Keyboard manufacturers have been prominantly placing their corporate logos on the rear of their instruments for a long time. That makes sense — the equipment is going to be on stage and it's good to get your name out there facing the audience and photographers.

And some intrepid musicians have hacked the keyboard manufacturers' logos to personalize them. Let's take a look at some examples.

Here's one of my favorite musicians, Sigmund Snopek of Milwaukee. You can see how he's tweaked the Roland logo on his keyboard to express his ethnic heritage. Excellent.

And here's Ron Mael of the band Sparks on Saturday Night Live. He's swapped two letters on his Roland keyboard to spell out his first name. Clever.

And finally (here it comes...) here's Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls with her Kurzweil...

Yeah!

Is the darkness of the afternoon this time of year getting you down? Well, buck up. December 8th (roughly, depending on your specific latitude) was Analemma Day. Analemma Day is the day of the earliest sunset in mid-northern latitudes, and from here on into the summer the sun will set later in the day, each day, affording you more afternoon sunlight.

Note that this is not the same as the Winter Solstice, December 21st, the shortest day of the year, because the oribt of the earth is not circular, it's elliptical, and the earth moves a little faster during the time when it is closer to the sun than when it is further away. Check these out:

Wikipedia: Analemma

Analemma dot com

Sunrise Sunset dot com

Douglas Dodds: Analemma, My Analemma

Wikipedia: Kepler's laws of planetary motion

And in celebration of Analemma Day, and of Johannes Kepler, I got my kids a Kepler Elliptical Orbit Pizza:

The cool thing about a Kepler Elliptical Orbit Pizza is that all the slices are guaranteed to have the same area. (Ba-da-bing.)

Please enjoy the "Pre-Taped Call In Show" from Mr. Show.

YouTube: Pre-Taped Call In Show

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

I've become a big fan of Flight of the Conchords, the comedy folk duo from New Zealand.  I discovered them on YouTube, and have been enjoying NetFlixing the HBO series.

These are my favorite FotC clips on YouTube:

The Hiphopopotamus vs. The Rhymenoceros
Boom! She's So Hot
Jenny
1972 David Bowie
The Humans are Dead

Enjoy!

Here's some YouTube wonderment I've been enjoying lately:

YouTube: Barry Bonds' #756, From Four Rows Behind Ground Zero

YouTube: The Amazing Ross Sisters, Country Music Contortionists

YouTube: The Leningrad Cowboys, Red Army Choir, Sweet Home Alabama

YouTube: Weird Al Yankovic, Smells Like Nirvana

YouTube: Weird Al Yankovic, It's All About the Pentiums

YouTube: Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Smells Like Teen Spirit

YouTube: Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Wuthering Heights

The traffic in Mountain View was mighty fierce driving into work Thursday morning.   My office is next door to Google (Google actually owns the building) and it's across the street from Shoreline Amphitheatre.

So I arrive and see the Building Maintenance Guy in the parking lot.  And I ask him about the crowd...

BMG:	Ozzy Osbourne is at the Shoreline.
Don:	Really?  The Prince of Darkness is in town?!?  Cool!
BMG:	Yeah.  And there are half naked girls with spray paint on their breasts.

So there you go.  (By the way, we're hiring.)

In other randomness:

WFMU (non-commercial New York radio station) has an amazing radio blog.  Do check it out. http://blog.wfmu.org

For example, you can take the 80's pop music quiz.