How in the holy frijoles is it December already? And why do I get the same stressed, panicked feeling every year? And why do I harbor such resentment against those who get their Christmas shopping done early (or prance gaily around their yards stringing up their lights the day after Thanksgiving)?

*deep breath*

The truth is, when I put myself in the mindset of how much I enjoyed the holidays as a kid, I can actually get some of those warm, good time-y feelings back. And having two little kids adds to the fun too. But man oh man, the stress returns every year, as sure as the commercials.

Music, of course, is the key to bringing back some of that positive holiday energy. Since 1994, this collection of tunes has steered the way (or the sleigh, heh). I taped this special off the radio that holiday season. I’ve said this all before, but Bruce Cockburn is a warm, comforting musical presence in my life, and listening to him sing these great songs and play the guitar like only he can - well - it’s better than a fridge full of nog.

Now, Nanci Griffith joins Bruce here, and sings some songs of her own (”Wexford Carol”, “Grafton Street”, “Going Back to Georgia”, etc.). But it’s the Bruce tunes that resonate with me: “Shepherds” opens the show, and has always been a song that pops into my head throughout the year, for some reason: “Glooooooria, in the hiiiighest.” I’m not heavy into the religion, mind you, but when Bruce sings, I’m a believer; “Deer Dancing Around a Broken Mirror”, a spirited and lush instrumental tune; “Huron Carol”, a song written in the 1600’s by a Jesuit missionary to the Huron Indians, and sung in the Huron language. Bruce gives a wonderful introduction, and reads the English translation beforehand; and of course, two favorites of mine: “I’m Gonna Fly Someday” and “One Day I Walk”. Sublime.

Enjoy. And hey, happy holidays, eh? Oh, and always a reminder for you fellow Yanks that haven’t heard of Bruce from the great white north - it’s CO-Burn. Co sounding like So. Ho ho ho.

“Christmas with Cockburn”
The Columbia Records Radio Hour, 1994

Intro
Shepherds [mp3]
Wexford Carol (Nanci Griffith)
Brave Companion of the Road (NG)
Deer Dancing Around a Broken Mirror
I’m Gonna Fly Someday
Grafton Street (NG)
Going Back to Georgia (NG)
One Day I Walk / Intro to Huron Carol
Huron Carol [mp3]
Mary Had a Baby

[Download the ZIP]

It'd already been known that HTC got a little help from the boys and girls at San Fran-based One & Co in designing its beautiful, WinMo-defying TouchFLO 3D user interface along with the Touch Diamond on which it premiered; apparently, HTC likes the result so much that it's snapping the privately-held firm right off the market. One & Co's expertise certainly isn't limited to phones -- its clients span from Coca-Cola to Adidas, Dell, and Palm -- and interestingly, HTC has decided that the move won't spell the end of the design consultancy, so if you were hoping to get your hands on an HTC-designed K2 snowboard, you might just have a shot. We're told that the injection of fresh thought that found its way into the Diamond will ultimately filter its way through HTC's entire lineup, which we're taking to mean Android- and WinMo-based devices alike -- and sorry, G1, but if this means that we can eventually land a Google-powered set with a giant display and some glossy facets on its rear, you know you're getting eBayed right quick.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC acquires design firm One & Co originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panzi wrote two texture nodes that were recently committed to the Blender svn repository. He demonstrates their use by creating procedural terrains. Nifty stuff. Panzi wrote: Recently I wrote two tiny texture nodes. They don't do much, just exposing the coordinates (x,y,z) to the node system and a node that calculates the distance between two coordinates (vectors). [...]

I'm a firm believer that designers are makers at heart, but that might just be because I went to design school. The Core77 design blog just published their gift guide (77 items under $77), and plenty of the fancy designer items would make great remakes for the holidays. Designer products are looking more and more maker-y lately, just check out that plunger lamp!

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/core77_gift_guide.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/core77_gift_guide.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/core77_gift_guide.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/holiday_projects/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Holiday projects/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fcore77_gift_guide.htmltitle=Core77%20gift%20guidebodytext=%20I%26apos%3Bm%20a%20firm%20believer%20that%20designers%20are%20makers%20at%20heart%2C%20but%20that%20might%20just%20be%20because%20I%20went%20to%20design%20school.%20The%20Core77%20design%20blog%20just%20published%20their%20gift%20guide%20%2877%20items%20under%20%2477%29%2C%20and%20plenty%20of%20the%20fancy...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/bigLEDscreen.jpg" width="494" height="310" / Imagine one-upping Adam Frucci by posing with a 180-inch screen... only it's 3D! NewSight could give you a chance with their new gargantuan 3D video wall. Sadly, it uses LEDs for pixels, making the resolution all Monet-like./p pUnlike Panasonic's behemoth, Newsight's 3D Wall would never enter some trajillionaire's AV room. However, you will probably see it in Times Square one day, especially given its ability to combine with three other displays to make a 360-inch monster. /p pAnd ithen/i all you have to do is come out with some 3D shark movie with scary ass advertisements and it'll be like Back to the Future II is ifinally/i coming true. [a href="http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20081203/162285/"Tech On/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9b2aceb8b95462444aa6348312217c07p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9b2aceb8b95462444aa6348312217c07p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=9b2aceb8b95462444aa6348312217c07" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=RLZkaGCq"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=fY574aeA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=gpJSKfnv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=gpJSKfnv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Fw3mEDa6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=Fw3mEDa6" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/qp7BG5_Es5k" height="1" width="1"/

