obviously not much time for posting today, because today dan is getting married!!

it’s going to be a beautiful wedding! another huge congratulations to dan and therese!!!

love, ryan

hey guys, sorry this is so brief, but today is dan’s wedding rehearsal! (so excited for him!)

totally random, but in honor of our recent visits to disneyland in california, here’s someone’s bootleg of their new water/laser show called “world of color” – as usual, via video this stuff doesn’t translate perfectly, but disney always does a good job at this sort of thing (even though i never really actually like going to those types of shows)

oh and don’t watch this if you plan on visiting disneyland anytime soon. the video is part 1 of 3 and is literally of the whole show…

and here’s the official commercial for it:

looks neat! lasers are cooool.

due to dan’s wedding activities today and tomorrow, it’ll be some sparse postings, but we’ll talk soon! congratulations to dan!! hooray!!

love, ryan

fact: radiolab is my favorite radio program of all time.

for those of you that have not had the privilege, radiolab is radio program (duh) that airs on new york’s WYNC radio station (and lots of other public radio stations around the US) and it’s hosted by two excellent gentlemen, by the name of jad abumrad and michael krulwich. it’s an incredibly clever, fascinating and frequently beautiful radio show about topics as big as they come… they tackle everything from “sleep” to “time” to “space” to “memory” to “morality” and in each themed episode, they conduct wonderful interviews of folks in fields relating to the theme (scientists, doctors, and lots of misc. folks…), from which they extract incredible stories and different angles on each topic they take on. they do all of this in a wonderfully produced and playful manner that makes understanding such broad themes fun and easy to wrap your head around, but at the same time it’s always mind-stretching experience. i just love it.

similar to why i love david attenborough and his BBC nature programs, radiolab does such an amazing job at displaying the intricate and wonderful mysteries that life produces. and just like BBC’s team of genius photographers and producers that bring their findings to light in such a beautiful way, radiolab’s talented crew has a similar gift. even beyond their obvious talents, i think what makes it work is that i get the very clear impression that they are enjoying their work as much as we are enjoying the results of their work! which is a wonderful gift to us, the audience. both robert and jad from radiolab seem so genuine in their quest for answers and different angles that it’s contagious to listen to. i admire that a lot.

anyway, if you haven’t checked out radiolab – they have a free podcast that can be downloaded here.

off the top of my mind, some favorite episodes to check out are “emergence,” “memory & forgetting” and “after life” is quite interesting too. but really, all of ‘em are great.

love, ryan

RadioLab

PS if radiolab printed this design on a t-shirt, i would order 2. 

you may have noticed, dan hasn’t been posting much lately. that’s because dan is getting married this week! craziness! needless to say, he’s got wedding planning into full gear right now. so, i’ll be blogging it up daily ’til he returns from his honeymoon.

i recently read a book of fiction that explored several different silly scenarios of the afterlife. one of which was that we’d live all of lives over again, but everything we did in our life on earth would be organized in time – for instance, every minute we spent brushing our teeth would be lived again, but in a row… so months of non-stop teethe brushing. (that would be awful.., i know) which made me think of my life and the amount of time i’ve spent doing different things in it… i’d love to see some actual totals!

time spent writing songs: a half a year? 1 year? who knows…

time spent staring at a computer screen: 3 years? yikes, that’d be a sad one…

time spent watching movies: gosh, probably nearing a year?

time spent stubbing my toes: ouch… probably like 15 minutes of nonstop toe stubbing. bummer.

time spent with the feeling of butterflies in my stomach: maybe a solid 4 hours? that’d be fun…

time spent getting goosebumps on my arms from hearing music: a few hours as well, perhaps.

time spent playing video games: not a total i’d ever want to see. eek…

speaking of wasting time… these two iphone/ipad games have recently killed off many good hours of my life. bummer… but they’re ever so fun!

angry birds

fruit ninjas

how about you? comment some random guesses of time spent doing random stuff. it’s an interesting thing to think about.

love, ryan

this’ll be a quick post, because today’s a busy day of work in sleeping at last land – but first things first: iphone 4 was announced today and it looks as glorious as i had hoped (known) it would be… since i already gushed earlier about it, i won’t get into too much nerd excitement, but here’s a new commercial made by sam mendes (update: apparently that was just a rumor) for the new video chat feature “facetime” that i wanted to share, because it’s actually quite beautiful. not only on a nerd/technology level, but on a normal human level. (nothing like the pairing of louis armstrong and major life events! gorgeous.)

on a totally random note… i appear to be the 25 millionth person to see this, but i thought it was fun and worth posting. video of a 6th grader covering a lady gaga song. since i’m late to the party, chances are you’ve already seen it… but kids these days… (i also love the girl on the right of him, with the black tank top… she looks like her mind has been blown!)

speak soon!!

much love, ryan