Cool as hell biology sites

Story about the Encyclopedia of Life

Slashdot Post about it

EOL

Fish Base

WikiSpecies

Tolweb Tree of Life

Integrated Taxonomic Information System

They are all cool species indexes. One day I will be a biologist. It's something like this that I really want to do with my life. Use what I have learned in Information Technology and combine it with biology. Hopefully Marine biology, helping to conserve and rebuild either Atlantic Salmon or Striped Bass stocks. Something I always wanted to do but never felt I had the chance nor the support from the important people (my parents) in my life but I do now. Thank you Katie, it means the world to me that you want me to do something that I dreamed about and will make me happy.

I love this song

Clutch Electric Worry


I've listened to it probably twenty times today. I love it. It's a great thing when you can still find music that thrills you.

Great beginning to the weekend

I'm on a blogging streak so I gotta post something today to keep it up.

Had a great start to what looks to be a great weekend. Some good friends came over and we dug out the giant lylac ( too much digging and too many beers, well not really, to worry if i spelled that even remotely close ) bush in our backyard. Drank some beer had and had a good supper. Spent the rest of the night laughing at his wife and Katie.
Tomorrow I going fishing. The weather should be perfect and the fish should be going crazy.
Sunday it's off to the zoo to see Lions and Tigers and Bears....Oh My! ;) They are having their annual Earth fest for Earth Day. Lots of info about recycling and organic food. I'm really excited.
I hope everyone else is having a great weekend also.

I wish I could be here to see this

Jimi plays voodoo chile (slight return)

I wish I could have seen Hendrix (Or Stevie Ray Vaughan for that matter) play. So creative and different. Amazing player, he really painted sound scapes, gave the music a sound and a color. There have been many who are more techinally skilled but none that could play with the texture and power that he had .

Continueing a Theme

Country Boy - Albert Lee

Johnny Hiland

Johnny Hiland Chicken Picking Guitar

More cool Guitar vids

Paganini Caprice No 24

Paganini Caprice No 24 is even better here

Julian Bream - J.S Bach-Violin Sonata fugue

Paganini Caprice No 5 (Acousitic) Dude is a little weird but plays pretty well

Paganini Caprice No 5 (Electric) Sound is not good but the playing is cool

Instrumental version of Your Eyes from Rent

Satch Boogie

Tool - Vicarious Guitar plyaing is just average but that's not hte point of the song. Great lyrics.

Cool guitar vids

Simpons Theme on Classical Guitar

Super Mario Guitar (Electric)

Super Mario Guitar ( Classical )

Canon in D

Fur Elise (Electric)

Fur Elise (Classical)

Too busy for something amazing?

Too busy for something amazing?

When I lived in NYC one of my favorite experiences was hearing the street musicians busking in Grand Central. I was late to work several times because I would hear a guitar playing or a violist and I just had to stop and listen. Great way to break up the boringness (is that a word?) of the commute.

One time in one of the lower levels of Grand Central I heard the most amazing duo playing. I was on my way home and I think it was the 9 train uptown (not sure it's been a while) I was trying to catch. There were two men playing, one younger and one older. The younger was had a white pickle tub turned upside down and an old style washboard. The older had a nice looking fender strat with a pignose amp and a portable pa. He also played the harmonica and sang. I must have listened for 30 minutes or more as they filled that area up. They played a great mix of blues, zydeco, and jazz. There was pain but yet it made me feel great like all great blues should. I left a $20 and told that it was one of the best performances I had ever heard. I still think it was. I couldn't believe at the time that noone was stopping to listen.

Music that I have been listening to.

Crooked Still and Wayfaring Strangers

Great Bands both. They are a modern bluegrass/jazz mixture that is great sounding IMO. Very well textured and the lead singing reminds me alot of Alison Krauss who's music I also love. Great traditional songs with a modern updated type sound. The two bands share some members.

The Black Keys

A two piece band out of Akron, Ohio. The lead singer has a great voice and the guitar is fuzzed out blues-rock at it's best. A very 70's sounding band that's been updated for the 21st century. Magic potion is a great cd and 'Your touch' is a great song. I think I've been driving Katie slightly nuts with these guys because I always seem to be listening to them. Blues-rock and 70's rock, if you like them this is a good band to check out.

