its just been another one of those jam-packed week/weekends. Nothing overly new and exciting to report (well, I did set the curve on an anatomy test, but I won't brag...too much). After talking with India again today for a half hour, I finally settled my 2 month escapade at getting my new cell phone working somewhat the way it is supposed to. I don't even know why I have it. I hate phones.

We've all seen the videos of the people who have gotten the first question on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" wrong, but there's a new one out. As funny as it is, you have to feel bad for the guy. Yet again, you'd think he would at least know what a surge protector is, but apparently not.

In honor of our recent "fall back" time change, this has to be one of the coolest clocks you've seen. You can also download it and others as screensavers.

Here's a screenshot from ABC 7 news. Hmm, interesting...

This is a pretty funny/interesting story about one of those weird, daring people who like to be a pain to corporate America. For a few weeks, this guy faked signatures when using a credit card. He progressively makes them worse, even drawing pictures on the receipts and nobody notices until he tries to buy $16000 worth of TV's. Make sure you read all it, it's a pretty funny read.

Well I'm beat, so I'm going to go attempt to get some rest.

Happy National Nut Day

October 22 is National Nut Day, so go out there and thank an almond. Then eat it.

I apologize for the lack of an update last week; I was in Pasadena most of the day and sleep seemed to be the more favorable activity when I got home. But I do have good news (no, I did not save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico...sorry): I made the Pasadena City College Tournament of Roses Honor Band, the official band of the Tournament of Roses Parade. Yep...I'll be marching in the Rose Parade along with 7 others from the AV. I'm looking forward to it, my sister did it ten years ago so I hear many good things. Here's the schedule if you want to see the insane amount of time it takes...it's worth it.

Yes folks, you can now store all of your valuable data on your key chain. For only $1500 you can get a 32GB thumb drive. Just what this world needs.

In case you ever need to know how to say "hello" in Egyptian, Kabuverdianu, or Guugu Yimithirr, here's a site that gives you greetings in over 800 languages. Very helpful if you ever need to travel to the deep forests of Tasmania.

How not to lean Karate. Ouch.

Firefox 2.0 its scheduled to come out Tuesday. It is essentially the same, but has a few new neat little features. If you can't wait until then, here's a link to RC3, which is pretty much the same as the final release. I'll have to get a new shirt now.

It's that time of year to bring back the old car commercial ghost. This has been around a while, but its still pretty freaky. Watch closely after the car leaves the trees and you might see it. Kinda spooky.

That's all for now...I'm gonna go find some peanuts and celebrate the day of the nut.

Rose Parade!

Weekend?

Where did it go?

Friday was one of those famous 17 hour Football Fridays, followed by a competition on Saturday. We went to Simi and did ok. In most areas we got 3rd out of 4 in our division (all within a few points), but in music we got second highest overall. So that was kind of cool. To top it all off, I had to play with Bells this morning at 7. A few hours of homework later, here I am.

Andi, Karl and Matt were here this week. Matt was pretty hilarious...if you haven't seen the video, check out the short version (see last post), or full length. If you have seen it, go watch it again. It's worth it.

Well, both the Dodgers and Twins got swept in the first round of MLB playoffs. It's kind of ironic because both looked really great toward the end of the regular season. It's to bad...but I'm sure we'll get over it. Maybe.

This is a pretty cool image showing the "barrier between heaven and hell." It's kind of a neat, ironic occurrence in nature, if it's real, but I'm not too sure how real the photo is.

This site is pretty cool/creepy. Make sure you have audio on. It's described as "musical realization of motion graphics," that probably doesn't make much sense, but just read it on the site. Pretty cool stuff.

This guy took a picture of himself every day for 8 years and compliled it into a video. Interesting to see how much of a change there is. It gets pretty cool towards the end.

That's all for now...I think I'm gonna go sleep.

Laughing Matt

Dodgers Clinch the Playoffs

After sweeping both the Rockies and Giants, the Dodgers won the NL Wildcard. Looney looked pretty awesome on Thursday with 2 home runs (including a grand slam) and tying a franchise record 9 RBIs. Looney will be around for a while...the last game I went to I got him to sign a ball (my pic at lower right). Pretty cool stuff. Playoffs start Wednesday with the Dodgers at the Mets.

My weekly highlights include the Dodgers (of course), getting to play my Eb in the march, having an IV of Dextrose explode on me, finishing the field show, and Jon dropping his new Bluetooth headset in the toilet. Other than that, school is...well, school. And life is...life. I'm just continuing to trudge forward as usual.

