Tag: christmas

Final 2011 Christmas Song Playlist

Here’s my final 2011 Christmas song playlist.

Christmas Playlist

57 songs, 3.2 hours

Winter Song Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson

Last Christmas Wham!

The Little Drummer Boy Johnny Cash

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Christmas Day Dido

Christmas For Cowboys John Denver

O Come All Ye Faithful Art Garfunkel

Father Christmas OK Go

Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer Jack Johnson

Don Quixote’s Christmas Bonanza Gorillaz

Feliz Navidad Fenix TX

Christmas In Space Tori Amos

The Little Drum Machine Boy Beck

THE RETURN OF THE RED BARON The Royal Guardsmen – Snoopy And His Friens

SNOOPY VS. THE RED BARON The Royal Guardsmen – Snoopy And His Friens

SNOOPY’S CHRISTMAS The Royal Guardsmen – Snoopy And His Friens

The Chanukah Song Adam Sandler

Donna & Blitzen Badly Drawn Boy

O Holy Night Avril Lavigne, Chantal Kreviazuk

It Came upon a Midnight Clear Sixpence None The Richer

Little Drummer Boy Tori Amos

Xmas Cake Rilo Kiley

Gaudete Steeleye Span

Ring Out, Solstice Bells Jethro Tull

The Little Drummer Boy The Harry Simeone Chorale

Pavane Jethro Tull

Frosty The Snowman Leon Redbone And Dr. John

I Believe In Father Christmas Greg Lake

Christmas In Hollis Run DMC

O Holy Night Charlotte Church

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer Elmo & Patsy

Run Rudolph Run Chuck Berry

Stille Nacht Andre Rieu

Ave Maria [After Bach] André Rieu

I Saw Three Ships Sting

Oi To The World No Doubt

Wonderful Christmastime Paul Mccartney

Sleigh Ride Leory Anderson

White Christmas Bing Crosby

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Dean Martin

Holly Jolly Christmas Burl Ives

Here Comes Santa Claus Gene Autry

Jingle Bell Rock Bobby Helms

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Gene Autry

In The Bleak Mid Winter Bert Jansch

Silent Night Holy Night Sinéad O Connor

Walking In The Air Aled Jones

All I Want For Christmas Is You Samantha Mumba

Fairytale Of New York Pogues (Ft. Kirsty Maccoll)

Chanukah Song Part 2 Adam Sandler

In Dulci Jubilo Mike Oldfield

Stop The Cavalry Jona Lewie

Happy Christmas (War Is Over) John Lennon

What Child is This (Greensleeves) Mitch Miller and his Gang

Little Drummer Boy (Extended UltraTraxx Trance Mission Mix) CRU

Little Drummer Boy Dandy Warholes

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing Mormon Tabernacle Choir With Sissel

Happy Christmas to all!

Asimov, Robots, and Christmas Sales

I am sitting at the mall Starbucks working on my dissertation while Y takes advantage of last minute sales. I don’t get to work among the bustle as much as I used to, because the local Starbucks is always packed in Kent. Also, Scribbles is too far away for a walk.

I look around and I wonder if I will ever see a world where robots walk among us. Some folks, like David Levy, believe that this and more is right around the corner. However, I wonder if pro-robotics folks, myself included, will find our enthusiasm challenged by the antirobotic Luddites that Asimov writes about in his Robot, Empire, and Foundation stories? I say coexist, coevolve, and cooperate.

Back in Kent After a Short Christmas Reprieve

Yufang and I are back from a week long visit to see my family over Christmas. We had a great time in the South, but there was far too little time to do everything we would have liked to have done or see everyone who we would have liked to have seen. I have some pending DynamicSubspace.net updates on my reading and experiences while we were gone, which should follow in short order.

The picture above is of us on my Grandpa Ellis’ dock on the heavily polluted Turtle River. It’s pretty there, but you don’t want to eat anything that lives in or around the water. Industry along the river dumped a good deal of mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) into the water, which have obviously worked their way into the food chain.

There are only a couple of days left in 2009, so I would like to say to everyone: Happy New Year and Peace to All.

An Early Christmas Present


Yufang gave me the sweetest Christmas present a little bit early so that I could begin using it right away. Actually, I’m using it to write this post. She gave me an Apple Wireless Keyboard as pictured above on my desk.

I’ve had a Wireless Mighty Mouse for a year, which I really like except for scroller issues that have to be remedied too often with the help of a rough sheet of paper.

Now that I have the Wireless Keyboard, I can set my MacBook on Yufang’s hand-me-down computer stand, which places the screen at eye level. She’s been worried I spend too many hours perched over my laptop, so I hope that her fears are now allayed with my keyboard and elevated computer screen. I can report that it is more comfortable in this new configuration, which I haven’t experienced in quite awhile.

However, I do have a beef with Apple about the way that they shipped the Wireless Keyboard to our house. The keyboard is the same size as my MacBook keyboard, and the box that it came in isn’t that much larger. To save space, they even pre-installed the two AA batteries! With all of these packaging efficiencies, Apple looses their environmentally friendly gains by first shipping it DHL, which circumnavigated a curiously long route from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Kentucky before being handed off to USPS for its final trek to Ohio with USPS, and placing the teeny-tiny keyboard inside a ginormous box full of packing paper, which you can see below.

Perhaps they mega-packed my keyboard, because they knew that it was going on an epic journey to find its way to us. Nevertheless, Apple needs to find a better balance between packaging and product shipping safety. I’m afraid that this earns them a SHIPPING: FAIL.

Now, if I can only keep myself from reaching up to my laptop keyboard to do things like adjusting the volume.