Awesome Shop Vac Video

I almost didn't watch this because I worried that "kinetic typography" meant people nattering about how Helvetica is better than Arial (yawn). Nothing further from the truth. This is a very cool video and it's surprising to me how much having the right font really adds to the imagery. Anyway, if you haven't seen it yet it's worth taking a look.
(via Twitter. I first saw it from Len Peralta, but it's been well retweeted since then.)

What's A Few Notches Below "Internet Famous"?

One of the topics that I could talk about but is rapidly turning into "old news" is the existence of the Jonathan Coulton concert DVD called Best. Concert. Ever. This is a concert recording of a show he did in San Francisco (with Paul & Storm) back in February 2008. I was aware it was coming out from Coulton's Twitter or RSS feed but I'd seen the show live so I wasn't in a major hurry or anything. Then shortly after it came out I got an email from a friend saying that Karin and I showed up in the audience "several times". So thus reminded I ordered the disc. First off, I recommend the disc naturally. You get an immediate link to download the music tracks and then a few days later you get the DVD/CD combo set. To be honest I haven't taken the CD out - I mean I had the audio files already, but the music tracks are worth having. They may represent things you already had - but it does have the Zen Drum version of Mr. FancyPants which I've been wanting well ... ever since I saw this show in back in February 2008. And the DVD is a lot of fun to watch. I haven't listened to the commentary track yet, but Karin said it was funny. I did watch the regular concert part but I watched it from an unusual perspective: I wanted to know if it would be unhealthy to play the "Every time we see Tim or Karin on-screen we take a drink" drinking game. Now I should note I was not playing said game, I was just checking. For the first third or so I thought "man, people are crazy. I haven't seen either of us at all", then there were some shots. And some more shots. Then I saw a shot from the left wings and I remembered "Oh that's right, that one camera guy really liked that angle and parked over there quite a bit." We quickly went from "this would be a sucky drinking game" to "Well, that song would have been a bit much to be doing to shots" to "No, this would not be a shot-drinking game" to "Oh no, you wouldn't even want to play this game with a mild beer". In short, we turn up a lot in this video. No idea why especially, I suppose just my magnetic personality and charisma carries through .... So if you want to know what I was up to about a year and a half ago, you could do worse than to watch this concert DVD. Which is awesome in its own right, even without the bits featuring me or Karin. You should really go see Coulton live, but this DVD is a good substitute if that's all you can manage.
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