This is hilarious…a Dalek-produced relaxation tape for humans (might not make a lot of sense if you’re not a Dr. Who fan…).
How to find your life Purpose
There’s an interesting article over at ZenHabits about how to find your life purpose. It focuses on the idea of people falling into the trap of being self-centered, focused on a personal bubble representing the small world around you. The article talks about breaking free of that and helping others as a way to gain motivation and learn your purpose. I’m not sure if it’ll work…but I’ll give it a try. 🙂
Word Crimes – Weird Al Yankovic
Al’s got a bunch of new songs out, and my favorite so far is “Word Crimes”, addressing society’s growing indifference to using proper grammar. It’s not limited to just teens and texting, either…misplaced apostrophes are disturbingly common on restaurant menus and many other places. Check it out below.
Last day to speak up in favor of Net Neutrality!
UPDATE! Comment period extended until Friday 7/18!
Today Friday is the last day the FCC will take public comments on proposed regulations regarding the concept of Net Neutrality (check out this video by Jon Oliver if you’re not familiar with the issue). Please please please, send them a message that Net Neutrality is something we care about and demand! Gizmodo wrote up a nice set of instructions which I’m going to copy and past here (original link here):
Step one: Visit FCC.gov/comments and find the proceeding with the title “Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet.” It should be the one on top and should also have over 20,000 filings in the last 30 days.
Step Two: Click the proceeding number “14-28.” You can also try to click this direct link, though it might not work every time. This will take you to the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System. It looks a little janky, but hey, the government built it.
Step Three: Fill out the form. Write about your feelings. Express your concerns. Air your grievances. Provide your real name and address. Hope for the best.
Step Four: Click “Continue” and make sure you like what you wrote. If you don’t you can modify your comment. If you do, click “Confirm.”
Comments are being accepted until midnight tonight (July 15th). Right now, the website is acting a bit flaky, but don’t give up. This is a really important issue that will shape our digital lives in the years to come. You’ve already paid once for internet access…without net neutrality, you will have to pay again (indirectly) to access the content you want. You’ll have to pay to access the internet, and internet companies will have to pay internet providers to allow you to access their content at the same speeds as you can other content on the ‘net. It’s a horrible path to go down.
There’s also a great guide to the comment system over at the Consumerist.
Drone-eye view of fireworks
Happy 4th of July! Check out this cool video of fireworks from the point of view of a drone that flies THROUGH it! Very impressive.
Supreme Court rules against Aereo
In a big blow to cord-cutters, the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo, essentially dealing the small startup a death blow. If you’re not familiar with Aereo, they had equipment installed in major cities with one antenna per subscriber. Each subscriber could tune their antenna to record any over the air TV signals, and then stream that data to their computers or mobile devices over the internet. Aereo’s position was that the one-antenna-per-subscriber made them different than a traditional cable company, but the Court ruled otherwise in a 6-3 decision. Bummer.
Read more at TechCrunch or SlashGear.
The Wil Wheaton Project
So, if you’re a true geek, you probably know by now that Wil Wheaton has his own weekly TV show now, called, you guessed it, The Wil Wheaton Project (I hope they didn’t spend too long thinking up that name…). If you didn’t already know about it…it’s a weekly look into geek culture, and is, so far, not bad! My one complaint is that he talks about Game of Thrones…which I still haven’t caught up on (but that’s my own fault). Wil has a long blog post about the history of the show that’s worth reading, too.
Cord-cutters won’t have an easy time watching the show as it’s not available in iTunes. You can find it on Bittorrent of course, or if you have family members that have cable or satellite and are willing to share their login with you, you can watch episodes on SyFy.com the day after they air. There’s also a SyFy iPad app that works the same way (you need a cable/satellite login)…but allows you to then play that video on your TV via an AppleTV.
Withings Activité activity-tracking watch
Withings has announced its new Activité watch with built in activity tracker, though it’s not due to ship until fall (when it’s likely to face challenges from Apple and Google). It looks like a normal watch, and is even powered by a normal watch battery (size CR2025 if you’re curious, which last about one year). Note the 0-100 dial though…that helps you track your activity goals. Withings is not new to this scene; I’ve been using their Pulse activity tracker for over a year now and really like it. Throwing those electronics into a watch body could be a really nice solution for those who want that combination and not a full ‘smart watch’. At $390 it’s not cheap compared to activity trackers, but you really need to compare this to nice watches to justify its price.
For more info, go to Withings’ website or check out their press release here.
SlowTV for a Fast Plane
British Airways is offering its passengers an unusual in-flight entertainment option: SlowTV. Specifically, a seven hour long video of a train ride from Bergen to Oslo (Norway). Boring, yet relaxing and actually a pretty good idea for a long plane flight! I hadn’t heard of Slow TV before, but if you search YouTube you’ll find quite a bit of this. My favorite has to be an hour long video of a tropical beach…I’ll embed it below for your viewing enjoyment while I let it play on my second monitor. 🙂
Speaking of going slow, the Kona Brewing Company made a nice commercial about ‘single tasking’, doing just one thing for a change. I like it!
World Cup soccer
Silly TV networks. Do you really think you can stop cord cutters like me from watching World Cup soccer games live? There are do many workarounds. Today, my preferred solution is to steam it from the BBC’s website over a Cloak VPN connection, on my iPad Air steaming to my AppleTV. Not as complicated as it may sound actually. 😉