Why they would put a rap questions on Jeopardy beats me. Maybe its just so we can laugh at Alex Trebeck trying to rap. Pretty funny/disturbing.

Leo Laporte (2006 Podcater of the Year) is making a move to change the name of Podcasting of the more accurate Netcasting. Since current Podcasting has really nothing to do with iPods, I think that's a good idea. Hopefully it works out.

Is the one and only time-waster Windows Solitaire rigged? Even though I've beaten it a lot (just try Alt+Shift+2), it's still an interesting idea that could be the child of bored Microsoft programmers. The video may be rigged, but still interesting.

Finally, this is one of the best political ad I've ever seen. And it's accurate, too. Pretty funny.

That's it for now...I have to go test out a toilet-washed headset.

Mac Mistakes and Airport Security

We'll, we've successfully completed 5 weeks of school. It seems like a lot longer, but oh well. Nothing too new this week. Just the same old stuff. We had our second football game on Friday which went halfway decent for us, and the football team actually won, so that's good.

I got recruited for the handbell choir at church, so that has been interesting. I wouldn't exactly call myself a natural, but I'm surviving so far. We had our first "performance" this week which went pretty well.

On Saturday I saw The Price Duo at AVC. Dr. Price (the clarinet dude) and his mom played. It was pretty amazing/degrading/motivating...all at the same time.

See that Dodger game this afternoon? Tie game, bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, 2 out and Garciaparra knocks one out. Pretty sweet...now let's see if they can keep it up.

Here's a guaranteed way to ensure your luggage doesn't get lost. Just pack a starter pistol and register your luggage with a firearm. They're gonna make sure they don't lose it. Pretty slick idea.

On the same topic of airport security, here's a time waster where you can be the TSA. It's a fun little (addicting) game. Enjoy.

I haven't done some Mac bashing in a while, so I don't feel too bad about this. Everybody has seen the videos of XP crashing under Bill Gates, so here's some clips from Apple Conferences where things didn't exactly go as planned, or just didn't work at all. Pretty funny.

Finally, our quote of the week:
"Rap is an incomplete word without the 'c'"

Well said Mr. McQ.

The Band Plays On...

It's marching season again.

We had our first football game on Friday. We did as well as we could. It was really weird: I noticed when we were marching that the crowd kept cheering...at a football game. That's quite...rare. Then it hit me, they were cheering for our new freshman prodigy baton twirler guy. That dude is pretty amazing. It's good to know that things haven't changed too drastically.

Then the next day we had a 3 hour morning practice followed by the exhibition show, to further prove the weekend dominated by band. The practice went surprisingly well, even with me adopting the entire low brass section since their leaders were mysteriously missing. The show that night went pretty bad. At least that's how I felt, but I'm told it was halfway decent. It was a pretty fun evening and Matt's fan club finally got to meet him.

The new ipods came out last week. And not to disappoint they are, you guessed it, smaller! It seems that whole Steve Jobs "ipod pequeno" SNL skit is coming true. iTunes 7 also came out with some newfeaturess and a new UI.

AMD teamed up with Streamload and is offering 25 GB of free online storage. Not only is it storage, but you can share media, and even use it as a hosting service. Pretty sweet.

For our baseball fans out there (ahem...Karl), here's some 1864 baseball. It's a pretty hilarious Conan O'Brien clip. It's kind of long, but worth the watch.

That's it for now...

Introducing The Donut Bacon Cheeseburger!

Now, doesn't that look appetizing.
Don't forget to wash it down with some deep fried coke.
Yummy.

Now that you are thoroughly sick to your stomach (with disgust or hunger?), we can move on. Last week was pretty nice in terms of school (or lack thereof), Monday off, short Wednesday, short Thursday, and the normal Happy Friday. I'm afraid this week won't be quite as short and sweet, but I'm sure we'll live.

This coming Friday is the first home football game, and Saturday is the annual QH Field Preview Show. Despite the fact we lack uniforms and 2/3 of the field show (and probably will acquire neither by Friday), it should still be pretty cool. It's marching season again!

Just for clarification: the picture above my name at the top of the page is not me. It's Matt. I know there was a bit of confusion there, so I hope that clears it up.

Here's some pretty cool paper cut art. I've never really seen anything like it before...it has to be pretty time consuming, but looks really cool.

The next huge fad: light emitting shirts. Those look pretty awesome, except Wired says you have to carry a battery back around. Anyway, the idea is interesting...I wonder if it will ever take off.

If the thought of deep fried cola didn't make you dizzy enough, here's a site with a bunch of different optical illusions. A good time waster.

That's it for now...go find yourself one of those delectable 1000 calorie donut bacon cheeseburger.