Here is the playlist for this week.. I\'ll give it a B on the whole.

• BabyLove - Number 3 - bottom of the barrel style humor but sort of mind blowing to think this airs on TV somewhere.
• Mortal Kombat: Bus Bloodbath - this is in poor taste but it\'s amusing so I accept it.
• Texas Flashlight - this. is. terrifying. I don\'t even want to get into why I find this so disturbing, I hope it\'s obvious.
• Joe Pesci with His Head on Fire - a test of wills. Can you watch the whole thing? I don\'t mean passively.. I mean, really, watch it.
• Min Pin Stair Steppin - that\'s some quick foot work!
• Funeral Home Dance - not that funny until the kids get in trouble.. then it rules.

Have a great weekend!

Today starts the beginning of the end for the 2009 Whiskerino. Beards of all sorts will converge on the greater Nashville area and celebrate the fact that they haven\'t shaved in nearly 4 months. It\'s weird and impossible to explain to others but I\'m excited for it. That being said, no links today.. I\'ve got much preparing to do.

If you\'ve been listened to my mixes for any amount of time you know full well that most of them tend to fall into the more upbeat side of things. There maybe a trickle of slower songs mixed in with the rest but I try not to let things get too sullen. Until now. Sad Songs, Not Waltzes is a mix I\'ve been thinking about putting together for awhile that is comprised entirely of the side of music that I listen to that\'s quieter, more introspective, possibly more self indulgent and maybe even a little sad.

Long story short, I realize a mix of this nature could appear to be a little \"dramatic\" but these songs have all legitimately grabbed my attention at one time or another - and warranted repeated plays because of it. I hope you enjoy.

[ Download Sad Songs, Not Waltzes | View Details ]

• The 30 Most Important Cats of 2009 - If you aren\'t dying laughing at Zombie Cat, Fan Kitten, SOS Cat, Vase Cat, Chilling Cat or Crazy Dance Cat then your heart has solidified beyond all hope.
• Instant Trap - surely this has been around for eons and I\'m just now stumbling on it, right? It\'s the perfect internet site. Admiral Ackbar still has proper Internet appeal to me.. call me crazy but he does.

I recently received an email heads-up to check out the new iPhone app - Album Art Tap. The concept is to test your knowledge of how well you know your album art library. As a total stickler for having album art embedded in all my mp3\'s, this was right up my alley. AND it\'s free, so you haven\'t got much to lose. It\'s mostly pointless but does provide a decent way to waste some time should you need such an opportunity.

Great blog entry from Frank Chimero regarding the craze surrounding information overload. Basically it\'s a little history lesson on how people have felt this way for a very long time:

A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both “confusing and harmful” to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an “always on” digital environment. It’s worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That’s not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.

He goes into a lot more than that so I suggest you read the whole thing but I think it brings up some curious potential discussions regarding the evolution of man and how technology plays a role in that change. Evolution doesn\'t have to mean a positive change.. just a shift in behavior that eventually encodes itself deep in the underlyings of how we all work. I think it\'s happening to some degree.

Please Rob Me has been making the rounds the past few days.. basically an aggregated feed of Foursquare / Twitter updates of people reporting that they\'ve left their home and are now at another location. The intent isn\'t for people to actually have people\'s homes robbed but it does stir up some conversation about privacy concerns and this growing movement to live your life completely out in the open.

Personally I can\'t get into the Foursquare, GoWalla, Loopt style of updating.. seems kinda creepy and, also, requires a mindset shift to actually report in where you are. Who has time for that?

Once in a blue moon you come across a massive Flickr set where every single image contained within is jaw droppingly beautiful. Such is the case with this set of images from Berlin by massju. I\'m dead serious about loving every image.. allow me to link three at random and see if I\'m right: one, two, three. All amazing, right? It\'s almost too much to handle!

Via Kate. Thank you.

Something about this Wired iPad Demonstration felt familiar.. then I remembered that Mag+ demo I had posted awhile back and there seem to be a lot of similarities. Not in a \"X ripped Y off\" kind of way but just a magazine in a rich digital format kind of way. The Wired demo is neat to watch but I hope they maintain that notion that a sense of completion is one the satisfying aspects of reading any printed material - endless content is too overwhelming. I also hope that any and all magazines that go this route don\'t start to rely too heavily on video content to tell their stories.. I like reading and want to continue consuming information in that fashion.

I\'m pretty sure everyone loves the little books in the style of Field Notes / Moleskine but Scout Books are adding a little twist to the setup - you can have it printed with your own artwork. They have a handful of ready made designs you can pick from as well but the real draw (pun intended) is the blank canvas waiting for your mark. It\'d be nice if you could order in quantities fewer than 50 but you know you\'re going to use them.. might as well go for the gold.

• Pitchfork Media on Tumblr - thus far the postings have been slim and not overly verbose. Though it hasn\'t been drama free - they supposedly stole the subdomain but not really.
• Pitchforked - a simple web app that pulls data from Pitchforks Best New Music section and plays a random assortment of tracks as provided by 8tracks.com.

