Friday, February 26, 2010

Friday Music Special, February 26, 2010



A little groove for a little give.
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1. Because they're awesome.
b. Because their Biography episode was the last thing I watched, last night.
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Don't know much about this band, but of the few tracks I've heard, this one stuck.
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Friday, February 19, 2010

Friday Music Special, February 19, 2010



Dance it out, suckas.

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I continue to absolutely adore this band. And you should too. If you don't, then The Machine will get angry. And you wouldn't like The Machine when it's angry.

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The sophomore slump may have dimmed these guys a bit - but overall, there new offering ("Contra") contains much of the same toe-tapping awesomeness and groove that their first major record did. Play on, boys. Play on.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Pedagogues & Broomsticks, Part 2

In this next installment of Pedagogues & Broomsticks (aka - the technological travails of Professors I've encountered along The Way), I'd like to detail the current scene. I sit, in class, watching no fewer than 5 educators trying to figure out how to get presentations from 3 different laptops, onto 2 very large screens. The 2 screens simulcast the same a/v feed, the 5 people will only present one at a time, and 2 pairs are sharing 1 laptop per pair. 3 laptops use VGA out. 1 uses DVI. 1 looks like it has an S-Video out.  Convoluted? Yes. Painful to watch? Even more so. Number of icons on one professors left-side docked Windows XP taskbar? The total of survivors from the Titanic might actually be a lower number. Me? I'm a big fan of the path of least resistance, and struggle to understand how something as simple as wiring a classroom for ease-of-use for the non-tech savvy Prof's can be made so disruptively arduous.

Call me crazy, but in today's higher education setting, it's seemingly imperative that educators (and students) maintain more than a passing awareness of how a/v stuffs operate. The old guard of overhead projectors with reusable transparencies is gone the way of the Sugar Daddy (the candy, not the old guy) - as in, you can still find it somewhere, but only in the most specialized of spots. So here's my plea to all of you "Technology is not my thing" types: reach down, grab your bootstraps, and pull. Hard.

And if your answer is no, then stop wasting everyone's time and make way.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Friday Music Special, February 5, 2010

"The Ol' Beggar's Bush" - Flogging Molly




At their usual pace, their usual charm, and their unendingly awesome style. Yes, I like The Pogues more, and understand why I should - but after all this time, Flogging Molly still makes me dinky stinky, and that's the key to a long-lasting relationship, right?
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"Kinda Kinky" - Ursula 1000



I owe my discovery of this total crap-track (toe-tap worthy as it is) to the website of a dive-bar in Mission Hill. For the record, if you don't serve whisky, consider rebranding yourself as a cafe.
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"Someone Like You" - Safetysuit



I don't really understand why these guys aren't more popular. They're certainly head-and-shoulders above much of the swimming-with-owls-and-dolphins-city nonsense that's out there right now, and seem fairly musically coherent. Kudos?

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Pedagogues & Broomsticks

In a recent discussion with some cohorts far more technologically knowledgeable than myself, I mentioned some past technical difficulties with various Pedagogues who, for posterity's sake, I won't name. This got me thinking - I'm terribly tired of going to class and hearing my fellow humanistic brethren talk about how "technology is not their strong suit". Listen, bub - it ain't mine either, but I do - get it?

Let me paint a picture: first day of the first class of the last semester of classes before graduation. Professor X (no relation to the bald, psychic, Picard look-alike) frantically tries to get a laptop's video feed to pump through the magic jack on the wall and onto the big, beautiful screen. Simple, right? Not as simple as you'd hope. Now I'm no programmer. Not by ANY stretch. But listen - if you're going to use presentation materials, as just about EVERY faculty member does, nowadays - get your frakkin' act together. There is almost nothing that irritates me more than sitting in class, watching professors fumble through something that could (and SHOULD) be easily remedied by a training class, showing these brainiacs how to get their slides up on the screen. Stop wasting my time because you don't know how to do something, and clearly haven't bothered to learn.

Off to class now, we'll see how thing go today...