Mark’s blog

Rosetta@Home is the website for a project that uses a screensaver to analyze proteins that could lead to the cures of major diseases, such as cancer. Everyday they feature a different user as their "user of the day". Today I am that user so that is pretty cool. I am always wanting to build up a team of Rosetta@Home users to be on my "Team M.I.A.", but it hasn't quite happened, yet.

Here is a screenshot ...

If you ever join Rosetta@Home, and you download their screensaver, there will be an option (on the website, not the screensaver, I think) to join one of the teams. Please join my Team M.I.A. ...

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/team_display.php?teamid=3302

Rosetta@Home website

BOINC screensaver

The cool thing about this screensaver is that it is basically harnessing the power of thousands (or more?) computers out there to act like one supercomputer. The more people who use the screensaver, the faster it will get its job done.

I'm such a nerd about Rosetta@Home that I made 2 YouTube videos about it a while back ...

The videos combine clips from M.I.A.'s songs (all of them) with images of her and images/video of the BOINC screensaver ...

 

This is a pretty neat chart that shows you how quickly people all over the world are downloading Firefox 3.5.

http://downloadstats.mozilla.com

I know this is something only extreme tech nerds will appreciate, but you have to appreciate just on a communication/technology/business level how quickly one product can sort of infest itself on the world.

Here is the article at TechCrunch that led me to the chart ...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/30/firefox-35-soars-past-a-million-downloads-approaching-100-downloads-a-second

I am hoping Firefox and Mozilla will continue to take a bite out of Internet Explorer and Microsoft's market share because I still believe Internet Explorere is one of the worst browsers. Also, I love Firefox's add-ons.

Firefox is still my favorite browser. Sometimes I will try out other browsers, like Google's Chrome, just to see what else is out there, but I always end up coming back to Firefox.

The latest version, Firefox 3.5, is available for download here ...

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US

There is also a video you can watch about the latest features of Firefox here ...

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/video

Here is a YouTube video about Firefox 3.5 from a week or more ago ...

You can also just go to firefox.com to get the new version.

That's one of the many songs I think of when it actually rains in Austin. Another good one is "Showdown" by Electric Light Orchestra. Anyway, it rained this morning in Austin, and I think it is still raining right now. It's so rare to see rain now that I thought I would take a video of it with my little Canon SD750 digital camera. There's nothing special about the video, but it is the best feeling in the world to actually see rain and lightning and hear thunder. Austin is in a drought right now so this rain is very much welcomed.

M.I.A. won the best female hip hop artist at the BET awards.

http://www.bet.com/Specials/betawards09/betawards09_nominees/betawards09_winners

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyRTygq5XiGpktbDwyUD0SSnra6QD994415O0

Here is a new remix of M.I.A.'s Hombre ...

M.I.A - Hombre (JMAY's Bad Mami Remix)

You can download it here.

Google increased the maximum size of a Gmail email attachment. Here is a story about it from Austin Business Journal ...

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2009/06/29/daily2.html?ana=from_rss

You may ask "why does this matter?", but being able to send a larger file with Gmail is great. I recently had a PowerPoint project that was a little over 25MB in size. I had to put in on a USB drive, but it would have been nice to simply email to myself for storage and be able to download it to my work PC when it was time to do a presentation. Google is also increasing the maximum size of a video on YouTube from 1 GB to 2 GB, which means we should see some much higher quality videos soon. This is my favorite part of the article ...

The company warns, however, that users' attachments may bounce off of other email systems which have smaller attachment limits. This is apparently seen by the company as an entry to getting more Gmail users as it includes this suggestion on its Gmail help page: "If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail." 

This is my favorite sketch from the show, The Kids In The Hall. This is pretty old, but I thought of it about 10 minutes ago and knew I had to find it on YouTube.

The sad thing is I am just like that guy. =)

I was trying to make a video for Tori Amos' song, "Starling", for YouTube. The song is one of my favorites on her latest album, Abnormally Attracted To Sin. I heard her sing, "starling", and immediately thought of astronomy, even though a starling is a type of bird (I should have thought about that one). However, I think the video still came out OK. I scanned images from an old, old, old book I have about stars.

I uploaded the video, and everything was fine until YouTube said I was violating a copyright, which I always think is weird since I get nothing for making the videos, and the videos actually promote the artist's music and introduces the music to people who would have never heard it before. When you have a copyright violation on YouTube that is caused by a song, you can take out the song and replace it with one of YouTube's fair use songs.

I chose a song called "21.18 (Ventunoediciotto)" by an artist named Cybophonia.I chose the song based on its time and electronic vibe, but it is cool how it is has a sort of space sound that goes along with the video's images.

Here is the video ...

Here is the actual song, "Starling", by Tori Amos ...

I thought I would post the David Bowie and Nirvana versions of "The Man Who Sold The World" because I get this song in my head a lot. I definitely prefer the Nirvana version.

I found this on YouTube. I think it's really trippy to see Olivia Newton-John in a TV special before Grease, Xanadu, or Physical came out. Also, I never hear her do the Mariah Carey vocal gymnastics that she does in this video so that is cool. However, the best part (and you need to watch this part if you watch any of the video) is the very end when they list all of the guest stars.

You can find all the parts of this special on YouTube if you need them. The song she is singing is "Love Song" from her first major album, If Not For You.

 Here is a playlist for the 1976 ABC Olivia Newton-John special if you need it ...

This link will take you to an old video of Olivia Newton-John singing, "Take Me Home, Country Roads", which is a John Denver song that Olivia pretty much made her own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-cPvsH1_I8 - I had to just put the link because the person who uploaded it to YouTube is not allowing it to be embedded. 

Here is the ending scene of Mission Impossible set to a remix of Goldfrapp's song, "Train". The actual title of the remix is El Train (T. Raumschmiere Remix).

This is also my favorite scene from Mission Impossible because the pace and lighting of the movie change completely as soon as Tom Cruise emerges from the train.