Cool/Snap?

It took me a while to ‘get’ Youtube. What eventually did it for me was being able to find obscure recital footage from my favorite classical pianist, Evgeny Kissin. This morning some neurons misfired and I felt compelled to reconstruct some obscure context from my life circa 2002 when I was living in Germany. And Youtube was the right tool for the job.

On a recent visit to my Mom’s house, my brother got me pseudo-hooked on the current season of American Idol. I guess it was Sanjaya who pulled me in. Or moreover, the absurdity of Sanjaya did.

The whole scenario reminds me of watching the German production of Idol called Deutschland Sucht Den Superstar. There was a kid on the show, Daniel, of whom Sanjaya very much reminds me. So, I went on Youtube to see if I could find my favorite clip of Daniel, the one where he sings Nina’s 99 Luftballons. And voila, it was there. Youtube rocks. Now, enjoy the clip.

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In a spirit of trying new things out, I’ve recently switched from my long-time hosting provider to my own server in a local colo, from Movable Type to WordPress for blog management, and from Perl to Python for scripting chores. I have to say that I’m really pleased on all three accounts. WordPress has been an especially pleasant migration. The install took less than 5 minutes, the interface is intuitive and beautiful, and the feature set is more than complete.

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