The White Stripes

Right, I know I'm about 3 years ( or so and this coming from the guy borne in 1980 and that listens to Led Zepp and Jimi on a nearly daily basis) behind with this band but right now but I'm really enjoying them. Another two piece ( just drums and guitar ) but not quite as good as the The Black Keys IMO. I like Jack Whites voice and I think he writes good punk rock blues but I can see how some will find it a bit wearing. I'm liking it right now. I'm also really liking the Raconteurs Jack White's other band. If you like punk/garage rock and blues-rock you'll probably like these guys.

Yonder Mountain String Band

A Bluegrass Jam band. Great musicians and great songs in a more timeless style. Great harmonies and great playing.

Flogging Molly

A punk Celtic band. I really really like this band. Drunken Lullabies is a great song. Punk type of vocals with Celtic and punk music mixed together.

Queens of the Stone Age

Great Heavy Hard Rock. They write some of the best guitar riffs I have ever heard. They also have a unique sound to them. It's heavy music yet without the cookie monster style vocals or the screaming.

Tool

Dark Heavy Hard Rock. I love the rhythms this band builds into their songs. The guitar is cool but nothing amazing but the lyrics, singing ( in rock context, I wouldn't compare it to a really good trained singer but it fits the style of music ), and the drumming are really great.

Drive By Truckers

Southern Country-Rock. I've been liking this but not as much as some of the other stuff on this list but I want to give it more of a try. Think early Eagles but better and less commercial.

Cross Canadian Ragweed

See the Drive by Truckers section, they sound different but everything I said up there applies here. Same type of music as well.

The Donnas

Good old 70's classic rock filtered though some girls right around my age ( mid 20's ). The Lyrics and songwriting are ... well stupid at times but the songs make me feel good. I Love the Gibson into Marshall guitar tone she gets and the songs aren't all stupid but none are poetry level either. Most of the songs sound very similar also. That's OK to me though because it rocks and sounds good. Led Zepp, Kiss ( without all the tacky-ass crap and stupidity ), and the Ramones are there most easily hearable influences.

Los Lonely Boys

Texas Blues Rock. A little poppy for me but great guitar playing and the songs just stick with you. I really like it.

John Mayer

Pop-rock and blues rock. A really good guitar player and I really like alot of his songs. Great sense of humor IMO.

All these go align with my steady diet of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, Aerosmith, Metallica, AC/DC, Alice In Chains, BB King, Black Sabbath, Brain Setzer, Clapton, Green Day, Offspring, the Sex pistols, the Ramones, Johnny Cash, Nickel Creek, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Norah Jones, Rent ( Broadway cast ) Soundtrack, Stevie Ray Vaughan, System of a down, ZZ Top, and Miles Davis.

I have also been listening to a alot of classical lately. The Evenings withe the Captain albums are great. There pieces that appear in the historical naval novels written by Patrick O' Brian ( my favorite series of books ). Mostly chamber music played by strings. Lots of violin and cello. I love stringed instruments, from guitar to violin to cello I love the sound.
Brandenburg Concertos No.1 - ii: Adagio by J.S. Bach

I HATE OWNING A CAR

I hate cars. Some guys are car guys. You know the type they talk about engines and spew forth technical stuff like lava from a Hawaiian volcano. Not me, I look at an engine and say "Yep that's the thing that makes it go vroom-vroom and honk honk. Hope it's all working right!" It's not that knowing about or liking a car is bad in my opinion, it's just that I don't like working on cars and really have no drive to learn how to go about working on cars. In fact I hate working on cars. I know that I can spew techno jargon with the best of them when it comes to computers or guitar stuff or even some science and biology and fishing related stuff so it's not that I think it's bad to do this, I just hate being made to feel less manly/dumb or something like that. It's kinda stupid to base feeling manly on what others think, I know that but there is always that look that you get, when you are a man and you say that I know very little about cars and I hate that look. It's somewhere in between pity and contempt. Like, "aww look at the wussy moron who doesn't know what every man should be born with". This isn't aimed at anyone in particular and probably is more a result of my frustration about not knowing how to fix the damn thing. Also to anyone I may have made feel dumb about computer stuff, please forgive me as it was not my intention. Unless you really are dumb( you know who you are, well at least I hope you do ), in that case carry on and forget I just typed that.

