Month: January 2008

Composer Hector Berlioz and AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson.

My calendar’s full, but if you’re thinking about making those first baby-steps into — ahem — culture, may I recommend Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, which the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will perform tonight and tomorrow at Roy Thomson Hall, with super-maestro Charles Dutoit conducting. I think it’s pretty accessible: after all, it’s all about trying to impress a chick with your music, lust, obsession, orgies, drugs, devil-worship and a big-ass bell — dude, it’s AC/DC, if they’d formed a band 150 years earlier!*

(* It could also be a loose summary of my social life — or a very accurate summary of Robert Downey, Jr.’s — from ages 27 to 37.)

Links

• The Wikipedia entry for Symphonie Fantastique
• A video of the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo) performing the 5th Movement of Symphonie Fantastique, a.k.a. “Things get freaky“
• The Hector Berlioz Website

Wow, has a year already passed?

There’s more here and here.

Click the photo to see it on its original Flickr page.

[Via Boing Boing] Here’s a page from the 1906 schoolbook New Complete Geography showing a number of various “races” and what they look like.

Note the inclusion of “Philippino” — probably included because the Philippines was an American protectorate at the time (one of the by-products of which was my great-grandfather, one James O’Hara, born near Dayton, Ohio). I thought I’d run the image of my kababayan (countryman) from the book side-by-side with my own smiling mug, just for kicks:

Should I swap my goatee for that splendiferous handlebar moustache from the illustration?

For your nerdy enjoyment: a set of stills taken from Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, in glorious 1080p. Click the photo below to see it in its full high-def glory:

Click the photo to see it at full size (it’s huge — 1.7MB!)
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I’m turning a couple of these into my desktop background images.

The use of computers as assistive devices for romantic encounters isn’t new: from the “computer dating gone terribly wrong” plotline used by some ’60s and ’70s sitcoms to SolveDating.com (has its developer, who had not yet been kissed at the age of 33 back in 2004, “gotten anywhere” yet?) the likes of LavaLife and eHarmony, we’ve had a handful of dating generations’ worth of software approaches. However, there wasn’t much in the way of romance-assistive computer hardware save for possibly impressing potential soulmates with your Guitar Hero or Rock Band skills. (And no, I don’t count sex-toy peripherals or “teledildonics” — I’m talking romance, not rumpy-pumpy.)

That’s changed, thanks to the USB Aroma Radio + Speaker, a US$30 device that boasts the following features:

• Radio (for mood music)
• Speaker (if you’d rather play the “shag tunes” playlist on your computer)
• Mood lighting (in 7 colours!)
• A scented oil warmer

Of course, how you lure that special someone into your place/cubicle/airport bathroom stall so you can actually use the USB Aroma Radio + Speaker to set the mood is up to you.

Photo-montage courtesy of Gizmodo.

[Found via Gizmodo; this article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]