(This post started here and will end ridiculously)

To quickly recap, I recently found myself pondering the deeper facets of life and the universe. The budding Friedrich Nietze inside of me was twisting and turning, unable to rest. The ultimate question in question? If I could buy anything, and I mean anything, what expensive things would I buy? The list continues…

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4. A $20,000 .mp3 player

The TrexStor i.Beat Organix .mp3 player is the geek’s ultimate bling. Adorned in 18-karat gold and 63 one-karat diamonds. Its wrist strap is made from aquamarine jewels and admittedly I don’t know what those are, but I want them. I can just imagine running into an iPod user on the street. Our conversation would go something like this:

iPod guy: Awesome, my iPod just shuffled to REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You!”

Me: My iPod is covered in diamonds.

iPod guy: …(cries)

I used to be an Apple fanboy but Apple just doesn’t seem to have class anymore. I don’t even think they have a product with gold or diamonds. Then again, Steve Jobs isn’t necessarily known to be an innovative thinker so I won’t be too hard on him.

All the same, Apple will be lucky to have even 5% of the .mp3 market in 5 years with jewel-encrusted devices like the i.Beat Organix on the rise.

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5. The New York Yankees

The Yankees are America’s team and I love America so much that I would buy them in blink of a George W. Bush eyelid if I had the chance. I also love baseball and Coney dogs. Completely justified purchase, no doubt.

First order of business with George Steinbrenner out the door and the kid-phenom at the helm (that’s me, by the way), would be to replace those outdated pinstriped jerseys with American flag-inspired gear. A prototype of the new pants already exists.

Second order of business… sign Air Bud* to a lucrative contract. Air Bud brings marketing power and raw talent to the team.

Third order of buisness… trade A-Rod and Andy Petite to the Minnesota Twins for Nick Punto.

Then… sit back, eat 6 Coney dogs, and enjoy the game.

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That’s all the time I have for today! I’ll leave you with another one of my favorite quotes, this time from Nietze himself: “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” Definitely, especially if you are super rich and can buy happiness. Tune in next time, world.

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*Buddy the Wonder Dog, a.k.a. Air Bud, died 10 years ago this February but was father to dozens of healthy pups who have become famous actors themselves. With the world hanging on every one of my words right now, I’d would like to take this opportunity to pay my respects to Buddy; An inspiration to an entire generation, he is loved and missed everyday.

What it do, world.

Oh man, oh man. My Kanye shades arrived!!

Driving with these on is not a crime because looking fly and committing a crime can never occur in conjunction with one another.*

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*ArcStone Technologies, Inc. and the author are not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any information, data, opinions, advice or statements made in this post. Word.

My esteemed colleague Nik Rowell has graced these pages with some really cool Flash experiments in the past, which has inspired me to also explore the wonderful capabilities of ActionScript 3.

Audio visualization is a fun area to experiment in, as you can do some very interesting things with very little code. Nik showed us a unique way of looking at sound in this post. His code utilizes one mode of Flash’s sound compute spectrum method, which returns the raw sound wave data.

In my program I decided to use the Fourier transformation mode, which returns a set of calculations derived from the sound wave data. These calculations output a set of frequency numbers, starting with lows and ending with highs.

If your browser has Flash 9 installed click here to see a really cool song by Kate Havnevik brought to life with Flash. If you don’t see anything except the background right away, please be patient. On slower connections the sound may take a minute to load.

Every once in a while I come upon a site so unique, so interesting, that I simply must share it. Indexed is one of those sites. Jessica Hagy has taken blogging to a another dimension with her faux-math graphing posts.

While others (me included) struggle to convey complex thoughts and opinions with hundreds of words, she cuts strait to the point using only a few lines. Jessica’s hand drawn creations may not stand up to scientific scrutiny, or be testable on your TI-80, but they are genius in their own special way.

She also has a book coming out that will no doubt become an instant coffee table classic among nerds everywhere. It’s sites like Indexed that renew my faith in the Internet’s ability to offer up quality content for an unbeatable value.

Don’t miss this site, it will change your perception of blogging, graphs, and math forever.

If you’re anything like me your daily digestion of web content can’t be contained in one browser tab. Between RSS feeds, work Intranets, gMail and other web applications, several tabs are needed, and flipping between them constantly becomes a carpal tunnel inducing nightmare.

The solution many choose is to setup a start page. Start pages are one page sites that aggregate data from many other web pages into a dashboard style display.

Google’s iGoogle is the most popular start page system, but I have started using a little known competitor that puts iGoogle to shame; Netvibes.

Keep reading for tips on setting up the ultimate start page and the secret to unlocking the start page’s hidden power.

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As many of you know, I’ve been spending a bit of my time exploring the cool features in ActionScript 3.0 - some new, some not. Lately, I’ve been intrigued by the SoundMixer class which has a special method, computeSpectrum(), that essentially takes a snapshot of the wave of a streaming sound (or an embeded sound, but I’m talkin’ 100% code here)…

The finer details quickly boil down to binary data, but the power of this is the potential to create audio-powered animations in Flash.

After a refresher in Trigonometry, some tortellini, and a late night (or early morning), I’m pleased to present latest ActionScript 3 experiment!

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For those of you who read my recent article on High Dynamic Range images, you’re already aware of the power of HDR in creating images that trample the boundaries of traditional photography. When pushed to the max, it’s quite easy to create eerie, surreal or just plain fake looking photos.

I recently did some night photography at the old train yard outside of downtown St. Paul, near Shepard Rd. The photo opportunities were endless. Surprisingly, both times I was approached by someone with a blaring walkie-talkie on their belt, I didn’t get kicked out - they only stopped to chat photography. And trains.

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I’ve done some more experimenting with the Papervision3D class library. This experiment uses a “Plane” object, the ArcStone logo for the plane’s “material” property, and a little bit of math to allow a full 360-degree view of the logo. The logo’s X and Y-axis rotation is determined by the mouse position.

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A fellow word-lover of mine tipped me off to Scrabulous, the Scrabble-esque app for Facebook. You can play casual games with your friends over any span of time. (Name of opponent removed to protect the innocent.)

You know I’m already addicted.

Two or three holiday seasons ago, everybody was buying battery-operated toothbrushes for their loved ones. I didn’t get one (I guess no one cares about my oral hygiene) and I still use a manual brush.

Now gift-givers have another opportunity to give the gift of clean teeth. The latest toothbrush technology has evolved to the point where toothpaste may no longer be necessary. The Soladey Titanium Toothbrush runs on saliva, light, and a titanium core.

Here’s a description of how it works from Soladey.com:

Soladey looks like an ordinary toothbrush, but closer examination reveals a titanium (metal) ionic conducting rod, which runs through the replaceable bristle head and into the handle. This rod is the secret to Soladey. It’s made of a patented solar conducting material that allows light, by photoelectric activity, to be converted into a natural energy source which kills the harmful bacteria in your mouth.

The downside? You have to shove a light bulb in your mouth in order to activate the cleaning process. And make sure you have plenty of spit.

If you’re into marketing, compare the Australian Soladey site with the US version. In America, nothing encourages good hygiene like a bodacious babe weilding titanium toothbrushes.