Cool videos of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor

Neat video showing a visual representation of the Bach’s famous organ piece.

More versions:

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Rob Riggle is HILARIOUS in this clip.

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We were happy to have the Wee Trio come give a concert on April 22, 2008. It was a great success!

They performed to a packed house (standing room only) and did a great job. Their polished sound including drums, vibraphone and bass impressed everyone present.

James Westfall - Vibes
Dan Loomis - Bass
Jared Schonig - Drums

http://www.myspace.com/theweetrio

Click here to see video of the final piece they played

(Cross-posted on the Lafayette Square Christian Science Society site)

Popularity: 10% [?]

YouTube - Fire in the Patio Fireplace at Mad Art Gallery in St. Louis

We went to the Mad Art exhibition opening tonight. This video is was taken using my Treo 700p and was of the fire in their outdoor patio fireplace. It was quite cozy and nice.

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One of the clips that has been played over and over again was of Barack Obama’s pastor saying that America’s chickens were coming home to roost. This video reveals that he was quoting a U.S. Ambassador who had said this. Fox News and other media outlets played the quote, over and over, making it sound like it was the pastor who thought that. See the video for yourself, and see the power of selectively quoting a speech or talk.

Originally linked by Bald Eagle 08.

They’ve got some more good contextual video clips on their homepage too.

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Watch Barack Obama’s speech on his vision of the future of the perfection of the United States of America:

My favorite quote from this deeply nuanced, insightful and intelligent speech:

“This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.”

You can also view it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU

See the comments on Barack’s site:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGBbTW

Full text of the speech below:

(more…)

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“Don’t base your votes, this time, on fear. Base them on possibility.”

The time for a thinker as our leader has come.

Watch on YouTube - Michelle Obama: Be not afraid

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Barack Obama is the most intelligent, reasoned politician I have ever heard. This video is remarkable. In it, he shares his views on religion and its role in a pluralistic, progressive society.

My favorite passage of the speech (emphahsis added):

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

You can read the full transcript of his speech here.

Are you hearing this America?

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One of the smartest people around, noted Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, has put together an outstanding video sharing his reasons for voting for Obama. I highly recommend watching it and thinking about the issues he raises. If you disagree, why?

Watch or download the high-quality video here (torrent).

Lots of excellent thoughts and comments on his post too (scroll down).

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I’ve been enjoying using my Apple AirPort Express to stream music from my laptop to our living room speakers using iTunes. The other evening I wanted to watch a DVD and use the good speakers to get the best sound, but you can’t do that without using a helper program.

I found a program that lets you route any audio signals to your AirPort Express — it’s called Airfoil (free to try out, $25 to purchase) and is made by Rogue Amoeba. It’s very simple to install and run. When I tried playing a DVD, though, the audio didn’t synch properly with the video.

This is the solution I found to fix the audio synchronization problem using VLC to play back the DVD and by adjusting the preferences and using VLC’s ability to buffer audio and adjust the synchronization settings.

1. Open preferences in VLC
2. Click on Advanced tab on bottom of screen
3. Select Input/Codecs
4. Select Access Modules
5. Select DVD with menus [Note: to make this same adjustment when you are playing back regular files as opposed to DVDs, simply select File instead of DVD with menus and continue with the rest of the instructions]
6. Change the default value (300 milliseconds) to 6000. This will increase the amount of audio data buffering to 6 seconds, which should be enough to synchronize the audio playback.
7. Click Save to activate your changes (you may need to quit VLC to ensure the settings become active).
8. Re-open the DVD using VLC and click Play.
9. Click the “f” key repeatedly to adjust the amount of audio synchronization offset. It adjusts the audio offset downwards by 50 millisecond increments. I had to set mine to around -4900 milliseconds to correctly match the audio with the video output on my system. Press the “g” key to increase the offset in the other direction. Watch the actor’s lips and adjust the offset until it matches perfectly.
10. Enjoy listening to your DVD audio through your speakers, streamed wirelessly!

Download VLC (Free Open Source video player)

Download Airfoil

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