I’m not behind on this: I’ve known about and have been enjoying Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog the past few weeks. I may have put a few things up on twitter about it, but I didn’t think it needed a whole blog post.

That is, until I learned some of my 1.1 readers had not yet seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. If you have 45 minutes, if you like Neil Patrick Harris and the funny, if an equestrian underlord is making you do it, and if that doesn’t make sense to you: go watch Dr. Horrible. Now.

drhorrible.com/

Dr. Horrible. Tell your friends.

I can’t count the number of freeze ray or Captain Hammer jokes were made this weekend. Ideas were starting to form about team costuming the Dr. H group for Halloween. I’m on the look out for lab coats and welding goggles. Last night, I did more Horrible research (I have an MS in searchingness) Since these were new to me, I figured I’d share them here for y’all.

Dr. Horrible’s twitter page

That lead me searching for ringtones (TK mentioned those existed,) and I found not only ringtones, but music and sheet music.

James Tauber: Dr Horrible Ringtones – renaming the m4r extension to mp3 worked for me in WMP.

James Tauber: More Dr. Horrible had not only MP3/midi type things, but transpositions that had the vocal tracks removed — great for karaoke.

(If you believe that I didn’t close the windows, crank up the laptop, find a lyric page, and belt out all the songs at the top of my lungs, you don’t know me very well.) We’re so doing a sing along Halloween skit.

Finally, I found Moses Lei’s Dr. H. page, complete with sheet music, and great MP3s. He doesn’t have as much arranged as James right now, but I like his stuff alot. Have yourself a listen. (And call me; I enjoy his 90s ringtone.)

Somehow, after even more yak shaving, I wound up (as I’m wont to do,) at YouTube. There’s lots of DRH fan covers. Not all are good (but the last one, wow.) Who knows, maybe we’ll have a video up there soon.

TiVo’s latest software update for the Series3 supports YouTube videos, so now you “see the small videos on the big screen.” It’s new and interesting. Might be fun at parties. I don’t know how much I’ll actually use it.

But, I had to watch Numa Numaa first. You know. To break it in. Then, I browsed some Numa knock-offs until I settled into the most watched videos on YouTube from all time. That found me this gem, viewed over 56 million times:

Go ahead. Don’t smile when you’re watching it. I dare you. (It’s impossible.) Baby laughing at the Wii is pretty good too. Enjoy!

I use the social networking site Delicious to share bookmarks that I want to keep/organize for future use, and network with others. All 16.75 of you readers will notice the nightly “dump” of what’s new in my Del account over to the blog.

Today, Delicious got a facelift (and a new name at delicious.com, if you didn’t know where to put the dots and non-dot-coms scared you.) The new design is fine, and better in a lot of ways.

What I like best is the “what’s new” video Delicious made to promote it. Such a simple way to show what’s different and where the old info can be found in the new site. I even like the background music. I’ll embed it here.

Prepping for the Open House, I was poking around the www.dps.uiuc.edu site. I found they have a page that lists the recent crime reports… and they mean recent. This must be from the same sources (at least for campus) that the DI gets its blotter.

Marc massaged it through some pipes to get an RSS feed of the UofI DPS crime reports.

It proves for entertaining reading. Such as:

An unknown person(s) poured two bottles of laundry detergent in the fountain near the Admissions and Records Building, 901 W. Illinois St., U. sometime after midnight on July 21. Staff estimated the costs of labor and de-foaming agents for clean-up at $300.

Yes, that’s bad — but think of how “green” they were being, doing their laundry outside.

A construction worker paid restitution ($186) for breaking a wood parking arm in a lot at Assembly Hall, 1800 S. First St., C. on July 7. According to the report, the man drove his truck across a pedestrian walkway to enter the parking lot without paying the fee and struck the arm. A witness recorded the truck’s license number and the incident also was captured by a surveillance camera. When interviewed by police, the man agreed to pay for the damage and the $5 parking fee.

And best yet:

Dumbass1, 22, of U. and Dumbass2, 21, of Paxton (not their real names) were arrested on a charge of criminal trespass to state-supported property on July 14. At 2:05 a.m. Urbana and U. of I. police responded to a call of a burglary in progress and a report of suspects on the roof of the Bread Co. building. Dumbass1 was arrested after an U. officer identified him as the suspect he had seen on the roof of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Goodwin Avenue, U. a few minutes later. Dumbass2 was arrested at about 2:36 a.m. when a U. of I. officer saw him walking with a woman on the west side of KCPA. According to the report, the officer became suspicious because Dumbass2 was not wearing a shirt, shoes or socks and was covered with dirt.

So, enjoy!

[ I threw in non-summer band YouTube example links, so you can listen to others' (odd) renditions... ]

Star spangled banner — ex (she does kimi ga yo better, I think)
Flourish for wind band / R. Vaughn Williams — ex
Bacchanale : from Samson and Delilah / Camille Saint-Saens — ex1, drum corp ex2
Scenes from “The Louvre : based on Ancient Airs / Norman Dello Joio
El Capitan / John Philip Sousa — ex
Jupiter / Gustav Holst, transcribed by James Curnow
John Williams : the symphonic marches / John Williams, arr. by John Higgins
Inglesina ["The Little English Girl"] / Davide Delle Cese — bad ex, ex
Gershwin : a medley for concert band / Ira and George Gershwin, arr. Robert Russell Bennett
Illinois Loyalty / Thacher Guild, arr. Mark H. Hindsley — ex with mace!

I’m going to re-blog Greg Downey’s post about finding a Computing Research Association publication on using history to teach computer science and related fields. It’s a long report (319 pages,) but just reading the table of contents makes me think this is something I should read. Computer Science, Informatics, LIS: they aren’t just studies of technologies and methodologies, algorithms and analysis. They are cultures, evolutions, people, social networks, and are disciplines filled with resumes of triumphs and failures. Their histories are greater than the product of where they currently are. The first paper’s abstract says, “attention to the history of computing might help to make a computer scientist into a better teacher and, on a broader level, might make computer science itself into a better discipline.” I agree.

But, see, I get mine without the cilantro, so it’s healthier. (I don’t care if you are bad for me — I still love you, Chipotle.)

University of Illinois
Summer Band
2008
Daniel Neuenschwander, Conductor

*Program*
Thursday, June 19, 2008

Star spangled banner
Espirt de corps / Robert Jager
Concord / Clare Grundman
National emblem march / E.E. Bagley
Second suite in F / Gustav Holst
Amparito Roca / Jaime Texidor
Puszta / Jan Van Der Roost
Shenandoah / Frank Ticheli
Armed forced salute / Bob Lowden
Illinois loyalty / T.H. Guild

[ Concert starts at 7pm on the south patio of the Union/Quad, and should last about an hour. ]

[ Edit: 6/19 4pm Corrected the date from 6/18 to 6/19. Whoops. ]

Humor is repetition.

It looks like Sprint has flipped the switch on their high-speed, 3G data network in the Champaign-Urbana area. As of this morning, my phone is showing the same data icon I see in the St. Louis and Chicago areas. I don’t use the broadband much on my phone, but I’m looking forward to the increased speed — even if it’s as much a perception of speed than true evolved functionality. It makes us not seem so rural when we have the same data plans as urban areas.

Now, to gets me a new smartphone to use all this tasty bandwidth…