Photo Credit: Woz.org

Soon you may be able to witness the final send off without traveling any farther than your computer.

An undertaker in County Down, Northern Ireland is offering mourners the ability to stream live feeds of funerals online.

The S. Clarke and Sons funeral home offers a new option to the bereaved: live video of the departed’s final journey.

Friends and family who cannot attend the ceremony personally are given access to the feed through a private website, ID and password.

Yes, that’s right, they’re offering streaming death 2.0 web services.

Cameras and microphones are installed throughout the church, giving the viewer as complete an experience as if they were there in person.

The ceremony can also be recorded to the viewer’s PC and saved for later viewing.

What’s next? Deathcasts?

As with most holidays, Google gives tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. with a special logo:

It’s a time for the nation to remember the injustices that Dr. King fought. A time to remember his fight for the freedom, equality and dignity of all races and peoples. A time to remember the message of change through nonviolence.

Dr. King sought to forge the common ground on which people from all walks of life could join together to address important community issues.

Working alongside individuals of all ages, races and backgrounds, Dr. King encouraged Americans to come together to strengthen communities, alleviate poverty, and acknowledge dignity and respect for all human beings. Service, he realized, was the great equalizer.

Today we celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country will remember and memorialize Dr. King by participating in service projects in their communities.

For those of you who don’t remember this show or never heard of it, here is a YouTube clip from the introduction of the original TV series:

I’m a child of the 1970’s and I remember watching this TV show as a kid.

Thinking about it, the show was way ahead of it’s time with the things they used as subject matter.

Back in the early 1970’s it was all fictional things but today in 2007 it’s more of a reality.

The funny thing is 30+ years later, the star of the Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner can now be seen doing Sleep Number Bed commercials :)

The original series, a spin-off from “The Six Million Dollar Man,” starred Lindsay Wagner as a woman whose body is mechanically enhanced to save her life. It ran on ABC and then NBC for three seasons in the mid-1970s. NBC’s order is contingent on casting.

NBC Quote Source: CNN

Some of my fondest Christmas memories were spent in front a of television watching such classics as the animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or one of the myriad versions of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”.

If you can only watch a few holiday specials, these are the ones to watch in my book:

1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas
3. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
4. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
5. Frosty the Snowman
6. Santa Claus is Coming to Town
7. The Year Without a Santa Claus

If I missed anything good be sure to contact me or add a comment below.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Have Laptop Will Travel.

As Major General Lejeune’s message reminds us, the ensuing generations of Marines would come to signify all that is highest in warfighting excellence and military virtue.

Each November as Marines the world over celebrate the birth of our Corps, we pay tribute to that long line of “Soldiers of the Sea” and the illustrious legacy they have handed down to us.

Happy 231 years of service.

Most of the video arcade games from back then actually had some entertainment value and didn’t involve being a gangster or a car thief. Amazing.

The sad thing is almost all of my favorites are virtually impossible to find in a modern arcade but thanks to projects like MAME and my personal video game collection, I can play them any time I want.

Ok, moving on to the reason for this post… last night I was talking with a few of my classic video game collecting friends about what we felt were our personal top 20 games that we actually own either the full upright or cocktail table version in our collections, so without any further delay, here is my personal top 20 list:

1. Ms. Pac-Man
2. Tempest
3. Pac-Man
4. Centipede
5. Galaga
6. Asteroids
7. Star Wars
8. Donkey Kong
9. Tron
10. Joust
11. Donkey Kong Junior
12. Robotron: 2084
13. Defender
14. Space Invaders
15. Frogger
16. Battlezone
17. Galaxian
18. Space Duel
19. Q*bert
20. Dig Dug

It’s great having my own personal arcade. Everything is set to free play. No quarters required. I’ve spent many years and 1,000’s of dollars to restore and revive my childhood memories of the local arcade.

I’m a hero to the kids in my neighborhood when the garage door is open but sometimes I have to be a bully and kick them out. I’m not a baby sitter… but it is nice to let the youth of today see what real arcade fun and entertainment is all about.

It does take up a lot of room having full size games in my garage but it’s so cool when I have friends over for a BBQ or just to hang out and remember the days of playing Galaga as a kid.

The commemoration included four moments of silence – two for the times that hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center towers and two for when the burning towers collapsed into mountains of rubble, killing thousands of people working there and first responders who were trying to rescue them.

The ceremony included the reading of the names of the 2,749 victims at the trade center site by about 200 of the victims’ spouses, partners and significant others.

The first moment of silence came at 8:46 a.m. ET, the moment American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the trade center’s north tower; others followed at 9:03 a.m., when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the south tower; 9:59 a.m., when the south tower fell; and 10:29 a.m., when the north tower collapsed.

Souce: CNN.com

Dylan Avery, the creator of Loose Change headed to New York on September 8, 2006 and had the following to say on his Loose Change blog about the trip:

I’m leaving for NYC in two hours… hope everything goes okay, I’m a little nervous, I’m not going to lie to you. There’s going to be troublemakers there, let’s be realistic.

I wonder how the distribution of the Loose Change 2nd Edition DVD’s is going? I hope people are being respectful.

Even though there is a lot of evidence to show things happened differently then what we were told 5 years ago, we still need to be respectful of the family members who are at ground zero to remember the loved ones that were killed, still missing or unaccounted for.

I’ve been giving out free copies of the Loose Change DVD to family, friends or anyone that I know who would talk to me about the events of 9/11.

The creators of the film, myself and others have stated “we encourage you to research this information yourselves and come to your own conclusions” which everyone should do.

I will never forget what happened 5 years ago and either should you. Do your own research, ask questions, demand answers.

In the words of Founding Father John Adams, the holiday would be “the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance… It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

I totally agree with you John Adams, so today I plan on celebrating our independence with good friends, good food on the BBQ, loud music, maybe a game of Scrabble and lots of fireworks exploding high into the sky.

The picture above was originally entitled Yankee Doodle, this is one of several versions of a scene painted by A. M. Willard that came to be known as The Spirit of ‘76.

You pumped your fists when they rocked. Your heart pumped full of love when they broke out these sweet ballads. Go ahead, shed a tear or two.

That’s the introduction on the liner notes on the CD that I picked up yesterday titled “The Greatest Hits – Power Ballads” from my local Target.

The CD was only $8.99, so it was well worth the cash to have some songs from days gone by in my music collection.

I just finished listening to all 12 tracks straight through this afternoon while I was driving around. The songs brought back so many memories from high school and from when I was in a metal band. Good times indeed.

The track list has some of the biggest bands from the 1980’s-1990’s:

Whitesnake, Damn Yankees, Warrant, Poison, Night Ranger, Scorpions, Bad English, Skid Row, Extreme, Mr. Big, Cinderella and Queensryche.

So for any of my readers who are into late 80’s-90’s metal, go grab this CD. It’s less then $10.00, so it’s not a major purchase :)