My friend Lori Najvar recently started a nonprofit called PolkaWorks to help preserve and feature cultural traditions through documentaries, other media, and events. One of the PolkaWorks projects is a photo exhibit on Texas auctioneers. The exhibit was on display last week at the Texas Capitol and, on Friday, Lori organized an auction demonstration in the Capitol rotunda to help bring attention to the exhibit. The event was featured on KXAN news.

If you look very closely in the video, you might see me in the crowd. And you can see some of my work on the PolkaWorks website, which I helped Lori set up.

It’s a short film called Gisele Kerozene that’s part Mad Max and part Harry Potter. It’s a bit hard to tell at YouTube-quality, but all the flying sequences are accomplished by stringing together individual shots of the actors jumping off the ground with a broom between their legs.

Tim Minchin might be the result if Eddie Izzard and Elton John had an Australian love child. Add a bit of Tom Lehrer influence and you’ll start to get the idea. If you like this video, check out more on YouTube.

The sound at the club was a bit disappointing, but the band still put on a great show. I wasn’t too familiar with the background of the band, except that their publicity photos show just two people; however, there were six people on stage: a DJ, guitarist/trumpeter, bass player, drummer, violinist, and lead singer/keyboard player.

They have a rich cinematic sound that reminds me of several of my favorite bands: part Propellerheads, part Kirsty MacColl, part Morcheeba, and a little bit of Andrew Bird.

After discussing those two videos with my friend Steve, he recommended a video by a bluegrass band called Uncle Earl. The video for “Streak O’ Lean, Streak O’ Fat” is a mind-bending mix of genres that I’ll call “Bluegrass Tiger, Hidden River Dance.”

Bat for Lashes — What’s A Girl To Do

RJD2 – Work It Out

Uncle Earl – Streak O’ Lean, Streak O’ Fat

With that in mind, it’s nice to know that humans are still better than computers when it comes to certain tasks. Yesterday, I watched a Google Tech Talk given by Luis von Ahn, a computer science Ph.D., who specializes in harnessing the computational strengths of humans. The talk was not as dry as it may sound. In fact, it was one of the most interesting Tech Talks I’ve watched.

Von Ahn has developed programs and games to help thwart spammers and collect useful data for search engines and other databases. His reCAPTCHA program helps in recognizing classic texts for the Gutenberg Project in a very novel way. When users enter text into a reCAPTCHA script to prove themselves human, they are actually helping to recognize words that computers were unable to.

Von Ahn’s games pit players against one another in ways that allow useful data to be collected. Von Ahn does a much better job of explaining and demonstrating the games that I can. I recommend checking out his presentation (below or on Google Video). Or read the recent wired Magazine profile of von Ahn. Or play one of Von Ahn’s games online.