Take the greatest animated series in history and combine it with the audio from one of the most dramatic and breath taking films released this year and what do you get? The 300 Trailer: Simpsons Style

I guess doing any kind of “real” blogging is out of the question now that old bossman Puck the cat is on the job. He must really like my company since when I got home at 6:15pm the two other roomies were asleep! Looks like Puck is sneaking in a cat nap, so I can try sneaking in a bit of work.

An empty run way just before a dozen asian models will be strutting their stuff down it. I’ve got a good seat and will post the results of my first foray into fashion.

Remember all the fun you used to have as a kid with the ultimate squirt gun? This guy obviously couldn’t let go of his obsession.

I hope he has a lot of friends come over for a huge water battle!

You gotta love that little, balding music nerd. Moby has just opened up a site that lets anyone sign up and license his music. Well not anyone but particularly film music for “independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.” The word “licensing” immediately fills my head with anxiety about a long, drawn-out, expensive experience. But not ‘ol Moby. He is making his music free to anyone who doesn’t profit from their film or video project. If you are doing a commercial venture then you can apply for an “easy license” with any money that’s generated being given to the Humane Society. Not a bad deal for top notch accompanying film music.

Currently there are 3 pages of songs to choose from. While a lot of the songs are unreleased experiments. There are a few from some of his albums including all of the songs on his album Hotel – Ambient. I wish he had God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters on there. That is a beautiful score that would be interesting to release as a Garageband mix for budding composers to see how the song was layered and put together. Expect to see more artists opening up their work to the remix/mashup communities as it benefits everyone by advancing our culture.

Washington DC had it’s first Startup Weekend event two weeks ago drawing a crowd of about 70 techies. The idea behind startup weekend is for a group of people to get together, conceive, build, and launch an Internet business in under 72 hours. The only thing more stressful than executing a new idea in such a short period of time is managing such a large group of random people. I didn’t have the pleasure of attending but I did follow along via the official blog and twitter posts from friends that attended.

The group settled on an idea about a social network for communities, later dubbed HolaNeighbor.com. The site is meant to help people plan events, share important information, meet the neighbors, and generally be a better member of the local community. It has been more than a week since the site launched and it is still far from even a proof of concept.

So far Helo Neighbor is a Google Maps mashup. You can search for communities by zip code which displays the location on a Google map with an exclamation point as a marker. Clicking on the marker lets you check out the community which only includes a list of members and three crude options: name of founder, public or private, and invite or open. There is also the capability to upload photos though there is nothing taking advantage of this feature yet.

The idea is half baked at best. I imagine there must have been way more ideas during the pitch of this business proposition to keep the team excited about this. I don’t see any advantage of launching HelloNeighbor as a standalone site. In hindsight it would have made much more sense to build on top of an existing social network like Facebook. By making this product a Facebook app the team could spend more time working on the features instead of building up the basic infrastructure like the sign up process and user management. As the site stands now, users are better off creating a group on Facebook to keep in touch with local events.

I hope the gang had fun, because the end result certainly falls flat.

Walking to work on this chilly November morning.

Chicago pet store owner, Cindy Groenewold of Pet Luv Pet Center, is searching for 17 puppies who were stolen from her store. Apparently the pup-snatcher broke the front glass window of her store and stole boxers,beagles, golden retrievers, huskies as well as a puggle and a Pekinese. As you might imagine, the owner is quite upset. This is directly from the article:

The owner said she assumes the dogs will be sold at a flea market somewhere.

Ha! Pupies. Fleas. Get it? Well if the pet store business doesn’t work out for poor Cindy Groenewold, she could always fall back on comedy.

P.S. The owner said whoever took the dogs probably wasn’t very gentle with them. Oh, cruel world.

A recent story appearing on CNN examines Britney’s spending habits revealed by court documents released November 1st. According to the papers Ms. Spears brings in $737,000 a month. Spears’ monthly expenses include $49,267 in mortgage for two houses, $16,000 for clothes and $102,000 on entertainment, gifts and vacation, according to her financial declaration.

Meanwhile, she spends zero on education, savings and investments and gives $500 a month in charitable contributions. With such an enormous income, if she saved just 1% a month she would have $88,440 at the end of a full year. This would be more than enough to ensure her children get through college. For the rest of her life she could take that $7,370 monthly contribution and dump it in an investment vehicle that returned 5% annually for a cool $8,387,324.38 by the time she turns 60. Of course what fun would that be? I guess we’ll keep seeing Britney albums and related schwag until she finally gets a clue or drives herself crazy into the ground. Hey, nobody said saving for retirement was glamorous.

Saw this interesting product at Target the other night. Apparently trash bags just won’t do anymore for crash body water reduction. Their marketing angle, “Keeps muscles warm while exercising.” Ha! All for $10.99. By contrast a pack of 80 Target-brand trash bags goes for $5.29.