Kudos to Greig, a dude I know, for his amazing Theremin/Rock Band crossover. Almost 100,000 views on YouTube so far.

Why? BECAUSE HE CAN.

Oh, and with a neural interface too…

Be sure to visit the videos’ homepages on YouTube to get the details on what he’s doing.

I don’t care if this is tongue-in-cheek. Everyone involved should be maimed in indescribably unpleasant ways for their participation.

A YouTube commenter summed it up hilariously:

“stemcellfilms (9 seconds ago) 

and yeah, beyond the awfulness, something that hasnt been addressed is the indoctrination of children into making songs with seemingly benign but sinister disneyesque musical theory, that just rings babylon throughout every note the poor child sings. This is the next advancement of guitar hero mindcontrol, first they destroy music then they rebuild it in their image: the state represents our love for the music; music represents our love for the state.”

If the video didn’t leave you with post-traumatic stress disorder (or even if it did), you can find out more about the product at… Microsoft.com.

“Come and meet my son in law, David Nixon, will you, and the Mellotron.”

A wonderful British Pathe short film:

I just love the interplay between these guys. Eric Robinson’s feigned ignorance. And David’s flourish at the end in time to the music is sublime.

As for Jeff Unwin… well, Jeff, no-one likes a smart-arse.

Mellotron: recommended for Viennese Waltzes and music to accompany scenes from Thunderbirds.

I could watch this video all day.

Via BoingBoing

This week saw GroupSmarts release an interesting update to their MemoryMiner social photo organiser application. MemoryMiner is a social photo organiser for Mac OS X, allowing users to tag imported photos by who appears in them (the ability to draw a marquee around a subject in a photo is somewhat similar to Facebook’s photo tagging service). Memory Miner also incorporates time-based selection, tagging and geotagging.

If you’d like to see a visual demo, check out MacBreak’s video interview with GroupSmarts [QuickTime movie, 93.6MB]. Warning: Merlin Mann present. I don’t mind him but I know that many do…

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I received my new MacBook on Friday, so I’ve been swiftly copying everything I can onto it in the hope of moving lock-stock to it from my iMac G5 in the next few days. Some initial thoughts:

It’s built like a tank.

I managed to drop it this morning but despite a nasty deflection off a wooden desk it survived unscathed (the desk came off worse somehow – a big slice taken out of it).

The AirPort connection is erratic

This could be none of the MacBook’s fault, since my AirPort Express is very flaky, but it does tend to drop connections quite a lot. I haven’t had enough time yet to evaluate it on the office or university WiFi to verify this though.

The power system is extremely well designed

The battery itself is really very capacious – and the MagSafe adaptor is a decided improvement on the old Apple adaptor. Power management is also very good – including the very cool safe sleep (watch video demo) function.

The screen is a fingerprint magnet

I should also say that it looks fantastic in all conditions despite this – but I’m definitely going to have to get a proper cleaning cloth…

The iSight is streets ahead of the FireWire version

Perhaps because it’s so small – but having it built-in is so much more natural during conference use than an external camera. The resolution also seems better, though it’s probably just the same in fact.

It gets hot

Really quite hot! Not enough to burn you, but certainly a little uncomfortable for long periods on your lap. The obvious solution is to put it on a desk, but clearly this isn’t always possible. This isn’t really a design fault – I’d rather have a hot but quiet notebook than the noise of a small aircraft engine taking off every time I run something demanding. Interestingly, the battery doesn’t heat up at all, unlike our 12″ PowerBook G4.

It’s fast

Really very fast! Rosetta apps (ones written for PowerPC chips and so which run in a transparent emulation layer) aren’t noticeably slower, though I’ve been sticking to Universal Binaries wherever possible out of consistency.

The graphics chip could be better

It relies on Intel’s integrated graphics system, and so doesn’t have a dedicated graphics chip in the normal sense of the word. This is a bit of a shame, as my quick high definition video tests show. Playing 1080p24 clips from Apple’s HD movie trailers site (an activity which pushes my iMac G5 2Ghz over the edge) hardly even taxes the processor cores (about 20% CPU usage on each). But actually displaying twenty-four frames of 1920×1080 seems to cause the graphics system a bit of a problem. QuickTime Player reports that the full frame rate is being attained, but there’s a noticeable flicker. This could be a player/codec issue, so I’ll persist and see what I can find out.

However, 720p24 plays great. EyeTV footage looks fantastic in progressive scan mode too.

Overall, I’m really happy with the machine. I think it’s one of the best-value machines that Apple have ever made, and it will serve me well.