Can Kanye Create Original Songs?

It’s a simple question really? Is it possible for Kanye West to create a song without “sampling”(see ‘copying’) any part of another song?  Frankly, I’m not sure he can do it, If you look at a lot of his recent hits, “stronger”, “gold digger”, they are all rip-offs of other songs.  I think we can all agree that what he lacks in creative spark he certainly makes up for in arrogance, which is really all you need to succeed in the music industry anyway.

As Usual, I’m Wrong

It’s no secret that I’m wrong about a lot of stuff, so now I’d just like to take the time to go ahead and issue some apologies to Facebook and Google and have a bit of a pity party for myself over the disappointment that Scrybe turned out to be. By the way, if you’re new to my blog, this post is in response to several previous posts about Facebook, Google Web Accelerator, and the calendaring application Scrybe.

Facebook- Ok, so maybe it has some useful applications, like the market place type thing and the integrated calendar apps…

Google Accelerator- Fine, it has now saved me a sizeable chunk of time…7.3 hours to be exact, of course I’m assuming this is correct, because for all I know, Google has just been slowly adding time to it while not actually saving me anything, but since I’m too dumb to be able to tell the difference, I’m just going to go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Scrybe- Not as cool as I thought it’d be, in fact, I actually find it to be a little inconvenient since I can’t figure out how to get it to not open in a separate browser window, so all it does really is make me angry. I personally find this to be one of the largest disappointments in my life since I had been looking forward to it for literally almost a year. Oh well, I guess I’ll just go ahead and assimilate with the masses and start using Google Calendar…woe is me…

Oh well, at least I’m posting again.

What’s that you say? I’m not on the guest list? Think again, tool.

Don’t you hate not being invited to things? Especially when you know people who did make the guest list. Don’t fret though, not being invited to things is about to be a thing of the past…well, at least as far as web betas are concerned. I recently stumbled upon(no, not using stumbleupon.com, I’m talking actually and literally stumbled upon) a website called inviteshare.com. It’s a site based around the principle that certain people get invited to betas, and certain people don’t. Therefore the people that do get invited can share their invites with those that didn’t receive one. It’s simple, yet brilliant. I haven’t put in for many invitations, but I have already been invited to Joost, which, for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, is a fairly new internet tv service. From my limited experience with it, Joost seems pretty awesome, but that’s a whole other story in itself. Anyway, the site currently supports 41 various websites that you can submit an invite request for, including a certain calendaring app that has failed to invite me to its awesomeness for over several months now and of which I even posted about not too long ago. The list seems to cover a lot of potentially good(I say potentially because I haven’t tried most of them) web sites and services. The site community seems very nice and eager to share their invitations so I can’t imagine it taking a terribly long time to get even the most limited of invites. So, in a nutshell, if you’ve been itching for some pre-release beta action and haven’t been able to get your foot in the door, give inviteshare.com a visit and the best of luck to you!

Here is the link to inviteshare.com : www.inviteshare.com

Welcome to Farm Fresh, Enjoy the Show

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who was previously employed at Farm Fresh, and he brought up an interesting tidbit of knowledge. Although Farm Fresh has bins/places to put recyclable bags and stuff, they actually just end up dumping them in the trash. Uh…excuse me? So you’re telling me that Farm Fresh just wants us to think it is trying to be environmentally friendly while not actually putting in the effort. My friend mentioned this to me because he knows I’m all about the environment and everything green so he knew it would pique my interest. Well he was right. He said he couldn’t speak for every Farm Fresh, but at least at the one he worked at, thats how it worked. So I’m writing this with a few purposes. I intend to do a little investigatory work, but if anyone has any knowledge about this, I would appreciate it a lot. I want to know if this is a company-wide policy or if it is just localized to one particular store. If it is company-wide, hopefully if enough people notice and make a fuss Farm Fresh will be forced to change, or at least put on another good show.

And thus, My life is Virtual

Up until recently, I have been a huge fan of Microsoft Outlook(yeah yeah…I know, whatever). I liked how it let me keep pretty much my entire life in one spot: my schedule, email, contacts, notes, todo, etc. However, the other day I stumbled upon a little website called 30 Boxes. At its innermost core, 30 Boxes is a calendaring application, but in reality, it is so much more. It has a pseudo desktop view where you can access your email, todo list, facebook, flickr account, and pretty much whatever else you want to put on there. All of this would be crap however if the basic calendar sucked. Good news: it doesn’t. It has a smart entry system where I could type something like “lunch tomorrow at 1pm” and it would recognize where tomorrow is and how to place it onto the calendar correctly. It can also give you the weather forecast for several days in advance on the actual calendar itself, which is much better than having a separate widget. Needless to say, I’ve started using 30 Boxes instead of outlook and I just get all of my mail through my gmail account. I have to admit it’s pretty cool to be able to access all of this information from any computer, but now things are different. Before on outlook, I could access my calendar, todo list, and notes without being connected to the internet. Now however, I need a connection to able to access my schedule and tasks. I have always joked with my friends that I couldn’t live without the internet, but now, more than ever, I am literally in a state of absolute dependence on the internet in order to access a lot of my most important information. I know what some of you are thinking, “just start using your browser in offline mode,”which would work if it weren’t for the fact that then I can’t access my information from anywhere until I connect once again to the internet from my home computer and allow my information to update itself. Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered that the internet is no longer becoming a past time, but rather a necessity? I realize this is kind of a ridiculous question, but what if for some reason the internet ceased to exist. Millions of people would lose friends, family, jobs, even their lives(metaphorically speaking of course, as far as I know nobody’s life support is hooked into the internet…yet). There wasn’t really a point to this post, I just felt like ranting and was curious if anyone agreed with me. As always, feel free to comment!

