adrian is rad

Now that Lance Armstrong is riding for Team Discovery Channel, he’s doing a series of commercials for the various tv channels they own, including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and the Travel (or as I call it Poker) Channel.

These commercials are called Welcome to the Family, Lance and are viewable online here, I saw the Discovery Channel one which has the guys from American Chopper and Lance and I laughed a lot. I’d recommend it. The Animal Planet one with the crazy crocodile guy and the Travel Channel one with the guys from the World Series of Poker are both pretty funny as well.

You sort of have to know the people in each spot for it to be funny.

this week’s playlist. I’m doing an hour of indie, an hour of old-timey and an hour of motown. special edition of the show!

and if you read this before 9am PST, you can listen.

Results of the voting for covers contest #1 entries:
Best cover:
Adrian 1
Andy 5
Dave 1

Most Original Cover:
Adrian 1
Andy 1
Dave 5

So the big winners were Andy and David.

This week’s song is Wait by Secret Stars (original). Here are the entries:

• Adrian
• Andy
• Dave

Vote here for the Best and Most Original cover version.

Covers Contest #3: Sassafras Roots by Green Day (original) Entries will be accepted until next Tuesday.

I have a project for which I need a Canon Powershot A40 or A70. If anyone has one to sell, let me know and we can make a deal. It can even be broken in certain ways–it needs to power up and take photos at least, but the zoom doesn’t need to work and battery doors and the like can be broken.

I swam at the Palo Alto Riconada Pool last night because the Stanford pool didn’t have evening hours.

It was my first timed mile in a long time. 36 minutes. Take that Roger Bannister! That puts me on pace for a 54 minute Alcatraz swim

It’s weird swimming in a 25 yard pool again. It feels too short and I could really get into my stroke before I had to turn.

Myron Cope has retired. What will a Sunday game be without him?

Maybe sometime I’ll write a post about Listen/ Silence.

But for now, I’ll just tell you to listen to my show till 9am PST.

And/ or check out my playlist.

And you should listen to and vote on the entries of the previous post. I know that more than 6 people read that post!

Last week, I announced the Covers Contest.

A brief recap of the idea of the contest:

• Andy, Dave or I are the lead for the week. The lead picks the song to be covered. He posts the original. The song will be announced each Tuesday and linked here.
• We each do cover versions of this song by the following Monday and post them online as mp3s.
• You, the readership, listens and votes.
• Lead rotates to the next person and he picks a new song.

The original this week was Never Ending Math Equation by Modest Mouse.

Listen:

• Andy
• Adrian*
• David

*[update: new mix]

Personally, I found it pretty hard to conceive of and record a cover in a week–especially because it took until Saturday to get my laptop to a point where it’d run Protools again. A week definitely doesn’t give you time to make things perfect.

Vote for the best and most original cover. Voting will be open until next tuesday.

You can also comment here about the songs, if you’d like.

Covers Contest #2:
Andy’s choice. Original: Wait by the Secret Stars. Entries for this will be accepted until the end of the day next Monday.

Yesterday was the second time I swam in Aquatic Park in San Francisco. Aquatic Park is an area of the Bay that is protected by two piers, so you get all the coldness without any of the ship traffic or crazy currents.

I’m getting ready for a swim from Alcatraz in just under a month. The best preparation for swimming in that cold water is to swim in similarly cold water. Aquatic Park was probably about 58 or 60 degrees.

I knew what to expect this time and I still went into panic breathing when I went underwater. Once I forced myself to put my head in the water again and start swimming, I relaxed.

I did probably a mile and it didn’t feel too bad. I mean, it was cold, that’s for certain, but it wasn’t painfully cold after about the first five minutes. My injured elbow did nag a bit and I’m a bit worried about it, but I think it’ll be okay.

I was wearing a Barracude Hot Head neoprene hood and I had in silicone ear plug, which did help with the coldness. I figure I should be okay to swim without a wetsuit.

At this point, I’m going to start swimming a mile twice a week, one in Aquatic Park and one in the pool down here and probably two shorter work outs a week of kicking and whatnot to still get in the water but to not overwork my elbow. My previous regiment was 3 half-mile swims a week.

the local public access TV channel is on right now with kareoke! it’s awesome. this guy in a stupid hat is singing YMCA out of tune. it is really stupid.

he’s not even doing the hand signals.

It appears that last week you morning blog checkers did check my blog and listen to my show, so let’s do it again.

Listen to KZSU 6-9am PST.

