mWow IV – RadioLovers

Are you a fan of old time radio shows? Or maybe you just enjoy some good clean (albeit sometimes politically incorrect) comedy? Or how about some real Big Band music. If so, this mWow is for you.

RadioLovers is a collection of free in the public domain radio shows from the 30-50s. Listen to legendary shows such as Abbott and Costello (including a standalone clip of the legendary “Who’s on First” bit), Amos and Andy, Benny Goodman, Flash Gordon, Batman, etc.

RadioLovers has taken these old time shows and converted them to downloadable mp3s. If you’re bored with your current playlist try downloading and listening to a show or two as a change of pace.

You even get some unintentional humor along the way. Nothing like listening to a cigarette commercial that extols the health benefits of smoking Camels.

Checkout RadioLovers here.

Make Your Daughter Work Day

Thursday was “Take Your Daughters/Sons to Work Day”. Charlotte went to work with me and I put her to work. We had to edit 3 Yankees promos. I taught Charlotte how it’s done while I cut the first two. Then it was her turn. She cut the 3rd spot. You can see it here.

She truly did most of the work. Well, most of the work that needed to be done. If you watch the spot you’ll see it’s what we call a donut, you basically just need to fill the hole in the middle. And she did that. She took direction from the producer (Joe Pepitone, btw… nephew), and chose the best part of each shot (with a small bit of reassurance from me).

We both had a great day, and not just because she was at work with me…. much more, really. Just walking to work together was special, quality-time. Making mundane chit-chat, talking about people that are homeless, eating lunch, laughing with adult co-workers, shopping leisurely for a b-day present for Lex, listening to music on the train home. It was great.

mWow III – Google Labs

Google truly is an internet phenomena. Here’s a company that started with absolutely no business plan for making a profit but grew into a company with billions of dollars of cash on hand (As of March 30th, Google had $8 billion in the bank).

With so much cash at it’s disposal Google is free to play around with dozens of new ideas – some of which might turn out to be quite brilliant, others which will turn out to be real losers. The crazy thing about Google is that while many companies are extremely secretive about what they are working on, Google is quite open about many of their projects (don’t get me wrong, they are also quite secretive about bunches of them too).

You might think of Google Labs as Google’s sandbox. Google Labs, reachable at http://labs.google.com/ is where Google posts links beta versions of products that their scientist and engineers are working on – some of which are neat as hell, others of which will never see the light of day.

Many of Google’s current offerings started out at the Google Labs site. I first started using Google Desktop when it was a beta product at the Google Labs site and it’s changed the way I store and find things on my computer. I know longer have to worry creating folders or files with recognizable names to store things on my computer. I can just dump everything into My Documents then use Google desktop to search for them when I have to access the file.

Google Earth is another neat product. Google Earth is a collection of satellite and aircraft photos from all over the world that you can access on your computer. Most of the earth is covered and you can see enough detail to usually be able to pick out your own home. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you can get some pretty detailed views of your home for example (Marilyn, I can easily pick out the octagonal deck addition to your patio – the hottub is partially in the shade so it isn’t as easy to pick out). Google Earth is wild because you can take panoramic tours of various locations (the Grand Canyon and Chicago River tours are particularly interesting). Google Earth also has a community of users who use Google Earth’s forums to tag interesting items on the photos (talk about mundane – there’s a ton of people committed to finding flying airplanes and their shadows in the photos).

Google Earth turned out to be such raging success, that the Labs now have a Google Mars where you can zoom in on the Red Planet using photos taken from various Mars Missions.

Some others interesting offerings curently in beta include Google Video, where you can search for videos by keywords using the familiar Google interface.

One that I want to try out but haven’t gotten around to it yet is Google Page Creator which proposes to be an easy way to create your own website (Marilyn – you might want to look into this a bit as a possible way to build a site for Dawn).

That’s a quick glance at Google Labs. Try it out. Also check back every couple of months. New and interesting stuff shows up all the time.

mWow II – The Numbers Stations

Pandora, UncleLar’s mWow I, turned out to be a way practical contribution so this week I decided to go the complete opposite. I think I can comfortable say that no one will find this week’s honoree the least bit practical.

First a little background.

What exactly is a “Numbers Station”? The answer to that supposedly lies in the intriguing world of spies. I’m not talking about the Tom Clancy, John le Carré fantasy world of spying. I’m talking, at least supposedly, real world international spies.

Numbers Stations are shortwave radio frequencies that intermittently suddenly start broadcasting people reciting seemingly random streams of numbers, words, or letters. In theory, they are coded messages that governments use to communicate with their spies in the field.

