BearFood.net

“John Carter” – New Movie based on an Old Classic

Jim — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:57:58 +0000

Disney’s new “John Carter” movie will open in theaters March 9th. It’s based on the 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs book “Princess of Mars”, the first installment in the “Barsoom” series.

Although Burroughs has traditionally been best known for his “Tarzan” series, a successful “John Carter” could raise the Barsoom series popularity enough that Disney produces the sequels. What a treat that would be…

“Princess of Mars” is in the public domain and downloadable for free, in both ebook and audio book format from Project Gutenberg, as are other books in the series.

High Energy Guitar

Jim — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:10:23 +0000

Peru’s Charlie Parra Del Riego does a wonderful cover of The Doors “Light my Fire”.

Check out his many other excellent metal renditions on his YouTube Channel.

“Alicsibu” covers Ronald Jenkees on Guitar

Jim — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 14:00:05 +0000

“Alicsibu” shows that Ronald Jenkee’s tunes sound great on guitar.

You can use this playlist to view many of his tunes.

Ronald Jenkees Jams

Jim — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:28:38 +0000

I browsed upon this young fellow’s high energy keyboard jams and have found them quite enjoyable. Many of his videos start with his trademark “Hello Youtubes” and he always wears a hat.

You can use this playlist to view many of his tunes.

He has a website at www.ronaldjenkees.com where you can buy his CDs.

He uses the digital audio workstation package “FL Studio”. Check out the description on WikiPedia or visit the FL Studio website for a downloadable demo.

The Next Guitar Wizard – Sungha Jung

Jim — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:36:31 +0000

Occasionally, I’ll do a YouTube search for “guitar” and queue some videos as background music. ‘Recently felt like hearing “California Dreaming” and found young Sungha Jung from Korea.

You can use this playlist to view many of his tunes.

“Moonwalk One” – Circa 1970

Jim — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:12:55 +0000

This NASA documentary from 1970, highlights events before, during and after the first moon walk, July 20, 1969. It is different from most moon landing documentaries in that it mentions some of the overlooked contributions and depicts how the world was in the late 60′s.

My favorite unsung contribution was by the little ladies that made the space suits by hand. Most impressive was the extraordinary care they used slowly stitching it together.

DIY “Box of Moonlight” Soundtrack

Jim — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:14:54 +0000

New “Box of Moonlight” soundtrack CDs are very expensive at $60 USD. So, I thought I’d look on YouTube to see how many of the tracks I could find and capture them to MP3 using Audacity:

Starting with the CD track listing from Amazon, I searched for each one with these results:

01. Mexican Radio – Wall of Voodoo (video found)
02. Red Right Hand – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (video found)
03. Blues Before Sunrise – Elmore James (audio found)
04. Big Black Sky – Chaser (not found)
05. Too Much Tequila – The Champs (video found)
06. Carioca – The Fireballs (1962) (video found)
07. Wayward Nile – The Chantays (1963) (video found)
08. Lost Time Blues – The Chrome Cranks (video found)
09. Wheels over Me – Die Haut (not found)
10. Gun Control – Tom DiCillo (not found)
11. Opening Titles (not found)
12. Tomato Field Fight (not found)
13. End Titles (not found)

Audacity did a good job, but its extraction is essentially a “digital to analog to digital” process which introduces some signal degradation, although inaudible to my ears.

To do the extraction completely within the digital domain, an extraction utility or a Firefox plug-in could be used. Just be aware that some of them , specifically Free Youtube to MP3 Converter contain tracking software so that your habits can be tracked and they can do target marketing. As Heinlein said, “TANSTAAFL”.

Regarding “Box of Moonlight”, the Internet Movie Database, IMDB, lists a couple other tracks that don’t appear on the CD:

Cuts you Up – Peter Murphy (video found)
Cerveza – Tom DiCillo (not found)

As I played each one, I ran Audacity in a separate window to capture the audio. After tidying up the beginning and ending, each was exported to MP3 format.

Hearing all these Moonlight tunes did whet my appetite so I gave in and bought a used CD from an Amazon vendor. A new one is just too expensive at $60+ USD.

When the CD arrives, I’ll use Exact Audio Copy to make MP3s of the CD, add “Cuts You Up” as a supplemental track, and enjoy them via Media Center.

For those that aren’t familiar with “Box of Moonlight”, read the Reviews at IMDB, then check out the trailer.

‘Probably one my top 3 favorite movies of all time. Recommended!

Tom Mabe’s hilarious Videos

Jim — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:05:05 +0000

Tom Mabe, the nemesis of telemarketers TomMabe.com, has branched out into funny videos.

“I had chili last night…” Har!

I recommend his CDs, available at Amazon.

Trojan Downloader on fresh Install

Jim — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:31:26 +0000

There are some things that make you go “hmmmm”.

After completing a clean install of Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 3 and all 93 subsequent “high priority” updates, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) was installed.

MSE is Microsoft’s free-for-personal-use anti-virus/anti-malware package. Immediately after installing, all updates were applied and a full system scan indicated no problems.

Next, a hop over to OpenOffice.org to download OpenOffice.org 3.2.1. Just as the download completed, MSE popped up an alert saying that Trojan.Downloader.A had just been detected in the System Restore area.

MSE successfully cleaned the trojan file, but where did it come from? A repeat download of OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 didn’t cause a recurrence.

Hmmm…

Lesson in Leadership

Jim — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:30:33 +0000

Here’s a “pearl of wisdom” contained in a YouTube video. The video is a bit shaky, but listen to the audio commentary.