My youngest daughter turned five on Sunday. Now, technically, I have no more babies. They are both big girls now, and rockin’ into another school year. Five is a pretty big year. It’s nothing like having five o’clock shadow, listening to the Ben Folds Five, bumming a fiver, or watching reruns of “Party of Five” (very underrated show). It might involve the naming and exploration of the five senses, getting five servings a day of vegetables, or making simple recipes that contain “5 easy peices” or less…

She had a pretty good birthday. Didn’t really have a “party” per se, but she got to do almost everything she wanted. Went out with my parents for Japanese, went out another night for Mexican with aunts and cousins and having everyone sing to her (even though the highly anticipated mariachi band was off for the night), and she went to Build-a-bear workshop (they both love to hit that place on any special occasion). Oh, and she got the new-and-improved easy-bake oven… the one they have out now is electric (instead of batteries and a light bulb). It still took about 30-45 minutes to make 4 morsels of bread that passed as blue muffins, though.

Meanwhile, A has decided that she is very much into AFI. One night last week, I had left the television on the IMF music video channel, and the girls were bathing, one upstairs and one downstairs. I helped A get out, and when we sat down to blowdry her hair, she saw the AFI “Miss Murder” video for the first time. Sunday night, we were in the car, and flipping radio stations, and she heard two notes of the same song, and went nuts for us to switch back to it. After singing along to the whole song, she announced that she really likes “that guy” (Davey Havok), wants to look like him, sing like him, the whole nine yards…

Another Rock Star in the making…

Biodiesel is one thing, but the first diesel engine was designed to run on corn products. This guy’s project is very intriguing. FIVE bucks in gas, and used vegetable oil from asian restaurants (free) got him 7500 miles. That’s ingenuity. He’s a High School Senior.

I just installed a couple of plugins to handle tagging for my posts. I’m just kind of testing them out at this point.

the EFF has a campaign against a couple of proposals that are currently under scrutiny in the U.S. The flash video is well done, explains the issues witout being dry or long-winded, and entertains at the same time.

random quote form the girls…

A: “Hey look at this! I put a sticker on my ear!”

K: “Oh yeah, I found something sillier! chicka bok bok! chicka bok bok!” (imitates a chicken, strutting, flapping wings, pecking)

The evolution of the portable mp3 player and p2p file-shares have mixed things up quite a bit. The music video channels and the media conglomerates are reeling, and garage bands who would have never made it out of the garage are touring the world, and rocking out. It’s a quiet revolution, where the local radio station isn’t the only influence, and neither is MTV. It’s grass-roots, it’s social, and it’s totally organic. Being such, it cannot be controlled by an overseeing force. Companies *can* profit, but they cannot corner the market. ISP’s can sell it, but they can’t cast a net over a large chunk, and call it their own, truthfully.

It’s now happening with all media, and a lot of the news attention has shifted to the movies and video sector.

the Creative Commons license is getting very popular, and provides for artists getting their music to the masses without a governing monopoly, as well as for options to allow other artists to base new creations on the originals, including a re-mix-friendly license.

if you are looking for legal downloads of mp3′s there are a number of links on the cc site, including this one.

BTW, For those who haven’t heard it, the new Tom Petty album is out. Another in along line of excellent road trip CD’s. Every track has a mood, and a progressive beat, and very personal lyrics. WTG, Tom!