Cage The Elephant

Just heard a wonderful new band that should be checked out immediately. Not to mention that this band is located here in the KY. Yes, that is right this is a band from Bowling Green Kentucky. Homage is due. Anyway, they have a very earthy and almost White Stripes feel to their music. The raspy lyrics are strung together with amazing riffs and pounding drums. So… Click pop-out player below and enjoy a song from their recent release. “Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked.”

Boobalooza

Boobalooza, yes that is correct. The benefit for those who hope to always keep em is coming up fast. We are talking very soon. Anyway, help out for a great, and we mean full of supple greatness cause.
Official Site
Also, make sure to pick up a bad-ass boob shirt that helps out. How often can you guys wear a shirt with boobs and be able to pick up women at the same time, really? Buy one.

Wisdom Gained?

I am getting those wisdom teeth of mine removed in a short period of time. We are talking about 7 hours here. I am not totally excited about this in anyway considering my sincere love for foods of all sorts. I am depressed of the lack of tactile stimulation my tongue will be going through over the next few days.
This looks reasonable, right?
Any way about it, my dear friend did propose that I may actually gain some wisdom from the removal of those teethers. We will see if this is has any evidence supporting it. Expect results.

A Beautiful Word (Says Dr. Goodword)

Just one of the more beautiful words in the english language. Dr. Goodword over at Alpha dictionary has listed what he believes to be the 100 most beautiful words. Dr. Goodword has been defining word of the day for years now for dictionary.com. Enjoy, oh and its summer so this one’s special.

To aestivate (or simply estivate) is to spend the summer, to summer somewhere. It also serves as the antonym of hibernate. Desert amphibians aestivate in the summer for the same reason bears hibernate in winter—to avoid seasonal extremes.

To tell the truth, summer itself is a lovely word, however commonplace it may be. Aestivate, however, is lovely with a touch of class, especially with an initial ae-ligature, that is, when written æstivate. Moreover, it bears the same alluring sense of summer, referring to a particularly pleasant season of the year. The act of aestivating is aestivation and aestival is a more sophisticatred Latiny alternative for the adjective summery, rhyming quite nicely with festival, many of which occur in the summer.

Does summer in the phrase, “I summer on the Côte d’Azur,” strike you as beneath the dignity of Côte d’Azur, not to mention the amount of money you spend there? Then try, “I aestivate each year on the Côte d’Azur” and impress your friends even more. If your school is out for the summer but you are the only one of your clique without a job, impress them with, “I will be aestivating at leisure this summer.” Of course, unless you can aestivate on the Côte d’Azur, you should keep looking for a job.

This beautiful word comes from Latin aestivare “to summer somewhere” from aestas “summer” with the same root as aestus “heat.” Sanskrit inddhe “it ignites,” Greek aithos “fire,” and Old German eiten “to heat,” all come from the same original root. The Old German word developed into Modern German Hitze “heat”, close kin to English heat.

A Quasi-Review: Dell Mini 10

I just bought this new netbook, a dell mini 1010, from an outlet. After arriving after only 2 days in the post, I opened the box to find a beautiful little green netbook.

This netbook is slick, well maybe not macbook slick but nevertheless dell has done something right for once. A huge improvement over the mini 9 in all things design. The screen is now what is called “edge-to-edge”, though of course, this only means that there is a window of plastic going edge to edge. This has always bothered me ever since the “edge-to-edge” fad started, the screen is the same as any other, only now it sit behin a piece plastic, oh well. The resolution (1024×576) provides clean and crisp text and media display.

One of the major improvements from the mini 9 to the mini 10 was the enlargement of the keyboard. The mini 9 featured a small, rather cramped keyboard with some strange placements of keys. The mini 10, though, has a nearly full size laptop keyboard that doesn’t seem cramped at all. In fact, I love this keyboard. The keys have great response and are placed at the perfect distance. Incidentally, I suppose you could call the keyboard “edge-to-edge” as well. Below the keyboard is a wide touchpad. The first thing one notices about this touchpad is the lack of buttons. Dell has chosen to replace the buttons with areas of the pad that will click. This is ok, but I would prefer a more tactile feel. The multi-touch feature of this pad is useful, though; giving the ability to scroll and zoom with two fingers. All in all, keyboard and touchpad are done very well in this netbook with only one major complaint. I find myself constantly grazing the touchpad while I am typing; even during this post I have managed to move my mouse and inadvertently begin typing the completely wrong spot. This is easily remedied if you have the proper driver installed, allowing you to disable the pad when typing.

As far as performance goes, I think anyone will be pleased with this model. Though shipped with only 1gb of ram, anyone with the slightest know-how can upgrade to 2gb for only $25 at any memory retailer. I have to say, I am currently running windows 7 with full aero and all that jazz at blazing speeds. I can run Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash with no problems and even found myself playing some Team Fortress 2 the other day. This little guy delivers. Nearly 4 hours of battery life seems to be the norm here. You would be hardpressed to stress this netbook out if you are just a normal user.

All in all, I love this netbook. In fact, I don’t even want to call it a netbook. Why call it a netbook? This is a fast little laptop. Sure, it is small and the battery does last a ridiculously long time, but this is more speed than needed to just surf the net and this doesn’t really feel like a disposable pc. Oh and the price was $349 at Dell outlet, if you didn’t know, that is really cheap…

Last Days with Pigeons

I work in a pigeon lab here on University of Kentucky’s campus. The lab is housed in the dungeon of Kastle hall, down long locked corridors. The small windowless room is about 65 degrees F right now and I am quite cold, pigeons don’t seem to mind though. Imagine sitting in a room with cages on all the walls with around 150 pairs of beady eyes stairing you down; not the best experience. It is amazing how self-conscious one can become from a pigeons glare. These little guys have very expressive eyebrows and the personalities to match.

I have spent about four hours a day putting these little guys in and out of test chambers for the past 3 months. I find myself getting to know some of them, learning their habits and such. There are some pigeons I would consider friends but there are also some I would never count on to be my DD. This is, as I said, the end of my time down here in the dungeon of the Kastle. I must bid farewell to my fluffy companions.