Playlist. (refresh during the show to update the playlist)

Tonight at 10pm is the premier of the show 30 Days on FX. It’s by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who did Supersize Me. In Supersize Me, he took 30 days to live the all-American fast food diet. Each episode of this show, he’ll follow himself or someone else living another experience for 30 days. For example, oie episode is about an evangelical Christian living in America’s largest Muslim community in Michigan for 30 days.

This is like a short documentary more than a standard reality TV show with its share of schadenfreude.

Dave Franusich, Andy Chadwick and myself, the members of the seminal Upper St. Clair indie folk band Where’s Luke? have started a new competition. It’s called the covers competition. It is a weekly competition and this week is the first week.

The idea of the project is this:

• Andy, Dave or I are the lead for the week. The lead picks the song to be covered. He posts the original. The song will be announced each Tuesday and linked here.
• We* each do cover versions of this song by the following Monday and post them online as mp3s.
• You, the readership, listens and votes (either by email or on another webpage with little buttons). Voting categories will probably be Best and Most Original.
• Lead rotates to the next person and he picks a new song.

*I’m thinking about opening up submissions to any one that wants to do a version…The lead would still be one of us three, though.

This week’s song has been picked.
Covers Contest #1
Song: “Neverending Math Equation”
Original Artist: Modest Mouse.

the original

Dave already has his version done (that’s actually what sort of sparked the idea). Usually the versions will be posted simultaneously.

If can afford to do otherwise (i.e. you know where you next few meals are coming from), you should not shop at Walmart.

I’ve had Hotel Rwanda from Netflix for a while but finally watched it this morning.

It’s good—it’s a tremendously affecting movie.

Don Cheadle’s acting is good, but I think the standout part of the movie is just the story.

That’s all. See it.

Dylan and I have started a crap buying contest.

The terms are:

• the one with the most and the highest quality crap wins
• there’s a $50 limit to all spending (items, tax, and shipping included)
• spending must be done by June 22. Items will be judged July 6.

What’s an example of good crap (and good crap density)? My autographed picture of Bob Villa inscribed “To Joe. Best Wishes, Bob Villa” for $3.

I felt bad because I’m spending $50 on nothing in particular when I could be doing something better with it, so I just donated $50 to Catholic Charities of San Jose as an offset of sorts.

I’ll let everyone know who won and what the haul was when we’re done.

I am on the radio till 9am (pacific time, of course). Listen!

Playlist.

[note: this is an Alex Bischoff tribute post]

I tried the new Diet Coke Sweetened with Splenda and some Better N’ Peanut Butter today.

Diet Coke with Splenda (not to be confused with Diet Coke, which will still be made with the same formula) came out about a month ago, apparently, but I first heard about it today. We all know that Splenda is made from sugar so it tastes like sugar. I was really curious to see how this stacked up to regular Coke (I knew it wouldn’t compare to Mexican coke made with sugar).

I tried some. It was good. It’s not Coke but it may be good enough that the trade-offs (betterness-for-you vs. taste) might be worth it. It has a bit of an off aftertaste, but it’s tons better than Diet Coke. It has the same problem as Diet Coke, though, where it tastes like fizz more than it tastes like Coke. It’s taste is too light, I guess.

I also got a jar of Better N’ Peanut Butter at Trader Joe’s. 85% less fat! Well I thought, if this is good, that could be really good because peanut butter is good but has lots of fat/ calories (even though most of its fat is the good kind rather than saturated fat). This stuff has 2.5g of fat per serving.

It’s texture was alright (smooth—I like my Peanut Butter crunchy) and it’s flavor was alright, but the overall effect wasn’t that great. I like apples and peanut butter together a lot and I tried that after I tried a little bit alone and it didn’t taste that good. The BNPB didn’t add to the overall taste of the apple. It might be better in like a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich or a Velvet Elvis or something. Maybe I’ll try that before I throw it out.

I went to something like 60 garage sales this morning. It was the biennial (as in every two years) Palo Alto City Wide Garage Sale. Just check out the map with locations of sales. Look at all those dots!

The haul:

• Machinery’s Handbook—The absolute key book in mechanics and mechanical engineering
• A Long Walk to Freedom— Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. He’s from my homeland, you know.
• A couple more mech e/ design books
• an African sheet metal mask thing
• thie awesome foam dome:
  
  Have you ever seen a better foam dome? (Besides my Fel Pro Performance Gaskets foam dome, of course.)

I had a dream Thursday night about fluffernutters. Marshmallow Fluff isn’t really available around here. I’ve seen the Kraft marshmallow creme but not the real stuff.