This shot, from flickr user colmdc, was taken at the Jacob’s Creek Vineyards in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. I love just about everything about this photo– its three distinct layers of perspective, its colors, its otherworldly feel. Makes me pine for a good class of shiraz just looking at it.
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Want to make all your friends swoon? Rent out a villa in the south of France for an affordable, peaceful vacation.
Want to make all your friends love you? Take them along!
French villas have become one of the top destinations in the great tradition of group vacations. I love group vacations; it’s like an extended party. Get everyone you like together and watch them interact for a week. It’s fascinating, often scandalous, and makes one feel like they’re in some 17th century comedy of manners, or an old-Hollywood movie.
One villa I recommend is Villa Plantat, near the small town Quissac. Villa Plantat (plantat means “to plant”) is an elegant house set on 400 acres of beautiful grounds with an orangerie and a private spring-fed swimming lake, and is located close to both historic Roman ruins and the Mediterranean sea (just 35 minutes away).
Villa Plantat can provide a private provencal chef for just around $20 per meal, and they also have twice yearly yoga retreats (2 hours of yoga per day plus special events; not yoga boot camp) in May and September. $1380 per person includes accommodations, wine (!), and classes.
Villa Plantat is available year round for $4,200 per week (price drops by $500 for additional weeks) and sleeps thirteen. That’s just $323 per person. Or, for ten people, $420 per week.
Save up your miles and get to the south of France. It’s an idyllic, quaint, and quintessentially lovely experience you won’t forget.
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Welcome to my review of the Freestyle Audio Soundwave sports MP3 player. The Soundwave differs from most other MP3 device on the market by offering a water and shockproof player.
In this day and age, it is hard to develop an MP3 player that actually does something no other players can offer.
The Soundwave has 2GB of flash memory and comes complete with waterproof headphones, an armband and a “floater” for keeping the player from sinking to the bottom of the ocean, should it fall overboard.
The player has a tiny OLED display which is surprisingly bright. The main portion of the screen is blue, and the equalizer line is yellow. Under the display are 5 rubber buttons for controlling the various features of the player.Because these buttons need to keep water from entering the device, they are actually quite hard to press. The controls bring me to the most disappointing part of the player; controlling this thing is harder than it should be. The basics like skipping tracks work just fine, but controlling the volume or selecting a playlist is actually quite annoying.
The Soundwave MP3 player has an internal battery pack rated for up to 30 hours of playback time and charges using the included USB cable.
Adding music to the Soundwave is as simple as “drag and drop”, so you are not required to use a dedicated media program to transfer songs. The player also supports the Windows Media Player method of transferring files.
Freestyle even provide some basic iTunes support, and they show how to convert and transfer Apple AAC files to the player. Music purchased in the iTunes store will not work on the player and will have to be copied to an audio CD and imported in order to remove the protection.
In addition to regular MP3 files, the Soundwave also supports WMA files and subscription based WMA music.
The Soundwave is not the prettiest player, nor does it have the best interface, but if you often find yourself in need of music in places where a normal MP3 player would not last too long, then the Soundwave is going to be one of your only options.
It is waterproof enough to use for swimming laps, and the included waterproof headphones sound surprisingly good underwater. My test involved sticking my head underwater in the bathtub, which shows how dedicated I am at delivering reliable reviews!
The Freestyle Audio Soundwave costs $89.99 directly from the manufacturer, or as low as $63.80 from Amazon.com.
From the blog I Watch Stuff comes the news that Jack Black, comedic actor known for his roles in such classics as Nacho Libre and Tropic Thunder, has signed up for a new Twentieth Century Fox adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels. Quoting from Variety:
“Twentieth Century Fox is moving forward with a bigscreen adaptation of “Gulliver’s Travels,” with Jack Black taking on the title role as his next project.”
Should be interesting. If memory serves, the story is about a regular-sized man (in this case, a travel writer) who gets shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, filled with tiny little people called Lilliputians. So, if IMDB lists Jack Black as being 5’7″ …
… how bleeding tiny are the Lilliputians going to be??
First I recognized the music, and then I saw him. Matt Harding dancing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
In a segment to show the world’s reaction to Barck Obama’s election win, The Daily Show wove snippets of Harding’s video Where the Hell is Matt? with footage shot in various countries of people celebrating. The song played throughout, and location names flashed with each scene change just like in Harding’s original.
In Daily Show fashion, there was a bit of fun mixed in. Sure there were the shots of real people dancing on Tuesday night woven in with the original video, but there was more. There was Jennifer Grey jumping into Patrick Swayze’s arms in Dirty Dancing in Catskill, New York, Jimmy Stewart dancing in a movie party scene I couldn’t place in Bedford, NY, a Star Wars dance scene at Third Moon, Endor, and Michael J. Fox as Teen Wolf in Beacontown, Pennsylvania.
Although I couldn’t find that video by itself, you can see it on the Daily Show web site in the November 6 episode. You’ll find it at the 9:53 marker, but start watching at 9:46 to get the lead in.
Because we’ve been longtime fans of Harding’s work (see posts), it was a pleasant surprise to see it surface in another form.