Dennis McDonald's LIVING WITH TECHNOLOGY

This Year's Halloween Music

Dennis D. McDonald — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:30:53 +0000

This is what I’m pumping through the outdoor speakers tonight:

Ed Wood Soundtrack Music	Leonard Maltin’s Favorite Movie Themes	Shore, Howard
Empty Restaurant	Spirited Away	Hisaishi, Joe
Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone	Very Best Of Manhattan Transfer	UNKNOWN
A Perfect Evening For Flying Carpets	The Spell	Braheny, Kevin and Tim Clark
Total Halloween Terror 2 (short Version)	Best Of Total Terror Scary Halloween Music, Screams & Sounds	UNKNOWN
Nightmare Before Christmas Orchestral Suite	Leonard Maltin’s Favorite Movie Themes	Elfman, Danny
The Day the Earth Stood Still	The Science Fiction Album	Herrmann, Bernard
Lothlorien	The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring	Shore, Howard
End Credits	Coraline	Coulais, Bruno
Halloween Horror Scary Sounds – Haunted House	Halloween Horror - Scary Sounds and Music
The Dark Knight (Aggressive Expansion)	Batmania	Zimmer, Hans
Total Halloween Terror 10 (short Version)	Best Of Total Terror Scary Halloween Music, Screams & Sounds
Cirith Ungol	The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King	Shore, Howard
Is That What Everybody Wants	Solaris	Martinez, Cliff
Contact: The Primer	Contact	Silvestri, Alan
Dreaming	Coraline	Coulais, Bruno
Vertigo - Suite_Prelude	Bernard Herrmann - The Essential Film Music Collection	Herrmann, Bernard
Mars Attacks	The Science Fiction Album	Elfman, Danny

Herons Nesting Near Our House

Dennis D. McDonald — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:32:02 +0000

By Dennis McDonald

Word on the street is that the herons will eat the crayfish that are in the creek, as well as frogs.

A Walking Tour of Georgetown in Washington DC

Dennis D. McDonald — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:29:33 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

I took these pictures Saturday, December 13, 2008.

What I Listen To When I'm Not Listening to Classical Music or Podcasts

Dennis D. McDonald — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:11:39 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

Station (iTunes)	Genre
Groove Salad on SomaFM	Ambient Chill
Limbik Frequencies - Radio Elektro[u]nique	Ambient, Electronic, Techno
Chill Out Lounge (1.FM TM)	Chill Out, Lounge, Ambient
Raunchy Rhythms Radio	Dance Funky House
Hot Mix Radio 80	decades 80s pop
Ambient Popsicle (from Groovera)	Downtempo Adult Pop Neo-Soul
SmoothLounge.com	downtempo ambient smooth urban
GotRadio - Piano Perfect	Eclectic
Clubbing and Dance	House electro trance dance Top 40
SoulfulClassicJazz.com Radio	Jazz, Blues, Be-Bop
ASCAP LATINO - Latin	latin
Batanga Jazz	latin
Radio Frequence Metz Woippy Relax and Smooth	lounge jazz dub relax
radioio BIG BAND	Rock
radioioJazz. Your world. Your station. No boundaries. (c)2007 ioWorldMedia, inc.	Rock
radioioStandards. Your world. Your station. No boundaries. (c)2007 ioWorldMedia, inc.	Rock
.977 The Smooth Jazz Channel	Smooth Jazz
Gotradio - The Big Score	Soundtracks, New Age, Ambient Eclectic, Various
Futuradio Sweet	Sweet
#MUSIK.CLUB - WWW.RAUTEMUSIK.FM - 24H MIXED HANDS UP TRANCE DANCE TECHNO HARDSTYLE HOUSE AND MORE!	TECHNO DANCE TRANCE HOUSE
1.FM - Bombay Beats	World, indian

Election 2008 Pictures

Dennis D. McDonald — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:14:51 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

Halloween Music 2008

Dennis D. McDonald — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:52:09 +0000

By Dennis “The Slasher” McDonald

Ok, here’s what I’ve loaded onto the old iPod to play for the kids who come around Friday night hoping to get some treats:

