Have you Seen this?

I was watching a program on Discovery channel and saw an add for one of their series called: "The Colony".

From the site:

The Colony is a controlled experiment to see exactly what it would take to survive and rebuild under these circumstances. For 10 weeks, a group of 10 volunteers, whose backgrounds and expertise represent a cross-section of modern society, are isolated in an urban environment outside Los Angeles and tasked with creating a livable society.

With no electricity from the grid, no running water and no communication with the outside world, all the volunteers have to work with are their skills and whatever tools and supplies they can scavenge from their surroundings.

Experts from the fields of homeland security, engineering and psychology have helped design the world of The Colony to reflect elements from both real-life disasters and models of what the future could look like after a global viral outbreak.

Over the course of the 10-week experiment, the Colonists must work together to build the necessities of survival, such as a water-filtration system, a battery bank that powered their electricity, a solar cooker, a shower system and a greenhouse – and even some niceties (a coffee maker!).

Watch some of the episodes here.

OMG

Thundercats - the movie?

Yeah, it's a fake trailer - but wow.

Look here:

Tseo says Hi

Two posts in one day...

Amazing.

Once I got home from the lake, I decided to fire up the outdoor kitchen again and cook something for lunch. When I was finished and putting things away, I saw something gray walk down from the hillside and into the back yard. Originally I thought that it was one of the stray cats in the neighborhood coming down to eat at the bowl of food I put out for strays.

Well, I was half right.

BSG the musical

After watching about ten hours of BSG this past Friday to catch up with the series, I listened to one of the characters singing a lament.

The character was one of the side-line characters who had been there since the series started. Lt. Gaeta was sort of the guy that everyone over-looked until he wasn't there; a backbone of the CIC who would leave a big gap in their operations if he was gone.

Through the course of the series, Gaeta ends up getting shot in the leg and they have to amputate it below the knee. While recouperating in sick bay, he is half-drugged on pain killers but can occasionally feel the twitches of his missing limb. The doctor told him to sing whenever he felt it to help get his mind off the sensation. It's an interesting idea considering that they can't just keep pumping him full of morph - they're not making it anymore.

It reminded me of the scene in Return of the King where one of the Hobbits sung some depressing dirge while a force of men charged in on a suicide run to retake the ruins of Osgiliath.

Well, I had wondered if they had borrowed the song from another source (like they did with the song that gathered four of the last five cylons together) or if it was original. So I started digging and finally found the words to the song and that it was originally composed.

To give you some idea of how the song was used in the show I've put a link to the Youtube video here.

An Original

With the end of BSG coming soon, I returned to the beginning. Thanks to youtube, I was able to find the introduction to the original series.

"Life here...began out there"

Powerful. Simple. Thought-provoking.

See ya.

Click here

Time for the Change

In every society that I have studied, there are moments when the there is a change, an evolution of the society to become something different. In early societies, this may have been the change that occurs in the great gatherings of the summer: leaders are replaced, the shaman are initiated and the boys and girls are recognized as young men and women. This change was an accepted element of their society, something that would occur every summer or so as the need arose.

As society has become more and more complex, the annual or semi-annual change was stretched out more and more until it became a rare event that occurred only once a decade.

In our world, change is embraced and feared in the same breath. We are eager to buy up the latest change in communication's technology with Iphones and laptops and the like. Technological change is almost too common. Every Thanksmas (the combined holiday of Thanksgiving and Christmas), people are all too eager to seek out the latest tech toys not because we may need them but because the consumption of new technology is not only 'GOOD' but also required.

Change, within society however, happens slowly.

Thankfully it does still happen.

Without yammering about the merits of the new President-Elect, I will let him speak for himself.

The "Yes We Can" speech has gone viral throughout the net. Though many people are looking to him for the salvation of the country, he doesn't seem like he is presenting himself as the "leader" of the country but more like motivator.

Not "Yes -I- Can" but "We".

Pulling ourselves out of the past eight- years will be difficult, but I think that it is time for a change. Oddly enough, this is the year of balance, of the Crane. It is time to learn from our history and find a place to stand that works for us.

