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post Twitter Updates for 2008-06-28

June 28th, 2008

Filed under: Twitter Roll — NunoXEI @ 11:59 pm
  • @steveswrong are you going to make me move to friendfeed now?… I feel FF is still to social-Web2.0-circle-centric…not a fan of that. #
  • Twitter is growing to extremely frustrating levels of annoyance–I’ve tolerated it for at least 2 weeks with my world-renowned patiently… #
  • Actually, I’ve just decided… I’m walking away from Twitter for a straight week. Maybe when I return Twitter will be toleratable once again #

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post Twitter Updates for 2008-06-27

June 27th, 2008

Filed under: Twitter Roll — NunoXEI @ 11:59 pm
  • @mediaChick you just sounded like my girlfriend when she wants attention… she “mrows”. #
  • Tough GUys webcomic is definitely on track now for an overhaul! I’ve designed the basic character structure last night! #
  • @mediaChick <stroke> <stroke> the nice kitty-girl… prrrrrrrr… #
  • @starfocus Twitter is a disaster today… or it’s Twhirl… but betting it’s Twitter… again :) #

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post links for 2008-06-28

June 27th, 2008

Filed under: Delicious Links — NunoXEI @ 11:34 pm



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post Just In: The Band “Brad Sucks” Lies About Sucking

June 27th, 2008

Filed under: Music — NunoXEI @ 4:05 pm

Oh my holy crap, how did I NOT find this earlier! Boy, do I ever have a treat for all you out there who can respect finding a precious gem in the middle of a rock query!

There’s this band I came across of Jamendo called “Brad Sucks”–the only negative thing I have to say about the band and album is that they chose the WORST name ever. Why? Because what the band does is everything completely opposite of “suck”.

I love fun simple covers and with a name like “Brad Sucks” titled “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing” I took a gamble when I clicked–as I often do–and awaited something to hit me so violently noobish that I had no choice but to immediately click back or close my browser before my larynx spontaneously exploded in gag-rejection. So, I click on the first song and get hit with a crazy mix of techno-indie rock–What the Hell?!? The song is called “Making Me Nervous” and is thoroughly sticky on the mind.

It has been months since I stumbled on something that so completely energized my attention span that I could do nothing else but listen to the whole album. No lie, 40 minutes and 47 seconds of my life amazed and captivated.

Well, not entirely motionless. I had to find the lowdown on this band. He released this album in 2001 digitally and then compiled it, totally fan-funded, as a CD for self release in 2005. Oh, oh, did I mention that this band is only ONE guy? For everything? He’s from Ottawa Canada (which excites me because I may just have to drive 9 hours away to see him perform live now). His name is Brad and considering the amount of digging I had to do I just started thinking his last name was indeed “Sucks” which would have been both unfortunate and mildly amusing, but his actual last name is Turcotte. Brad Turcotte.

On his site he mentions that he’s about to release a second album which makes me wish it was already September!

On more than one occasion Brad’s vocals took me back to the mid and late 90s when I’d listen to Beck and doddle or write randomly (”Fixing My Brain”, “Borderline”, “I Think I Started a Trend”, “Work Out Fine”). I also got a mild flashback to a crazy set of albums from The Magnetic Fields‘ 69 Love Songs or certain Ween tracks (”Sick as a Dog”) with his simple acoustic rhythm and melody. There’s even one track that took me back to my trips with my uncle’s surfing clan with Lenny Kravitz (”Bad Attraction”) playing on the deck. He goes from laid back introspective stuff (”Overreacting”) to some heavier alternative rock (”Time to Take Out the Trash”) without losing a second of interest from a listener–trust me–or please prove me wrong…

… So I can tell you that you’re wrong and then ignore you. Because you’re wrong.

Finally can I tell you what excited me the most about this discovery? I had stumbled across a band on Jamendo while in Amsterdam this winter called “Tryad“; a collective of artists who collaborate together. There’s one song in particular off their “Listen” album called “Mesmerize”. I liked it so much I got inspired to try to capture its feelings by creating an emo-inspired video called “Hair Cut”. Don’t believe I’d cut my hair on a whim of inspiration in an attempt to explore an emotional state? Here’s the final video!

Well, guess who was the ORIGINAL writer of this song? My double holy crap: Brad Sucks!!! His acoustic version definitely comes across more depressive than frustrated. It ever made me take out my acoustic after having it bagged away for 4 years! I’m also so pumped about this find because Brad has a veritable pay-what-you-want system for his CD and mp3s (ok, CDs are $5 minimum, but come on! Did I already mention this guy is awesome?)… He’s also released the source files of his music for community re-mixing! How much more creative commons friendly do he have to be?! The entire digital album is designated: By Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike for interested parties: That means download or buy a copy and pass it out to as many friends/family as you like legally!

I can’t even express how much I respect this guy. How often can I say, “Wow this whole album frigging rocks my clean socks off!” to a pro-released album nowadays? It’s rare as unicorn poop. (OK maybe not that rare: aka IMPOSSIBLE… since unicorns don’t exist and all… not of the horse variety anyways).

