Well, well, well -- quite the summer has passed.

I traveled through 12 states with my dog Scout, visited some old friends, made some new friends, and am now watching the movie known as “what in the name of sam hell is going on with the financial markets and why are these rich and grasping greedheads ruining our party?”

People were living high off the hog, borrowing money they shouldn’t, but this current nonsense is mind boggling on many levels. I hope those people who bought their kids matching luxury cars because that’s what kids need these days to fit in don’t get burned too bad.

Anyways -- Chance and I are both keeping busy and I have a few posts to write over the next month or so.

Here is some music.

2002 Remake

Original from 1972:

I was visiting a blog site of someone I admire earlier today and was reminded of this video again. I watched this video when it first came out, transfixed by someone who is dieing of pancreatic cancer give one of the most powerful and moving speeches of my life. He gave the speech for his three very young children. Dr. Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor, beloved teacher and an important researcher in the virtual reality field.

If you have 70 minutes and want to watch something meaningful, I humbly suggest this:

From New York Times: Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End.

The 70-minute talk, at www.cmu.edu/randyslecture, has been translated into seven languages, and this week Hyperion is publishing “The Last Lecture,” a book by Dr. Pausch and a collaborator, Jeff Zaslow, that tells the story behind the story of the lecture.

“The whole thing is very strange,” Dr. Pausch said over lunch at a diner near Norfolk, Va. “I just gave a talk. I gave talks my whole life.”

But of course, this wasn’t just any talk. “Let’s not ignore the obvious,” he said. “If I’d given that lecture but I weren’t dying, it wouldn’t have had the gravitas. Context is everything.”

Dr. Pausch, 47, is dying of pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 95 percent of its victims, usually within months of diagnosis. Except for a pill bottle on the table in front of him, there were no outward signs of the deadly tumors growing inside him. Though he had just recently recovered from heart and kidney failure, he looked boyish, with a red knit shirt and a head of thick dark-brown hair.

Last fall, after doctors told him that he would probably have no more than six months of good health, Dr. Pausch stepped down from his academic duties and relocated to be closer to his family. But he decided to give one last lecture to a roomful of students and faculty members at Carnegie Mellon.

The lecture was not about cancer. Instead, he says, it was simply a father’s effort to digest a lifetime of advice for his children into one talk — a talk that Dr. Pausch knew he would not be around long enough to deliver in person. The children are Dylan, 6; Logan, 4; and Chloe, almost 2.

Although he could have set it up on a home video, he liked the idea that one day they would watch his last lecture and see their dad at work, in his element.

“I’m speaking only to them,” he said. “I didn’t set out to tell the world about how to live life.”

6500.00 dollars means I won’t be buying this anytime soon, but it sounds cool. I have a monophonic analog Moog source synthesizer that I love.

The special sauce: strings that have “a specific metallurgy designed to work with the Moog pickups.” Marketing manager Chris Stack told Listening Post, “the pickups are simultaneously listening to the strings and controlling them.”

Wired article about the new guitar.

What a crazy secret. What a waste. I barely print anything any more, although I use a laser printer when I do.

From this post

Now that is what I call an escalator.

Also, as a bonus -- this escalator in Prague is apparently the longest in the E.U

Long exposure film combined with LED lights. Enjoy.

Tochka Japan Web Site
PikaPika Web Site

While some purists dislike David Lynch’s interesting 1984 release of Dune , I have always liked the movie. Its not perfect but for the most part it matched up fairly closely with my mind’s eye that was formed while reading the books when I was a child. Sometimes movies look quite different from what I expected. Between the Omni magazine art about Dune and the movie I was happy enough to have something that complimented the book series.

A re-mastered theatrical trailer of the original movie:

I didn’t care for the 2000 release of the Dune miniseries:

I have heard recently that the movie is in production in the writing phase of the project. Hopefully it will be well made. Will you watch it?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160419/

One of my favorite labels and tracks. Sounds great on a huge sound system. A little long weekend chocolate bunny music. I also threw in a second track from a second artist I like, Chain Reaction.