The Flying Steps have a video that poignantly shows the life of a breakdance troupe on tour. The Flying Steps are renown bboy group from Europe. I remember watching their videos back in 2000, when they won 1st place at Battle of the Year, one of the world’s largest breakdancing competitions.

The life of a breaker is hard, both financially and physically. Most breakers dance because they’re passionate. It’s just not an easy way to make money or become famous.

This video is a small glimpse into the life of the street dancers you see on urban corners.

Apparently this is the new viral video that’s spreading. It’s Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday, and he states two things that people always say about him: his voice is low, and he looks young (he’s 25). There’s already too many remixes to count on one hand: Sung by McGruff the Crime Dog, Vanilla Snow, Sung by Darth Vader, Animated, and Music Video-ized.

Already at 844,559 views at the time of this post.

CraigStats is a great statistics resource for Craigslist apartment listings in San Francisco. They’ve been running the statistics for the past year or so, and have graphs and data for average rental price for studios and bedrooms for each neighborhood, and much, much more. They also have a heat map for prices. It looks like Russian Hill and North Beach on fire, but, I would have expected SOMA to be quite hot as well.

This is one of the most stunning remixes I’ve heard–it’s Snoop Dogg and Kirby, an unlikely combo. They work so well together it’s frightening. Listen for yourself.

This has to be one of the weirdest renditions of Thriller I’ve seen. It’s done by the inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines. Apparently, they put their free time to good use with a pretty impressive show.

This is a video of Imogen Heap performing one of my favorite songs, Hide and Seek, live for 103.1 FM. Her use of the vocoder on the vocals is simply beautiful and penetrating. Ironically, the sparseness of the vocals lends depth to the song.

Here’s the original audio and video:

I played my first round of golf this past weekend with my good friend Joel Sacks. He was patient enough to show me the ropes, despite the fact that I’m a lefty. Yes, I’m a lefty when it comes to sports requiring two hands, like golf and baseball.

My first experience with golf has taught me two fundamental lessons: golf is all about the individual, and the golf swing is a totally unnatural motion.

In golf, the ball sits motionless waiting for you to hit it–there is no one to blame but yourself for a bad shot. The only enemy is the course itself, and the only person you have on your team is yourself. Also, there is only one chance to hit the ball for each shot, and an error could mean disaster for your score (and also a long walk off the fairway). These elements all add up to a lot of psychological pressure.

Furthermore, the golf swing is a monster. From a non-golf player’s standpoint, it doesn’t look too difficult. But, in actuality, it’s probably one of the most difficult movements to master, and I’ve done a lot of other sports that have notoriously difficult movements, including wushu and breakdancing. For me, it’s the combination of the precision required and the unnatural twisting of the torso that make it difficult.

But, the good thing is that the people at Nike have done a beautiful motion capture of Tiger Wood’s swing, which, as Ray Romano says, “reminds me of looking at the inside of a Swiss watch.” You’re able to view the super slow motion swing video from 6 different points of view.

The flexibility in his arms and shoulder is simply amazing. Pay attention to his arm position at the top of his swing, it’s frightening how twisted they are with respect to the rest of his body. I think next time, I’ll be spending more time at the driving range.

This is DJ Kentaro doing what he does best: rocking it on the vinyl. Pretty amazing stuff about halfway in.

And here he is DJing at the 2002 DMC Technics World Championship. He was the first Asian to win the Final in the championship. He was 20 at the time.

I also noticed that he doesn’t use any headphones. Is that common? It has to make is so much more difficult to find and manipulate the beats.

Like many other people, I’m just barely holding back from switching over to the iPhone. But, alas, I’m still on a two-year contract with Verizon. I know that there are plenty of ways to get out of the contract. So, I decided to call them to ask how much the early termination fee would be, and what other options I have.

Almost immediately after I said I was considering other options, the Verizon rep jumped to attention. Here’s how it went:

Verizon rep: So why are you considering leaving? Any problems with the service?
Me: No, I’m just considering some other options.
Verizon rep: Are you consider moving to AT&T and that.. iPod.. iPod phone?
Me: Umm.. yes, actually, I’m considering that.
Verizon rep: Oh, really? I just got training on that today. And I was so surprised by how limited the iPhone is.
Me: Oh, please do tell. (thinking to myself: this is gonna be good)
Verizon rep: Yes, well, there are a few phones coming out that just so much better. They’re AWESOME!
Me: Okay..
Verizon rep: Yeah, well, there’s that new Blackberry that we have. I’ll send you the info.

The rest of the call was basically me waiting patiently for her to compile the desperate marketing email. From the way she was talking, it was apparent that she had never touched an iPhone. And, even if she did, she probably had no idea why its features are compelling.

The fact that Verizon reps are getting specific training to battle against the iPhone shows that Verizon is at least a little scared of Apple, contrary to what the CEO has said before. In my case, I’m going to be thinking hard about the price of getting out of a contract along with the sky high price of the iPhone before I make my purchase.

Or, I could just wait until the hackers successfully unlock the iPhones from the AT&T network. That would probably make me switch in a pinch.

People have already been losing weight using the Nintendo Wii. For a lot of people, it’s a great way to be active without having to consciously go out and exercise at a gym. It looks like Nintendo has responded to this demand with WiiFit, a game that comes with a slim board that acts as the interface for your workout.

By the looks of the trailer, there are a plethora of ways to exercise with the game, including yoga, balancing, and aerobics. And, of course, the game will keep track of important stats like BMI for all of us stat geeks.

Nintendo is really understanding the market for nontraditional gamers right now, which is much larger than originally anticipated in the US. They project that they Wii will soon be Number 1 worldwide.

WiiFit Trailer