Accord­ing to CBS News:

“Right­eous Brother Bobby Hat­field, who with part­ner Bill Med­ley pio­neered “blue-eyed soul” with hits includ­ing “Unchained Melody” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feel­ing,” has died of unde­ter­mined causes at a hotel in Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan. Hat­field was 63.

“It’s a shock, a real shock,” says Cohen, adding that Med­ley, who teamed up with Hat­field over 40 years ago, is “bro­ken up. He’s not even coherent.”

Rest in peace, Bobby. Thanks for shar­ing your voice and tal­ents, you will be missed. 

It’s under­stand­able why some artists or writ­ers for that mat­ter will come to a halt in their cre­ative think­ing. The process of out­put­ing ones thoughts to pen­cil and paper (or the com­puter) can some­times be a stress­ful one. Not stress­ing in the “My para­keet is stuck in the toi­let” way but rather a “cre­ative block” that puts a cork in the cre­ative process.

A team from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Berke­ley have cre­ated a piece of use­ful soft­ware called Denim that helps stream­line the process of cre­at­ing web­sites by allow­ing the user to sketch out “inter­ac­tive web sites” and ulti­mately flesh out their ideas.

Accord­ing to Wired.com :

“Although the soft­ware is three years in the mak­ing, the first really sta­ble, usable ver­sion was released last month. It is already becom­ing an under­ground hit with design­ers. Denim has been down­loaded about 15,000 times, with almost no adver­tis­ing except a cou­ple of aca­d­e­mic papers, Lan­day said.

In addi­tion to web­sites, Denim is being used to design inter­faces for desk­top soft­ware. Car­son Reynolds at MIT’s Media Lab used it to sketch an inter­face for some Linux soft­ware.“
(more…)

Founded by Derek Powazek,

bq. “Fray (www.fray.com) is a com­mu­nity. We are peo­ple who have come together around the idea that every­one has a story to tell. Ordi­nary peo­ple who tell extra­or­di­nary true sto­ries… Fray is a dare. The word means the fight, the rab­ble. It’s a chal­lenge. To live an inter­est­ing life and have some­thing to say about it.“
(more…)

“The White House at night is a dark and spooky place, haunted, accord­ing to leg­end, by ghosts of dead pres­i­dents and a for­mer British soldier.”

So begins an arti­cle from Yahoo News about the spooks that haunt the walls of the White House. Accord­ing to the article:

“Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, who was spend­ing Hal­loween at his Texas ranch, has never reported see­ing a ghost, Wal­ters said. But recent pres­i­dents have felt the pres­ence of their pre­de­ces­sors, he said.

The spook­i­est area of the White House is prob­a­bly the president’s liv­ing area, Wal­ters said. “Every sound resounds through the halls.”
(more…)