A few weeks ago in class we were discussing why nerds (we might have said something like “science people” but we all meant nerds) used their free time to build silly things like ohhh I don’t know, robotic beer launching refrigerators. I brought up my friend from college who apparently had built some sort of wii guitar. There was widespread scoff-age at the idea of some sort of nerdy faux-guitar, and knowing my friend was not scoffworthy I could only defend him with stories of having seen him play the solo from freebird behind his head. But now I’ve been vindicated! Turns out he used a wii controller as an effects controller, with different button pushes or guitar movements leading to different effects. The actual guitar was left intact to be played with his rock god-like abilities.

I had this great idea to open up an indie/hipster rock karaoke bar in Williamsburg.  Now I could actually make the karaoke discs myself.

The ReacTable is a brand new instrument that uses a touch surface to make music from waveforms and samples, awesome is an understatement.

Whoa! This downloadable tool translates RGB pixels into chromatic tones, moving from left to right over the image.

Spooky Scary, boys becoming wolves, wolves becoming men! 

Those of you who don’t watch 30 rock should get on it.

Some of you might know that I’ve been working on a project about Boy Scouts for quite some time.  This video for St. Vincent’s song “Jesus Saves” is not only a great video, but covers the “popular ideas” about Boy Scouts (religious/militariness, weird things like merit badges) in a way that I could never do.