Made of 70% bamboo (the fastest-growing plant in the world) and 30% cotton, it’s antimicrobial, wicks moisture away from the skin, and feels like a blend of cashmere and silk.

Doing a search for “bamboo clothing” yielded about 411k results. It appears that this has been a trend building up since 2003 when some inventors devised a way to turn bamboo into yarn.

I love targeted ads! Gmail just sent me here to check out the this awesome MSU Spartan gnome.

At $21.95 it’s hard to say no to this stellar lawn decoration. Maybe I’ll put him on the floor of my office so my co-workers can rub his hat before gameday.

Well targeted ads do work!

At first glance I wasn’t too thrilled with the fact that you choose from multiple choice responses to provide questions to the answers, but after more thought, I’m a fan. I hate having type with a game controller, so this should be ok. And it’s not like they provide you with the multiple choice questions until you buzz in anyways.

On that note, I really like the cell phone text message style typing input that the Playstation does provide at some point (like setting up your PSN account)

It’s amazing how many people work very hard to reduce their carbon footprint but don’t even realize how much their water consumption has an impact on the planet. Also, it is shocking to me from the standpoint that we, here in the states, take for granted the fact that we can walk over to the faucet and get a drink of water whenever we want.

Friends have told me stories of people they know joining the Peace Corps and coming back being super frugal about using water. For me, just learning/being reminded of the few facts in this presentation has affected how I think about my own water consumption.

Notable facts from the presentation:

• Less than .007% of the Earth’s water is consumable by humans
• A 10-minute shower uses 50 gallons of water
• 1 in 5 people in the world don’t have access to safe drinking water

Two years ago, Johnson gave himself the moniker — a reference in Spanish to his No. 85 — and put it on the back of his uniform before a game. Quarterback Carson Palmer ripped it off before the kickoff. After the season, coach Marvin Lewis — who dislikes Johnson’s attention-getting stunts — referred to the receiver as “Ocho Psycho.”

This is truly hilarious. The QB and coach didn’t like his attention getting scheme, so he legally changed his name so he could have that name on the back of his jersey! Insanity!

Marshall Faulk on the story:

Also, what in the heck. Chad Johnson thinks he can swim faster than Michael Phelps? This guy is both hilarious and out of his mind.

With the addition of a Dobro to my collection of guitars, I decided that it was time to get serious about a better way to keep my instruments. The current system has been to keep whatever instrument I’m most recently playing on a stand and the rest in their cases, laying on beds, or even leaning up against the wall. Becca and I were getting kind of tired of tripping over these things in our office/studio room, so I got inspired to build a “guitar stand to end all guitar stands.”

After looking around online, I noticed that there is a trend for these DIY pvc pipe guitar stands. Yes, they serve the purpose, but I’m not too impressed by their appearance and besides, having cheap PVC pipe hold up my beloved instruments seems a little odd to me. Example here:

Being the crafty individual I am, I set out to find a cheap and elegant solution to building a guitar stand for myself. I immediately came to the conclusions that I’d like for it to be made out of wood and for it to look nice enough where you wouldn’t be embarrassed to have it sitting in your living room. After giving it some quick thought, I remembered the cedar materials I had left over from the deck project. With those, a few screws and a little bit of upholstery, I figured I could build something pretty quickly.

I couldn’t really find any plans for the type of design I wanted– a wood guitar stand with the capacity of four guitars– so I grabbed my measuring tape and figured out the dimensions that would work and sketched a quick diagram of what it should look like. I cut and sanded all of my wood pieces to fit. After assembling the frame from the cedar pieces using some wood screws and dowels I had laying around, I tossed on a clear coat of finish. Once dry, I cut a piece of 1″ thick dowel into five pieces to serve as the neck holders.

After getting the structure complete, I just needed some padding for the parts the guitars would be touching. I went and picked up some foam pipe insulator and cheap fabric. After getting the padding and fabric on with a stable gun and some adhesive spray, everything was complete!

I’m very proud of the way this turned out. I don’t have a ton of experience in woodworking, but this is a solid and decent looking solution for my needs. In my mind, it’s much nicer and elegant than the metal tubular (or pvc pipe) stands that I’ve seen elsewhere. The best part was, I only spent $10 to build it since I already had the wood lying around.

 

I really like this picture that I took last time we visited Florence. Too bad the camera that I took it with is now worth more as a paper weight than it is as a camera…

I initially tried to post this using Flickr’s “blog this” functionality but found it quite limiting in that it doesn’t let you choose positioning or image size.

This past Saturday evening I performed a set at the Furrer Farms Open House near Eugene. With just my voice, my Heritage H-535, and my Fender Blues DeVille amplifier, I played a set of a little bit over a half hour.

I covered a pretty good range of tunes, from Motown to old country blues to original songs. Unfortunately I don’t have any sound/video clips, but here’s the set list with the original performer in italics:

Bring It On Home - Sam Cooke
Shake Your Hips - Slim Harpo
Sometimes - Sister Hazel
Candle Eyes - Sean Sullivan
I Live the Life I Love - Muddy Waters
Way Back Home - Sean Sullivan
Stagger Lee - John Mississippi Hurt
I’ll Float You - Sean Sullivan
Sugar Daddy - Jackson 5
Perpetual Blues Machine - Keb’ Mo’
Prove Yourself - Sean Sullivan

My act served as a warm-up for the awesome performance that followed by The Procrastinators. I actually saw them play twice this weekend, which was a real treat (Friday night they played W.OW. Hall in Eugene.) Their performance of 19th Nervous Breakdown (originally done by The Rolling Stones) was rockin!

Awesome photos by Ben Garney. Check out Ben’s Flickr stream.