The Rarely Updated Blog of Nate Warner

If you’re stuck chatting up a mumbler at a cocktail party, lean in with your right ear. It’s better than your left at following the rapid rhythms of speech, according to researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to identify that song playing softly in the elevator, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is better at picking up music tones.

From the illustrious Mens Health Magazine.

Read the whole article “18 Tricks to Teach Your Body” cause I didn’t.

This bag is awesome, charge your iPod, or other gadgets while waiting for the bus!

The Voltaic Messenger™ is reinforced and padded to carry and protect a laptop. It has large zipped pockets for documents, and multiple small pockets for electronic devices. Ideal for use in town or as a travel bag.

Features:

Adjustable padded laptop sleeve, for laptops with up to a 15″ screen (14″ x 10″ x 2″)
The solar panels provide protection for fragile items inside the front pocket
Oversized nylon zips for extra strength
Padded adjustable shoulder strap
Will fit the optional phone / MP3 pouch
Wire channels throughout the bag

Right now it is a little bulky, and lacking style, but I am confident that newer iterations will be a great improvement.

It recently occurred to me that I don’t know any of the sweet happy hours or drink specials around town. In Missoula we had every night of the week lined up with random stuff to do. In Helena- nothing.

Off the top of my head this is the list I came up with:
Wednesday Miller’s 4:30-8:30 $2.50 Blackfoot Pints
Weekdays Silver Star 4-6 $2 Well drinks
Wednesday Bert and Ernie’s $5.00 Micro Pitchers (Clem)

Thats about it. Let me know of any others and I’ll post ‘em.

In other night-life news “The Flying Rickshaws” are playing Wednesday night at Miller’s. I went to school with some of the band- it will be a rockin’ night to say the least. Come on down, show starts @ 9:30.

You may remember my post a few weeks back regarding the end of AT&T’s logo.

Turns out after Cingular spent untold millions re-branding the AT&T wireless customers they now want to switch back to AT&T.

They even announced their new logo. At first glance I liked it, but after reading this article I agree- it sucks.

Great point from the article:

Secondly, the fact it’s not bold makes the letters themselves less of a logomark, so now you *need* to have the globe-thing next to the letters or you lose the whole branding.

To my dismay Thanksgiving is only 2 days away. Which means Christmas is only about a month away. It scares me to realize how fast the fall has slipped by. I guess when you are busy winning Co-Ed City Soccer League Titles the rest of your life can turn into a blur.

More to the point. Christmas is coming and I live in this obsessive neighborhood that requires you, by covenance, to decorate your house, and to put out little paper bags with candles in them to line the streets for Christmas Eve.

People move to this neighborhood just so they can spend hundreds of dollars and multiple hours putting up their Christmas lights.

In the spirit of Christmas, and my neighborhood, I think we are going do something a little bit bigger and a little bit better than this. (4MB .wmv)

(Thanks to Pearce for the link.)

I have never really identified with the Gen-X or Gen-Y titles. The titles never really made the sense that say a “Baby Boomers” classification inspired. At least now I can finally be stereotyped into a Generation that makes sense.

From trendwatching.com:

No, this is not about a new niche generation of youngsters born between March 12, 1988 and April 24, 1993; the C stands for CONTENT, and anyone with even a tiny amount of creative talent can (and probably will) be part of this not-so-exclusive trend.

So what is it all about? The GENERATION C phenomenon captures the an avalanche of consumer generated ‘content’ that is building on the Web, adding tera-peta bytes of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis.

Geek out with the whole article

Just released on Saturday Night. Introducing the iPod Micro, Pequeno, and Invisa.

Check them out at the Apple Store nearest you.

In summary the Griz suck.

Other than the loss I had a great weekend chilling with Katie, Hutch, Clem, and Tiffany. We hit a relatively new bar in Bozeman named “Plonk”. It was a sweet martini/wine bar that had great atmosphere that was suprisingly un-Montana like. They had a solid DJ spinning and some great cocktails including the “Plonk Cosmo” which was made with ginger vodka- it was super tasty.

Today I went to the new Harry Potter Movie “Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire“(Directed by Mike Newell)it was better than the first two (directed by Chris Colombus), but not nearly as good as the 3rd (Directed by Alfonso Cuarón). I know it is a very very long book, but I was disappointed to see much of the supporting character and sub-plot development was lost in order to get through the story. One of the IMDB reviews summed it up best.

When viewed as a movie in its own right the Goblet of Fire is as enjoyable, thrilling and down right scary as the book is, but as an adaption, to be quite honest, it was a let down.

I LOVE this video. It show that with a good concept you can create an amazing final product with out huge production costs. Amazingly simple. Amazingly great.

Super-duper-euro-music-video

17 November 2005 - MIT has unveiled its $100 hand-cranked laptop computer to the United Nations technology summit in Tunisia and said that it hopes to make millions of the devices to give to the poorest people in the world.

The lime-green machines, which are about the size of a text book, will offer wireless connectivity via a mesh network of their own creation allowing peer-to-peer communication and operate in areas without a reliable electricity supply.

full story

I just want to know how the hand crank works!

Jack Nicklaus was among those honorees awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Pres. Bush. The award is the highest recognized for a civilian. Among the other honorees were Muhammed Ali, Aretha Franklin, and Alan Greenspan.

So scratch my last post regarding heading to the Cat-Griz game. I told Shalon and Becky I would tend bar at the Myrna Loy Martini Fund Raiser on Saturday Night.

For those of you unfamiliar with with the Myrna Loy:

With a 1985 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Advancement grant, the Myrna Loy Center completed a major capital campaign that resulted in the opening of the Myrna Loy Center, located in the historic Lewis and Clark County Jail in downtown Helena, Montana. The new Myrna Loy Center officially opened in 1991.

The mission of the Myrna Loy Center is to present the arts, including media, performing, literary and visual, in an educational context, with challenging and culturally enriching programs that would not otherwise appear in the Helena area or in Montana.

The event should be a great time. With your $25 donation you get, a one year membership to the Myrna, martinis, appetizers, and the chance to win some great door prizes.

If you are interested in attending (you should be) contact:

Shalon Hastings:
shalonhastings (at) hotmail.com

Becky Dockter
rdockter (at) mt.gov

I’ll see you there!

As Pearce so elegantly commented:

“Get on the ball Warner, or I will firebomb your house.”

In order to avoid joining the homeless ranks I have decided to update the site.

Yes, it is true that I have been somewhat hermit-like about the blog lately. The reason being I have been working a bunch, chilling at the house a bit, and going out every now and then.

In the interest of self preservation as well as a well founded fear of Google’s caching abilities I typically don’t write about work or partying, and if chilling was worth blogging about then it would not really be chilling. I like to keep my search results politically correct.

In other news the snow has finally started to fall. We have had on and off showers all day with about an inch accumulating downtown so far. I am STOKED to say the least. I would be willing to bet the mountains are getting some pretty solid accumulation, especially west of the divide. The snowmobiles will be out this week for sure!

Hutch and I are heading to Bozeman this weekend for the Cat – Griz game. I hope we survive. I am also thinking about heading up to Big Sky Sunday to get some turns it (Challenger lift opened yesterday).

Winter is finally heating up!

GO GRIZ!