David Recordon / O'Reilly Radar:
Getting OpenID Into the Browser  —  Google Chrome did a smart thing: Less.  They unified the search box and address bar, since that's what people do anyway.  That gives us back precious pixels for the only thing that's as important to an average web user as where they're going: Who they are.

It's been on sale for a couple days now (at least in Shanghai), so it had to happen eventually -- you're witnessing the first tentative breaths of a Canon EOS 5D Mark II as it leaves the box. So many manuals to ignore! So many useless composite video cables and driver CDs to fill your drawers! So much bubble wrap to spend intimate moments with! It all goes down at the read link, kids.

[Thanks, Mikha]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Canon EOS 5D Mark II unboxed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember how “bad” those Microsoft commercials were?  If you thought those were odd and slightly off-putting, you obviously haven’t seen the most recent ads from Ask.com, which are now making the rounds with commentarians asking the same questions they asked about Jerry Seinfeld: “Why?”

“Why is their marketing so random?” asks Harry McCracken.

“Why is their marketing so creepy?” asks SAI’s Dan Frommer.

“Why is the music so sad? Why is she obese? More important: why is she BRITISH?” asks VideoGum.

Harry did accurately observe that the base message being conveyed in the most recent Ask.com commercial is more or less the same as what they started with back in 1996 with AskJeeves, the original moniker for the site.

While I think that the Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ads could be arguably groundbreaking, in that they were more like sponsored entertainment content rather than traditional advertisement, I have a hard time defending these Ask.com ads. The ads seem to have most pundits and Twitter reactionaries asking questions rather than wanting to try out the service.

Here are the two most recent ads:

On the other hand, those who live “outside the bubble,” so to speak, all seem to have the uniform reaction that the ads are just downright hilarious.

Are we over-analyzing, or are these ads just duds?

**I'm not trying to spam, just want to give people the opportunity to get this, and for me to find a reason to use the new Promotional Codes.

Y'all aren't going to buy it anyway so I'll give 20 away for free with the use of Promotional Codes, so first 20 who message me with their email address will get it. The only thing I ask is to leave feedback on the app, whether it be 1 star or 5, just leave honest feedback.
Link to app:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/M...296117232&mt=8

Thanks

In my SQL database I have a field that has a value as:
Code: 1000, 1013 This is the code I have:
PHP Code: function SentTo($list)
{
    $arr = array($list);
    while (list($value) = each($arr))
    {
        $who=GetUIDMessages($value);
        echo $who;
        echo "<br>";
    }

} 
What I want to do is some how get the small list of IDs to return it's real name.

So, for an example, if someone sends a message to 3 people and in that field it will show: 1012, 1010, 1002 and when you view the message i want to be able to return the actual name of the IDs that were inserted. To do this I have a small function that takes that list (shown above) and request the names of the IDs using GetUIDMessages($value) function. Is there a way to do this? Thanks for your help in an advance!

I've always left my login keychain the same as my user login password. Mainly because it's easier. But I've also read that a lot of people think it's better to have two different passwords.

Anyone have this setup? If so, why? If you never leave your machine unlocked and you have a strong login password, do you really need a separate keychain password?

I'd welcome any thoughts or comments. If I'm being stupid, feel free to tell me.

Thanks.

For the Rob Zombie mega-fans, Zombie announced today the launch of his brand new official website, which has details on all of his projects ranging from music to film. It also carries a news page and blogspot so you can track his every move (and then report it to B-D). The website is called RobZombieWorld.com and could become a pretty important place to watch if he does end up directing HALLOWEEN II for Dimension Films (still no comments coming in from all directions).

Georgia voters are going to the polls Tuesday in a runoff election that could determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

So I'm way too cheap to pay $20 a month for unlimited SMS, so I've been using a Ymail account for push messaging and sending SMS through gateways.

Is there any alternative for free SMS? Like through a Cydia app with unlimited free SMS that would make things easier? My only problems with email is that I have to look up each persons carrier and create a seperate email address with it. That and I just get notifications for email and can't tell the diff between that and my SMS.

Any suggestions? Or anyone interested in making a SMS looking app that runs off of a Ymail account?