Cars themselves are evil. I mean I know that they are a great advance for human society and blah, blah blah.... That doesn't change the fact that for the most part they can drain the life from you. You pay a extraordinary price for them. You pull it off the lot and it's worth a faction of the money you just payed for it. Next you have constantly pay more money just to keep the damn thing doing what it is you bought it to do. Then come the repairs, more money and time and frustration to fix any one of the hundreds of parts that could be bad on the damn thing. All just to do what it is you bought to do. Buying used can be just bad. Has been in wreck? Of course not, that frame isn't bent it just got a bit of a gansta lean built in for you. The day when I can no longer own a car and still get around is the day I'll be a much happier man. I know public transpiration is a pain sometimes but I've done both and I'd rather have the bus and subway please. Even during rush hour!? Yep, I have certainly changed alot lately.

Moral of this mini-rant: cars = the devil or cars = bad, very very bad, if you happen to not believe in make believe little red scaly men with tails and horns. And pitchforks, the little devil on my shoulder reminds me. Thanks little guy.

This post brought to you by a left front tire that will not stay inflated and several gas stations that have broken air compressors and very little signs saying that they are broken, all on a cold morning.

Sunday July 30th

Kinda a boring day but still a good day. I went fishing but didn't catch anything. Used a deer hair popper I tied myself ( dark red and olive and black tail with silver flash in it ), a chartuese form popper, and a clouser minnow. Got a couple of bits on the deer hair but no fish. This was at Katie's Grandpa's pond.

I've been looking at python and http://www.djangoproject.com pretty hard as a new web dev platform to learn. I have a couple project in mind to use it with. Django is pretty damn good stuff IMHO. For most web stuff the auto admin is a great thing. The OR/M is pretty nice to work with also. Of course I do love python and working with it.
That being said I have a feeling that most of my studying and work will be in C#/asp.net and Java/JEE. I'm hoping to work towards certs on both sides.

Me fishing a while back in Maine

Wow, it's been awhile

I need to post more often. Any way I saw rent the movie and Avenue Q in NYC this weekend. Both are highly recommended.

A Clash of Kings

"Bad enough when the dead come walking, now the Old Bear wants them talking as well? No good will come of that, I'll warrant. And who's to say the bones wouldn't lie? Why should death make a man truthful, or even clever? The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints - the ground's too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do ..."
- Dolorous Edd, A Clash of Kings

GMaps

http://maps.google.com/

Google's new mapping tool. What's cool and different about it is the ablity to get sat photo's for the address you search for and the abilty to put in a place name and have it find it. Click on Ohio zoom in to about the fifth zoom level and search for sandy valley high school ( the High School I attended ) then click Satellite. I think it's pretty cool although a little freaky. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING ME!!!! ;)

Great Guitars

Seagull
Fender

I own this, which I love. It's got a great bluesly/bluegrass olde timey feel and sound. The setup from the factory was great. The action was a tad higher than I like but I don't except a custom setup from the factory. ( Um... damn you mean that they can't predict the future!?!? what the hell am I paying them for?! Oh yeah to make a good guitar that can be later adjusted.) The Frets and fingerboard were very well done. TO BE CONTINUED....

Gmail Goes Public

http://slashdot.org/articles/05/03/15/1845250.shtml?tid=217

GMail looks to be a better web based email option, 1gb storage, threaded views, and google's great search. I'm sold.

A Song Of Fire And Ice

Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. “Do you understand why I did it?”

“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry off women and sell them to the Others.”

His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do it.”

Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a headsman,” he said, uncertainly.

“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”

-- From A Game of Thrones By George R.R. Martin

Links

I'll post some of my favorite links on this page:

Fly Anglers Online
A Song of Ice and Fire Message Board
Fender Guitars
Seagull Guitars

What's taters?

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/taters.php

Kind of funny but kind of annoying also. Not sure why I think it's funny.