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Best Radio Station EVER!

erockster.com might have the cheesiest name ever, and it might be owned by Clear Channel… but it’s one of the coolest radio stations ever!

I’ve been listening for a week and have been gobsmacked to hear songs by bands I already like but almost never hear on local radio such as Au Revoir Simone, MGMT, Husker Du, Massive Attack, Beach House, Vampire Weekend, Brian Eno, Sleigh Bells, La Roux, Asobi Seksu, Bat for Lashes, R.E.M., Hot Chip, Spoon, Lykke Li, The Clash, Radiohead, Best Coast, Metric, LCD Soundsystem, Golden Filter, Cocteau Twins, New Order and more.

But the truest test for a radio station is how many new acts I find on it. In just a week, I’ve discovered several awesome new bands (Polly Scattergood, Kisses, Yeasayer, Blonde Readhead, Stars, The National, and Washed Out) as well as a few bands I’d already heard of, but had overlooked (The Apples in Stereo, XX, Florence and the Machine).

You can listen to erockster here, but what’s even better is that Clear Channel runs the station as a subchannel in most large markets. So if you have an HD radio, you can tune in to erockster almost anywhere!

It’s a really great station, and I’d advise you to check it out soon!

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Windows Vista: Making a “Universal Install” Disc

In this post, I showed you how to make an “universal install DVD” for Windows 7. In a nutshell, by deleting one file from a Windows 7 install DVD, you can have the edited disc prompt you for which version of the OS you want to install. You can’t use this tweak to get free upgrades – the version you can use is tied to your product key – but the tweak comes in handy for IT support staff who might need to install many different versions of Windows.

I have found a similar tweak for Windows Vista, and it works in a similar way:

1) Using a disc imaging utility like PowerISO, make an image of the Windows Vista installation DVD.

2) Extract a file called SETUP.CFG from the “Inf” folder inside the “Sources” folder in the root of the drive image.

3) Open the file with a text editor like Notepad and scroll to the bottom of the file. There you will see something that looks like this:

[DefaultImageSelection]
Value=VFWBB-HAJJV-G996G-QWGJY-2V7X9

4) Delete these two lines and save the edited file, then overwrite the existing configuration file in the ISO image.

5) Burn the edited ISO to disc.

When you run setup using the edited disc, do not enter a product key when prompted; on the next screen you will be asked which version of Vista you want to install. You can then enter the product key after setup completes.

The only “gotcha” to this is that I’m fairly certain that you need a Windows Vista Ultimate disc to create the ISO, as Vista Ultimate is the only one that contains all the installation files for every version of the OS.

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Say It Ain’t So!

The latest from the Hollywood rumor mill has it the January Jones, “Betty Draper” from Mad Men, is having an affair with… celebrity chef Bobby Flay.

Since I’m already in an awesome relationship and since I’ll probably never meet January, it really doesn’t matter all that much to me. Still, the thought of January hooking up with Bobby Flay makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

January Jones
(click to enlarge)

Continue reading “Say It Ain’t So!”

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-20

  • loves hearing the Boston crowd chant "Beat LA! Beat LA!" #
  • @Deneesie Heeyyyyy Guuuurrrllll! #
  • If this announcer says "North Korear" one more time… #
  • Citizens! Our Fearless Leader is now appearing on your telescreens. Please cease all other activities and watch our Leader! #
  • “A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.” #
  • Weird: reading a book about medieval England, get to a section about money and think about Sixpence None The Richer… and Kiss Me comes on! #
  • Ha-ha! France sucks! #
  • Another tie? And they say soccer isn't exciting! #
  • Anyone in CLT got an HD radio? If so, can you tell me what's on 106.5-2? Thx! #

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Rapidfire Saturday…

Not much more than a bunch of links for today, but fear not… it’s all pretty cool stuff!

