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Stuff that doesn’t fit in any other category

Revisiting literal music videos, 14 years later

2023 Update: Over the span of some 14 years since I wrote this (wow), all of the YouTube links broke. I've fixed them (except for two that sadly vanished), though you may see a "view on YouTube" message instead of being able to watch them as overlays here. I also added three more videos—two thanks to comments from Aaron and Jordan—and one I just stumbled on while searching for new links. Originally published June 10, 2009.

Recently a friend introduced me to something called literal videos. A literal video is a remake, with a twist, of a popular music video, usually something older from the 1980s or 1990s.

The twist in the remake is that the lyrics for the song in the video are changed to reflect what's actually happening in the video. So if there's a shot of a car driving down the street, the literal video's lyrics will be something along the lines of "So there's a car ... driving ... driving down the street."

The words are sung by someone doing their best to match the musical sound and pacing of the original singer, making it seem like this is how the video has always been.

It's actually much harder to explain than it is to demonstrate. So, without further ado, here are four six of the funniest (to me, at any rate) literal videos I've found. If you haven't seen the original versions of these videos, the literal videos may not be quite so funny; I've included links to the originals, too.

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A quick iPhone 13 Pro vs iPhone 15 Pro photo comparison

I upgrade my phone every two or three years; I just moved from the 13 Pro to the 15 Pro, primarily for the new camera features. I'm not a pro photographer, nor even a prosumer photographer. I do like seeing how things have progressed, however.

So here are three photos shot with each phone, taken seconds apart, with each camera set to its highest resolution and HEIC-formatted photos. I then edited the photos only to improve their alignment, and reduce the sizes. See if you can guess which photo of each set was taken with which phone.

Indoors
Before imageAfter image

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Mazda’s Magnificent Miniaturized Marvel: MX-5 Miata

  • Auto

Way back in 1989, Mazda introduced the MX-5 Miata, its take on the two-seat convertible sports car. To say the car has been successful would be an understatement; it's perennially well reviewed and still going strong 34 years later.

Over the years, we've been lucky enough to own a couple—the first was a 1999 version that we sold shortly before the kids came along. And the second is still ours, a 2020 model that we bought used last summer...

We bought it to have something fun and involving to drive around in—complete with manual transmission, just like in the good old days. But this post isn't about our car, it's about something amazing that Mazda has done—or rather hasn't done—to the Miata over the 34 years of the model's existence: It hasn't bloated it into some oversized imitation of the car it used to be.

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The greatest dishwasher innovation ever

This is definitely a "first world problem and solution," but in case anyone's in the market soon, I thought I'd share…

We'd had our dishwasher for over 12 years, and by last summer, it was starting to show its age—two of the modes couldn't be used at all (the buttons wouldn't activate), and the top rack would constantly want to fall out, despite my replacing its stoppers at some point. It was also quite loud.

Conveniently, I visited my father last summer and saw their dishwasher, which featured a thin silverware rack located at the top of the washer:

I'd never seen this feature before—hey, it'd been 12 years since we looked at new dishwashers—but after one cycle, I was a convert. This tray solves the single worst issue with traditional dishwashers: Loading and unloading the silverware bins.

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(No) planes, (no) trains, and automobile

Our family (four of us) flew on Alaska Airlines to Colorado for the holidays; we left on the 20th, and were set to come back on the 27th. We watched the news of the mass cancellations on Southwest and others, but as we were set to fly back after the worst of the weather, we thought "everything should be fine."

Oh how wrong we were.

I awoke Tuesday morning to an email from Alaska Airlines, sent late Monday night, telling us that our Tuesday evening flight had been canceled.

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The most popular letters in Wordle and its relatives

Each morning, I spend a few minutes doing a set of word puzzles—I find they help clear the sleep and get me ready for the day. My daily set includes (in the order I do them):

My focus today is on the first three games in the list. Everyone is probably familiar with Wordle, where you have to guess a five-letter word in six tries.

Canuckle uses the exact same rule set, but all the words are related to Canadian history and culture.

Quordle also uses the same rule set as Wordle, but you solve four five-letter words at the same time. (If you like that kind of thing, Octordle (8 at once), Sedecordle (16), Sectordle (32), and Sexaginta (64) take it to extremes.)

