Songsmith Sings the Classics

As you might have seen on Jared or Justin's blog, Microsoft Research has come up with a sweet new program called Songsmith.  Basically, you record yourself singing and then Songsmith puts a full band behind your voice.  You can pick from all kinds of music styles for your accompanyment and the program does the rest.  Sure, some are see this as another sign of the end of good music, but I must say, I'm very impressed with it.  Sure, it might sound cheesey, but endearingly so.  You can check out more about the program and even download a trial from the Songsmith website.  

In celebration of the program's release, people have putting the vocal tracks from many popular songs into the program, with often humorous results.  Check out some of my favorites below:

Roxanne by The Police

Wonderwall by Oasis

Creep by Radiohead

Buddy  Holly by Weezer


And of course Barack Obama

Surely you're impressed by this.

My First Photos

I've been interested in photography for a while now, but just didn't ever have the resources to really get into it. Well that all changed this Christmas. I got a Canon XSi and I love it. In the first month of owning the camera I took around 3,000 pictures. Of these, maybe 20% were in focus and decently exposed and maybe 10% were worth keeping. Most exciting, however, is that maybe 1% are worth showing to other people; and that's why we're here! I plan to post a lot of the pictures here and would love to have so feedback. After all, I know many of you are fantastic photographers.

So here are a couple from our trip to Minnesota around Christmas. I loved taking pictures in the snow!

Dogs Gone Viral

I must say, when the Sawyers first watched the video of Gunny and Catan home alone we thought it was hilarious. Did we expect it to become the next big internet sensation? Probably. Are we delighted that it is the next big sensations? Of course!

In one week we've gotten well over 5,000 views! That is amazing! We've had viewers from every state, although I must admit I'm a little disappointed in Alaska only coming in with 1 view. You'd think if any state was desperate for some dog humor it would be Alaska. Here is map showing where the views have come from:


So thanks everyone for watching and passing the video along to your friends. And in case you missed it, here is the video:

A Dog's Night In

Last week on our way out the door for the evening we decided to film the dogs to see what they got up to while we were out. Upon returning home we immediately watched the video. It was the funniest thing we had seen in quite some time. The video was only missing one thing to make it perfect, and I quickly remedied that.

Enjoy!



The video covers about 2 hours of real time.