I'm surprised that I have never posted this song before. Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" is one of my favorite songs ever, and it was mentioned in the Stephen King/Peter Straub novel, "Black House" (which was a sequel to "The Talisman", which King also wrote with Peter Straub), and I looked it up after reading about it. It's a very calm, laid-back oldie, but it has tons of charm and class. Here is some info on Hoagy Carmichael. There are tons of covers of this song.
Hoagy Carmichael - Stardust
The above photo comes from NASA's image gallery.
Here is Nat King Cole's version of the song, which is good, but not as good as the one above (in my opinion) ...
Here is Harry Cool's (I think that is the right name) version ...
The more I think about the movie, "Speed Racer", the more I realize that I actually thought it was pretty cool. In an IMAX theater, or on a home theater with a large flat-screen and cool surround sound (which I don't have), it would be really awesome.
I hated reading all the bad reviews of it so I thought I would post a good review of that seems to get it right ...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1738497,00.html
That review is from TIME magazine.
It's sad when movies are not appreciated in their time. A good example is "Blade Runner", which is one of the best movies ever to me, but it's lifetime gross is only about $32 million (and it was re-released recently).
I'm not saying "Speed Racer" is as good as "Blade Runner", but the visuals of "Speed Racer" blow most movies away.
I have a ton of Hot Chip remixes in my iTunes library, and I put the entire Hot Chip folder on a CD (data disk) recently to play in my car. Well, I discovered one remix that I really liked. Here is the song, "Biting Tongues", by Faultline remixed by Hot Chip.
Here is a video of the original version of the song on YouTube ...
Here is Faultline's official site, which I think is very well done.
My friend, Travis, showed some videos of a disco group from the 70s called Boney M. I had never heard of them before, but I guess I should have since they seem very popular then and now. Travis thought that M.I.A. may have gotten some of her style from Boney M, and I think he may be onto something.
Here are some my favorite videos of theirs ...
Here is the remix of Santogold's "You'll Find A Way" that is on their official album. I have posted this remix before, but this new one sounds a little cooler ...
The above remix was done by Switch and Sinden.
Grab your helmet, check the air in your tires, and hop on your bike because in many U.S. cities, May 12 - 16 is Bike to Work Week! Six Apart has a lot of biking enthusiasts, so we're very excited to support this event by encouraging all of our employees to bike to work this week. San Francisco's Bike to Work Day is tomorrow, Thursday, May 15th, and New York's is Friday, May 16th.
Six Apart is helping out its employees by providing maps (shaded according to steepness - a must in SF!) to help everyone plan out his/her route, as well as finding first-time riders buddies to commute with. We're also supporting ALL SF riders who pass the front of our office by handing out coffee, juice and snacks from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. If you're in our neighborhood, look for the sign that says "Six Apart Supports Bike to Work Day" and stop by to say hi and get energized!
Improve your health, financial status, productivity, and happiness by joining thousands - maybe even millions - of commuters around the country who are hopping on their bikes to get to work. Visit the Bike to Work Week website to find out more about events in your area.
Support the two-wheeled way of life with the "Passing Left" theme found in "Photo-Based" in the Design Area. Planning on cycling to work this week? Let us know in the comments!
As we mentioned last week, we had to postpone the maintenance that was due to occur on Thursday, May 8th.
We have rescheduled the maintenance for tonight, Tuesday, May 13th, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT). We'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
I talked to someone recently about Caetano Veloso, Brazilian music, Marisa Monte, and Spanish music (like Shakira, Juanes, and Julieta Venegas) so I thought I would post some Caetano Veloso songs from a CD of his that I have called Noites do Norte. I am sure there are better Veloso songs out there, but I don't know them all. If anyone wants to recommend a better song from his library, by all means go ahead in the comments section. Eu falo um pouco em portugues. ;)
Here are some from the Noites do Norte album ...
I love that the title of the above song is the name of a famous Italian director, whose movie, L'Avventura, I love.
Here is the first song on the CD ...
Here is the second song from the album. I can't leave it out because it's very pretty. I used to play this song while driving back from lunch to my job, and I remember passing under the canopy of the trees while little bits of sunlight broke through the green leaves. It was a magical moment. Ha! I ususally don't talk like that. It's moments like those that make me want to travel more, but it's too damn expensive!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/11/campaign.wrap/index.html
Feel free to donate to his campaign here. ;)
Candy posted about this SocialVibe widget you put on your blog, MySpace, etc. I thought I would play around with it. You get to choose which cause you want to support, and the only one that I liked was the One Laptop Per Child program because I love the idea of technology and communication tools being introduced into an area where people don't know anything about email or "surfing the web". I think the idea behind the OLPC program is pretty cool, but I know there have been issues with the program, which you can read about on Wikipedia or just by doing a Google search for "OLPC". I think the program will improve over time, though. I wish SocialVibe would let you choose any charity you wanted such as the Alzheimer's Association. I like to donate money to that charity sometimes because my grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and it is not a nice way to go.
Here is what the SocialVibe widget looks like ...
You also choose the sponsor that appears in your widget. I chose XBOX since I actually have an XBOX 360 and play it quite often. I think you earn points whenever someone views the webpage or blog entry or profile page that contains your SocialVibe widget. I think those points are later converted into money for the charity somehow so that's cool. I'll have to monitor it to figure out how it works because I am still new to it.
In other news, Tricky has a new album coming out called Knowle West Boy. There is an article about it here ...
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/want-a-free-pou.html
I have always liked Tricky's music. I even like his acting in The Fifth Element. I like it when he does remixes of others' songs, such as Garbage or Bjork, too. Here is one of his songs, "For Real", that I like ...
