BYTE MARKS
Click, then pick Beatles songs for your 'ukulele
By Burt Lum
One of my faithful readers sent me an e-mail asking me to quit writing about blogs.
Let me make my apologies up front because here comes another one. In a roundabout way, while chatting over beers, we happened on the topic of playing the 'ukulele.
It's an instrument I've always wanted to play, but I never seem to find the time. My buddy said go check out www.boingboing.net, adding, "there's a link there to online instructions on how to play a bunch of Beatle songs."
As it turns out, the 'ukulele site was several clicks deep, so while searching boingboing.net, I found all kinds of side excursions to keep me pleasantly engaged.
This weblog is a group effort between four West Coast writers each having a broad interest in art and technology. Readers like you and me can post suggested sites to the boingboing team for consideration. On my recent visit, I found cool entries ranging from N.Y. underground photos, Ted Koppel ripping into the Patriot Act, a controversial Doonsebury cartoon and Quick Time VR shots of a volcano.
One of the editors of boingboing.net, Mark Frauenfelder, moved from L.A. to Raratonga in the Cook Islands. You can read all about this yearlong experiment in simplicity in Island Chronicles at www.boingboing.net/island.
Here is a guy who has spent most his life in the hustle and bustle of urban living, in one of the most crowded and intense West Coast cities. His experiment, as he calls it, is to get out of the rat race, take his family to a remote island in the South Pacific and find out what simplicity is all about.
Don't we all dream of this at one time or another?
You can share the experience through his weekly photo pics and journal in LA Weekly.
Mark has another passion, the 'ukulele. Postings of all things related to the four-string instrument I will someday learn to play are at www.boingboing.net/uke. There's a lot of information here, and after looking high and low, I finally found the Beatle's song site at www.4rmj.com/rick/beatlesite.
OK, I'm game. ;-)
Burt Lum is one click away at www.brouhaha.net.
