Standing 372 feet underground in Jewel Cave the guide turned off the lights. This was a rare chance to experience actual complete darkness. As my eyes adjusted I was distracted by little blinks of light. A screen on a phone here. The blink of a camera light there. A child’s shoe with blinking lights sitting on my lap. Even deep beneath the earth’s surface it was impossible to escape technology.

I went camping this week with my family and it was a great chance to try and unplug from the world. That was the plan at least, and it wasn’t a real easy decision. I was tempted to bring my laptop along, even knowing how silly it would be to be typing away in a tent in the wilderness of South Dakota. The reality of our culture is that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to really unplug from the technology of our world. Throughout the week I took note of situations where man and machine clashed with nature and the wild.

A herd of bison ran down the mountain side, crossed the road and crossed through the field next to our campsite. We stood in awe as the huge animals passed us by. They just kept coming, hundreds of them. The line of cars grew waiting for the road to clear. Amazingly, several cars cut to the front of the line and tried to wedge their way in between the herd. Safety issues aside, where in the world would these people be trying to go that they couldn’t wait a few minutes to enjoy these amazing animals?

At Mount Rushmore we watched a presentation at sunset. It was dark by the time it was over and the climax was when the lights came up and lit up the president’s faces. I looked out over the audience and saw hundreds of tiny video screens. I don’t know what I expected, but I was surprised to see how thoroughly our gadgets have been integrated into our everyday life. We all have a tiny computer and video screen connected to the end of our arms. 

A tradition of this family campout is a slideshow to view pictures of the past 40 years of camp. Before the slideshow I was thinking that it would be so much more convenient to just have a group on Flickr where we could archive all these pictures. If the campsite had wireless we could just do the whole thing on a laptop. As we sat down for the show, a slide projector lit up a white sheet taped to the side of a cabin. We all watched captivated by the beauty of the pictures. The aged photos were so warm and real. The sound of the slide changing and the movement of the images as the wind gently blew reminded us that this was a physical thing. This wasn’t just some online community that we pretend to connect to. This was our family, and these memories were as real as the people sitting next to us. It was a beautiful thing that could never be replicated by Flickr and a laptop.

If it was hard for me to leave my laptop at home, it is going to be even harder for my son who will have lived his whole life with a mouse in his hand and on demand television and video games. He sat on my lap playing his Gameboy as I enjoyed the camp fire. I said, “Rian, look at that fire, isn’t it beatiful!” His response was “Why? What does it look like?” not even lifting his eyes from his Mario game. It’s hard to blame him though. That evening in the tent I turned on the fan. It wasn’t that I was hot or needed fresh air. What I wanted was the white noise. I couldn’t fall asleep without it.

Growing up in the Midwest, Showbiz pizza was the best place in the world to go for a birthday party. Games, pizza, tokens, tickets, crappy prizes, and that creepy animal band that performed every half hour. Someone got hold of the robotic Muppets (the band’s name is The Rock-fire Explosion) and has been programming them to sing modern songs. They record the “performance” and post the video on YouTube. Here is one where they “cover” a song from one of my current favorite bands, MGMT. Enjoy!

via the yellow stereo

Did you hear that Wal-Mart has a new logo? Here are the bullet points:

1. The name is no longer Wal-Mart. It is Walmart. At least they didn’t change it to Wally World, am I right?
2. Apparently the logo will be complimented by a burnt orange color. Nobody knows for sure how burnt orange is actually going to compliment light blue and yellow, but that’s beside the point.
3. The star separating “Wal” from “Mart” is gone and so is the blue and white. Patriotic colors are so yesterday.
4. No word on whether or not the yellow smiley face guy is gone for good or not. Cross your fingers.
5. To the right of the logo is a yellow starburst or sun or asterisk or something.

Here is a short video clip showing the logo from Fox News:

[Ok, I just can't let that last comment from the reporter pass. He says "How much does that job pay do you think? Coming up with a little sunshine?" Seriously? What an idiot! How much do you think that jerk makes to wear a suit all day and read other people's words? Moron. Moving on...]

My first reaction to the logo was, I have to admit, a little perverted. My problem is that ever since reading “Breakfast of Champions” by Kurt Vonnegut I have never looked at asterisks the same way. Google it if you don’t know what I am talking about.

I will leave it to the other blogs to dissect the logo more. Criticize the font. Question the color. Scream about the symbol. The usual. I guess my post is more about the positioning. Is this a step towards positioning the company as a more trendy or up-scale store? In other words a reaction to the success that Target is enjoying. Or is it an attempt at a facelift to appease the communities that object to the presence of the giant stores? That is too much weight to put on even a great logo, so they will have to have some incredibly amazing supporting design elements if they are going to pull that off.

If they can’t change their brand image with this new logo then what’s the point of a redesign? As bad as the old logo was (if you can call it a logo), at least it was honest. It was a generic warehouse sign. No frills. It made you think that the money they saved by not having a logo or nice signage was being passed right along to the customer. It may be design blasphemy, but I think there was some merit to that “lack of design” philosophy. It will be really interesting to see how the new identity works out for them.

I haven’t made a music post in a while and being that is is about the middle of 2008 I thought I would give you some tracks from my favorite albums of the year so far. Here is a 12 track mix tape that is pretty darn good, if I don’t say so myself…

1. Lose Big, by Eef Barzelay
Mp3: The Girls Don’t Care

2. Fleet Foxes, by Fleet Foxes
Mp3: White Winter Hymnal

3. Vampire Weekend, By Vampire Weekend
Mp3: M79

4. LP3, by Ratatat
Mp3: Schiller

5. In Ghost Colours, by Cut Copy
Mp3: Strangers In the Wind

6. Smilers, by Aimee Mann
Mp3: Freeway

7. Pork and Beans, By Weezer
Mp3: The Greatest man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)

8. Lucky, by Nada Surf
Mp3: Weightless

9. Narrow Doors, by Death Cab for Cutie
Mp3: I Will Possess Your Heart

10. Distortion, by The Magnetic Fields
Mp3: California Girls (Alternate Version)

Bonus Tracks:
Fate, by Dr. Dog
Mp3: The Old Days
(This is a track from their upcoming album that I am really looking forward to.)

