Hung Truong: The Blog!

Asian Guys Doing Karaoke (Badly)

So while I was on Youtube looking for actual karaoke videos (like for me to sing along), I found these videos of two asian guys playing Karaoke Revolution. The guy on the left is pretty good, and the guy on the right is not quite as good…

There’s something to be said about hearing two Asian guys singing endless love to each other… And California Dreamin’ is just terrible! They seriously need to switch parts.

Anyway, these videos are the real reason why Youtube is freakin’ popular, so I thought I’d share the wealth:

Greatest Love of All

Endless Love

California Dreamin’

Believe it or not, these videos really make me want to run out and get Karaoke Revolution. They have “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”? I must get it.

Why David Letterman Is Clearly Superior to Jay Leno

I’d always known David Letterman was better than Jay Leno, but after he implemented a new feature I like to call the “Kevin Eubanks Laugh Clip,” David Letterman is the only late night talk show host (besides Conan ‘o Brien).

Basically, David tells a joke, then they show a clip of Kevin Eubanks laughing like a dumbass. Pure brilliance.

Pandora Internet Radio – Find Music You Like!

So I guess this has been around for a while, and I tried it a long time ago and forgot about it. Pandora is this online radio thing. You give it an artist or a song that you like, and Pandora creates a radio station that plays music it thinks you’ll like. For instance, I made a “Toasters” radio station, and it mostly plays ska. The idea is that you’ll find new music you’ll like and buy tons.

It seems like their algorithm is pretty complicated:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

It’s actually done a pretty good job of finding music I like. The Aquabats station plays a lot of music I already own and like. The other songs are okay too.

After playing with it for a few days, I have a few complaints. First, they repeat themselves way too much. I’ve heard The Toaster’s “Can I Get Another” like, four times already! Next, they only let you skip so many songs every hour. You can get around this by making more than one station and switching them (which will play a new song!).

Other than the weak variety of songs, Pandora seems to work pretty well. It’s at least nice to have free music that you’ll probably like streaming automatically.

Mogu People Pillows – WTF!?

So I saw this thread on fatwallet about “Mogu People.” Apparently they’re these squishy pillows in the form of people. Here’s the hippy company’s description:

Mogu People are reminders of what is best in all of us. Each one represents a positive human ideal or emotion. By their presence, Mogu People remind us to use our positive attributes to overcome challenges, reach our goals and follow our dreams. Keep them around to motivate you throughout the day or share them with others to empower their day.

Friendship, love, encouragement, motivation, sympathy, apologies, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, holidays…

I guess they were popular a few years ago, but I never heard of them. They seem to be really cheap now. Anyway, one of them really creeps me out. The Success one:

Seriously, it looks like an alien! I can imagine waking up, seeing this next to me, and flipping out (and killing people)!

Cobalt Flux – GET!

Well, it’s not quite gotten, but I won and paid for a Cobalt Flux on eBay, and it shipped today. Hopefully it’ll work and stuff. I’d been thinking of getting one for a while, since my DDR skills had advanced a bit (and lost some weight) since this:

Right now I’m using a normal pad, but upgrading to the kick ass metal pad should help me get better scores. Like the Power Glove! It cost a pretty penny ($280 shipped), but it also came with two games that I already have. So I can auction those off to bring the price down. Usually they go for $300 new plus like $50 for shipping. Plus you have to wait two weeks!

In all, I’m calculating that I saved about $100 (after I sell the extra games). These DDR Pads are supposed to be pretty sturdy, so hopefully that means I don’t get a dud. I guess I’ll have a full review up once I play on the pads!