Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don’t know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

• Last Man on Earth– the Vincent Price version of I am Legend, maybe not quite as over the top as the Charlton Heston – Omega Man version, but the one I always think of… Time to get in the station wagon (take a look here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/46780/the-last-man-on-earth).
• Also Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot– it’s up there with Ultraman for cheesy dubbed goodness (take a look here: http://www.hulu.com/johnny-sokko-and-his-flying-robot).
• And of course the Joss Whedon masterpiece short about the Evil League of Evil — Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – definitely must watch this one – “cause the world is a mess and I need to rule it” (take a look here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog)

So first on the list is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War  by Max Brooks… surprisingly a book about a post apocalyptic Zombie War – well – err not that surprising. It’s supposed to take place 10 years after the Zombies have been eradicated.

Great read – I think it’s almost a little too real. The governments, across the globe, like China suppressing information of the plague’s spread and society just sort of folding up. Hey it’s hard to be nice when you’re neighbors are trying to eat you.

It’s a collection of short stories and interviews strung together – reminiscent of war reels from WWII or some of the civil wars across the world today. A real page turner – and a quick read.

Worth a look if you like the genre.

http://www.drobo.com/products_drobo.html

Aside from the almost Apple like following — it seems like the real deal. Watch the demo. Think it’s a little on the pricey side at $500 before adding some beefy drives, but the value proposition is compelling. I like the idea of being able to add any size drives and keep upgrading the capacity as the larger drives come down in price. Also can’t beat the redundancy – drop or grind out a drive? Pop in  new one and keep going.

It’s hard today – particularly with digital pics and video. In many cases — that file was the original, not like the old days where you can reprint the negative (if you can find it).

While there’s all kinds of RAID solutions and other backups that you can do locally, I started to look for a solution that I can recommend to less technical friends (something that’s easy to setup and forget for me too).

http://mozy.com/

http://www.carbonite.com/

http://www.sugarsync.com/

http://www.syncplicity.com/

I’m going to give Mozy a try first. I’ve heard good things and they’re owned by EMC — a large player in the server storage market. There’s a number of new players in this area and more coming.

Also out there are more of the storage players like Amazon’s S3 in conjunction with a front end like JungleDisk. Which is great if you need to store your workfiles as you’re never anywhere in particular or need to run a whole business, but harder for just backup from home (and more $$ as well).

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_problems_solved_by_MacGyver

“This is a list of problems that have been solved by the fictional character MacGyver from the television series of the same name. MacGyver employs his resourcefulness and his knowledge of chemistry, physics, technology and outdoorsmanship to resolve what are often life or death crises. He spontaneously creates inventions from simple items to solve these problems. These inventions became synonymous with the character and were called MacGyverisms by the public. MacGyverisms became a distinct motif of the series. MacGyver was unlike secret agents in other television series and films because he carried only a Swiss Army knife and duct tape, instead of relying on high-tech weapons and tools.”

Gotta love the use of duct tape — fixes almost as many things as a hammer. It’s all about the basics <smile>.

“Ettlinger’s Nuremberg assignment evaporated without explanation, and he was plunged into a thoroughly unexpected sort of war, waged deep in Germany’s salt mines, castles, abandoned factories and empty museums, where he served with the “Monuments Men,” a tiny band of 350 art historians, museum curators, professors and other unsung soldiers and sailors of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section. Their task, begun with the uncertain peace of May 1945, was to find, secure and return the millions of pieces of art, sculpture, books, jewelry, furniture, tapestries and other cultural treasures looted, lost or displaced by seven years of upheaval.”

Check out the article online: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/monumental-mission.html

There’s a book (Rescuing Da Vinci) and a movie on the topic (The Rape of Europa) that I hope to catch in the near future.

It’s a story about pretty much the end of the world — and I know shockingly, the zombie apocalypse. Amazing art, ink and of course storyline. It’s also all black and white – which somehow just adds to the effect.

“It begins with Rick, a dedicated cop, waking from a coma in a hospital. There are no orderlies, no nurses, no doctors and no loved ones to be found. Though he was comatose from a shotgun blast to the chest, Rick is able to walk. He probably wishes he hadn’t, as he finds the hospital filled with the dead — and some of those dead are still walking around.

There are no answers as to how or why the outbreak began, but the dead are walking among us and they’re real hungry. Rick escapes Kentucky and heads towards Atlanta, hoping that his wife and son managed to escape to a larger city. What he discovers is that the cities are overrun with zombies, that just about everyone who decided to take refuge in the big metropolises of the US ended up as zombie fodder. ” <from Comics IGN>

The starkness of the art and storyline are refreshing — where would you go when the world ends? It’s a kind of search for home… But the longer you’re anywhere, the walking dead start to come and gather. It’s disconcerting to watch the characters start to bend and finally shear off — coming unglued under the stress.

A bit on the expensive side, but this could be one that might be worth it. There’s a lot of memories here.