When I started playing Quordle, I had troubles as I'd focus on one word and use up too many moves, preventing myself from solving the others. So I thought I'd "do the math" and see if I could find better opening words for the three Wordle-like games.

To do that, I looked at all the words that had been played so far, figured out which letters were most likely to appear, then created a set of four starting words, based on letter popularity, for each puzzle.

Note: The remainder of this post includes an analysis of all the words used in each game, and ranks the letters by occurrence counts. It also includes graphs showing the distribution of the letters. The images are hopefully unreadably small before clicking, and the top letters are ROT13'd to prevent accidental reading. Still, if you don't want to know, stop reading now.

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Monkey Bread recipe—the non-dessert variety

  • Home

Update: I have updated this recipe to show all measures in grams, as well as fixed some formatting and typos. Given the approaching holidays, I chose to republish with a new date, as it's been a few years since I posted this.

Growing up, around the holidays my mom would bake something we called Monkey Bread. If you search the net for Monkey Bread recipes, what you'll find is a number of dessert-like breads, covered in a sticky brown sugar (or other sweet) coating. Those are not the Monkey Bread my mother made—hers was more of a "regular" bread (containing just ¼ cup of sugar) that you can eat with your meal.

What makes the bread unique—and fun to eat—is that it's assembled from small pieces, which you then tear off and eat.

Although I bake Christmas cookies and occasional other stuff, I'd never tried her Monkey Bread recipe. But for this year's New Year's Eve party/potluck, I thought I'd give it a shot…and after a couple false starts, I managed to get one done…

As noted, that was not my first attempt. I left the egg out of my first batch (whoops), and missed a whole cup of flour (whoops again) on my second try. But in the end, it came out great, and was well liked at the party.

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My favorite holiday cookie recipes

My mother has been baking holiday cookies for as long as I can remember—at least 50 years and counting. Many years ago, she gave me a binder with her cookie recipes in it, which I basically ignored for a long time.

But in 2009, when our eldest daughter was six, I started making some each holiday season. And pretty much every year since then, I've made a batch of holiday cookies. Here's a sample plate of this year's batch*Click the image for a larger version with cookie names…

And as nice as it is having her written recipes, some complete with notes, I wanted to digitize them, for easier access. I also wanted to convert them from their use of the inane US-based measuring system to one based on weight in grams, which greatly eases preparation (assuming you have a good kitchen scale).
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Recipe: Monkey Bread

Monkey bread is a nice bread to make for a party—it's made up of lots of bite-sized pieces. You can read more about it in this blog post, but here's the recipe.

This is very time consuming to make, mainly due to multiple long waits for the dough to rise.

Load recipe in LoseIt: Monkey Bread

The Recipe
IngredientVolumeWeight
All-purpose Flour4 cups500 grams
Sugar¼ cup47 grams
Active Dry Yeast1 packet21 grams
Salt1 teaspoon6.1 grams
Milk (2%)1¼ cups305 grams
Butter¾ cup170.3 grams
Eggs1--
Preparation and Notes

Please see the full Monkey Bread recipe post for the detailed preparation instructions.



Recipe: Jumbo Raisin

These cookies are very soft, and have a wonderful mix of flavors and spices—as long as you like raisins! They puff up during cooking, and remain puffed. Softness is retained well in storage, but add a piece of bread to enhance their shelf life.

Load recipe in LoseIt: Jumbo Raisin Cookies

The Recipe
IngredientVolumeWeight
Raisins2 cups290 grams
Shortening1 cup205 grams
Brown Sugar1½ cups330 grams
Eggs3--
All-purpose Flour4 cups500 grams
Baking Powder1 teaspoon2.6 grams
Baking Soda1 teaspoon2.6 grams
Cinnamon1 teaspoon2.6 grams
Nutmeg½ teaspoon1.2 grams
Allspice½ teaspoon1.0 grams
Preparation and Notes

Preheat oven to 350F (177C).

Boil two cups (290g) of raisins with one cup of water, then let them cool back to room temperature.

Cream shortening and sugar, then add the eggs and the cooled raisins. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and slowly add to tjhe shortening mixture. Form into roughly 20 gram balls, and place two inches apart on a light-colored baking sheet.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops just start to brown. Cool on wire cooling racks.