Randy Pausch – death speech, …who calls so loud – New EP, The Desktop Wallpaper Project

1)  So after posting that Blog of Death link I was browsing through the rest of the articles and I definitely overlooked one of the best.

“Randolf Frederick Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University professor whose final lecture about the importance of achieving one’s childhood dreams became an Internet sensation and best-selling book, died on July 25 of pancreatic cancer. He was 47.”

“As a child, he wrote a list of the dreams he hoped to someday achieve including: walk in zero gravity, write an entry in the World Book Encyclopedia, win stuffed animals, be like Captain Kirk and become an Imagineer for Disney. Pausch accomplished all but the Star Trek-inspired dream…”

This is a video of his last lecture before he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 47.  It’s an hour and a few odd minutes long but it’s well worth the time.  Watching a good speaker give a presentation rules, especially when that speaker is being brutally honest because he knows his time is limited.

Pausch’s complete obituary can be found HERE.

2)

God, the new …Who Calls so Loud record is so fucking good.  4 new songs, actually 3 if you don’t count the electronic intro, that absolutely destroy.  M’ed Palms is up on their myspace right now which you should go check out, Resonant Grain Silo is an instrumental track with prominent slide guitar playing, and the closing track Lark vs. Rascal is a 9 minute epic.

Sample HERE.

Buy HERE.

3)  The Desktop Wallpaper Project is a project organized by Kitsune Noir that features top artists and designers creating totally free (and amazing) wallpapers.  I’m not sure why I haven’t written about this already since it’s one of my favorite things on the Internet.

“…I decided to write all of my favorite artists and designers, many of which you’ve seen featured on this blog, and see if they’d contribute a wallpaper. As it turns out, my favorite artists and designers happen to be some of the nicest people out there, and so many of them were more than happy to help and be a part of this project.

Here’s the plan: I’ll be releasing one desktop wallpaper every Wednesday morning (California time) until I run out of wallpapers. They’ll be free to download, and come in a multitude of monitor sizes, as well as iPhone and PSP versions just for the fun of it. I hope you enjoy them all!”

There have been tons of good submissions by some really incredible artists.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Tessar Lo

Tavis Coburn

Dash Shaw

This one is extra cool because it’s kind of like a comic strip.  The icons tell the story of someones life starting from left to right.

Go check out the The DWP for larger sizes.