by: Jenny Baxter- AWS percussionist

This week I experienced something magical during rehearsal, and no, it wasn't because of the beefy cheesy burrito I ate earlier. While playing Star Trek: The Next Generation, a slow part wasn't being played dramatically enough. Patrick took a minute to describe the actual scene in the series. Captain Picard, a man who rarely shows emotion, enters the Nexus, which is a "temporal phenomenon" which transforms dreams and desires into temporary reality. Picard, who has no more chance of a family dreams that he married Antonia, the woman he wanted to marry but didn't. In the Nexus he lived with his wife, dog and five children in a log cabin. The rarely emotional captain cries in this beautiful temporary reality.

After Patrick described this scene, we played the section of the piece again, this time with much more feeling, because at least for me, I know I imagined this picture in my head.

Another thing that was mentioned during rehearsal was the death of Don LaFontaine, voiceover extraordinaire. Over 40 years he filmed over 5000 trailers, including some of AWS's promotions. We'll miss his voice, his charisma and that mustache.

The Senators also acquired a 2009 first-round draft choice from the Lightning.

Picard, 23, recorded eight goals and 30 assists for 38 points in 54 AHL games with Philadelphia and Norfolk in 2007-08,and represented the Phantoms at the 2008 AHL All-Star Classic in Binghamton. The native of Gatineau, Que., also appeared in five NHL contests last season.

In 135 career AHL games, Picard, who made his professional debut with Philadelphia during the 2005 Calder Cup Finals, has totaled 16 goals and 58 assists for 74 points. He also has 28 points (6g, 22a) in 92 career NHL games with Philadelphia and Tampa Bay.

According to OttawaSenators.com, Ottawa general manager Bryan Murray called Picard a high-end prospect with the potential to have the same impact as Brian Lee, another 2008 AHL All-Star and the Senators' top selection in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft who is expected to challenge for a full-time role in Ottawa this season.

Kuba, 31, spent three seasons (1996-99) in the AHL with Carolina, New Haven and Kentucky. He has recorded 55 goals and 152 assists in 531 career NHL games.

Sens trade up to select Karlsson at 15
Wolves sign defenseman Rivers
Ottawa native Bell signs with Senators

As the good captain has put it What The Fraque Is this isht!? I occasionally come across WTF situations and when I do, guess who will benefit from it? You will, YAY applause for you. Enough, now on to the redicularity.

• Watching the Secret History of Kung-Fu on the History Channel. This guy pulls this plane with his crotch. Due to it's phallic nature the video is nowhere to be found, but since I know my word is not enough for you, you doubting Thomases, click the picture of Sensei Metal Shlong to read all about it.

• Mini James brown Jackie Chan amalgam dancing below.
• Need more of the lil guy? Want to fill up on your monthly dose of vitamin midge? There is violence, Jean Claude Van Damme-esque cinematography, campy western music, air kicking Kung-Fu and attempted midgenapping. Is all this bearable for more of the lil guy? if yes, click continue reading. I warned you so I am not responsible for any laughing headaches that may ensue. There is also a Bavarian treat at the bottom for those brave enough.

• I could not mention JCVD without giving him a lil shine. I luv how they're playing his fight scene on the screen in the back, it makes the video for the men and the ladies.

Il mio mega lavoro di tagging delle canzoni è finalmente terminato!!

Allora io non sono il perfettino che si compra tutte le canzoni su iTunes, e questo vuol dire scaricarsele da LimeWire. Ovviamente le persone che condividono le canzoni non mettono apposto titolo, artista e album.. eh no, scherziamo?! Sono furbi loro! Mettono tutto nel titolo, così dopo uno può perdere ore davanti al pc al posto di fare qualcos'altro di più importante! Ma da oggi (anzi, c'era da tempo ma io l'ho scoperto oggi) posso finalmente abbandonare quest'attività inutile!

Questo software ti fa importare la cartella con tutte le canzoni e in meno di 10 minuti (dipende da quante canzoni ci sono) te le tagga tutte in automatico; taggare significa sistemare nome, artista, album, genere e altre informazioni. E' tutto gratuito, opensource! Se volete ci sono anche i plugin, tra cui quello per scaricare anche l'immagine del cd per ogni canzone.

Picard era proprio quello che mi mancava. Grazie a chi l'ha creato!

[via Blaztard]

Schwarzer Kaffee, Junge. Weißt du eigentlich, wie gut der schmeckt, Junge? Echt jetzt. Äh, und wenn ich Kaffee sach, wa, dann mein ich richtich dunkel-schwarzen, kochend heißen. Äh, echt leckeren, extrem schwarzen Kaffe, Junge.

Endlich mal wieder Sinnlos im Weltraum, herrlich. Offensichtlich gibts auf Youtube doch noch einige originale Schnipsel davon. Bei meinen Suchen waren mir bisher immer nur dir eher semi-lustigen Kopien untergekommen...

