NorthGeek

What are NHL coaches yelling behind the bench?

No matter how close you get to the excitement of a professional hockey game, you’ll never catch all the goodness coming from the energized mouths of hockey players, coaches, and refs. While the players are full of weak taunts and endless swearing (which somehow still provokes fights), it’s the coaches who have to drive fickle, millionaire adults playing professional sports into battle. They’re usually seen during breaks in play, standing silently behind their players, but they must be keeping busy.

Here’s a sneak peak at Mike Keenan, current coach for the Calgary Flames:

Some good coach bits in here too:

Impressive street riding in Edinburgh by Danny MacAskill

This video by Dave Sowerby of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill is amazing and has some of the most creative riding ever seen. Thanks to this video, he’s not only leaving his incidental live spectators breathless. And, he’s wearing a helmet. Good boy, Danny.

What do you want to do before you die?

I believe that what you’ve done makes good stories, but what you seek to do with your life and the things you want to accomplish define you. These guys set out to cross off their lists, document it, and help people out along the way.

It looks like they’ve created something very powerful in the process. It’s called The Buried Life. These four guys from Victoria, BC, Canada have signed their show to MTV. We’re looking forward to seeing more!

Inspiring finish to Boston Marathon 2009 by Americans

We’re not Americans. We’re proudly Canadian here at NorthGeek. But it’s very hard not to like Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher, two phenomenal US distance runners. They’ve got great personalities, remarkable finishes, and good looks. Watch them compete in the final stretches of this past Sunday’s legendary Boston Marathon:

This is Kara Goucher’s 2nd marathon. She is also the 2007 world 10km champ. And she was upset by this result. You gotta love that competitiveness and post-marathon emotion (you gotta run one to know).

Think Google Maps is invading your privacy?

Google Maps’ street view is amazing. You can peruse new neighborhoods, potential dwellings, hard to describe stores, and so much more. Some have enjoyed showing their Googles, and some innocently sharing the road haven’t had such a pleasant fate. Others have attempted to catch images of the Google van to alert pedestrians and perhaps inspire them to do something special when it passes.

But maybe it’s just getting a bit too close for comfort:

How to name your baby

Having trouble coming up for a name for your baby? These guys count down the most bootylicious names for your baby:

Eating the world’s biggest Cheeto over the world’s most expensive keyboard

Only the guys at Gizmodo would do this:

How to get your content removed from torrent: respect

Comedian Louis CK is at the heart of this new take on preventing your content from circulating via torrents.

This stand up comedian logged in to Mininova and nicely asked for some of his content to be removed:

HI. I’m Louis CK. Can you please take this down? This show is a work in progress and was not intended to be passed around the internet. I have absolutely no problem, personally, with file sharing, and if you take everythign I have on the market on DVD, CD, and put it up for free downloading, I don’t care. But this is an artistic and personal request. Please take this torrent down. thanks.

The guy who uploaded the torrent responded:

Sorry Mr. CK, I have taken down the direct downloads and asked Mininova and ViPeers to remove the torrent. I thought you would have preferred the reverse, your live concerts in ****ty audio quality would be ok, especially for what you said about NBC taking down your Late Night appearance, and your high quality DVDs and stuff wouldn’t be ok since you need ***** for that stuff. I sincerely apologize for the torrent and the misunderstanding.

Wow.

What this means: people who use torrents aren’t evil. They do it for convenience, not to steal. Some content is just still best accessed through the world of torrents. If you’re the content owner, and you become confrontational with the torrent users, they will push back. If you become one of them and understand their reasons and motives and converse with them, they will listen.

Louis CK then responded to a thread at Techdirt:

So I ASKED him to take it down. I didn’t demand it. I don’t expect him to sympathize or care how I feel about it being out there. I only hope he does. It turns out he did, which I’m grateful for.

Other people very easily jumped to the conclusion that the torrent guy complied “because he’s not being a jerk.”

Lesson for Metallica?

Remember this guy’s recent tirade on Conan. Hilarious stuff (the good stuff start at 2:18):

I’m a surprisingly cute Microsoft ad

Microsoft has finally come up with an endearing series of ads:

Now I’m a Mac, and my mom is a PC, and I am the technical support for my mom’s PC… and this happens fairly often (bless her). So how does this fare that a 4 year old is so fluent with PC?

Go Microsoft. This ain’t no Jerry Seinfeld disaster.

Disclaimer: I’m a big Seinfeld fan and am on a mission to buy zero Microsoft products in 2009 after my recent move back to Apple!

Something odd about Bruno the movie

The preview for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new gem Bruno is now for the viewing. Of course, this movie is going to be hilarious — Cohen’s gotta be the most creative and abrasive mainstream comedian out there. But what’s so funny, or strange about this? Why does the official movie website look like a hacked together WordPress site built on the free Revolution template originally from Brian Gardner? (By the way, Brian makes great stuff.) Notice the funny gradients, typical ironic t-shirt ads, Google ad banners, obvious keyword usage, dead links, etc. Have a look and see if you can figure out how it fits in with the movie… is it not really the official movie site, or it must just be part of the humour?

Here’s the trailer. Enjoy:

Not like there’s anything wrong with launching an incomplete WordPress project…