My most important performance in July

August 1st, 2010 | By admin

July was mad busy. There were a few big things to prepare for. First was getting ready for the much loved EPP performance at Nerdapalooza. Next was going to DC to one) speak on a panel and two) perform Particle Business, TEDx style. My final performance on the microphone was to be a reader in my sister wedding. The last was the biggest deal. What was rapping or speaking to scientists compare to stepping up for your family?

When I first got the call, my thought was to read Dr. Suess’s “Oh the Places You’ll Go”. That had the right vibe and cuteness and her reaction was positive but I wanted something even more unique. This is a unique bride and groom. I searched the web and even went through some Joseph Campbell writing looking for something awesome, smart, meaningful. I figured I wanted people to laugh and then cry. The internet let me down. Nothing was awesome enough.

In my 3 credit hours of Marketing, all I truly remember is “Know your target audience”.  Well, the bride and groom are big baseball fans and the vows were going to actually be said at home plate of their favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies. This led me to come across a piece called “Marriage and Baseball”. I was going going to go with that until I actually read it and thought it sucked. It was flat. I won’t even link to it. That sucky piece did inspire me to go off and do my own thing (kinda like how that dumb Souljah Boy song inspired “Milk & Doo Doo“)

Now play ball!

CONGRATS STEF AND AL FROM YOUR BROTHER!

Wrapup – National Academies Communications Fair

July 22nd, 2010 | By 49

What an awesome and exhausting time!

AM – Reel Science

Let me explain some drama that morning. I had crafted this OpenOffice Presentation to run from my Macbook Pro 15. Well the Mac  failed to display to their house projector system with two separate mini-display port adapters! My bacon was only saved via the quick thinking of Lauren Aguiree. She suggested I export as a PDF to run on the ‘house’  laptop. This worked with a bare 30 seconds to spare!

EDIT: I went to the Genius Bar in the Apple Store. They duplicated the issue and will be replacing my logic board. Because of my wifi trouble at home, they will also be replacing the Airport card. Sucks that the hardware crapped out but I’m thankful for AppleCare and having a physical store to go to for technical help.

The panel was titled “Reel Science: Communicating Science Through Visual Media”. It had Lauren Aguirre from PBS/Nova, John Hoffman from HBO Documentary Films, Beth Nissen from NBC Learn and myself. I think we were very well received by the audience. Chris Palmer was a great ring master. I loved how he introduced us with our normal credentials, would slap the table and say “AND HERE IS WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW!” . My “Reel Science” speech is available on Rapbassador.com!

A memorable part of the panel was when Nissen gave a quote from a poet “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”

Post-panel - Lauren Aguirre, Beth Nissen, Chris Palmer, Steven Rush

PM – TEDx

In the afternoon I was part of some TED Tryouts. Technically it was TEDx Tryouts because it wasn’t officially part of TED but ran in the exact TED format. We also had Kelly Stoetzel, the Content Director at TED. All of the speakers were excellent! I had fun performing Particle Business in which I had a cardboard cutout of Albert Einstein rap the hook and was slapping hands with people in the crowd (who were apparently important bosses and stuff!). I had totally forgotten that I actually mention the city in Particle Business “ballot box for better decisions in DC” until I actually said them on stage! That reminds me of when I rapped at Fermilab and while performing Starblazer it came to me that I was rapping about “shooting protons” and “I’m the rhymer super-collider”. I’m so dumb sometimes.

DC was great. I got to hang with my mom. See the International Spy Museum. Stay at a fancy-pants hotel (with a goldfish named Ana). Hang with friends, Winn & Chuq, who live in the area. Lose my cellphone (VERZION! WHERE IS MY INCREDIBLE?) in Winn’s truck. Talk World Cup with some cabbies. Eat some fine tapas. Drink some beer. Meet a BUNCH of cool people. Share some science. The ~36 hours of DC were certainly good times!

funky49 rapping with Albert Einstein

WRAPUP – Nerdapalooza 2010

July 19th, 2010 | By admin

Holy Monkey what a good time. I’ll try to give my perspective in a serial fashion, as best my brain has recorded it.

Friday: Got off of work, did some last minute prep and packed up the car for the drive to the hotel. The gf was working on something and didn’t let me see it. Saw Devo Spice & Schaffer at the hotel. It’s starting! Stopped for a big gulp for the gf and a quart for myself. The big gulp was flasked with some goodness and we continued to A Comic Shop. WOW THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE. Handshakes and hugs from old and new friends online. An amazing milling of people. The star was Lars, aka Snipeyhead’s husband who climbed into my trunk for the ride to the Pre-Party After-Party at the “EPP House”. That was a smaller milling of nerdcore’s finest. Dr. Awkward had some music video filmed there, some of Scrub Club rapped and EPP had a set. We bounced after that for some Taco Bell and sleep.

