Redesign Coming Soon!

There's a big redesign of the Beatnik Turtle website coming soon. Be on the lookout!

Who Left Their Brain At Home?

As someone who built their day career on database application development, I can't help but call attention to this situation: Some company called "Channel Intelligence" managed to patent the concept of creating lists of items in a database. In 2005. Huh?

Now, this "Channel Intelligence" is suing a number of small web 2.0 companies.

Check out the patent at Google Patent Search. I don't see Chris Date or Edgar F. Codd on the list of "inventors" on that patent.

How the hell does something like this happen? I think someone at the Patent and Trademark Office left their brain at home on July 12, 2005...

Star Wars Video At Atom Films!

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (actually last year in our studio), Jason and I created a video at mashup.starwars.com using our song, Star Wars (A Film Like No Other). Recently, we licensed the video to Atom Films to be part of their Star Wars fan film contest. As of today, it was posted on their site. Check it out and watch the whole thing! Give us a thumbs up vote while you're at it :)

Open Mic Tonight

If I survive the trek through this monsoon I'll be playing the usual Wednesday open mic at Bad Dog Tavern. Tonight I'll be playing some traditional Irish songs with a couple of other open mic regulars. I might be able to sneak in a rendition of Tell Me Ma, but we'll see. I have something else in mind too...

Interns On Grammar

Recently we had one of our interns look into the grammar issues that keep cropping up in some of our songs. Apparently, we has a problem with this.

Our intern , Brae Whether, analyzed the song What We Need Is Some Interns In Here.

I have no definitive answers, but after some extensive research I have some decent arguments about the sentence: "What we need is some interns in here."

"We" seems to be the subject, but I think that's the case only because it's a poorly constructed sentence.

I think an argument can be made that the real subject of the sentence is "interns." The sentence should be something like, "More interns are needed in here."

There's a grammar rule called the proximity principle which states that the verb should agree with the closest noun. Look at the examples below:

- What he needs are loving parents and a stable home.
- What he needs is a stable home and loving parents.

I think this song is more of an example of 1 than 2.

Finally, if your sentence is singular, then if follows that it can be turned plural. But I can't seem to make it turn plural. However, I can easily make is singular: "What we need is an intern."

Or, change the subject, make it plural, and change the word "interns" to something singular: "What the companies need are a scanner." See how that doesn’t make sense? If the subject of that sentence were "companies" then that sentence should read correctly. More evidence that "we" is not the subject of the original sentence.

Late for class. More tomorrow if you would like to continue.

Thanks Brae for that thoughtful analysis. We is going to write better lyrics in the future.

Sham Rock (and more)!

Just a quick note today - we've been hard at work getting our newest music released for sale. Recently, our rockin' album, Sham Rock was made available for sale at CD Baby and at The iTunes. Here are the links:

Buy CDs and MP3s at CD Baby

Buy tracks or the entire album at The iTunes

Also coming soon! A very large release of albums from Beatnik Turtle. I'll give you a hint - we will be releasing 365 fully remastered tracks on 12 albums. I wonder where we might have found 365 tracks in our back catalog? hmm...

Open Mic Night!

For the next three weeks on Wednesday nights (starting tonight), I will be guest hosting the best open mic on the planet, Scott Besaw's open mic at Bad Dog Tavern.

Tonight, Randy and Ryan will be joining me to help kick off the night with a couple of Beatnik Turtle songs. Hint: the first song is about not wearing underwear and the second is about drinking coffee while programming... Any guesses?

We're scheduled to start at 8:30pm!