Spoon’s Daytrotter Session
Mp3: Peace Like A River (Paul Simon cover)

Rian wanted to make a movie today so we hooked up the camera, got out his Star Wars guys, and started playing. He had the idea of using the printer as a spaceship and this is the movie we came up with. Enjoy…

Even with our huge 100+ gigabyte hard drives, space eventually becomes an issue. Anything you can do to save space is helpful. As your music collection grows it becomes more and more important to control your music library. For the most part iTunes does a great job. If you have iTunes set to automatically manage your library then you probably already have things pretty organized.

There is one major flaw, however, that you may or may not be aware of. When you delete a song from iTunes it asks you if “you want to move the selected song to the Trash, or keep it in the iTunes Music folder?”

By default iTunes will keep the file and just delete it from iTunes memory. Unfortunately, this creates an orphaned file somewhere in your Music Folder. ITunes no longer knows that it exists and unless you have the patience to manually go through your folders these files are doing nothing but taking up space. Even if you are pretty careful about clicking “Move to Trash” every time you delete a music file there will inevitably be times when you accidently keep the files.

It is pretty easy to see how much space the orphaned iTunes files on your computer take up. At the bottom of your iTunes screen you should see a line saying something like “14118 items, 37.6 days, 66.88 GB.” Compare that last number to the size of the folder where iTunes saves your music. Unless you changed your settings that would be in user/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/. If the size of that folder is larger than what iTunes is telling you then you have some orphaned files.

In my case, my music folder was 3 gigabytes larger than my iTunes library so it was definitely worth it to recover the disk space. Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t have a built in way of fixing this problem. You could try moving your library then reimporting all the music. That will work, but you might lose your playlists and if you have a large library this will take a long time.

Luckily there is another solution. Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes is a great place to find scripts that extend the features of iTunes. The script that will help us consolidate our music library is called “List Music Folder Files Not Added v2.0.” Follow the instructions on Doug’s site to install the script. It will show up in the iTunes menu bar under the little script icon. Click on it to run the script and then follow the directions. If your library is pretty large it may take several minutes for the script to complete. When it is complete you will have a text file containing paths to all the orphaned file in your music folder.

Now that you have a list of orphaned files you can delete them. You can do that manually, but that could take a while. A better way to eliminate them is to add them all back into your library and the delete them. To do that, change the extension on the text document from “.txt” to “.m3u”. Next, double click on the file and it should open in iTunes and begin adding all the orphaned files to iTunes. Then all you have to do is go to “View” and click “View Options.” Make sure that “Date Added” is checked and click “ok.” This gives you an extra column with “Date Added” as the header. Click on this heading and your library will be listed with the most recent additions at the top. You should see all the orphaned files that you just re-added to your library. Now delete them and make extra sure that you click “Move to Trash.” Empty your trash and you are done.

I hope that helps you clear up some space on your computer. I am on a Mac, so if you are on a PC and find that this doesn’t work please add your advice to the comments. Good luck!

My latest side project has been to build an archive of over 1000 fonts that anyone can use on their website. The project is called Font Burner and it makes it super easy to change your website’s headlines from boring system fonts to beautiful creative fonts. All you have to do is copy a chunk of code into the head of your webpage. Head on over to www.fontburner.com to check it out.

Technically the site launched last weekend but I was still working out some bugs so I haven’t started promoting it until now. I am really excited about the possibilities of the site so please let me know what you think of it. Also, if you use Font Burner on your site let me know!

You probably have seen the Nikon commercials where girls steal Ashton Kutcher’s camera and they take flirtatious pictures with it. Frankly, I find the commercials annoying, but does that mean it is a bad advertisement? Nikon needs to sell cameras and the money isn’t coming from geeks like me who take apart broken antique cameras in their spare time. The money comes with selling tons of cameras to the vast majority of people who aren’t particularly interested in photography as an art form. The truth is that cameras serve a different purpose in modern society than it does for people like me. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that, it just isn’t me.

Today the camera is a status symbol. The camera is a fashion accessory. The camera is a social toy. To the average person it is just a way to document your life and have some fun. So perhaps the Nikon spots are brilliant. With a market flooded with affordable digital cameras what do you do to stand apart from the pack? More megapixels? New technology? People expect a camera to take good photos and have the latest features. To sell more product camera makers have to find another way to differentiate themselves.

Nikon’s answer is to sell a lifestyle. The Nikon commercial appeals to the average person not because it is pushing “speed and a Nikon lens,” but because it is selling a way of life. Girls like the idea of using a camera to flirt with that cute guy. Guys like the idea of taking advantage of clueless babes. And this all happens in the context of some kind of party that you wish you were invited to. Sex, status, and a party lifestlye. The formula works for beer and deoderant, why not cameras? I guess all that is left to do is smile and say cheese.

Just a quick post before the weekend is over. This one is probably only funny to fans of Kermit the Frog, Elliott Smith, and Royal Tenenbaums. To the other two people in the world that share those interests, here is a video for you:

By the way, Sad Kermit has his own MySpace page. Enjoy.

I finally got around to posting the other Star Wars stop motion movies that Rian and I made together. Enjoy.