Digidave's Quickies

This is a group of old friends. The bass player went to highschool with me. The director of the video lived with me for two years. The leader singer dated a good friend of mine for a LONG time and the guitar player…. well… he is that CRAZY guy you know that can out-party everyone.

Also making cameo’s in this film is one of my best friends little sister (the one whose face gets pushed down - a hilarious moment). Also at the end the scene where the audience is going nuts watching the band play - a good friend from highschool who I also lived with in New York.

The whole band lives in New York but they formed in SF.

ROCK ON WORKOUT!

Via Geek Tryrant

Here's a very cool collection of art that places the Muppet characters into classic fairytales such as Robbin Hood, King Arthur, Peter Pan and Snow White. These images were created by illustrator David Petersen. Check out the rest of the collection below and tell us what you think!

Keys are an interesting instrument. In most respects they have not changed over the centuries. The majority of us have metal keys, smaller than their medieval predecessors, which we carry around with us. Each key unlocks a door.

The biggest advancement for the average key-user might be the electronic key. But really all we are doing is exchanging our metal ridge shaped friends for smaller plastic keys sometimes in the shape of a key or often a card to get access in and out of restricted areas.

What's frustrating is that we ALL need keys in our daily life. We leave our house, that's one key. We start our car, a second key. We go to the office, a third key. Ride a bike, that's a key. Key to open the apartment building (separate from your front door) boom, another key.

Somehow while we've managed to harness the power of the atom we haven't evolved the way we grant and restrict access to physical locations.

What's the future of security? Is there a way to evolve us beyond the stone age? Is there a way to make one key that will rule them all?

In a science fiction future I can envision a "key" which is a plastic security card but it doesn't associate itself with a specific door and then produced in mass and handed out to each new individual who needs access (just adding to an individual's collection of objects that grant him/her access). Instead this key card associates itself with the owner. This is YOUR card. It has a special code. You have a number to kill its access at any time. But this key is synced up with all the doors you need access to. When you transition from apartment to car you use the same object (a security card) to grant you access. When you start a new job and need access to the building, the manager of the office space will sync your card with this new door. Instead of getting a new key, you just sync your key.

You can program settings so that every time you leave your car it automatically locks until somebody with a key card that has access comes within vicinity.

When it's time to move in with your significant other, you don't need to make a copy of your key. They already have a security key marked just for them, instead you just need to give that key access. After your rough break up, just un-sync that key-card. Every door has an owner and every owner can grant/restrict access based on a person.

One key to rule them all.

For those late to the game, I've decided to upload many of the songs I wrote/recorded in high school and college to the web.

We're starting with my jam band days and eventually we'll work our way up to when I started recording cover songs.

Previously Released

1."When You're Sleeping" - by Aleatory.

2. "Forgotten" - by Aleatory

Today we publish

3. Boom - by Aleatory.

02 Boom by David's Songs

This is an instrumental song. You have to remember - we were a jam band. And what's a jam band without one instrumental, a song they can stretch from 5 minutes to 25 depending on the mood. This was our warm up song. No deep analysis of this one, no lyrics to share. Just a good song (we thought at least).

September 11th, 2001. I was 19 years old. I'm a bit on the older side of the "9-11 Generation" but also on the younger side of the Gen Xers who were full-on adults at the time of the attack. (See past posts on Generational Theory).

I was a sophomore at U.C. Berkeley. I remember that morning the phone rang. It was early for the phone to ring. I didn't pick it up. My roommate did. I remember hearing the TV turn on. He then came and told me to get up. As I did, the phone rang again, it was my parents this time.

I can distinctly remember seeing the images on T.V. For a split second I thought it was an elaborate joke of some kind. I wanted to laugh and go back to sleep. Looking at my roomates face, I realized it wasn't a joke. This was happening..... right now.

We weren't sure if we were supposed to go to classes or not. Eventually we decided to walk to campus. I'll never forget the eerie feeling. It was quite. Gutter punks, bums, college students and professors were huddled around radios. Sproul Plaza, birthplace of the free speech movement, began stirring. Groups of people formed circles and began discussing, some calmly, some getting emotional and yelling.

I had no idea who Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda was. The only thing I knew of terrorism was that it happened in Israel.

