Robert Lund – Nuttin’ But Spam

My reasoning for finding this particularly funny is every now and again someone will send spam with one of my email addresses (yes, I have a few) as the source, and then I get all the bounces.  This is pretty much unblockable on my end since the content is incredibly diverse, and each comes from a different address.  It usually lasts a day or two, but this last time it lasted 2 weeks and I was getting 500 emails an hour based on some random sampling.  No doubt I lost some emails I wanted in my fight to control my inbox.  Luckily it finally subsided down to a managable 10-20 an hour, most of which my spam filter is catching.

I actually enjoy Opera after discovering Amici Forever after watching their ‘Senza Catene’ video through Winamp.  I picked up their Opera Band and Defined CD’s from Amazon and love them!

So I went to checkout the video’s Nick linked to, and it was great, but one of my pet peeves about YouTube is the quality, so I popped out to Stage6.DivX.com (requires the DivX web plugin!) and I found they had the videos there with much better audio and video quality.

The first video is Paul Potts’ audition.   The great thing about this video is Paul walks out looking a little disheveled and very unassuming.  When he tells them he is going to sing Opera you can see the judges raise their eye brows in an “Oh no!”  Since Opera is probably one of the most difficult singing styles I am sure they expected a painful experience.  What I love is almost immediately, when he starts singing, you see the surprise on the judges faces.  The audience and judges reaction is great.  I’ll let you watch it.

In the Simi-finals, Paul Potts comes back in a nice suite with some obvious production value improvements to his performance.  His performance was once again amazing, but I think I still enjoyed the piece from his audition better.

When Paul was back for the finals he once again gave a great performance.   You see the audience members waving signs with pictures.

I still think his audition was the best, just because the contrast was so high between the expectation and what we got.  Plus I really liked the piece he performed.  I went out to Wikipedia and read up on Britain’s Got Talent and Paul Potts. Paul did inded win the competition, and also was signed to a recording contract and to record his debut album.

What I really love about Paul, beyond his great signing voice is he is living his passion.  He says that singing has always been his passion, and now he is living it.  I watched a couple of the other video’s from the finalists, and they were good, and passionate, but I really felt it more from Paul.  While everyone may not get to win a large sum of money or a recording contract by living your passion, I still believe that is the best way to go.

Live your passion!

I have become a huge fan of my iPod naps. They work great. I got a new Bond CD in the mail today that I may start using for my wake-up. Because I have had success with my 15 minute iPod naps, and trouble with my core sleep I am thinking about going total Uberman. I don’t like the frequency of naps (every 4 hours) then, but at least I don’t need to worry about sleeping in from my core. . .
We will see what tomorrow holds. . . .

At home my wife got me a great dual-alarm clock with a nap timer. You hit a button and it will wake you up in a fixed period of time. The dual alarm is great for the polyphasic sleep too. Dawn uses it to wake up in the middle of the night for up time, and then I use the second alarm to get up in the morning.

I was using my cell-phone’s alarm to wake up from naps, but it is a pain to set, and was not 100% reliable. I came up with this great solution that I really like: the iPod Nap.

How it works:

1. Create a play list. I have 3 playlists for naps: they are named 15 minute nap, 20 minute nap, and 30 minute nap.
2. Add meditative, relaxing or soft music to take up the amount of time you want the nap to be. I have some hypnosis tracks I use.
3. Add some high energy and loud music to wake you up, after the soft music. I use Bond’s Highly Strung from their album Classified.
   
4. Play the playlist in sequential play (non-random).
5. Sleep during the soft / relaxing tracks, wake up for the high energy track.

This works great! Using the same soft music reminds my body it is nap time, so I go to sleep quicker, and every single time I wake up right away with the high energy music. Since I carry my iPod most of the time I am always ready to take a nap. The added bonus is the headphones block out a lot of the background noise so I can sleep easier, and without interruptions.

If you don’t have an iPod then you can get any portable MP3 player that supports playlists. You don’t even really need that much storage capacity.

Enjoy your naps!