Rock ice, for people who know the difference. En attendant de poster quelques billets interessants dignent d'un journal de qualite (ce serait pas du luxe, hein ! ) Juste un instant fraicheur, pour etre bien, plus frais et plus efficace devant son PC. Et pendant que je vous tiens la, completement par hasard et a la meme date, l'an dernier, je postais un billet presque similaire. Amusant.

If you are like me you have probably tried managing your personal finances, and ended up feeling like this:

And then you said to yourself, "I really wish there was a business intelligence tool aimed at the individual consumer, because I need help organizing all my financial information." (And really, who hasn't thought like that?)

Well pine no longer, because now you can use Yodlee's Moneycenter to give yourself a total picture of your financial situation. You have instant access to all your bank accounts, credit cards, other loans, investments, all their current balances, and when bills are due. You can even put in a budget and track your spending against it. All pretty neat.

However, be aware that if you have any loans (student loans, car loans, mortgage, etc.) your financial net worth will probably be a big fat negative. Do not despair; as you pay the loans down your situation will improve. And you know that you used that loan to purchase something valuable, so your financial situation is not as bleak as it may seem. And it is a huge pain to get everything loaded into the site initially. But it is worth it to have accurate information on all your financial accounts on one screen.

Now that you know how much money you actually have, it will be easier to start spending less (or more, if you have more money than you thought) and saving more (or less).

Leave your Sharpies and 8x10 glossies at home, trekkies, because The Royal Shakespeare Company just released a statement regarding the production of "Hamlet" starring "Star Trek: The Next Generation’s" Patrick Stewart and "Doctor Who’s" David Tennant today, stating that fans will not be allowed to bring any Dr. Who or Star Trek memorabilia to be autographed.

"Due to the huge amount of interest in the RSC’s current production of Hamlet, only Royal Shakespeare Company or production related memorabilia will be signed by members of the company. It is very flattering that there is so much interest in this production, but the sheer volume of requests means that we need to set some limits which will be as fair as possible for everyone. We apologize if this causes any disappointment."

This news will no doubt break the hearts of trekkies and "Doctor Who" fans making it out to this year's performance of "Hamlet," but let's examine the facts. There is a time and a place to dress in your finest Starfleet uniforms; classical theater is not that time. I’m sure the performers would prefer fans to go and appreciate their new roles and enjoy Shakespeare, rather than just be there to see a character they’ve played in the past.

On the flip side, I am not entirely sure that RSC handled the heartbreak in the classiest of manners.

It is one thing to ban autograph requests entirely for logistical reasons. The same as it makes sense to limit autograph requests to 1 per person. Or if the actors themselves choose not to sign the memorabilia for whatever reason.

But the facts are, there's no real difference between autographing a play brochure or signing a Star Trek TNG Picard as Locutus action figure, so the statement is more insulting than it ever should have been. How about you just say you want to keep the focus on actors and get your action figures signed at San Diego's Comic-Con?

-- Christie St. Martin of Funny Pages 2.0

Photo Credits: "Doctor Who," BBC; "Star Trek: Enterprise," CBS Studios Inc.

Here's the best method I found so far. It involves a couple of programs, the process is kinda tedious, but since iTunes insists on being a piece of sh...

Tags:

The best tagger that I've found is Musicbrainz Picard. It tags and fixes file automatically by either scanning the metadata and tries to find the metadata in its databases with the closes match, or it scans the content of the file and tries to find a set of metadata with a similar content signature. I think. It's easy to use and finds almost all the right metadata.

As a sidenote, metadata lookup fails more often than scanning, and the metadata is not consistent with that of the Amazon. There are minor variations. For excample, in the Picard database the individual artists' names would come up for High School Musical, where as in the Amazon database, it only comes up as "various artists".

This might be a problem is you use Picard in conjunction with a program that searches the Amazon database, such a MediaMonkey. I used MediaMonkey to get the album art before I didn't notice is that if the metadata does not match the Amazon metadata, MediaMonkey changes it along with downloading the album art, problem is that the Amazon databases had less information and craps up the metadata.

Loading Album Art:

As I mentioned above, you can use MediaMonkey to to fix the album art and tags, but it doesn't do this very well, and the album art search occasionally comes up empty or searches for the wrong terms.

A better alternative that I found was Album Art Downloader. You have to install the Microsoft .NET framework if you don't have it, the program runs on that. This program requires you to search manually for the album art by typing in the name of the artist and the album, which isn't too bad, since the searches always turn up album art. Album Art Downloader searches databases of various album art websites, Google Images and Amazon among them, so you'll get a wide choice. Album art around 300x300 can be found for album released in the last few years, older albums tend to have smaller album art. Getting album art will take a while if you have heaps of singles.

