Janelle Monae performs Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” at the BET Awards 2010

Janelle Monae kills it again. I must say though, it looked like Prince was giving her the “bitch, please” look until the very end… When Prince performed “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Purple Rain” during his encore at Coachella a couple years ago, I lost my shit :)

In related news: when did BET start doing award show performances better than MTV? Why did nobody tell me about this?

I *heart* string cheese

This is Frigo string cheese. It's a good brand.

I love string cheese. At work, we have string cheese stocked in the fridges, and work is all the better for it.

I love when you peel off a piece, and it’s thin, and I love when it gets stringy at the bottom.

While walking to my car today, I made a discovery about string cheese: it’s better when it’s NOT straight out of the fridge! Now, I know what you’re thinking, “No way. You are wrong. That’s impossible.”

To that I rebut, “Yes way. I am right. It is possible.”

Today I pulled my string cheese out of my pocket once I got to my car (about 7-8 minutes post-fridge), and it peeled off much better than usual. Believe me, I was as blown away as you are right now. Try it.

Gossip – Jealous Girls (Live in Liverpool)

I was driving home from work today and had the Live in Liverpool album by Gossip on, and when this song came on, I remembered how badly I’ve wanted to share it with everyone every time I hear it. So here you go.

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the bass line that stomps around in this song. And the snare hits make me think of someone marching around, stomping their feet and clapping like Mick Jagger in this clip (skip to :45).

Jealous Girls by Gossip

Apple’s new wall of exclusion: a demo of HTML5 and open standards

wait, I thought Firefox, Chrome, and Opera supported HTML5 too...

Apple has been catching a lot of flack for it’s HTML5 Showcase page it recently put up on its website. And for good reason! The problem with the site is that it purports to be a page intended to

show how the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser, new Macs, and new Apple mobile devices all support the capabilities of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

So what’s the problem? You can only view the demos with Safari. If you’re using Firefox, Chrome, or Opera – all modern browsers that support HTML5 – you get the error message shown in the image above. The fact that Apple is browser sniffing and excluding products that are all capable of displaying the content on those demo pages is troublesome.

Christopher Blizzard of Mozilla summarizes the issue and what’s really important in this way,

The most important aspect of HTML5 isn’t the new stuff like video and canvas (which Safari and Firefox have both been shipping for years) it’s actually the honest-to-god promise of interoperability. Even stodgy old Microsoft, who has been doing their best to hold back the web for nearly a decade, understands this and you’ll see it throughout their marketing for IE9. (Their marketing phrase is “same markup” – watch for it and you’ll see it everywhere in their messaging.) The idea that the same markup, even with mistakes, will be rendered exactly the same. HTML5 represents the chance for browsers to work together and find common ground.

It really sucks that Apple thinks it can push the market around like this, but it’s great to see that people aren’t going to take it.

intellectual honesty and html5 -Christopher Blizzard

“Paper or Plastic?” is in California’s past

Calfornia lawmakers votes to ban plastic bags in supermarkets

It looks like single-use plastic bags are a thing of the past here in California. According to the LA Times and GOOD Blog, lawmakers voted 41 to 27 on Thursday to ban the bags in supermarkets, but retailers will still be able to provide the bags for a nickel.

So how many plastic bags does California use? About 19 billion every year, which averages out to 552 per person! Kind of insane, no?

California Bans Plastic Bags -GOOD Blog
California lawmakers act on flurry of new bills -Los Angeles Times
In California, a Step Toward B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Bag) -The New York Times