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Randy Rhoads is one of the greatest guitar players to ever pick up the instrument. Alex Vollmer shows you how to play the solo from “Crazy Train.”

Happy Birthday Strat. Fender posted a great timeline of the guitar too.

There are a lot of great elements to webOS. I’m really looking forward to seeing what LG can do with it.

Jalopnik:

People on two continents mourn the death of 92-year-old William Overstreet Jr. He was a resident of Roanoke, Virginia, a retired accountant, and like many men from his generation, a veteran of World War II. And in the spring of 1944, Overstreet did something people in France and the U.S. still talk about.

Overstreet, who died Sunday at a Roanoke hospital, is remembered for being the U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who flew underneath the Eiffel Tower’s arches in his P-51 Mustang during an aerial battle while in hot pursuit of a German fighter plane, which he ultimately shot down.

Stones. Great, big stones.

Vulture:

Vulture corralled legendary rap-rock producer Rick Rubin, Sir Mix-a-Lot (real name: Anthony Ray), the video’s director Adam Bernstein (also of Breaking Bad fame), and others to bring you the story behind the behind-centric classic.

Somewhere on the internet is a hilarious video of myself, John Welch, Sam Crutsinger and (I think) Andy Ihnatko lip-syncing this song.

Re/code:

Apple confirmed to Re/code that it has bought SnappyLabs, but declined to comment further on the deal.

SnappyLabs had sold the SnappyCam app — which allows the internal iPhone camera to take high-resolution images rapidly — in the Apple Store. It was founded by John Papandriopoulos.

Best part of this story was the snotty last line.

The Washington Post:

Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos suffered a kidney stone attack while vacationing in the Galapagos Islands over the New Year’s Day holiday and was flown back to the United States for treatment.

“Galapagos: five stars. Kidney stones: zero stars,” Bezos said through a spokesman.

Ow ow ow ow.

Gotta love the Onion! INDIANAPOLIS—Following a controversial call Saturday, the home crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium told reporters that they disagree with the referee but respect his decision. “‘Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit’ is something you might mindlessly chant at a time … Continued

My thanks to Focus for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Focus is a beautiful and easy to use pomodoro timer. Built exclusively for iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, Focus is the best way to focus on a single task for a period of time.

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management philosophy that aims to provide the user with maximum focus and creative freshness, thereby allowing them to complete projects faster with less mental fatigue.

The process is simple. For every project throughout the day, you budget your time into short increments and take breaks periodically. You work for 25 minutes, then take break for five minutes.

Each 25-minute work period is called a “pomodoro”, named after the Italian word for tomato. Francesco Cirillo used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato as his personal timer, and thus the method’s name.

After four “pomodoros” have passed, (100 minutes of work time with 15 minutes of break time) you then take a 15-20 minute break.

Focus lets you enter and manage your task, work with customizable session length, see you completed tasks and incorporates the latest technologies. It helps you to focus on your tasks and stay productive all the time.

Focus is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with iOS 7 and also for OS X Mavericks.

Last November, voters in Colorado passed Amendment 64, which approved limited growth, distribution and regulated sale of pot in the state.

On the first day the new amendment went into effect, January 2nd, the Daily Currant, a spoof newspaper, ran this story, claiming that 37 people died as a direct result of this law.

They say it’s coming January 23, which would be at NAMM.

A new amp in Fender’s Pawn Shop Series. I bet this sounds great.

Mashable: We gathered up some of our favorite flicks from the year George Orwell warned us all about. Sorry in advance for making you feel old. Sigh. So very, very old.

Ben Bajarin:

Folks claim that because Apple’s competition is doing something that Apple should also or they will lose. Yet what I love about Apple’s strategy is that it is never around what the competition is doing. Apple marches to beat of their own drum. This is fundamentally mis-understood by so many.

I agree with Ben. Companies will release products that may be in a category Apple is interested in, but Apple is not going to change its strategy to release something before it’s ready. The so-called experts fail to realize that many of the products introduced are guesses by companies to try to beat Apple to a market. Often times, these products are not thought out very well and eventually fail. Apple enters a market because it feels it can dominate that market. It makes products for its customers, with the expectation that the money will follow—exactly the opposite of how most other companies operate.