We quickly learned because the world changed that day. We felt it. We knew it had changed but we weren't sure how/why.

I was 19. Today I am 29. It has been 10 years. It's of course impossible to know how this impacted the last 10 years of my life. What might have been different if it had never occurred. I certainly don't feel as though I grew up in my father's "America" and my grandfather's America is just a fairy tale.

But this weekend, while I was in D.C. for a journalism event, it was announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. A part of me wanted to run to the White House with the rest of the crowd that formed. I decided against it. In retrospect I'm happy with this decision. A part of me didn't like the partying that took place that night. I preferred somber reflection.

Again, it's impossible to put the last 10 years into a clean narrative. In fact, I often say that politics since Reagan is so crazy, twisted and incestuous  that Shakespeare himself couldn't write this shit. Let's re-cap.

1. Reagan, a new start to the republican party. His VP Bush Sr.
2. Bush Sr. becomes president. Sidekick of a VP.
3. Clinton - the new Democratic party stronghold. Eight solid years. Back story - the start of Bin Laden. Side drama of Hillary and the blow job.
4. Clinton's VP tries to become president. Loses to the son of Bush Sr. Florida recount happens in the state where Bush Jr's brother happens to be Governor.
5. September 11th. Afghanistan, Iraq, missing WMD's, Katrina, economic collapse, draconian laws, etc, etc (this is the height of the drama).
6. Meanwhile Hillary, wife of Democratic stronghold becomes Senator and looks to be a presidential hopeful in 2008 in the midst of the economic collapse.
7. Outta nowhere comes a black man who seems to have the most integrity I've seen in a politician in... well... my whole life (born under Reagen).
8. Birther issues, Healthcare, polarization, Tea Party, etc etc etc.
9. Osama Bin Laden killed.

The intertwined relationships, the back and forth, the drama. It just feels like fiction.

But it isn't. These are the political acts upon which I've lived my adult life.

I don't think the epic tale is over. But this does feel like it could be the last chapter in a drama of classic proportions.

At the heart of the fundamentalist terrorism acts was an idea, not a person. Ideas are hard to kill. Perhaps they never die. All they need is a person who believes in that idea.

But ideas are spread by charismatic leaders.

The motivation behind Al Qaeda was to remove western influences in the middle east by force.

With the recent uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere - the people of the Middle East are doing it for themselves - without directing their violence towards innocence. Instead, they are incorporating Western notions of self-determination. Al Qaeda would hate this.

I can't believe I'm 29. I can't believe it has been 10 years since that day in our apartment at Berkeley. I still feel like the same person. I'd be lying if I said that terrorism was a burden that weighed on me every minute of every day. But I don't think that's how it's meant to work.

I wonder what it felt like when the Cold War ended? Is that what just happened? Probably not - it doesn't feel as complete. Nobody on the other side "surrendered." The idea is still out there. But it does feel like "America" might just make a come back. The idea that a country with mixed religions, race, gender orientations, etc can live together, can work together and prosper together is coming back. That in fact, this is not a weakness - but our strength.

Today I turned 29.

Hooray for me!

I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the fact that I haven't had a birthday in California in five years. As with many of the posts on this blog, it serves more of a diary/journal function than anything else.

Today's birthday I'm in Columbia Missouri where I've been based the last nine months. I return for California in a few weeks.

Last year I celebrated my birthday in Austin Texas at the International Symposium for journalism. The last slide in my presentation noted that it was my brithday, a great way to gauruntee you'll get an applause at the end of your talk.

The year before that I was in Italy. I went to Europe to speak at an event in Berlin and stayed a little longer with my girlfriend. She stayed even longer in Italy for an exchange program where she worked on a farm. My last night in Italy was my birthday.

The year before that I was in Sayulita Mexico. A bunch of friends and I rented a house. It was a vacation in the true sense of the word (you forget what day of the week it is) and was my last big vacation. I had found out a little before that I was going to be working on Spot.Us so I treated this as a way to get some R&R before the work began on Spot.Us.

The two years prior to that - I celebrated my birthday in New York where I was living at the time.

The last birthday I celebrated in California was in 2005. I turned 23 years old. If memory serves my buddy Tim Adams threw my a surprise party at Little Star Pizza. (Tim was also with my in Sayulita).