Random playlists from this week's workouts

Every morning, I get up around 5 a.m., strap my iPod onto my arm, and stumble down to the exercise bike for 30 minutes (plus or minus) of cardio to start my day. I typically let the iPod offer me tunes on shuffle, some times I skip one, some times more than one. Last week I decided to write down the tunes I let play to see if I could get some insight into my mood for the day. Since I don't feel like I have anything profound to share right now, I thought I'd share this weekend's playlists (45 minute sessions):

Saturday:

1. Aqualung by Jethro Tull


2. Small Things by Blink 182


3. Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde


4. Gangster Tripping by Fat Boy Slim


5. China Girl by David Bowie


6. Never Say Never by Queens of the Stone Age
nice cover

7. You Make My Dreams Come True by Hall and Oates


8. Walking Contradiction by Green Day


9. Dirty White Boy by Foreigner


10. Hot Stuff by Donna Summer


11. The KKK Took My Baby Away by the Ramones

Sunday:

1. Longview by Green Day


2. Murder by Crystal Method


3. Pink by Aerosmith


4. I Don't Want to Dance by Eddy Grant


5. Voodoo by Godsmack


6. Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms


7. Tell Me What to Say by Black Lab


8. Jungle Love by The Time


9. Counting Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers


10. Splish Splash by Bobby Darin


11. Jump by Van Halen

I'm usually faced with musical dilemmas during these shuffle plays. Songs have to be up tempo enough to fit in with my pace. Also, I sometimes skip totally appropriate songs due to over exposure (the iPod likes to give me songs that it knows that I like sometimes too much of the same song).

I'm sure there's a great volume of data/postulation out there on why the iPod offers us some of the stuff that it does during shuffle play. I've noticed that there are some songs that the iPod almost never offers me, while there are other songs that it loves to offer me nearly every session ("Press Darlings" by Adam and the Ants). I was even offered "China Girl" a second time during yesterday's workout.

I'm looking forward to a new download being offered, though it may not be up tempo enough for a workout: "Re: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton, recommended by my friend Cobwebs over at Shadowmanor. The song fits in well with the following that she also posted (pardon the blatant thievery):


Other recent music downloads/rips that I'm pretty happy about: the soundtrack from Henry Poole is Here, the soundtrack to Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, the soundtrack to Bones (tv show that I've never watched) and the score to Twilight (the movie). On the Henry Poole soundtrack, I'm particularly fond of the Eels tune "Love of the Loveless". They've appeared on numerous soundtracks now, and never a miss in the lot.

Probably will see Monsters vs Aliens next weekend. Trailer looked great, but we were way too busy this weekend to get around to it.

What Cylon are you?

I'm still wallowing a bit in the ending of Battlestar Galactica. I stumbled on this quiz, and thought it would be fun. Considering the results, I'm a bit frightened (grin):

Which Battlestar Galactica Cylon Are You?

More on Battlestar Galactica. Created by BuddyTV

Brilliant! Order me a vindaloo!

The funniest SF show ever, and maybe the funniest BBC show ever, is getting a chance at a comeback ... of sorts. Though it's been ten years since the series ended, they're finally making The Red Dwarf Movie

Here is one of my absolute favorite short bits from the first episode:


For some insight to the new movie see:

And the segue between the series and the movie:

I cannot wait!!!

Quick link share for crafty/designing people

I stumbled on this link in a magazine article: Design Sponge.

The following is a snippet from their About page:

Design*Sponge is a daily website dedicated to home and product design run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney. Launched in August of 2004, Design*Sponge was declared a “Martha Stewart Living for the Millennials” (NY Times, 2008) and features store and product reviews, city, product, and gift guides, diy projects, before & after furniture and home makeovers, home tours, recipes, videos and podcasts, and trend forecasting. In addition, Design*Sponge features a unique section dedicated to covering student design, national and international design shows. The site is updated constantly throughout the day (with an average of 6-10 posts a day), and attracts a core group of devoted readers. Design*Sponge currently has 40,000 daily readers. Click here for PRESS on design*sponge.

I particularly like it for the do-it-yourself section. Nothing earth shattering here, just fun and simple projects.

Laid back but tiring day

Let's consider this evening's blog post to be a compilation of all the Twitter posts that I was too busy/distracted to make today.

This morning. Got up around 8 a.m. (very decadent of me). However, due to chronic pain issues, staying abed that late is never a good idea. It took me about three hours to lubricate my joints enough to be somewhat functional. Over the course of the morning, I caught up my financial records in Quicken, attempted to program my new Logitech universal remote control, and finished burning "Pebble in the Sky" to CD so I can listen to that during my commute next week.

After I got my aches and pains calmed down, I wandered down to the basement for a 45 minute stint on the bicycle. Took a shower, and then went out to lunch with Goblin. After lunch we went to see the new Nicholas Cage movie, "Knowing". In short: interesting, good, and way weird. After the movie we went off to do our weekly grocery shopping at the super Walmart. We picked up the DVD of Twilight and U2's new CD while we were there, along with a few cheap t-shirts. The diversity of retail therapy options is one of the reasons I like doing our grocery shopping at the evil W-empire.

When we got home, we had a nice little dinner while watching the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. No spoilers here, but ... pretty nice shutdown. I may actually have to get all the DVDs now.

I still have some major items on my weekend 'to do' list. Hopefully, I can attack them productively tomorrow.