Now excuse me while I go buy his CD and put my cash down on a pre-order and wait pseudo-patiently for September 8th before I start overreacting…

Quick Links:
Brad Sucks Website
Jamendo: Brad Sucks




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post My Vote is In for Martian Soldiers

June 27th, 2008

Filed under: Viva La Evolution! — NunoXEI @ 10:10 am

A month ago the NASA’s Phoenix Lander touched down perfectly on the surface of Mars. I sat at my desk, eyes glued to NASA’s live stream of the event on their website. I was excited and mass-texted family and friends when the signal came back that all was well.

While there it’ll look for ice which it may have already discovered to be a very true possibility. The importance of the ice is the frozen water. The importance of the frozen water is the potential life within. It’s got a mobile arm with a shovel-like tool at the end for collecting samples and is set up with an atomic force microscope, high-tech cameras and mass spectrometer–along with a few more bells and whistles including large solar panels to power it all up.

This blog entry isn’t about relating all the coolness of the Phoenix Lander’s onsite tech and how it all works and such. It’s about something I believe is the greatest and most earth-moving potential of NASA’s efforts: Finding life. ANY life!

Even if the most basic of organism is found within Mars’ H2O it could shift the fundamentals of human philosophy, social behaviour, political relationships–one puny little thing could help unite us as ONE race–help us come to the awareness of a greater commonality between us all. Any sign of life is enough to reinforce the theory that life DOES exist out in space, somewhere, just too far for us to see and interact with still.

My brain was flooded with possibilities, but one stood out as the most important one of all: We need to get a group of people on Mars ASAP! We need to get a human perspective of the whole thing, like Neil Armstrong gave us when he touched his feet on the moon for the first time. We need that kind of drama once again to get the world moving with excitement about working together to get the heck off this planet and finding new places to explore and–hell, I’ll go there–LIVE!

I mean why not? If the right pieces are in place then new technologies pushing the boundaries of terraforming opportunity could be developed. Imagine a new home planet where energy WOULD be natural and self sustainable? Solar panels and even wind mills would be the norm in energy collection. No coal. No nuclear. Clean start.

I’m siding with the whole Total Recall scenario of biodome-like structures that produce oxygen for those inside… connected with tunnels to other biodomes. I actually found the term to all this by accident while reading the Wikipedia entry on terraforming. These habitable domes are a form of “paraterraforming”. Oh, and as a side note, if women start growing a third breast as per the movie, I’ll still love them the same. Perhaps 33.3% more actually.


I love the Count; he taught me all about numbers.

I’d move to Mars instantly! If it’s affordable of course. I mean, losing my life trying to get up there should be the bigger of concerns, right? But imagine if you did get up there? The vastness of emotional and psychological impact it would have on your way of thinking about “the world” and being able to leave everything you disagree with behind on Earth–for the Earthling to deal with. I’d be a Martian now, living under a new set of rules and laws, preferably democratic, but I’d take military ruler any day just to be there. Martial law, heh, on Martian soil–how fitting. For those of you who don’t get it: Mars is a Roman god of war, and thus where our etymology for both these words came from. Hey, anyone else start thinking “marital” also sounds close?

This leads me to my next point: Sending soldiers. The very day I thought it I found news in my RSS aggregator confirming I wasn’t the only one thinking it. It excited me further when the article I was reading was about a Sergeant who would be willing to take the trip to Mars with his men–ONE WAY if need be!

This guy became one of my personal heroes immediately! Sergeant First Class William H. Ruth III states:

While reading Jim McLane and Nancy Atkinson’s thoughts on Space Colonization, I started to realize that we ‘ALL’ have lost our way. We have become so consumed by petty differences and dislikes of others that we all have forgotten our pre destiny of something better.

He takes it all a step further though by suggesting that not only one nation be responsible for sending their troops to Mars, but instead, have heroes of multiple countries join together as a human race out to make the ultimate sacrifice of something greater than one man’s idea.


3rd Platoon at Fire Base Ter-Wa, April 2008. SFC Ruth is first on the left. (Source)

Soldiers represent a group of highly trained individuals with the ability to survive in hostile environments. Of course, it makes sense to train them further with what’s necessary to push their REAL limits in an environment unlike anything they could ever encounter on Earth.

I want to clarify that when I type “soldier” here I only support high level units, not cold-hearted, insensitive individuals who throw puppies off cliffs. If you DO take soldiers like that up to Mars, be sure to treat him like a kobold in a dungeon crawl, make him walk 15 feet ahead, if something goes wrong, stop moving or back up if he hits the ground limp. Kinda like the good old days of sending a canary down a mine to test if the oxygen levels were sufficient to proceed. If the canary passed out, you left the mine shaft. No point in going on and on about this, I hope my point is now clear if it wasn’t before.

Unfortunately just the trip to Mars could take 2 years. Two years in incredibly uncomfortable conditions. It’s my opinion that a Mars trips isn’t just a physical one for a human being; it’s an extreme mental one. Aka: No quack-jobs on site please!

There’s a group out there called Mars Society, composed of 7000 multinational members determined to reach the red planet. They test these very limits by trekking out into the barren Arctic or Utah deserts with teams of volunteers. The European Space Agency and the Russian Institute of Biomedial Problems are testing these human limits as well by locking away 12 volunteers for 520 days with contact limited to 44-minute delay calls with mission control.

Whatever way organizations can begin testing the human psyche the better. I’d like to see an attempt at mini-colonization–even if it’s just 12 people–within my life time.

And I want a person, not a machine, to tell me there are no mosquitoes there.




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