All New For You

Hey, cool, a new look for 2006! I am back in Raleigh after a week long trip to visit the family in Jackson (pics are here). Santa brought me some cool stuff for the kitchen, which I'm sure will prove very useful. Now I'm trying to figure out what kind of New Year's resolution I should make. Actually, I know exactly what resolution to make, I'm just worried that I won't be able to keep it. Send me some positive energy.

Happy Holiday

I am preparing to go out of town, and may be away from the computer for a while (or I may not be, I'm not sure).

Happy Holidays to you and yours. Celebrate, or don't, as you see fit, and let others celebrate, or not, as they see fit. See you in a few.

Dean Gray Tuesday

Visit http://americanedit.org/home/ae/ to get your copy of the mashup album American Edit, which was banned by the MFs at Warner Records. Today only. From the site:

Only 10 days after its release, the mash-up album American Edit, which pays tribute to the acclaimed Green Day album American Idiot through some of the best mash-up productions of 2005, was shut down reportedly after received a cease & desist order from Green Day's label, Warner records, despite the fact that it was released as an internet only release with no commercial gain for the team of mash-up artists involved. In fact, the only possible profit to be made from the release was a plea from the creators of the album (known only by the shared alias Dean Gray) for fans who enjoyed the creation to donate to one of three possible charities that Green Day have been known to support. Furthermore, the mash-up versions were such fantastic productions that they were truly a departure from the standard Green Day performances and would not compete for consumptive dollars.

We hope to mobilize the online Mash-Up community by organizing a simple one-day organized event. Participants would be asked to post the American Edit album online for 24 hours only starting on Tuesday, December 13, at 12:00AM. Doing so is not intended to be a mass organization of music piracy but, rather, one single display of the consumptive power of the mash-up and home remix community in the hopes of encouraging the labels, publishers and artists who are curious about the mash-up community to consider giving the high quality productions of "illegitimate" music a legitimate consideration as a promotional avenue for all music.

MC Jelly D

A guy dressed up like a big jelly donut and battled in a freestyle rap contest. Here's some video of the event: Jelly Donut.

Star Wars pic

Sage and I visited Washington, DC last summer, and we visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where (for a fee) you can have your face digitally added to a photo. Here we are as Anakin and Obi-Wan from Revenge of the Sith. Large versions here.

Beer Fest 1, community athletics 0

According to a local NBC affiliate, "An October beer festival tore up the turf at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park so much that local recreation leagues and a high school team likely won't have a place to play baseball next spring."

That would be the World Beer Festival, which rocked, by the way. As the afternoon wore on, the mud got worse and worse. I can only imagine what the night session was like (umm, or I could ask some friends, who were at the later session).

It's a shame about the field, but at least there were plenty of delicious beers to sample for an afternoon. That has to count for something.

My most popular Flickr photos

Cool! It's my most popular photos at Flickr, as of December 1! See all my photo sets here.