Also check the comments field in your metadata, people tend to leave website URLs and stuff like "enjoy" in there. I have no idea why people do that, and would like to give people who do that a sincere "screw you" for wasting my time by making me delete all the useless comments.

"Die EU-Kommission wird das Unterstützungsnetzwerk für Innovation und das Enterprise Network nutzen, um sicherzustellen das die gemeinschaftlichen politischen Aufgaben und Initiativen der Gemeinschaft den Bedürfnissen der kleinen und mittleren Unternhemen entsprechen und keinen bürokratischen Aufwand verursachen, der ihr Innovationspotential beeiträchtigen könnte."

Hört sich langweilig und nach doofem EU-Bla an?
Ist es ja auch.

Trotzdem hört man gerne zu, wenn Willem Noe, dem Vertreter der EU-Kommission in Berlin, sowas sagt.

Warum? Weil er sich, wenn man die Augen schliesst oder woanders hinguckt, so anhört wie James Patrick Stewart bzw. Captain Picard aus "Next Generation".
Von Weitem sieht er auch ein wenig so aus. Wenn man die Augen aufhat und nicht woandes hinguckt.

Im bilateralen Gespräch hört man dann einen schwachen niederländischen Akzent raus.

Und jetzt stellen wir uns alle Picard auf der Brücke der Enterprise vor wie er sagt:

"Maken Sie es sö. Seyen Sie Innövatif! Es geyht um Gemeynschaftöufgaben!"

Aye, Captain!

This blog is so boring compared to that one, hahaha.. I guess it's because that's what I have to do to FUND MY DOG'S EXPENSIVE TREATS. And my clothes and shoes and bags. And my parents miscellaneous bills. And my Viagra. Man, life is all about $$$ sometimes. It's ridiculous! It's never-ending!

I wonder what it'll be like to be in this Star Trek-like utopia, where we've reached a point in civilization so advanced that money will no longer be the currency of economy. In Star Trek, they have like matter replicators so you will always have your basic needs like food and clothes. I'm assuming they have found renewable or unlimited sources of energy to power up the world's living needs and more, like technological advances. So with those sort of resources on hand, everyone on Earth will be well provided for. No poverty, suffering, pollution (because you no longer have to burn fossil fuels, and people are sufficiently smart and evolved enough to know not to smoke) and whatever crap we have now in the 21st century. Man, with all these improvements... money would be the last concern on anyone's mind.

 Em yea, and Picard rocks my world.

iTunes makes this a massive pain in the ass. As in, fucking yourself up the ass with a spiked pike painful.

There's no option to get iTunes to auto-tag your music, well actually I don't know, but you definitely need an iTunes account to get the album art working. I assume the function tags You'll also need a credit card because to get a iTunes account you need to provide credit card details. Faking the credit card number is hard, trust me, and probably illegal too.

I googled "itunes tagging utility" and the best link I found was to a Lifehacker post, The 23 Best iTunes Add-ons.

Whilst the list had some useful utilities. The only one relevant to me and runs on a PC was moreTunes. Which turned out to be completely useless, it couldn't find any of the artists I was playing. This isn't to say I have eccentric tastes in music, but that either the amazon database for music tags was down, which it wasn't, or that moreTunes is crappy software.

In the end, I downloaded a media player called MediaMonkey and copied music library over to it manually and tried to tagged it from the internet that way. The problem is, the amazon search won't come up with anything unless the Album name is right, and yes, heaps of my songs had missing album names. The only solution to the problem I found was to search for the name of the song in the iTunes Store and the manually edit the ID3 tags of the songs to include the album name and ithens earch for the rest of the tags on amazon from MediaMonkey.

Slightly more efficient than looking the tags up in Wikipedia and enter it manually.

SCREW YOU APPLE. HOW HARD IS IT TO MAKE ITUNES AUTOTAG MY DAMN MUSIC.

</rant>

Update: MusicBrainz Picard is an excellent tagger, although it doesn't download the album art for you, might have to use some other program for that.

In diesem Sinne kommt hier hin und wieder eine Gedächtnisstütze für die großen Momente der Menschheitsgeschichte; die Dinge, die Kultstatus erreicht haben und mit jedem Anschauen größer zu werden scheinen.

Den Anfang macht "SiW - Sinnlos im Weltraum", ein Meilenstein, und die erste Neusynchronisation, die größeren Bekanntheitsstatus erreicht hat. Mit legendären Sprüchen „Ich hab' mir neulich 'n Pfund Butter im Aldi für 2,95 Mark gekauft, und ich war begeistert, es hat so gut geschmeckt!“ und neuen Erkenntnissen und Offenbarungen hat es schon vor der Jahrtausendwende Kultstatus entwickelt.

Hier ein besonders wahrer Ausschnitt

Stare: f buna
Pret: 35 lei

(via Geekologie)