Cowboy Bebop is a great series, and if you’ve watched it, then you’re ready for this video, which is a kickass performance of the intro. It’s definitely different, but amazingly faithful to the studio version.
“Tank!” is the opening song for the popular anime series Cowboy Bebop. The song, written by Yoko Kanno and performed by The Seatbelts, has an extensive alto saxophone solo played by Masato Honda, as well as a fill part at the end. The song is a big band jazz piece in a hard bop style with a rhythm portion that combines a double bass and bongo drums.
“Tank!” is primarily an instrumental piece, though it does feature some spoken male vocals in the introductory portion of the song, thematically jazz in style. The vocal portion provides a lead-in to the instrumental portion, and its final lyrics, “I think it’s time to blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together. Ok, three, two, one let’s jam,” signal the beginning bursts of the majority, purely instrumental end of the song.
It has been featured on the soundtracks to the series and as the original opening theme it is somewhat iconic, one of several popular pieces which are still closely associated with the Bebop series. It has also been occasionally used as background music for some international commercials, such as a preview for My Own Worst Enemy.
I’m learning Python and Django; cue the shocked exclamations regarding Perl, religion, blah blah blah. This is how it has to be, and I’ll explain why in a little bit.
For now, I just want to say two things: Django is pronounced like “jan-go” (i.e. the D is silent), and Django Reinhardt plays a mean guitar. This stuff is smooth!
One of the first prominent European jazz musicians, Reinhardt remains one of the most renowned jazz guitarists due to his innovative and distinctive playing. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli he cofounded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek[3] as “one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz.” Reinhardt’s most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including “Minor Swing”, “Tears”, “Belleville”, “Djangology”, “Swing ‘42″ and “Nuages” (French for “Clouds”).
When you want to edit an image, you can either turn to MS Paint, that wacky editor that came with your digital camera, or you can grab for some seriously dangerous bazooka-style software like Adobe Photohop. In a world of bazookas, ImageJ is a suitcase nuke. Seriously, this software is sensationally raw. ImageJ is sortof like Photoshop or the GIMP in the same way that crack is like cocaine.
ImageJ is funded by the NIH, presumably to give medical science a powerful tool for image analysis. If you think about it, it makes great sense to provide a reference tool so that all research can be predictably comparable.
…but obviously, this type of work isn’t exclusive to the medical field, and ImageJ happens to be equal parts tool and platform, because a thriving plugin community has developed hundreds of fascinating commands and macros. It’s so open and extendable – check out this list of plugins.
I found ImageJ when I wanted a free image stabilization tool, because I had recorded some shaky outdoor scenes with a digital camera. ImageJ handled this task admirably, even if a 2-minute clip required 2 gigs of ram and about 60 minutes of rendering time.
ImageJ is the most general-purpose image manipulation platform I have ever seen. Let’s hear it for government-sponsored Public Domain software!
ImageJ is a public domain, Java-based image processing program developed at the National Institutes of Health. ImageJ was designed with an open architecture that provides extensibility via Java plugins and recordable macros.[1] Custom acquisition, analysis and processing plugins can be developed using ImageJ’s built-in editor and a Java compiler. User-written plugins make it possible to solve many image processing and analysis problems, from 3-dimensional live-cell imaging,[2] to radiological image processing,[3] multiple imaging system data comparisons[4] to automated hematology systems.[5] ImageJ’s plugin architecture and built in development environment has made it a popular platform for teaching image processing.[6]
Hahaha! Someone – confirmed to be “malicious” – inserted several seconds of porn into the Tucson broadcast of the Super Bowl. This certainly isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Keep reading to see the Max Headroom Chicago hijacking.
Super Bowl fans in Tucson, Ariz. were subjected to 30 seconds of hard core porn — wang and all — when somehow, the game feed was suddenly interrupted by a clip from an adult television channel.
Yes, this actually happened.
Comcast — the cable company in Tucson — is working on an explanation, but right now it appears the porn break-in only occurred in its standard-definition feed reaching analog TV sets.
Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on your taste — high def viewers were spared the wiener shot.
This kindof reminds me of the famous Max Headroom Chicago hijacking, which is supremely weird and technologically awesome.