Saturday: Participated in a very intimate meetup of fans of Hipster Please. Checked in as an artist and was rewarded with walking around with all 6 artist badges around my neck. Grabbed my HD Ninja red headgear and rocked out for the first song of their set. I got really jumpy and moshy and fist pumpy for Carformer. I hope me being a fan of that jam made others get more excited and into their set. It’s tough being the first guys on deck. The audience isn’t into any kind of groove but these guys are business, serious. Got some food. Met up with our friend Louie (the kind of friend you get intoxicated with and watch the season finale of Battlestar Galactica) and his ladyfriend he tricked into coming to nerd-ville.  Listened to a few other acts but didn’t really get in the crowd until MegaRan rocked it. Dreammaster=great. Freestyling=win. Since he was another guy who has been around since the 2007 Nerdapalooza in Florida, we spoke about how the event has grown. Ah snap, Don Myers with tshirtbordello.com was so awesome with his zombie makeup and tricked out merch truck. We made sure to buy from him in support (and because the shirts were awesome). Was having lots of fun with the Schaffer & Killer Robots sets. Crashed too fast to catch the Epic Win Burlesque Show to much, much sadness. Hopefully next year they will be back!

Sunday: Let the gf sleep while I surfed some web at 7am downstairs. I bumped into Rappy who had not slept yet. We went to his room and brainstormed for some silly lyrics when I tucked himself into bed and went to sleep. I went downstairs and hung out with some peeps (including bbear) and wrote more lyrics. Checked out of the hotel, packed up the car. Got dressed in robes. Walked into the crowd as the rest of EPP covered a Pixies song and thanked them for being there. Actually we had Domino’s pizza delivered to the stage and we gave out a pizza communion. I was saying to people “Pizza be with you”. We rapped. We did okay I guess. :) The secret my gf didn’t let me see on Friday? She had made signs! One said “I <heart> U FUNK49″ and the other one said “YOU MAKE ME SHINE”. She held up the second one during EPP’s song “Shine” and it made me tear and choke up on stage!

Afterwards I tried to help with the mic situation for The HT and Kabuto because I know it was an issue last year. I felt I needed to be on stage for the Scrub Club set so I got up there and hopefully helped hype the crowd. That Dr. Awkward has lots of energy. I was following his lead by jumping around so much. After the SCR set I was dead. Exhausted. Dehydrated. Out of commish. I think I never properly re-hydrated from the drinking the night before. We got some Cracker Barrel but I was still tapped out. Came back and hung out with our people. Checked out of the merch area and left for home (we had work the next morning!). There is TOO MUCH to do at Nerdapalooza and I guess that’s a good thing. You feel bad when you need to withdraw and take a knee but there is always action ready when you are… or a friend to hug when you turn around. It’s amazing!

Good times. Save now to make it out to next year’s Nerdapalooza, if the amazing Hex will allow it. :)

National Academies Communications Fair 2010

June 14th, 2010 | By 49

The honor is mine. I am humbled.

I have been asked to speak at the National Academies Communications Fair 2010 for the National Academy of Sciences. It will be in Washington, DC. I’m on a panel about science communication. Also on the panel are individuals from NBC, HBO and PBS! I need a three letter designation too so I’m representing EPP! My role is “science rapbassador, whose online rap video for Fermilab has helped communicate the science of particle acceleration.” Yeah, this is some cool fallout from Fermilab’s Particle Business music video! Thanks to Ben Kilminster for hipping the National Academy of Sciences to me!

In the morning I’ll be talking about science outreach via hip-hop and Particle Business. In the afternoon, there is going to be some TED Tryouts for which I’ll be doing Particle Business live!

The honor is mine. I am humbled.

What’s ALSO cool is that I rapped with my friends/bandmates EPP over the weekend in Orlando. This Saturday we’ll be performing at Florida Supercon in Miami. This will be my first time at Florida Supercon. Richard Roundtree (SHAFT!) will be there in addition to “Kat” From Battlestar Galactica!

Excitement!

Clubbing in the house

June 12th, 2010 | By 49

Apps I’ve added to my Apple MBP 15:

iStat – gives info like memory/hdd space/temps/fan speeds on the Dashboard.

gfxCardStatus – allows you to see if you’re using the intel video chipset or  nVidia.

Monolingual – frees up hd space by deleting languages like Finnish. I am keeping Klingon. nearly 2 gigs was freed!

VLC – for video playback (thanks Eric H)

Nambu – Twitter client

Problem:

The MBP stopped talking properly to the wifi at home. A download from Ableton kept going but web browsing was mostly nil. SAFari said there was no internet connection. Chrome/Gmail said there was a limited connection. Tried turning Airport off/on and re-adding my WAP. No dice. Gf’s Dell was on it fine. Giving the MBP the doubt I power cycled the router for 15 minutes. No dice. Restarted the MBP and all is well again. Apparently there is an issue with my Actiontec MI-424 ‘erizon ‘IOS router and Apple Airport wifi card.

While “Erasing” an external hard drive, Time Machine seemed to lock up so I had to learn about using Force Quit. Then Finder crashed. Then I told it to restart and it hung with just my background image on the display. I let that sit and then read about doing a Control-Command-Power button to restart  it. That did the trick! Fourth day of ownership and I’m becoming a real power user eh? The external hard drive is an ugly brown but since its the dedicated Time Machine drive, I called it Doc Brown.

Ownership Notes:

Geez this thing is quiet. It’s a bit creepy. You hear the 5400rpm hd ticking when its being accessed, otherwise you have to lean toward the laptop to hear its fans. Apparently there are two of them… spinning at ~2000rpm.

In the store, I didn’t like the silver border of the anti-glare/matte display. It looks nicer in the softer lights of home?

The i5 cpu is a beast. The only time I was able to make this thing bog down was when I had Server 2003 and Windows 7 VMs going at the same time.  I want to render video on this thing!