Videos like this remind of me of how much of a challenge it must be for an avid Fox News watcher to know what's going on in the world.

John was no saint, but he gave us some great music and he was an avid anti-war activist.

His influence was such that the USA was literally afraid of him opening his mouth.

Cheers, John, wherever you are.

I'm cool with my mom being on Facebook, but I just cannot yet bring myself to add my Grandma. She hasn't got a profile pic yet, so I don't think she's gone avid.

I've hear Jon Stewart is an avid gamer as well. He mentioned playing UT on his show a few years ago, so I imagine he still dabbles.

I hear he is or was a avid WOW player as well.

as an avid drummer I think I have a good idea for simple secret knock... a bit long, maybe...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UofdWQG346k

Thank you guys. I feel so pretty with my new diamond. This goes to show you that with tenacity, you too can get a diamond in 2 years and 8 months, only at the cost of life, love and liberty. And who needs that anyway...

I do my best to be a good guy around the sift, I've only ever been friendly to the vast majority of people here and I wish people would do the same all around. I've taken some flak for having black humor, but to that I say fuck that, humor is humor - if one person gets my joke, it's a success. This community has been a boon to me, I enjoy being here and I hope this ride never stops.

I don't make a huge distinction between "real life" and this community, which is why I've got many of you of facebook and like to consider most of you as friends - I'm pleased that some of you do the same back. This means that the way I act here is not far from how I actually am, many people take on a persona, and sure, to a degree I do that too, but I stand by everything I've ever said on this site and I think that's the only right way to do it.

It can be hard to get a reading of people based on comments, because we only get slivers of personality shown through that - this is partly why I spend a lot of time in the sift lounge. In there you get a much fuller picture of people, which I think is invaluable in a good community. So come on in and have a chat.. must I really put a red light on the door, before you lurkers will tip-toe in?

Throbbin, thanks! I agree in your assessment.

blankfist, I'm a heavy drinker, but when I do drink, it's usually heavy. And who don't like the boobies!

dystopianfuturetoday, I'm only a maniac by night. I blame my bat-suit and cloak.

kronosposeidon, swedes have nothing on danish vikings. We used to own them. Still, death by Samson is something I try to avoid.. but the diamond was so shiny and nice, I had to do it!

EndAll, aw shucks, you're not so bad yourself, mate.

campionidelmundo, but.. it's SO shiny! *gaze* Thanks for making the sift all pomp and pretty so I can stand being here for so long at a time.

dotdude, thanks for many good talks in the lounge. I think the two of us are the most avid users of that thing.. we need to find some sort of sifter-bait, so we can get more people in there.

UsesProzac: Well, why don't your reach on in there and figure out...


berticus, if I ever get over 9000 star points the sift will explode all over the place in peoples hair and stuff.. Thanks man, I hope to see you in the lounge more often, even though you've gotten so busy with school.

MikesHL13, indeed, see you in the lounge. Thank you for always being in there and being such a great friendly presence on the sift.

Ornthoron, I think I will. Delicious Belgian beer is delicious.

Sagemind, that clip made me laugh hard, so I couldn't help but sift it: http://www.videosift.com/video/It-s-a-ME-car-The-G-Wiz-on-Top-Gear

drax, are you coming on to me?


Wall-of-Text crits you for over 9000. OVER 9000!!

I am as avid an Opera fan as dag is a fan of Apple. The speed of Opera is fantastic, and all the gadgets that gwiz mentions are just what I need for a streamlined browsing experience. They are almost all extremely useful, and don't seem like bloatware to me at all. Features I use all the time are among others mouse gestures, speed dial, inline search (this one especially is much overlooked and AFAIK exclusive to Opera), Opera Link, and a very decent adblocker. Sure, you can get a lot of it as addons with Firefox, but then you have to work for it, and you run into scenarios like blankfist's above. Plus that Opera seems to have a keen sense of what the consumers need, and is often first out with new useful features.

Chrome is unacceptable to me due to Google harvesting statistics on my browsing habits. And running in incognito mode all the time is impractical.