– This site has a handy World Cup calendar. It’s round, see, and it lets you quickly find matches based on the date, stadium, or team. If you’re at all interested in the matches (let me be honest, my own interest is quickly fading), then this calendar is for you:

World Cup calendar– Music festivals are a big business in the UK. As far as accommodations go, most festival goers have to make do with a tent and sleeping bag. But now Britain’s rich and influential can enjoy a Yurtel, a high-end tent with a king-sized bed, freshly cut flowers, and chocolates:

Yurtel– Speaking of the UK, a British company called Fredericks Dairies has not only come out with a fish and chips flavor of ice cream (and yes, it actually tastes like fish and chips), check out their presentation:

Fish and Chips ice creamCute! Although I like to say that I’d try anything once, I’m not sure fish and chips ice cream is for me. I’ll stick to Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Brittle ice cream for now (it’s a new flavor, and it’s realllllyy good!)

– And lastly, hipsters torn between buying “cool” vinyl records and “practical” compact discs can rejoice now that electronic/dance musician Jeff Mills has released a hybrid record\CD. You’ve gotta admit, it sure looks pretty cool:

Record\CD hybrid

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FRIDAY FUN: Jenny Wade

Wikipedia sez:

Jennifer “Jenny” Wade (born October 6, 1980) is an American actress is best known for playing “Nina” in TV series Reaper and “Honey Pie”, recurring character from Feast trilogy.

She is currently appearing on the Fox show The Good Guys, which is actually pretty funny and worth checking out. But check her out:

Jenny Wade
(click to enlarge)
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Ch-ch-ch-changes!

A new version of WordPress was released yesterday, and this version has a new default theme known as Twenty Ten. I really like the look of it, and I hope that you do, too! Note that the site’s main pages are linked at the top of the page, and that a few sections have been moved to the bottom of the page.

Please let me know if you find any “bugs” on the new site. For what it’s worth, I already know about the header graphic being off by a couple of pixels; I’m actually looking for a new image for that now and hope to have something up this weekend.

Cheers!

Jim

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Episcopal Hypocrisy

Anglican Curmudgeon once again hits it out of the park, filling in the details on the story I reported on back in February.

It seems that the ECUSA’s Executive Council met in Memphis on October 5-8, 2009, and at that meeting they adopted the following resolution, which reads, in part:

Resolved, That the Executive Council, meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, October 5-8, directs the Executive Officers of General Convention and the Office of General Convention to refrain from using the Hyatt hotel chain for General Convention and its related bodies and staff, until housekeeping staff summarily fired from its Massachusetts hotels and replaced by contract workers are offered the opportunity to be restored to their original employment and work conditions and provided with back pay for time missed due to their fall 2009 layoffs;

Two and a half months later – as in, ten weeks, or seventy-five days later – the Episcopal Church headquarters in New York City fired all its union workers and replaced them with a cheaper, non-union company:

The workers lost their jobs – which paid standard wages and benefits – when the church canceled the contract with Paris Maintenance, a union cleaning contractor, and replaced it with the nonunion Benjamin Enterprises.

Nice. Read the whole article here, especially the part at the end, where it’s noted that TEC is using a non-union Hyatt in Indianapolis for the 2012 General Convention.

Hypocrites, the lot of them!

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Random Thursday

– Remember the “Death to All Juice” guy? The guy from this post?

death_to_juice

Described as a “wannabe New Jersey Jihadist”, he was apparently arrested last week on his way to Somalia to get “terrorist training”. The man, Carlos Almonte, apparently loved his friend’s cat and wanted to take him to Somalia, but his mother refused. I guess it’s hard to be a badass terrorist when you have pictures like this on your Facebook page:

terrorist_cat

– There’s a vending machine in Spain… that sells meat! Awesome!

– Not so awesome: a recent study from Taiwan found that cage-free eggs contained almost six times the amount of environmental pollutants of their caged counterparts. Of course, it’s just one study, and it’s from Taiwan, but it should still give you pause at the grocery store.

– Lastly… a drawing of a horse playing a saxophone!