England’s Irdial-Discs record label recorded a collection of these broadcasts and released them in a four CD set called the Conet Project. The set is available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Now before you think I’ve gone completely wacko and entered the world of conspiracy theorists, there is substantial evidence to support the theory that these stations are in fact spy based. Here’s some reputable journalists’ remarks re Numbers Stations.

The Washington Post: “The Shortwave And the Calling”
Salon: “Counting Spies”
Chris Brand: “Numbers Stations”
and, lastly, a real life spy, Thomas Wagner, mentions Numbers Stations in his tome about escaping from East Berlin.

Interesting you say (or maybe not – afterall the mundane has to come in some time) and you are even asking “Is there any way I can listen to these stations without paying the £39.99 for the CDs.

Yes, I answer, with UncleLar’s mWow II, The Conet Project – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. Check out a couple – I’m sure you’ll find them quite mundane. 🙂

One interesting followup. Evidently, the band Wilco, is a fan of Numbers Stations. They sampled one of the stations for the album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. Wilco looped a female voice, supposedly a Mossad agent, repeating the phrase “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” for a minute and a half during “Poor Places” a track on the “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album. That led to an interesting lawsuit. Irdial Records sued Wilco for copyright violations. Now I’m not exactly sure Irdial can claim ownership of an anonymous female reciting a phonetic alphabet over the public airways but the suit was settled before it ever went to court with Wilco was forking over some royalty payments to the record company.

While there’s little doubt that this mWow is mundane, I hope I’ve made it a little bit interesting. Now go “enjoy” the recordings.

UncleLar’s Mundane Website of the Week…

from here on out known as mWow.

Since things have been a little slow here, I thought I’d start something new to keep folk entertained. With the free time that I have on my hands I regularly stumble across interesting websites on the net, so I thought I’d start sharing them with you. Some of them you may have heard of, many of them I will guarantee that you never have, and I’ve no doubt that some of them you will wish you never had, but I hope at least a few of them you find enjoyable.

The only criteria that I’m am going to put on the selections is that they will all be something that I found quite intriguing. One week I might turn you onto something that is immensely practical, the next week you could get something totally absurd, it’s all going to depend on the mood I’m in.

The honor of the first UncleLar’s mWow goes to Pandora. Pandora is the result of the Music Genome Project, which is an effort to break music down into it’s “genes” or essential elements. The creators have analyzed over 300,000 songs and 10,000 artists and broken them down into over 400 different attributes such as tempo, rhythm, harmonies, lyrics, etc.

Now, I can already hear you saying “so what?” Here’s where the fun begins.

You simply give Pandora the name of a favorite artist or a favorite song of yours. Pandora creates a personal “radio station” based on that artist or song and begins playing music based on your choice. That’s it (well almost, after about 5 songs it asks that you register with the site).

What blew my mind was how right on Pandora’s selections seemed. Not from the perspective that the songs sounded like my pick but how much I enjoyed them.
In addition to playing songs that I’ve always liked and enjoyed, Pandora regularly picks out an artist or song that I’ve never heard of, or never would have considered listening to, and plugs it into my mix – and I pretty much like all of them. It’s infinitely better than listening to your same old collection of songs (Gary – not all of us have a music collection as extensive as yours).

Here’s a little example of what Pandora can do. I picked one of Gary’s favorites (and one he turned me onto) and created a Marcia Ball radio station. Here’s what Pandora played for me.

“How I wish” by Keith Richards
“Quicksand” by Tracy Nelson
“So Many Rivers to Cross” by Marcia Ball
“Wonder” by Natalie Merchant (from Tiger Lily an album I own)
“Living Proof” by Cat Power (who? never heard of them but liked the song)
“Quicksand” by Tracy Nelson
“That’s Enough of That Stuff” by Marcia Ball

When I put in what I considered one of the greatest Rock and Roll songs ever “Gloria” by Van Morrison I got:

“I Want Your Love” by the Pretty Things (who?)
“Boom Boom” by The Animals (kind of freaky since one version of Gloria that Van Morrison does has John Lee Hooker singing “Boom Boom” in accompanyment with Van)
“My Way of Giving” by Rod Stewart
“Too Many Fish in the Sea” by the Young Rascals (always liked the Rascals)
“Mickey’s Monkey/Love Things” by the Rascals again
“I’m Down” by Aerosmith
“Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind” by Elvis Costello
“Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” by AC/DC
“Wrap It Up” by the Fabulous Thunderbirds (an much underrated group in my mind)

You get the idea, now try it out yourself.

UncleLar’s mWow #1: Pandora