Sunday, December 25, 2005

Christmas morning (Christmas Eve night) surfing

Merry Christmas, everyone! If you don't believe in Christmas--may yours be doubly merry that you be struck by the spirit of the secular season of greed or of giving (whichever is your style).

The Chronic of Narnia Rap is growing in popularity--and stuck in my head. YouTube itself has lots of good stuff, like the Banned Xbox 360 ad that made the rounds a little while back. Also this odd tribute to the 'Net (and its pornography), with World of Warcraft characters, a la old Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. "Ready Normal People?" This will get stuck in my head soon, I know it.

Dear clients, we're on vacation. If you desperately need a new ad this week, make your own.

For Christmas: It's a Wonderful Internet. The Al Gore jokes are a bit thick (and outdated).

This fish highway could be an interesting conversation piece. I'm not convinced your average household fish has a problem with wanderlust.

Google Earth has a Santa Tracker. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the NORAD version. Apparently he's over Colorado Springs at the moment. Digging deeper I see that they use MS Virtual Earth for some of their maps, which also doesn't impress me much. Actually, though, family work issues have made it so that Santa is leaving a magical stasis on the presents somewhere near Granny's house, and the stockings will be stuffed tomorrow night.

Speaking of Santa, interesting how he went from St. Nicholas to Santa Claus. Kid started asking about the reality of Santa a few days ago... but he still believes. St. Nicholas is supposed to have destroyed several pagan temples. Is there a pagan spirit of giving equivalent to what St. Nick has come to represent?

I like a couple of these Firefox wallpapers, but there's a picture I've been using for several months now as a desktop. I will link it if I find it again online--don't want to post it for copyright reasons (the name it autosaved under is "coming_home.jpg").

Tunatic looks like an interesting tool--but if I have internet access and a mic available when I hear a song I can't identify, I can just type the lyrics into Google or lyricsfly and figure out what the song is. Won't help with the muzak at (name public place here) or work or when I'm driving and listening to the radio. If I listen to music at home it's either ripped from CDs I own, downloaded from iTunes, or on XM or MusicChoice--I know the music I've bought and the streams include tags. Is there that much demand for this service, given that limitation to its practicality?

Well, I have to pack and travel tomorrow. There may be a 3-day hiatus for the holiday. If so, y'all have a merry Christmas, and I'll be back chirping before ya know it!

Chirp chirp,
Cricket

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