Name	Album
Psycho - A Suite for Strings_The Knife	Bernard Herrmann - The Essential Film Music Collection
Vertigo - Suite_Prelude	Bernard Herrmann - The Essential Film Music Collection
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas Orchestral Suite	Leonard Maltin’s Favorite Movie Themes
Ed Wood Soundtrack Music	Leonard Maltin’s Favorite Movie Themes
Minas Morgul	The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Shelob’s Lair	The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Isengard Unleashed	The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
Main Themes {Jurassic Park}	Music of John Williams: 40 Years of Film Music
Intro Theme From The Twilight Zone	Soundtracks
The Day Of The River	Spirited Away
Road To Somewhere	Spirited Away
Die Walkure: Ride of the Valkyries: Ride Of The Valkyries -	Best of WAGNER
Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565	Johann Sebastian Bach - Berühmte Orgelwerke Vol. 2
Mars Attacks	The Science Fiction Album
The Day the Earth Stood Still	The Science Fiction Album
The Imperial March {Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back}	Music of John Williams: 40 Years of Film Music
Beetlejuice	Music From The Films Of Tim Burton
Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone	Very Best Of Manhattan Transfer
Is That What Everybody Wants	Solaris
A Perfect Evening For Flying Carpets	The Spell
The Spell	The Spell
Hide And Seek	A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Pictures of the "White City"

Dennis D. McDonald — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:14:43 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

Thanks to 37signals’ Signal vs. Noise blog for pointing out photographs of the 1893 Columbian Exposition posted by the Chicago Tribune.

Seeing these picture brings back memories of one of my favorite “pop history” books, Devil in the White City (this links to my book review).

Here is a quote from my own review:

The entire book is fascinating. It crosses paths with other themes of American history, including electrification, architectural competitions, urban planning, mechanical engineering, public relations, the Ferris Wheel — even Walt Disney is mentioned.

If you can think of other books that do as good and as entertaining a job in combining social history with the history of science and engineering, please let me know by commenting below!

When Animated Banner Ads Suck

Dennis D. McDonald — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:01:56 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

Before you proclaim the ascendancy of community orientation, audience engagement, shared innovation, and online social partnership, you need to realize that good old contempt-for-the-customer is alive and kicking.

Thanks to Google Chrome’s inability (unwillingness?) to block animated ads, my eyes were recently drawn to this banner ad (this is a static screen shot; click it to display the full size image):

It took me a while to understand the message. At first I thought the little figures were spiders. Then I saw they were human figures as the image zoomed in. What I thought at first was the drumming of fingers is actually manipulation-as-marionette by remote strings.

That’s what this product is supposed to enable you to do — treat your customers like puppets?

If that’s the intention, someone at Adobe hasn’t gotten the message about social media and collaboration and is continuing with the same old “let’s see what we can make our customers do” schtick.

I guess I know what the metrics for this ad are — and they don’t have anything to do with actual purchasing behavior or customer satisfaction. Maybe that’s what’s intended.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

Butterfly With Pumpkin and Mum

Dennis D. McDonald — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:18:01 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

Here is a late Summer visitor to our front porch:

It flew away right after I took these pictures.

Viburnum With Cat

Dennis D. McDonald — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:53:03 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

Flying Penguins

Dennis D. McDonald — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:40:45 +0000

8 Things You Didn't Know About Me

Dennis D. McDonald — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:09:03 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

OK, in response to Luis Suarez’s “tagging game” challenge, here is my list of 8 things you didn’t know about me:

My Confirmation name is Peter.
My favorite firework is this one.
I once built a phonograph out of spare parts.
One of my children might be part Swedish.
Sometimes when we are driving long distances I read out loud to my wife.
Years ago I stopped working while on airplanes and started sleeping on them instead.
Somewhere in my attic is a box of 80-column punch cards containing all my dissertation data.
Being an independent consultant is fun but I would enjoy a long term gig!

Here are the rules of this tagging game:

Link to your tagger and post these rules.
List EIGHT random facts about yourself.
Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names.
Let them know they’ve been tagged.

And here are the people I’m tagging:

GG's 100th Birthday Party Pictures

Dennis D. McDonald — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:11:08 +0000

Reload this page to get a different selection of pictures from GG's 100th Birthday Party!

www.flickr.com

My Blue Bench

Dennis D. McDonald — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:27:26 +0000

Podcasting Test

Dennis D. McDonald — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:26:36 +0000

By Dennis D. McDonald

I have recorded a short file to demonstrate the speed and ease with which podcasts can be created. Click here to download the MP3 file I just created.

I recorded the short podcast, I saved it as a .wav file to my desktop, imported it into iTunes, used the simple "convert selection to MP3" command to convert the file format, then I uploaded the file to my blog's audio storage folder (which I had previously set up). I then created the blog post that you are now reading and inserted a link to the stored file. The entire process took about 5 minutes, total.