I will not stop telling you about And The Relatives album Green Machinery until it has proliferated as far and wide as the Internet can take it. In order to do that, the videos will keep coming. This week I am proud to present "Regal Son" - shot by Andy Snyder. Do yourself a favor, watch it, enjoy it and spread the word.

Oh, and don't forget to snag the album while you're at it.

It is no secret that I am a sucker for taxidermy - so stumbling upon the latest works of Rod McRae was a real treat. The Operation Foxtrot series is my favorite among the bunch but there are plenty of other pieces to take in.

Loving the full site redesign over at The Heads of State. The layout is clean, easy to navigate but not without personality. I do wish there were permanent links to each of the portfolio pieces but I'll survive without. All of the work is great but I'm particularly smitten with the books they've designed... the 'Rosenfeld Web Form Design' is a beauty.

Also drop into the new store - plenty of xmas ready purchasable goods.

Good Neighbor has a bunch of comedy videos up on YouTube but they seemed to have find their perfect niche with this one - ultra awkward interviewer Kyle at the Showbiz Expo. I wish I didn't know it was part of a comedy collective and could just watch it over and over believing it was real - because his line stumbling and general behavior is believable. You can watch him do the same thing at Lakers game but the Showbiz Expo is perfection.

8-Bit Sexophone Remix with animation?? I'll take it. It may not be as perfect as the original but it's still worth a viewing.

Another week, another playlist. As usual, there are some true gems and some potential misses that I still find amusing for whatever reason. Enjoy and don't miss the bonus videos.

• Salsa Dog - this clips rivals Sexophone for Most Loopable Clip I've encountered in a long time.
• Snowbot - an old Staples commercial that Paul reminded me of. The "weeping weeping" part is perfect.
• Milky the Marvelous Milking Cow - just be happy you don't get this for Christmas
• The Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody - most Christmas music is crap. This song is an exception to that rule. You can also watch Brendan Benson cover it.
• Gang of Four - Kinect Sports - does anyone else find it bizarre that a Gang of Four song with lyrics like this is being used to sell an XBox add-on? I realize it's more acceptable these days to license your music to just about anything but it seems like a really odd combo.
• Double Dream Hands - the narration for the moves involved with this dance are sublime. The crank to shoulder is my favorite; though, obviously, Double Dream Hands is the real draw.
• The Thing That Happened - I can't explain why this exists or what the point really is but I was captivated the entire time. via Tromant.
• All of Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Played At Once - you will not be able to listen to more than 30 seconds of this. In fact, I'd venture to say you won't make it past the 10 second mark.

BONUS

• Evolution - incredible animation showcasing evolution (and selling Pilot erasable writing utensils). Seriously fantastic - via Jed.
• The External World - trailer for upcoming David O'Reilly film. If you don't have a macabre sense of humor, this will not be the least bit amusing to you. Fortunately, I do and it is. via Chad.
• Miracles Club - five minute dance party worth a scrub through just to see if you can figure out why there is a goat there. via Paul.

Have a great weekend.. let's do this again next week.

The third, and final, mix in my Year End Review series is comprised of those acts that are "obvious" choices - the music that got plenty of coverage and, assuming you're paying attention at all, you're well aware of. I've also included songs from each of my own releases because, obviously, I love the music included on those - otherwise I wouldn't have put it out.

There are a few artists that didn't make the cut - Broken Social Scene, Menomena and The Books namely - because the albums just didn't strike me as potent as I had hoped for. I have my reasons for this but, basically, I wasn't as jazzed on them as I'd hope to be. Expectations are a pain sometimes.

Anyway, please go download Volume 1 and Volume 2 while you're grabbing Volume 3.. gotta keep the set complete.

Matthew Genitempo is probably best known for his photography work - or possibly his involvement with Public School or Lamebook - but he's also an incredibly talented designer. He recently launched Ordinary Co. to showcase some of his finest undertakings from the past few years. Picking favorites is not easy since every piece shown has something great going for it but I think I'm particularly drawn to the Grizzly Bear poster, the identity work and that ridiculous Drunk as Sh*t mascot collab with Cody Haltom.

Go now. Enjoy.

Been browsing the various works of Carolin Walch - both at her official site and through her flickr photostream. It is, on the whole, a living diary of various occurences from her life and the results are surprisingly engaging. There's a lot to unearth and enjoy throughout.

The sheer amount of courses at Khan Academy is staggering, to say the least. Add to that the fact that Sal Khan is the only teacher for these 1,800 lessons and you've got quite an impressive undertaking. Everything from Simple Equations, Complex Math, Credit Crisis, History,Physics, etc. etc. The list is honestly daunting but the video lessons are actually legitimately consumable - 12 minutes maximum length, a personable professor and concepts broken down into understandable terms. Even Bill Gates agrees that it's a wildly well done idea.