As Michael Mulvey points out, it’s not just fragmentation, but Google’s lack of attention to design.

Blackberry has today filed a lawsuit against startup Typo Keyboards, which is backed by Ryan Seacrest. The company alleges that Typo copied BlackBerry’s patented ‘iconic’ keyboard design.

I actually agree with BlackBerry.

Our mission is to take the pain and tediousness out of the DMCA takedown submission process. We make this as easy as possible by creating tools that help you quickly create submissions, track existing submissions and organize the results.

Great idea.

Reservoir Dogs on Twitter:

Eight men dressed in BLACK SUITS, sit around a table at a breakfast cafe.

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, “Reservoir Dogs” is a great movie. This Twitter account recreates the movie in 140 character chunks. Interesting experiment in what Twitter can do.

Snapchat, the red-hot private messaging service, said on Thursday that it knew for months about a security loophole that allowed hackers this week to harvest millions of phone numbers and announced changes to its systems.

Assholes.

In this issue Wil Shipley talks about why developers ask you to rate their apps; Darren Murph wonders why American companies don’t give employees more time off; Jonathan Rhyne looks at some steps developers should take to legally protect themselves and their business; Matt Dusenbury tells of a sad story between a mother and daughter; and Doyle Armbrust talks about the new classical music scene.

I don’t even know why I posted this. Just for a chuckle I guess.

Deadspin:

Hello. My name is Chris Kluwe, and for eight years I was the punter for the Minnesota Vikings. In May 2013, the Vikings released me from the team.

I honestly don’t know if my activism was the reason I got fired.

However, I’m pretty confident it was.

Kluwe became famous off the football field back in September of 2012 when his letter to a politician went viral. It’s a sad end to his NFL career.

Vocativ:

The truffle. It’s the hallmark of haute cuisine. Sorry, caviar, but you’re no match for the truffle’s earthy-flavored tastiness, beloved by chefs and epicures alike. The specialty comes in several varieties, including black and burgundy, but Italian white truffles are the most revered, and in turn, the most valuable. Alba, a hilly area in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, is especially famous for its culinary gems, and it’s the place to look if you are hoping to find some.

I had never had real truffle (I thought it was a chocolate treat) until I went to Italy and was blown away by how even a little bit thinly shaved over a simple pasta dish could create such an explosion of flavour.

Incandescent light bulbs are on the way out. But not right this second. A US law, passed in 2007, has made it illegal to manufacture or import incandescent bulbs that do not meet the new efficiency standards.

CBC News:

In terms of astonishing weather facts, it doesn’t get much more impressive than being as cold as a distant planet for a day.

The Manitoba Museum is reporting Winnipeg’s temperatures on Tuesday were actually as cold as the surface of Mars.

According to the Curiosity Rover, Mars reached a maximum temperature of -29 C on Tuesday, a temperature Winnipeg only reached shortly before 3 p.m.

If asked the question, “Why will you never live in Winnipeg?”, I will simply point to this.

Jim travels to Austin, Texas to join Dan in person for this very special episode. Along with 5by5 Producer Haddie Cooke, they discuss the new Mac Pro, Bitcoin, iPad keyboards, the iA Writer patent controversy, Tim Cook’s thank you to Apple employees, and more.

Sponsored by HostGator (coupon DANSENTME), SquareSpace (coupon DANSENTME1213) and Shutterstock (coupon DANSENTME12).

Good writeup on 4 critical legal challenges, moving forward in 2014

Gizmodo:

Behold the first self-propelled ice sculpture ever—a truck made of ice that actually works! It’s a real truck, using 11,000 pounds of ice over a regular truck chassis complete with engine and electrical system. Check out the videos to see how they built it—and how it melted.

This commercial is in heavy rotation here in Canada.

Great list of iOS and Mac apps.

This has been around for a while, but is new to me. So deliciously awesome! Polydimethylsiloxane (or PDMS) is used in lots of products, from chicken nuggets and fries, to caulk, to shampoo. This use is my favorite.