Apple finally dropped the iPad. I know, you probably even questioned whether it was real. Checkout Steve’s keynote here, and the official Apple marketing video here.

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SoulPancake is number four in WIRED’s “What’s WIRED This Month” playlist in the January 2010 issue. Rainn graces the mag with a little shot of his near perfect Michelangelo-esque physique, and we get a nice blurb as well! It’s on page 48 in the magazine.

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I wanted to setup a place to share my thoughts. Twitter doesn’t give me enough “oomph” and I usually ramble about Apple, Google and other tech stuff there. Every once in a while, I try and write down something I’d want my (non-existent) children to hear. Avha.me is where I will (attempt) to save these thoughts.

The lights at a Phish show are part of the experience. Some would say the lights are complimentary to the music, others say the opposite. Either way, Chris Kuroda is a genius, and Hampton Coliseum is his playground.

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Posted in Insanity, MyFanboySide, Phish at November 17th, 2009. No Comments.

It’s really no secret that I love 37signals. I religiously use their products and I like to think that we run our company very much the same way they run theirs. That’s why when SoulPancake was mentioned on the 37signals Product Blog, I was almost more excited than when we were profiled on ABC’s Nightline.

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Posted in Insanity, Opinions, Video at October 26th, 2009. No Comments.

From film.com: The Office’s Rainn Wilson sings about the birds and the bees on the Cartoon Network’s adults-only comedy series.

Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show (Great Job!) is a show that’s difficult to just blanket recommend to folks. The cable-access-outtake format requires a certain taste in comedy that a large majority of the population never acquires, even those familiar with Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup. It can often seem just weird for the sake of being weird, but through the insanity many great moments of surreal comedy bubble up.

Take the Rainn Wilson guest appearance as child singer Bobby Stoan, showcasing his limited knowledge of how to make babies (see video below). The visual joke of having Wilson’s face digitally placed on a real toddler is funny enough, but having him sing “do you really have to pee in a girls mouth to make babies?” is beyond funny. Kids do say the darndest things, including this misinterpretation of the birds and bees.

This is easily the funniest video I’ve seen in months. Just watch. Read More…

Posted in Hilarity, Insanity, Ze-awwn-line-inter-toob at August 14th, 2009. No Comments.

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Posted in Genius, Insanity at July 12th, 2009. 2 Comments.

Not much to say about this one, I opened the carton and there it was. The largest egg I have ever seen in my life!

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Posted in Hilarity, Insanity at July 5th, 2009. 5 Comments.

One of my great friends Tom Fite found this original pie chart on this blog. Since the quality was so bad, but the chart was so incredibly amazing, I decided to enhance it a bit and make it readable.

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Posted in Hilarity, Insanity, Ze-awwn-line-inter-toob at June 1st, 2009. No Comments.

Checkout this cattle dog laying on the horn outside the grocery store… Clearly he got way too impatient and figured out how to use the fracking horn!

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Posted in Hilarity, Insanity, lifeisawesome at May 4th, 2009. 2 Comments.

I hold a deep passion for martial arts. Many people may not know that in a previous life I studied to be a black belt for about 5 years. I’m not too keen on American style boxing so much, but more bushido, jujitsu, tae kwon do and the such.

Below is an amazing compilation of Mixed Martial Arts upsets from the past year.
NOTE: If you don’t want to watch the whole video, scrub to the 7:50 mark and watch it from there.


Posted in Insanity, Opinions at March 21st, 2009. No Comments.

Five years ago, after numerous consecutive Phish tours across the country, a large group of friends and I traveled to Coventry Vermont where Phish last broke things off. The music sucked and the atmosphere was concrete depression mixed with a little bit of suicide.

The grounds were muddy, the band was sad, people were broke, and it rained so much in the days before the festival, that what seemed like Army forces had to be brought in to help the masses get through those 3 days.