Terrible!!! - I take back all the things I said about it. It may have a little sub-woofer, but this is not helping. The sound transfer through USB maybe the reason. There is this dying robot echo, very un-natural tiny metal particle screeching cheap echo... this is specially the case when you use the EQ or Sound enhancement. :mad:

I apologies if I've mislead anyone:o I'm gonna have to get some decent speakers:mad:

Cheap bastards:apple:
or hopefully it can be fixed via firm/software? don't know...

LGrsquo;s 8 megapixel ldquo;Renoirrdquo; touch screen smartphone has finally arrived in Australia, with an advertising campaign showing just how many features have been squeezed in to challenge the iPhone, Omnia and even the...

Hey all,

So I just purchased an external hard drive. So far so good on the setup. I was able to successfully transfer all of my music, movies, and photos over to the drive.

Changing the iTunes library files and everything was easy and I found all the info on the Apple website. The computer and all programs that use iTunes database seem to be working fine.

The issue comes in with iPhoto and the Movies folder. When I moved the photo folder over, I opened iPhoto and it asked me to locate the library. I pointed it to the external, and its all working fine. Outside applications, however (such as Connect360) seem to still look in the default photo folder for stuff, same with Movies. What I did to fix, was create a alias in the home folder to photos and movies and that seems to point that in the right direction, but another issue is with Firefox. When I goto, for example, attach a file in an email, when I click "pictures" or "movies" in the bar it doesn't work at all.

My question is; I know on Windows XP I used a program called Tweak UI to point the default music/video/photos folder over to my other hard drive. How can I make the system wide change on my Mac, or is how I setup going to work fine?

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Firefox seems to be working with it now. Hmm...still, if anybody has a surefire way to make a system wide change like this id appreciate it.

i've been using mail for quite some time and finally received an error message while trying to forward something from my work address. my mail box is full!
so today i went in and cleaned out all the spam, sent messages, and deleted message. also readjusted my settings so these would clean out automatically after X amount of time.
typically when i have mail open I use the top inbox, sent, junk under 'mailboxes'. i store all my personal items under the 'on my mac' folders. then there's the 'matt home' which i really don't know what that is. when i open up the 'all mail' folder there are over 5000 messages in there. some are messages that i want to keep, but the majority (all but maybe 200) are junk/spam.
is the 'matt home' where my mailbox pulls information from? or can i delete it without affecting the top folders? or else how do i get rid of all this junk? the spam/sent/trash folders under the 'matt home' are all empty.

image which hope describes what i'm talking about.



thanks!!

So, I'm curious if anyone has tinkered around much with the QTKit.

My problem set is actually pretty simple. Just a movie viewer. A window, with a QTMovieView.

The project is a Cocoa Application, not a Document-based project, though.

I have added the QTKit.framework to my project & set up the UI in IB. The UI has one QTMovieView & a button titled "Play".

I've set up the outlets & actions, etc correctly [I believe]. For now, I've hard-coded the path/filename into the program. When I click the play button, though, the movie doesn't play.

Since I couldn't get it to work, I thought I'd [*gasp*] check out the documentation for the QTKit, QTMovieView and QTMovie. I followed one of the tutorials. The first thing that stood out in the tutorial was that I created a document-based project & added the view to the MyDocument.nib's Window.

I did just add an NSLog line in the code that is connected to the play button, because I wasn't convinced that the function was even being called. When I built & ran the project & clicked the button, the NSLog message was output to the console. So, it is being called.

One half of my brain thinks it makes a little bit of sense that it works this way but not the other way, since movies are documents. But the other half of my brain is stubborn & thinking that they're both just windows with views on them and my code should work. Alas, it does not.

If code would help, I can post it. If I do that, though, please keep in mind that I really just whipped out the code for the app as a learning exercise, not for a class, or work project. I was just curious to see if anyone else had any thoughts as to why this might be happening.

Looking at blu-ray drives, I thought of an interesting question, and I just wanted to know if anyone knows the answer...why was an older standard used for the MacPro's optical bays, especially when the HDs use SATA?

And I know the motherboard has sata ports, so that's not my issue. It's just kind of a pain having to use an adapter or run a cable to the motherboard if I want to use a sata blu-ray drive for example.

Is there a widget for Mac OS X, that reliably shows me daily updated currency exchange rates?

I need at least GBP, USD, EUR, RMB. Other currencies are bonus, but not essential.

Here it is, my 500th post.:)
Only took me 3 years:o

It was actually kind of fun. Having to work for it. I usually don't even care at other sites. As most don't have such a high post requirement if one at all even.

I'm actually excited. This avatar is going to have to be special. I'll have to spend some time either making one or picking it out.

A film that was slammed on our radar last night was Rupert Glasso's Coffin Rock, which we've been heavily researching over the past 24 hours. If you click on over to BDTV you can check out a very impressive trailer for the film, along with two clips. Beyond the break you can check out a lo-res one sheet, along with the first official image and synopsis for the film that comes from the producer of WOLF CREEK. We're told this is one to watch, so we'll be keeping a very close eye on it.