I didn't realize there were such avid Hitchens fanboys on the sift, crimeny!

Hitchens has a pretty good grasp of the geo-political mistakes of the West since World War 2, but he falls short on everything prior to that.

When it comes to Islamic extremism, I've come to believe that the people pulling the strings, the terrorist leaders, mullahs, rulers, etc., care about nothing but staying in power. I'd be surprised if they genuinely believed the religion they use to stay in power. Fundamental Islam is merely the yolk they use to keep their people down, or make others do their bidding. It's only differs from Christianity in the west, in that the Christians don't openly tell their followers to kill people, they just imply it. Saying that Islam is the problem is taking the easy way out, Islam is the tool, the problem is the people using it as a weapon.

Bad people will always use what ever means they can to take and maintain power over others. Be it religion, money, or whatever. The trick to defeating them is to stop them before they can seize power, and if that can't be done, then to marginalize their effectiveness so that their followers/oppressed lose faith/fear and wrest them from power. The only people who can effectively destroy something like Al Queda, the House of Saud, or Iran's tyrannical government, are the people under their boot. The West should stop fighting the oppressors and start strengthening the oppressed.

^I dream of electric sheep, rottenseed. Electric sheep.

>> ^griefer_queafer:
I'm interested in this. Blank, is there a link to some original blog or sift talk where you talk about the project so I can catch up?
I never work 1:1 in editing, even though I would love to. Its always so maddening to know you are not working with what you REALLY have, quality-wise. Anyhow... good luck.


Sorry, griefer, forgot to reply to this one. Even when you work 1:1 in Avid, if you're using HD it really cannot visually reproduce the quality. You have to wait to see it on something that can properly reproduce the quality. For an HD deck, it takes a lot of power to play back 60 frames at high res, and my Avid system isn't strong enough to do that so it reduces the image.

We did have a blog and a site for a while, but recently we changed the movie title so all that changed.

yeah..you got me..you got the tater.
was waxing nostalgic last night.im glad somebody else enjoyed starships "stranger",and while i did enjoy DIO's solo projects ..well..ok,only the first two albums,i totally agree with you that he did his best work with sabbath.
i read an interview with tony iommi and he stated that dio had such a great range it freed him up to play much more complicated scales than with ozzy.
while i am an avid sabbath fan,my favorite ozzy/sabbath albums are really just the first 5.never say die and technical ecstasy are ok but too experimental in my opinion.

this eclipse was really a huge letdown for me... and video reportings like this actually have me scratching my head and wondering what the hell happened...

july 22nd - from 8am to 10:30am i was near the top of taiwan's 2nd highest mountain, hshuehshan or snow mountain (3886m), avidly watching for this phenomenon on a very bright and nearly cloudless day

i literally saw very little to nothing -- i know, i know... even people here in taiwan are posting photos and saying the 'sky dimmed noticeably' ... but i noticed no dimming whatsoever, and could only see a very slight after-image-type of bright 'elipse' layered over a small part of the sun if i quickly glanced away and back (don't worry, i was wearing some nice polarizing sunglasses)

i took many digital photos and video throughout this period and they also show nothing special, but perhaps that was simply my camera or settings (though i tinkered with all possible settings including time lapse

the only other indication i had that 'something' was occurring was in my holding up a pinhole card to the sun and casting its shadow onto another piece of white card i would set on the ground - even though this showed that something was obscuring the sun, there was no visible dimming whatsoever to the 'not-quite' naked eye

anyway, very disappointing results for something that i thought i had carefully anticipated and planned for

