I made a thread at Pabook.net, inviting my friends to post their 10 favorite albums of 2006, mostly so I could see what I’ve missed. Link to the thread can be found below. Here’s my list:

EDIT: I neglected to mention here that the list is in no particular order.

Lady Sovereign – Public Warning
I first heard Lady Sovereign on a compilation called Chocolate Swim (which you can get from adultswim.com, by the way). It had a remix of “Hoodie” and I heard it and thought, “What the hell is this?” but somehow I wound up with the album, and it’s cool.

Teddybears STHLM – Soft Machine
It includes a couple tracks from their 2004 album “Fresh”, and neither of them are “Hey Boy”, but it’s got some darn fine tracks.

Dragonforce – Inhuman Rampage
8 tracks of “Extreme Power Metal” will be enough to make you want to lie down afterward… or maybe punch through a concrete wall.

Futuristic Sex Robotz – Hotel Coral Essex
Finely-crafted rap songs about the internet, sci-fi, pornography and bit torrent.

mc chris – Dungeon Master of Ceremonies
DMOC marks the return of mc’s skit interlude comedy things, wherein Jesus asks mc about his myspace friends and talks about sex with mythical creatures.

Regina Spektor – Begin to Hope
This and Lady Sovereign surprised me the most this year, because I didn’t think that much of the Regina Spektor tracks I’d heard from her pevious albums, then I got hooked on “Fidelity”

Machinae Supremacy – Redeemer (Underground Edition)
This was the album I was most hyped about, I waited months for its release, then more time after that until I could get my hands on a copy, watching their little teaser trailer video and listening to the previews from the website over and over.

Matisyahu – Youth
This one came out early in the year and I forgot about it, I had to bump Spearhead’s “Yell Fire” off the list to include this one.

Basshunter – LOL <(^^')>
Weird and catchy Swedish dance music to listen to in your car and freak out the squares.

Ratatat – Classics
The guitar duo’s second full-length album. Not to be confused with their hiphop remixes, this album is purely instrumental. Excellent to listen to while studying or working.

I didn’t pick up every album I was interested in this year, but those are the albums I listened to the most and/or liked the most. Honorable mentions go to Gnarls Barkley – St Elsewhere for being very smart and harnessing the power of myspace (users) to promote the album, and for having the very-awesome “Just a Thought” on it. Also Jay-Z – Kingdom Come, which I just got for Christmas, and haven’t listened to enough yet.

TechEBlog has a list of the top 5 most creative uses (yet) for the Wii remote. It’s got Youtube videos for each one. My favorite is the RC car controller, where the Wiimote is used to control a real-life excite-truck. Some clever engineers need to pick up some nunchuk attachments and some Lego Mindstorms and start making robots.

SA’s Front Page update for today had me laughing very hard. It’s a list of goon-submitted “Youtube Wishlists”, ideas for videos they’d like to see on Youtube. Most of them don’t seem so unlikely, which makes it even funnier. The article also contains a link to the best ghost riding video I’ve ever seen, and probably ever will see.

Ghost Ride SF (download)

Yahoo has an (as of yet) exclusive HD trailer for the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint venture Grindhouse. It’s an ACTUAL double-feature. The official site calls it “the sleaze-filled saga of an exploitation double feature”, One movie by Rodriguez and one by Tarantino. It seems EXACTLY like a project they’d do.

The Tarantino movie “Death Proof” stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman, and Rodriguez’ stars Rose McGowan and Freddy Rodriguez. They both have appearances by Eli Roth. Why do I get the feeling an evening at the Tarantino house would be a life-changing experience?

Here’s the 720p trailer on megaupload for anyone having trouble with Yahoo: (84.8 MB MOV)

April 6, 2007. Can. not. wait.

Here’s another little holiday distraction for you guys. I’ve been a fan of all the games at eyezmaze.com for a long time. This one seems a bit easier to brute-force but have a look around if you’ve never been there before.

I’m busy sleeping off the stress of last semester, and I don’t have any posts prepared. I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays, and that implies that I hope everyone is actually on holidays…

“A pool filled with non-newtonian fluid”

They filled a pool with a mix of cornstarch and water made on a concrete mixer truck. It becomes a non-newtonian fluid. When stress is applied to the liquid it exhibits properties of a solid.
Links: Youtube, Keepvid

Over at TV In Japan, here’s a video of a moving company covered in oil. It’s completely ridiculous and awesome. Links: TVIJ, Youtube, Keepvid

Skype 3.0 Final has been released, alongside the announcement of their new Long-distance pricing plans.

I’d tried the Skype 3 beta but it was so unstable that it didn’t last long enough on my system for me to have a look around. You’ll immediately notice the addition of another tab, the “Live” tab. This lets you access ’skypecasts’, group voice chats where you can participate or just listen to them chatting about the given topic. Very awesome.

The plan has always been to begin charging for the currently-free calls anywhere within North America at year’s end. A part of me naively hoped they would have a change of heart and keep it free forever. The good news is it’s still pretty affordable. $15 dollars for a year of unlimited calling within North America if you sign up before January 31, and then $30 when the sale is finished. You can read about the yearly long distance plans at Ars Technica.

PS, I got my copy of Windows Vista Business today!

As of this writing, I’ve already disabled screen font smoothing and the Aero glass effect.

The first alpha release of Firefox 3 “Grand Paradiso” has been released, and it finally passes the Acid2 test. Good news for web developers: with Gecko 1.9 under the hood and a bunch of css improvements, we should be able to point and laugh at IE alongside Opera… or continue to do so, but this time with less guilt.

edit: oh! P.S. I’m just excited about the new features. I don’t recommend downloading it if you’re not an extension developer or something. Alpha 1? No thanks, buddy.

Mozillazine discussion can be found here.

Bram Cohen made an announcement at the utorrent.com forums that the Micro Torrent project had been acquired by Bit Torrent inc.

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This is Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, the writer of µTorrent.

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent’s exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent’s efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent’s expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.

What does this mean for the µTorrent community? Not much, at least not at first. The intention is to maintain the website as it is, and keep the forums and community active. Moving forward behind the scenes, we will continue to develop µTorrent and will be using the codebase in other applications, especially ones where a fast, lightweight implementation is more suitable, such as embedded systems on TVs, cell phones, and other non-PC platforms.

The existent µTorrent and BitTorrent communities are immensely valuable to us, which is why we are announcing this here first to make sure you’re all the first to know about the news. The plan is to continue to foster the health and growth of the community that has been critical to the success of µTorrent. Thank you in advance for your support.

Bram and Ludde

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both Bram and Ludde are available now on IRC #utorrent and will be answering questions for the next few hours.

A new forum has been created – uTorrent/BitTorrent – please use this new forum for all topics related to the uTorrent acquisition

Fans of the “Very tiny Bit Torrent client” immediately began to worry that this move might make it not-so-tiny in the long run. I had a laugh when the 7th, 8th and 9th posts in the thread all said “back to BitComet for me!”.

I’m hopeful that they won’t lose sight of their vision; tiiiiiiiiight code. It seems the BT community is antsy because of Bram’s dealing with the MPAA. A lot of people are afraid of a repeat of the Napster disaster, I’m hoping everyone learned enough from it not to let the BT project die at the hands of legitimization.

Also, you can see what Wired has to say

Play-Nintendo.com has a bit of disappointing news. It seems the Wii game based on the enigmatic majesty of Bob Ross has been put on an indefinite hold. Apparently Bob Ross Inc. (did you know there was such a thing?) is still interested in pursuing video games as a medium for creeping people out with afros, but for now there’s no plan to make one on the Wii.