Yes.  That’s "Boomer" from Battlestar Galactica.  When she’s not a CYLON struggling with human emotions, she’s helping promote a company she believes in.  Check this out.

My friend Ward recently launched Mondonation.  Mondonation is company – or movement – built on an inspiring concept:  focusing positive energy creates change, and you can be a part of it.

First, a simple look explanation.  You can visit their web site, and build a custom t-shirt with a custom belief printed on the back.  Any thing from "I believe in animal rights" to "I believe gnomes are after me."  It’s up to you.

For every shirt purchased, $10 is given back to the charity of your choice.  The shirts are ethically made by American Apparel, and not some cost-saving sweatshop.

You might say, "So what.  Custom t-shirts?  Can’t I just buy my own t-shirt somewhere and donate money to a charity on the side?"

Yeah, you could.  But here’s why you might want to support Mondonation’s idea.  If you genuinely create a shirt with a strong belief, you bring up that belief and create awareness.  The shirts are just a way to help draw attention to what you believe, and to inspire the world around you to do the same.  Which is great.  But it gets better.

What’s most impressive to me is what the Mondonation experiment is trying to show the business world.  A company can make ethically produced products, inspire people, help world communities through charity, inspire people to personally get behind those charities… and on top of this, turn a profit and grow.  Obviously, most companies are focused on that last one, which is crucial to the success and survival of a business, sure.  But do for-profit and non-profit companies need to be separate?  Mondonation wants to show it is possible to be a profitable
company, while being environmentally sensitive, ethical, and socially
conscious.  That’s an quite an honorable goal.

That’s something to get behind.  I’m ordering myself a shirt.

I love this video.  Not only is LL Cool J smokin’, but J Lo is back where she belongs… slamming her ga-dunk ga-dunk dunk and singing a little groove lick.  Stay, J Lo, stay. 

Uno, dos, tres, muevete.

Almost immediately after Google launched Google Maps, a spattering of web-based applications based on the mapping technology starting popping up.  So this might not exactly be cutting edge news.  But I just had to highlight my two favorites so far:

HousingMaps.com – This site integrates Craigslist apartment listings for most major cities, and places the titles and photos of listings as pins on a Google Map.  Rad.  This is actually how we found our apartment here in Vancouver.  Much to my joy, I stumbled across this site during at the end of our year in Boston.  You can quickly click from pin to pin, looking at photos of listings by neighborhood…. which is really a great way to search amidst a sea of available apartments.  Suddenly the deceptive "5 minutes to downtown!" line those shifty real estate agents use in ads, just doesn’t pull like it used to.

WalkJogRun.net – This site lets you draw your own routes on a Google Map, and it adds up the distance of that route.  As a big runner, this is sweet.  I’m able to map out my runs, create new ones based on distance, and save/bookmark them.  If that wasn’t cool enough, it also lets you browse the routes others are running, in your city and all over. 

I just wanted to give a big thanks to the visitors that felt compelled to toss a little something my way via my TipJar.  TipJar pays for this trippy blog via auto-pay, so your tips go right into keepin’ it rollin.  Since tippers aren’t required to disclose their email address when they tip, I’m unable to thank them personally.  So to those of you who wanted to show gratitude with a clink in the jar, big or small… many thanks! 

Joining the ranks of many bored 15 year olds with broadband access, I’ve recently signed up for a myspace account.  I did so to reconnect with old highschool friends, as I was finding a scattering of them online with myspace profiles.  Of course, it’s become one site that regularly wastes my time – and myspace is the king of all time-wasters – but occasionally I find something worthwhile.  With myspace, it’s the musicians I’ve come across, that’s really made my time on the site memorable.

Dan Paul
was my first find.  He’s a talented singer/songwriter from Dallas, Texas, who has 4 of his
songs featured on his myspace account.  If I had to toss a "if you like [blank], you’ll like [blank]" on this guy, I’d say if you like The Postal Service, you’ll like Dan Paul.  Something about the thoughtful song lyrics, kind voice, and electronic production give off a great vibe.  I dig it. 

Check out his music.  Perspective is my favorite.  Say That It Mattered is the only non-electronic track.  It’s just him and a piano, and is pretty raw and emotional.

Listen to Dan Paul’s Music on his MySpace  

So in order to encourage us to game together from time to time – rather than sitting back-to-back in our office, enveloped in different MMO games – we created a superhero duo.