3030 way past the millennium, check it out
Yo, Deltron thunderforce, ain't no other source of sunlight
Two ton mic, leave you toungue-tied
Runnin amuck with technology with no apology
Shoutin out to my colony with third eye physiology
Millennium past apocalypse is all I spit
Make you swallow it - your weak style, I'll abolish it
with nuclear rockets they glued to your optics with sci-fi
Unsettlin, man and metal blends
Underground chillin with the Mole Man, and his whole fam
Inhibit bacterial growth, material wrote
Impenetrable, incontestable, indigestible intelligence
Never let a computer tell me SHIT
It's rapid innovation, penetratin
Artificial life forms, who bite songs
I'm a buy a vest, lie is next, then I'll flip the bio-techs
Right into the wireless; your third eye is hit with psoriasis
The mightiest, Deltron Zero
Traverse and purge the travesties that tempt your earholds
The area of distribution, lifts the clueless
My flow is like, liquid oxygen
Rip it often with specific impulse, increasin thrust
Grease the cuts - unleash a cluster of thoughts I muster
I talk to touch ya, and rupture commercial communications
Convert solar energy, into imagery
In the mind's eye, blindside the contagious
With radioactive isotopes to decay them
Atomic mass they small as fragments
I magnetize the avid lies
My radiation shields reflects, rejects Decepticons
who take the truth and stretch it long, while I bless a song
Next level incredible, metal melding
Flexability and my engine is never failing

All your rhyme histories combined couldn't violate
the Prime Optimus operative
Use my hydrometer to see how warm you are, watch me form a star
Hydrogen turned to helium when I shine
Ridin 'em revealin 'em leadin 'em to the vacuum
Interact with tunes in my digital citadel
Critical pivotal with the mental shit on you
Spit infinity, hiden energies too dope for our planet
Star spannin, slammin hymms with
mechanical limbs, scanning your lens
with cosmic rays, you'll all get played, your brain's inferior
I hit the lateral AND posterior
My science is eerier
Ionic bonding for your moronic pondering, meet the armorines
My micro machines, might throw your team, into paralysis
They not talented, just a malady
Worry 'bout a salary, creative casualty
Couldn't defrag my power density intensity
Nonequivalence, nine hundred Newtons
Crush you like croutons, you plus Houston
Hiero's like dipoles inside a silo
Turbulence ten-fold, never simple
Defies accepted methods development most unique
Paralyze central nervous when you close to me
Interstellar void fills with color, appears to bubble
and split into four like amoeba
Inhabitin planets with, grandiose boast
and coast like Silver Surfer, feel the purpoise
High velocity, verbal atrocities
Fire resistance, better hire assistants
My pistons glisten ultra, high performance
Inside your private quarters where I fry your components

You walked out, dag?! But you missed the best part at the end when (SPOILER ALERT) Ewan McGregor parachutes back to earth unconscious and violently takes out a group of pedestrians with his limp appendages. I kid you not, that is in the movie, and it is hilariously out of place. The movie wasn't terrible, but then again I didn't go in with high expectations.

@KP, that probably had more to do with the volume set by the projectionist. Although, when a movie is perceived as "loud" it could just be that the mix has proper highs and lows without it being compressed -- don't think compression with a codec, but compressing the high and low ranges into middle ranges so explosions and dialogue can coexist in the same shot without the explosion overtaking the dialogue like it would in reality.

The Incredible Hulk sound mix also has a wide spread between lows and highs, which I'm a fan of. But, yeah, Terminator was a huge let down. So was Wolverine. Being an avid comic reader of Wolvie back in the day, I think they missed a number of opportunities with revealing his bone claws, but whatever...

So far, Star Trek is the big summer movie to see. Sad.

dick dale?
everyone knows dick dale!
if you ever saw the movie "pulp fiction"..
you have heard dick dale.
what a great short vid,
i could not agree more..
i cant stand the vanilla,cookie-cutter sameness of most of commercial music.
i stopped paying attention to that fluff in the early 90's,
and being such an avid music fan,finding new and interesting music was more of a co-operative search.
people would share what they found,and those people would pass it on.
with the internet,that form of discovery is that much easier.
i have found more fantastic music on the internet than any corporate outlet could ever supply.
sift members have introduced me to some fantastic music.
i really dont know whats going to happen to corporate music,
and i dont much care.
music is an experience to be shared,
and there is so much great music to be found.
the best way is to share with each other.
let the media conglomerates choke on their own greed.
they can keep brittany spears.
im not interested.