In 1987, Chicago TV channels WGN9 and WTTW-11 were hijacked by this guy wearing a Max Headroom mask. 20 years later, he is still at large.
This is a subtitled version of the original footage, since many people cannot tell what he’s saying, this makes it easier.
The first occurrence of the signal intrusion took place during WGN-TV’s News at Nine. During Bears highlights in the sports report, the station’s signal was interrupted by a video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask,[1] standing or sitting in front of a swaying sheet of corrugated metal imitating the background effect in the Max Headroom New Coke commercial. There was no audio, only a buzzing noise. The hijack was stopped after 20 seconds when WGN switched the modulation of their studio link to the John Hancock Center transmitter.[2]
The incident left sports reporter Dan Roan flustered, saying, “Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.”[2]
[edit] WTTW 11
Later that night, around 11:15 p.m., during a broadcast of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock, PBS station WTTW’s signal was hijacked using the same video that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, this time with distorted audio.[1] The person in the Max Headroom mask appeared, as before, this time saying, “That does it. He’s a freakin’ nerd,” before laughing and jeering, “Yeah, I think I’m better than Chuck Swirsky. Freakin’ liberal.”[2]
The unidentified man continued to utter random phrases, including New Coke’s advertising slogan “Catch the Wave” while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time), saying “Your love is fading”, humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, and stating that he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds” (the call letters WGN are an abbreviation for “World’s Greatest Newspaper”, in reference to the Tribune Company’s Chicago Tribune). He then held up a glove, said “my brother is wearing the other one”, and put the glove on. He then took the glove off, adding that it was “dirty.”
The picture suddenly cut over to a shot of the man’s lower torso. His buttocks were exposed, and he was holding the now-removed mask up to the camera while being spanked with a flyswatter by an unidentified accomplice wearing a dress, as the man exclaimed “They’re coming to get me!”. The accomplice then said, “Bend over, bitch!”[3]. The man then said, “Do it!” and moaned. The transmission then blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.[2]
Something tells me that the Tucson hijacking wasn’t the same sort of technological mystery, since the Chicago hijacking is still unsolved after 20 years… but we shall see.
A Hang [haŋ] (pronunciation between the vowel sounds in the word ‘Hot’ and ‘Hungry’) is a melodious percussive steel musical instrument created in Switzerland. It uses some of the same physical principles as a steelpan. That being said, there has been much metallurgical and acoustic research by the makers which have led to significant changes in structure, design, and process. It was the result of many years of research on the steelpan as well as the study of a diverse collection of instruments from around the world; such as gongs, gamelan, ghatam, drums, bells, etc. Udu-like sounds can be produced with the Helmholtz resonance that can occur within the clamped shallow shells. It also has the capacity to ring like a singing bowl. The instrument has sometimes been referred to by owners and others as a hang drum, because it is often played like a drum, its relation to the steel drum, and its popularity with hand drummers. While this is true, there are other ways to coax sound out of a Hang that do not involve ‘drumming’.
Apparently, they’re really expensive… which is too bad, because it seems like a great way to switch out drumming for a different percussive instrument, given that you’re willing to play in a certain key.
I was a little surprised to learn that they were created in Swizerland, because there is a distinctly “eastern” feel to it. Of course, to call this eastern is to run up against the following conundrum:
There’s also a tropical steel drum flavor to it, which might explain how Swizerland came to be the Hang’s birthplace, since it is exactly in the middle of the two regions (as with everything else Swiss).
I had looked into purchasing one a couple years back, but since there is only one place that hand-makes them… there is quite a lengthy waiting list.
They go for about $2000 USD for a plain one, and from there you can pay more for decorations (paint, etc.)
The catch is that you have to actually fly out there to pick it up once it’s complete. They wont mail it anywhere in the world, and their workshop is up in the swiss alps, accessible by train and car. Once there, you get a tour of the workshop, and you get to meet the people who invented/made your instrument.
Here’s another amazing video demonstrating both generations of the Hang:
A few days ago we meet for the first time at a mini Hang – Out in Münster. Rainer (sazas) play an Integral Hang , Uwe (bongo) also on Integral Hang and I (funky) play a second generation Hang. We had a lot of fun and this improvisation is recorded without we meet before or make music together before. It shows that Hang is a nice universal language. More coming soon!
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