Staticfree Blog

I made an RSS 1.1 plugin / flavour for Blosxom. It's got the basic functionality to make a valid RSS 1.1 feed (well, valid at least at the time of writing this). I should be updating it as the spec. gets finalized, though it's not versioned. I'll put a notice on the page regarding update times.

This winter, I have experienced two things things in Rochester that I never have before:

1. Shoveling out my car (I only recently got one).
2. Seeing numerous people bicycle by in -20°C weather.

After an hour or so of #1, I realized why #2 exists: you don't have to shovel out, scrape off, or otherwise dewinterify your bicycle. Of course the major drawback of that being that most bicycles don't have heated seats or something to keep your face from freezing off.

For the longest time, I've had a very silly song of unknown origin called "Moscau" on my hard drive. I wasn't sure what language it was in, or what the lyrics were other than that they were singing about Moscow in a rather discoy, mock-Russian way. Well, thanks to a commenter on my Disco Moscow post I have more info (thanks Greg!).

The artist is a German band called Dschinghis Khan. The song is Moskau, track number 1 on their 1979, self-titled album. The lyrics (local mirror, poor Babelfish German-to-English translation) seem to praise Moscow. I'm still a bit unsure if it's sarcastic or not, particularly as there are lyrics like:

Come we dance on the table
Until the table breaks down

Whatever the case, there are traces of the group on the web:

• Greg pointed out one of the most amazing music videos I've seen in a long time.
• thebronsteins.com has a copy of a video of one of their live performances
• As pointed out in the above site, you can buy their "best of" CD on Amazon
• my pugglechump entry which has most of these links.
• An excellent German fan site devoted to Dschinghis Khan. Make sure to check out the photo galleries. Some of those photos there are astounding.
• 2005-03-21: Boingboing discovered this video today. There's another link to a copy of the Moskau video there.