Meet Glacier Cat (my Ice/Storm Controller) and Quickburn (Mark’s Fire Blaster).  They’re on the Victory server, and are prime candidates for COH’s gay supergroup.  That’s also why we made these heroes have crazy sex appeal.  Though Glacier Cat is clearly the hot one, right?

I was suffering from my typical March hell, where my allergies fly in from out of nowhere,  kick in hard for 3 weeks, and stomp my ass into the ground.  This time, I got a new fun symptom… lots of ear-popping, like March was some horrible, long family car trip taking me over mountain pass after mountain pass.

On my way to a house party last Saturday my left ear finally popped, unclogging my hearing and providing me with a little relief.  Hours later, I was curled in bed in a fetal position, wondering how a plugged-up ear could feel like a hamster eating my brain out.

After not sleeping all night due to the pain, I became tired enough to Benadryl myself asleep around 10am.  After sleeping a while and waking up in pain, I made Mark peek inside my ear, and I figured out why my allergies were hurting it so much.  It wasn’t just allergies – I had ruptured the sucker somehow.  Likely just an infection, as I don’t blow myself up with loud tunes or jam stuff in my ear like Betty is doing in the above photo.

Mark said it looked like my brains were coming out of my ear.  Always nice to hear from a doctor.  But I’ll admit to feeling a little bit better, know I wasn’t dealing with a ton of pain without some sort of good reason.

After a week, the pain is pretty much gone – now I just can’t hear out of that ear.  That should come back, though.  In the meantime, I’m stuck with saying, "huh?" more than I normally do (in that dumb way us Americans do, as my Canadians kindly point out), and pulling whichever friend I’m walking with to my right side, so I can hear him speak as we walk.  Unless I tune him or her (.. her?  who am I kidding) out normally.

So.  No iPod for a while.  That blows.  I realized I hate running without tunes.  Not only that, but my balance is a little off.  Reminds me of a dog my friend Karey had, when we were growing up.  I think the mutt’s name was Shina.  Blind in one eye, used to try to chase us and would just run in circles, barking.

Cut to me, doing the same thing on my long Sunday run around the Seawall.  Passing mothers pick up their children and walk briskly by.

So all of my other senses have been heightened.  I’ve penciled in shopping for tomorrow.

It starts off pretty light and fun, and midway through gets a little sexier, with a good old-fashion spastic climax on the track Money Shot.  As always, every mix I’ve ever made (house music or otherwise) is titled from an obvious lyric in one of it’s songs, and rings some sort of relevence to my life at that moment.  And, of course, in the effort of shameless self-promotion, I’ve stamped my shirtless self on the cover again.  A party ain’t a party without a little skin.

Since I never spent much continuous on this mix, it’s been an evolving project that just never got finished.  So out of the 50 tracks I had to use for this mix, only 10(ish)  made the cut.  I trimmed the fat.  No sense trying to make certain songs fly when it’s unnatural. This mix is only 60 minutes rather than the 80 I usually shoot for.  But it’s a better listen for it.

I’ve had people send me some tracks based on what I’ve put up to share.  My response to that is "thanks!" and feel free.  I’m always looking to listen to new tunes.

Hope you enjoy it – let me know what you think.

Stream the mix: DJ Bravehound – Pure Gold.m3u
Download the mix: DJ Bravehound – Pure Gold.mp3 (right-click and save)

I cam across the video for Passion above, while browsing blogs.  I thought the song was incredible, which lead to me to finding out more about Utada.  She released an English CD this past fall titled Exodus. I’ve actually heard a couple of the songs off of it.  You may have heard the dance track "Devil Inside" on rotation in your gym or out at a bar. 

Obviously, she hasn’t achieved the massive success here that she has overseas.  That being said, I do really like her album after having it on rotation this week.  It’s obviously got the j-pop vibe, as well as some 80s sounding elements, which has the taste of where Gwen Stefani went with her last CD.  And while I have some fav pop songs on Utada’s English CD, I’ll admit my favorite place for her voice is on an epic ballad like Passion (above), of which an English version will be released next month.

I loved these videos, since they have such a painted sci-fi / fantasy feel to them.  Here’s another track to in addition to the videos above:

Stream:  Utada – Hotel Lobby