The trailer for The Exploding Girl seems to push all the buttons on the typical \"indie romance\" setup - a friendship that could be more, quirky moments, a ton of quotes regarding emotional performance and an unknown issue that may or may not rear its dramatic head at some point during the film. The thing is, it works.. totally hooked and want to see it. I doubt it will have the quiet moments it seems to have in the trailer but it\'s a nice thought. This is the sort of wacky movie setup we\'ve all been missing as of late - one actor (Edward Norton) playing two parts.. and carrying the film in doing so! Sure, we had Adaptation with Nic Cage but this is a comedy and it looks all sorts of wacky. As much as I enjoy Edward Norton that is something hilariously unbelievable whenever he plays a character with a thick southern / redneck accent.. regardless, I\'ll probably still see this. Watch the trailer for Leaves of Grass.

This is shameless and totally ridiculous but Invite Only deal store Jack Threads is giving away an iPad.. and the only way to enter to win is to get people to sign up for their (worthwhile) service. So, if you want to get some deals on clothes and possibly enter me into a drawing for an iPad that I most assuredly will not win - go here.

The fine folks over at Lakefever Sessions have taken it upon themselves to up the ante on their offerings to the world. Currently they release a new session to the world every three weeks which you can view at anytime online. However, sometimes you want to take it with you and listen along in other situations. Understanding this, they\'ve released a compilation of audio from the sessions and made it available for download. The first iteration of the compendium features one song from every session in 2009, sixteen tracks in total. They also promise to be releasing regular compilations throughout the year - likely four times a year - to keep people coming back for more!

I\'m really honored to be a part of this project and am glad to see them continue to spread their fantastic goods out into the world in as many formats as possible.

Once I drank the Kool-Aid and became an Apple fanboy it also meant that I gained a general distaste for most things Microsoft. Sure they could get the XBox right but, on the whole, their UI/UX was severely lacking and they weren\'t really pushing any boundaries as they pandered to the lowest common denominator with their all encompassing OS. I admit it, I\'ve been skeptical that could bring anything to the table that would be worth paying attention to. Then I saw that Courier video and something started to change.. maybe Microsoft had more goods up their sleeve than I thought possible. And now this!

• Windows 7 Phone - it\'s going to be a hard sell to get an Apple zealot to like anything more than the iPhone interface but you can\'t deny it looks really nice and could be a viable alternative experience. Way moreso than what the Android has been offering. It\'s also a no-brainer that they\'re working the Zune UX into this to finally get some cohesion across their products.
• Augmented-Reality Maps - taking Google Maps to the next level is, surprisingly, Bing Maps. They\'ve gone beyond street view and they\'ve got backpack cameras going inside stores documenting interiors. They\'ve got a three quarters view of structures when you\'re in overhead mode. They\'ve got live video broadcasting real time over previously captured imagery. They\'ve got Photosynth 3D rendering of geo-tagged images from the web as a whole. They\'ve even got constellation mapping. What is happening here?!

Long story short, Microsoft is doing things worth paying attention to and they\'re doing them quite well. Maybe, just maybe, they can reinvigorate themselves in the eyes of the technophiles looking for impressive moves forward.

If you haven\'t heard Dead Zone Boys from Jookabox you\'re seriously depriving yourself. Once you\'re familiar with that, go snag the Dead Zone RMXS.. lots of fun twists and takes on the originals. The works of Fol Chen are quite new to me but I\'m loving what I\'ve been hearing from Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune\'s Made.. and the subsequent remix companion: The Longer U Wait.

The underwater photography work of Wayne Levin, appropriately titled Water People, is a surreal visual trip. Nine times out of ten the crashing waves create a look that looks a whole lot more like violent clouds than it does water.

Admittedly, I\'m also drawn to any photo set entitled Resident Spirits: Whales. Great stuff throughout.

Via Courtney.

The new Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant movie, Cemetery Junction, apparently now has an official trailer - not just a cheeky teaser. The heads up from Gervais is this:

The trailer seems to be doing its job in warning people that Cemetery Junction is a drama. If The Office is 80/20 comedy/drama and The Invention of Lying was 50/50, then Cemetery Junction is probably 20/80.

Plot wise it looks to be like a standard Coming Of Age tale but that certainly wouldn\'t turn me away from seeing what variation the Gervais / Merchant writing style has put on it.

Today I launched the latest edition of the We Own This Town podcast.. Volume 32 in the series. It is surprisingly difficult at times to wrangle up enough Nashville-based music for a ~30 minute podcast but this one came together very quickly and very smoothly. I\'m very pleased with the selections and think you will be too. Please download it or stream it at your earliest convenience.

• Download MP3
• Download Enhanced M4A (Chapter stops, artwork, etc).

Let me know what you think!

Great photography is undeniable but great photography with a poignant story behind it is even more potent. Such is the case here:

One of the most compelling elements of the continued uprising in Iran has been when each night under the cover of darkness Iranians chant themselves hoarse from the rooftops, balconies, and windows of their homes. This is done to express resolve, hope, frustration, and probably more than anything else, to provide a way that people can be together in spirit and in their cause. As long as the sound of voices echoes through the night, Iran is not yet free. It is the soundtrack of the revolution.

Via Sea of Green.