In other news still ... I think there are a lot of people out who do not have anti-virus and anti-spyware protection on their computers. One of the biggest challenges with connecting the whole world with networks, broadband internet connections, etc., is that there are going to be tons of people with unprotected computers. Here is a website that will test your computer for viruses, spyware, etc., for free ...
http://housecall.trendmicro.com
Here is a free anti-virus program ...
http://free.grisoft.com (I would think it's better than nothing).
You may want to read about it here before you download it, though. (that link will take you to an article on LifeHacker, which is a great website.)
Other programs I like are the free versions of Spyware Doctor and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware. You can also download Microsoft's Windows Defender for free.
Once you download any of these programs, you should always turn on some sort of auto-update feature to make sure you are using the latest version of the program. If there is no auto-update feature, then you can usually go somewhere like "Tools" or "About" within the program to find an update option.
Sometimes, these programs are going to scan your computer and tell you that there are "cookies" on your system, but "cookies" are not that bad. An example of a cookie is when I go to TVGuide.com, and I customize the channel setup to reflect Time Warner Cable in Austin, TX. Well, that is a cookie, but I don't want to remove it because I don't want to have to setup the channels each time I go to that site. Therefore, don't freak out if a program tells you there are tons of cookies on your computer after a scan.
I like to go to My Computer, right-click on the main hard drive (in my case, it is C:), and choose Disk Cleanup to see what unnecessary items are in my hard drive (especially in the "temp" folder) ...
I also like to go to My Computer, and then choose the Add/Remove programs option to see if there any unnecessary programs installed on my computer. Be careful that you don't delete something just because you don't recognize the name, though. If you are unsure about a program, you can always do a Google search on it to see what it is. A lot of the time, it is a vital program that came with your computer, and you should not delete it.
Speaking of Anti-Virus software, I like to use McAfee for everything, but it does cost money. It's nice to be able to install the McAfee programs on more than one computer, though. I have let a lot of my friends download my McAfee programs onto their computers because they did not have any anti-virus software already installed or they had some awful program like Norton installed, which I hate.
Another way to keep your computer (and your money) safe is to be aware of phishing scams. Banks and credit unions will never ask you for your information through email or by phone unless you initiated the conversation. However, if you get an email from a bank such as Chase (which I have gotten), and it is asking you to verify your account number, SSN, etc., then you need to mark it as SPAM, delete it, report it as phishing, etc.
Gmail has a really cool option that allows you to report a message as phishing. Here is screen cap (or capture) of it ...
The email in that picture is definitely spam, but it is not a phishing email. Phishing emails usually come from banks, PayPal, etc. They pretend to be from the real company, but they are really from crooks who are good at disguising the information in an email. The cool thing about Gmail is that the more people who use it, the safer it gets because if one person marks a message as phishing and/or spam, then Gmail is going to go ahead and mark that message as spam for all the other users who receive it. That's why I wish everyone would use Gmail. To me, it really is the best email provider out there.
Here is a website from a good credit union in Texas that will tell you all about scams that relate to phishing, cashier's check fraud, Ebay fraud, Craigslist fraud, lottery fraud, etc. ...
https://www.rbfcu.org/NBO/Jsp/Reference/OnlineSecurity.jsp
You can also try these websites ...
http://www.fakechecks.org
http://www.ckfraud.org
OK, there are three songs on Portishead's new album, Third, that make me think of others songs.
The first song is "Hunter", which makes me think of a song from the 1992 horror movie, Candyman, by Philip Glass called "Face to Razor".
Here are the two songs ...
John Stewart - Gold
I saw the new Speed Racer movie at Alamo Drafthouse last night. It has gotten awful reviews, but the movie has some very cool scenes. I think the film should have been edited down to an hour and 30 minutes, and I think more color should have been inserted into the slow scenes. The racing scenes are amazing, and they would look great on an IMAX screen, especially if there were an IMAX 3D version of the film (which there may be for all I know). I know they did something like that for Beowulf (which I have not seen).
I think the soundtrack should have been more electronic, electro, techno, whatever. The major DJs out there should have contributed really cool songs to the score of the film. Fast electronic music would have gone perfectly with the scenes, and I think the movie had a little bit of that, but it needed way more.
Here is a very old remix of the Speed Racer song ...
The above song is not in the movie ... it's a very, very old remix. There is a remix of the Speed Racer theme at the end of the movie that Chim Chim dances around, too, while they show the credits. I will look for it. (edit ... I found it on Amazon's MP3 downloads)
Edit ... OK, here is the song Chim Chim dances to at the end of the new Speed Racer movie ...
I think that is the song. It sounds right.
Here is a scene from the end of the movie, but the quality of this video is not that good ...
The Wachowski brothers, who did Bound, The Matrix Trilogy, and V For Vendetta; did this Speed Racer movie, and I expected a lot more from them. However, I still think their visuals during the racing scenes are amazing so just remember that when you read all the horrible reviews of this movie (which is not as bad as the reviews say it is).
You can read a better review of the movie here at Ain't It Cool News. I swear some of these reviewers are ripping into this movie out of peer pressure. However, I think the movie really is the old cartoon brought to life. For fans of the old Speed Racer cartoon, I think the movie will be fun.
In other news, here is another fun song from Madonna's new album, Hard Candy, called "Spanish Lesson". It has really goofy lines like Entiendo means "I get it", but it is still a good song.
OK, here is yet another edit to this post (I think I have edited this post more than any other in the history of this blog) ... I wanted to buy Madonna's "Give It 2 Me (Paul Oakenfold Edit)" on iTunes, but I hate the DRM that goes with an iTunes song (DRM means digital rights management, and it means that you can only play the song on approved players like iTunes and the iPod). However, I then remembered that Amazon's MP3 store is DRM-free so I bought the song there, and here is the cool remix ...
Madonna - Give It 2 Me (Paul Oakenfold Edit) ...