• Google Zeitgeist 2010 - the top ranked queries to Google from the past year. ChatRoulette and iPad take the top spots overall. I suggest clicking on the different trends to see how they compare.. always interesting to see where the spikes lay.
• Dreamhost mod_pagespeed - apparently if you have a VPS with Dreamhost you can now enable the Google mod_pagespeed. I'ma try it out soon.

Much like the first volume, this mix is a compilation of songs procured and heavily enjoyed from the past year that I feel may not have gotten the notoriety they fully deserve. Maybe I'm wrong on that - maybe everyone already knows all of these songs and I'm just ignorant to their widespread affection. There are also a number of songs released in prior decades that I came to know and enjoy this year that just didn't seem right to exclude. These mixes serve as a personal document of reference for my listening habits over the past year; so they're in there to properly summarize what I've been enjoying.

So, without further ado, here's Year End Review 2010: Volume 2. Hopefully you enjoy.

As part of their Hollywood Issue, the New York Times Magazine put together this Interactive piece - Fourteen Actors Acting. Each piece is perfectly scored by Owen Pallette and adds an extra air of drama to each undertaking. The James Franco and Matt Damon pieces are the most amusing to me but still as well executed as the likes of Javier Bardem, Chloe Moretz or the sublime perfection of Michael Douglas.

At this point it is safe to assume that you know the work of Frank Chimero.. at the very least you know his State Series but I'd be willing to bet you've seen other pieces as well. Anyway, long story short, the man has officially opened a shop; which was news to me. Perfect holiday timing if you're looking to get some fantastic prints (or a few t-shirts).

Some time ago my friend Ben sent me a link to the Sweet Thunder Found Tape Archives and it's just now that I'm getting around to checking it out. Basically it is exactly what you'd think - bizarre found tapes digitized for all to enjoy. Something as simple as Answering Machine messages become infinitely more interesting when you know it's real. I wish the site had some more inline mp3 playing rather than downloading everything but it's worth the "effort." I've been digging through the archives and have enjoyed the sounds of a dying carousel and the History of the Future. Dive in, I think you'll be pleased with the results... or, at the very least, baffled knowing that someone decided to put these things to tape at all.

The Hey, It's Christmas is a fifteen track compilation of artists doing tasteful renditions of holiday favorites. It's always tough to consciously listen to Christmas music because you're inundated with it everywhere you go in public - but there's a chance this one will seep in to your rotation. At the very least, go check out the artwork by Danny Jones and listen to the track from Grain & Gram favorite Greg Perkins.

There are no shortage of Best Of lists that float around every year. I mean, this FluxBlog 2010 Survey is eight discs of music released this year deemed worthy of procurement. That might seem excessive at first but, honestly, if you're on the computer 8-10 hours a day, most days of the year - you're going to hear a lot of music.. way more than 80 minutes worth of goodness.

So, when I started putting together a list of my favorite songs / albums from the year it struck me that I should just put out multiple mixes that covered pretty much everything. If it seems excessive, that's fine - I'm really just putting these together for my own reference and enjoyment so why not go all out. This year I'm going to put out three mixes reviewing the year - the first two comprised of songs that didn't get that much coverage or press and the third comprised of "obvious" selections - the heavy hitters and no-brainer picks.

Long story short - here's Year End Review 2010: Volume 1. If you like it, great! If you have enough of your own music to sort through, I totally understand.

When you're a huge empire like Google you can roll out new product announcements at an unwieldy pace. Hot on the heels of the eBooks launch they have gone ahead and started rolling out teasers for the Google Chrome OS. They've got an introductory video that spells out the thinking behind the project - you already spend 90% of your time in the browser, so why not make everything browser based? I love the idea that you'd never have to worry about software upgrades or lost files since it's all taken care of in the Cloud.

However,I can't help but think we're just not quite ready for this yet. If I delete a file on Google Docs - it's gone.. no way of going into the Trash and retrieving it. If I want to buy an mp3 album from Amazon where would I store it with a Chrome OS powered machine? There's no local storage, I can't zap it over to some Cloud account and I don't want to be forced to buy music (or any data) via some forthcoming Google Store.

It's all very forward thinking, I'm curious to see where it goes but I'm just a tiny bit skeptical. I guess I'll check out the new App Web Store to see what sort of experiences are coming down the pipe...

I feel like The Noun Project will prove to be an extremely handy site to reference for future design projects requiring any site of icons. The goal of the site is:

The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way.

Basically, it's a huge repository of simple icons created in a very clean and professional manner that are distributed for free; for life. An admirable undertaking and content that is quite well done. Just keep scrolling for more goodness.

via JXN BLK and Simple Honest Work.

Jeremy gave me the heads up on painted works of Paco Pomet. Aside from being highly technically proficient there's usually a strange twist to most of his works - my favorites being those that are the most subtle. "The Sheriff's Dream", "Transporting Knowledge", "The Break" and "Atlas" being my contenders for top spot.