Category: Technology

How To Play the Piano?

Learning to play the piano at a respectable level is not difficult (or so I’ve been told).

So I’m going to learn to play the piano.

Anyone have a link to a site to help me out?  Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email (mail@samharrelson.com) if so!

I’ll keep you posted on my progress here.

Here’s a great piano tutorial from Mahalo:
http://www.mahalo.com/How_To_Play_Piano_For_Beginners_(And_Save_$500_In_Lessons)

Google and The Quest for Information Archiving

I’m imagining a future 3,000 years from now when scholars and archaeologists attempt to put together the scattered fragments of our digital cuneiforms like we attempt to do today with the scant remains of Mesopotamian cultures from the past that were just as vibrant as ours. 

I wonder how far Google will get before the barbarians invade and the library is burned?

As early as the third millennium B.C., Mesopotamian scribes began to catalogue the clay tablets in their collections. For ease of reference, they appended content descriptions to the edges of tablets, and they adopted systematic shelving for quick identification of related texts. The greatest and most famous of the ancient collections, the Library of Alexandria, had, in its ambitions and its methods, a good deal in common with Google’s book projects. It was founded around 300 B.C. by Ptolemy I, who had inherited Alexandria, a brand-new city, from Alexander the Great. A historian with a taste for poetry, Ptolemy decided to amass a comprehensive collection of Greek works. Like Google, the library developed an efficient procedure for capturing and reproducing texts.

Onward and Upward with the Arts: Future Reading: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

My Cousin’s Death in Afghanistan

David was my cousin, but functioned more as a brother.  While growing up, there wasn’t a week that went by when we didn’t see each other.  We spent countless hours reading comics, drawing comics, watching Beavis and Butthead, playing with GI Joe’s and re-enacting our Transformers scenes in the backyards.  He was always Superman and I was always Batman.

My favorite memory of David?  The day we decided to walk to the comic shop a few miles from his house without telling anyone when we were 12 or so.  To make matters worse, he had just had surgery on his toe, so he was on crutches.  My dad finally found us walking the streets (we made it to the comic shop!) a few hours later and drove us home. 

I love you, David… can’t tell you how much we’ll miss you.

A Marion soldier serving in Afghanistan has died in action, his family confirmed Tuesday.

Staff Sgt. James David Bullard, 28, was serving with the Army National Guard 1st Battalion 263rd Cavalry (Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition) S.C. National Guard Unit B Company based in Dillon, his brother-in-law Harold Caldwell said.

Marion soldier killed in Afghanistan – News – South Carolina Now (SCNow.com)

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GMail Changes?

I’m seeing a few subtle and not so subtle changes in GMail tonight.

1) Quicker message loading
2) New graphics (the yellow type found in Google Reader) at the top of the screen for loading messages
3) New contacts manager which is very slick and a great upgrade
4) The ability to add an event invitation when composing or replying to messages.

Nothing revolutionary, but pretty neat tweaks given last week’s big inclusion of IMAP in GMail. After a couple of years of stagnation, it’s nice to see a few new additions to the interface.

MORE: Evidently Google is rolling this out to all users (whew, I’m not crazy). Thanks to Andy Beal for the pointer!