But now, five long years after leaving us in a cold, wet and dirty swamp in North Coventry Vermont, when the economy is in the dumps and our unemployment numbers have skyrocketed past 4.2 million people without jobs, Phish decides it’d be a good time to hit the road again. And best of all, to kick things off at Hampton Coliseum on Friday, March 6th 2009 – they opened with a juggernaut… Fluffhead.

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Posted in Insanity, Opinions, Phish, SimplyStaggering at March 7th, 2009. No Comments.

Sometimes when Nya and Ryu (my dogs, photos on the right) dream, they get kind of rowdy and kick around while fake running. Usually, I obsess about them… But, after seeing the video below I no longer feel the necessity to obsess about it…. at all.


Thanx to my friend Seth Weintraub, author of 9to5mac and writer at Computerworld for sending this my way.

Posted in Hilarity, Insanity, Video, lifeisawesome at March 2nd, 2009. 1 Comment.

As you may have seen with my entry about Tarsiers, I have become rather interested in unique creatures that somewhat scare the shit out of me. What you see below is a Giant Japanese Hornet, and from the looks of things, you never want to meet one.

These hornets live right outside Tokyo, can fly upwards of 50 miles a day, and presumably kill around 40 people each year.

hornet

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Image Credit to Muenster

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Posted in Evolution, Insanity, Opinions, Video at March 1st, 2009. 6 Comments.

I am possibly one of the last people around without a Facebook account. Seriously. Next time you’re at a stoplight, look around. Chances are, more than 50% of the people you see have a Facebook account. Don’t believe me? Ask them.

nofacebookNow, when people find out that I don’t have a facebook account, they often times react with “wow” and “huh?” Sometimes I’ll get a chuckle and a “well, that’s just weird,” but for the most part I let it slide without feeling the need to explain my thoughts.

Aside from Facebook.com being a corporation that when squinting at looks like a small Microsoft replica, the entire thought that under no circumstance do I own my own content makes me cringe. I am not sure most people understand, but EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF CONTENT that you put on Facebook… They own. Every photo, every tag, every image, every word, every comment, every link, every click, every shared anything, every poke, every single thing. But you can just delete your account right? NO! Even when you delete your account… YES! EVEN WHEN YOU DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT !!! They own your content forever. This is makes me far too uncomfortable.

These are personal photos, letters, discussions, comments, that Facebook owns. These are people and system administrators working on the application itself that can, and most likely do browse your information unsolicited. Humans by nature will do things they are not supposed to do. If you put a big fat “don’t click” this in front of someone, they most likely will. And out of those 150+ people working at Facebook, you can be sure at least a few of them have illegally browsed some photos, comments and discussions. The only thing is, in a way… It’s not illegal. As the Consumerist intelligently points out, Facebook’s new Terms of Service agreement ever so slightly states that “even when you delete your account, they still own your content… forever.”

Here is the new Terms of Service agreement: As you can see it looks fine, but there are two important sentences missing from the end of this agreement.

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

And here are the two lines from the end of that paragraph, which happen to be missing now: As expected, they directly explain that you could at one time remove your content… Now, you cannot… Ever.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

And, just for good measure, the agreement explicitly states what remains their property… forever.

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.

I have accounts with Twitter, Vimeo, and of course Gmail. I have my contacts inside Adium, and I use my personal blog to express myself online. I will never join Facebook, and the slight moments of insanity when I consider it, the sheer thought of Facebook being able to peer into my life without any control over my digital content makes me realize that eventually this will backfire. Whether it be in a corporate shake-down where Facebook implodes while distributing your content to advertisers for direct targeting, or whether it be because Facebook employees were illegally learning about future employers, employees and competition to get a leg up. How it happens is yet to be determined, but at some point, Facebook’s intentions as a whole will emerge. And they’re not about “connecting to your friends.”

Posted in Insanity, Opinions, SimplyStaggering, Thank me later at February 16th, 2009. 6 Comments.