It is time for a Change.

-T

Boomdiada

Because I can't get this blasted song out of my head.

I had to share.

Click here.

-T

Mother Nature Needs Ritalin...

Ok, maybe not but she definitely needs to make up her mind.

Today the temperature had climbed into the 60's and I had to get out into it for a while. So I grabbed my camera and went out to the lake.

The lake was pregnant with all of the run off from the past week's snow and rain and I tried to get some video clips of it from a different point of view.

The vid above is from the main stream and small pool and the other is of a small creek that leads off into the hills.

Project

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was working on a project. Well, I've just posted the project to my 101 Untold Tales site.

The project is a remix of some video footage to create a 'story board' of an idea I had.

Have a look and let me know what you think.
-Tom

Baraka

I was looking up a song from Dead Can Dance "Host of Seraphim" on YouTube and found a clip from the movie / documentary called "Baraka".



Just...

Wow.

-Tom

1000 Journals Project

River Days 2007

It's that time again.

RIVER DAYS

Here in Portsmouth, we celebrate Labor Day by holding a celebration known as River Days. The downtown area is turned into a small fair with a band-stand and fireworks. This year they actually pulled in some of the standard fair fodder with some huge snake and a giant rat.

I went down to it on Saturday for a quick walk through (it was just too bright) and grabbed some pictures with my new camera; HP M537. Happy Birthday to me.

The conclusion of the River Days weekend is the big firework show. Well, it's not exactly a HUGE fireworks show because that's normally for the 4th of July, but it wasn't bad. So a few thousand people cluster on the river bank and crash out while they suck down lemon shake-ups, corn dogs, funnel cakes and all the unhealthy fair fodder you can think of. The police did their rounds and picked up a few rowdy, drunken idiots but I didn't see anything odd except for the plethora of blinky-light toys (as opposed to glowing toys) on every kid as far as I could see.

I got to play with the twilight setting on the camera and grabbed some shots of the clusters of people on the banks.

The breeze was cool and the sky was clear. It was an awesome night. I'm going to have to head back down to the river tomorrow night or something and see if I can get shots of the new bridge against the water with the new cam; it should be able to handle night-shots a lot better.

Here's the video of the fireworks.

I tried to get some footage of the finale' but I couldn't get my camera out of my thigh pocket fast enough; not with a half-numb ass.

-T

Feliz Cumpleanos a mi

How to spend my birthday?

Well, there was only one choice: Campus.

Today is the move-in day for the freshman at Shawnee State. Parents and students were swarming over the dorms and the University center to get checked in for housing and to get their student ID's.

I didn't want to just sit at home and read because I'd end up getting too comfortable and be tempted for a nap or something. After checking in with my buddy, Jim, (who had gotten me some coffee for my birthday) I wandered over to my new perch on the campus. There's a great tree there that provides plenty of shade and with the nearby wall of the 'porch', it's a perfect place to read through my lectures and update them where I need to.

Even though I have my office, it's not where I wanted to be today. Even though it's dark, cool and quiet, I wanted to get outside for a while. The only means that I could do that was to find some shade.

As you can see from the pictures, I was ready to just hang out for quite a while.

A few friends have called to wish me happy birthday; which is very cool. My father actually called while I was chilling in Jim's office and asked if I felt older. Oddly enough, he even sounded sober.

I do feel somewhat older. I'm now on my way towards 40. If 30 was the new 20, then 30-34 was still in the 'younger' years of my life. Now that I'm 35 - I feel older. A friend of mine even said that I am now half of 70. Such an odd concept; half of 70 year old. My grandfathers have lived to their mid-seventies or mid-eighties. My mother's father is still living and still working at 85. So I have lived long enough to have had started a family, had a kid, all of those normal things.

Thankfully, I'm not normal.

It's still light outside so I'm not sure what I'm going to get into for the rest of the day but I wanted to grab a video of the view I had on campus. Not a bad place to spend a birthday.