Hippie Wiki

First of all, I know I haven’t been posting as frequently as I was. I apologize for that and hopefully now that some stuff has been taken care of I can resume a more frequent posting schedule. Anyway, back to the main purpose of the post. I don’t know about you, but lately I have really started to turn into a tree hugger. All of a sudden I can’t get enough of any and everything “green.” So naturally, when I discovered Playgreen-the wiki for green living, I was super excited. I thought I’d get the word out on the site in case there are others of you out there who love this stuff just as much as I do. Check it out, I can pretty much promise you won’t be disappointed. Also, if you guys have any other cool sites like this one you know about and want to share, feel free!

Here’s the link to Playgreen: http://playgreen.org/

Blu Ray, Really?…Really?

So apparently, after deliberating over it for months now, Blockbuster has chosen to start carrying blu ray discs instead of hd dvds. This decision will make Sony and playstation 3 owners happy, and probably piss off the other 95% of movie renters. If it seems like I’m a tad bit bitter, it’s because I am. Not because I want hd dvds to reign triumphant, but simply because I want blu ray technology to fail miserably. I’m not sure why, but ever since Sony priced it’s playstation 3 at $600 I haven’t been too fond of them. I feel like Sony thinks that it’s a god among technology companies, that they can price their merchandise however they want and the dumb-ass consumer will pay because they don’t know any better. Well folks, as you’ve no doubt guessed, this doesn’t sit well with me, and is the reason why I would love to see Sony get taken down a peg or two. Of course, there is no fact behind any of this, it’s just my semi-weekly rant, so if you happen to own a playstation 3 don’t take too much of what I say to heart (I still want one, I just don’t want to pay $600. So don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything bad about the ps3 technologically speaking). As always, feel free to share anything you want to add.

Scrybe, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

For those who do not know what Scrybe is, it is an online calendar/notebook/list-maker/everything tool. Basically, it’s productivity nirvana if you’re into that kind of thing. Anyway, the beta for it launched October of 2006. I signed up pretty soon after. It’s now been almost 8 months and I have yet to hear back from the nice people handling all of the account stuff. Words cannot begin to explain how much I am anticipating the awesomeness of this app. If anyone out there is in the same boat, I’d love to hear about it, or if any of you already have a beta account and just want to rub it in my face, be my guest. I’ll take whatever I can get. Below, is the demo video of Scrybe in action, and at the very bottom is the link to the official website. Enjoy, my friends.

Here is the link to Scrybe’s official website: http://iscrybe.com/main/index.php

Review of The Fountain(Sort of)

Last night I watched The Fountain, the semi-new film by Darren Aronofsky starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. First of all, I’d like to say that I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film ever since I accidentally stumbled upon it in IMDB. I happen to think that Aronofsky is a genius and therefore any movie being made by him is an automatic “must see” for me (Requiem for a Dream is what turned me on to Aronofsky’s work, I’d recommend checking it out). As a consequence of this, I had been hyping up this film in my mind for a while now. Usually whenever I do this, the film ends up being terrible (Spiderman 3…I mean c’mon, emo Peter Parker?) or just plain not meeting the exceptionally high expectations I set for it(Pan’s Labyrinth…I know I’m gonna get a lot of negative comments for this, but I thought it was just pretty good. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but I just don’t know that I would say it was amazing). The Fountain however, was amazing. It it matched my skyscraper expectations and then some. The blurb on the back of the dvd cover said something to the effect of it being the only movie that will break your heart and blow you away. I don’t know if I’d say it broke my heart, but it definately blew me away. Without giving away too much of the story, it takes place in 3 different time periods with Jackman searching for the key to eternal life. In one time period Jackman is a conquistador, another one takes place in modern day, and the final one takes place an unknown number of years in the future. That’s all I’m going to say about the plot because it really should be discovered by watching the movie. If you want to learn more you can always IMDB it (I’ll put the link at the bottom), but I would recommend renting (or ordering, buying, whatever) it the next time you’re in the mood to watch a movie. If you’ve already seen it, how did you like it? As always, feel free to let me know what you think!

Here’s the link to The Fountain’s IMDB page: http://imdb.com/title/tt0414993/

Deranged Girlfriend Pulls Off Ex-Boyfriend’s Testicles?

When I first read this I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, I probably shouldn’t have had a problem with it because I’ve heard about much crazier stuff happening, but to see it on BBC News really struck me I guess. I’ll post the link to the article on the bottom of my post so those of you not in the know can read it, but apparently this guy and his ex-girlfriend were at a party together, she tried to put the moves on him, he wouldn’t have it, so she pulled off one of his testicles. I wasn’t even aware that things worked that way. I mean, I’ve been a member of the male gender my entire life, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t like grapes or tomatoes. You don’t just pluck ‘em off the vine like that. Anyway, to make things even stranger, apparently after the “attack” the ex-girlfriend tried to swallow the detached testicle and when she realized she could not, she spit it out and one of the guy’s friends grabbed it really quickly and handed it back to him while saying, “That’s yours”. OK…….what??? I think if I were witnessing this, after the initial testicle ripping episode, I would’ve been completely and utterly speechless. I really don’t think I would have had the wits about me to do anything, much less snatch the testicle from the ex-girlfriend and give it back to my now partially emasculated friend. All I can say is that this friend who did the snatching must’ve grown up around some pretty weird shit to just react like that and not even let it phase him.  Wow.  Well anyway, as always, if you have any thoughts don’t be shy.  Oh, and as promised, here is the link to the actual story.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4253849.stm