I’ve heard of bird crap on a car - and I’ve witnessed it first hand - but this, this is a little overkill:
Additionally, my coworker has so far gotten 3 songs stuck in my head, and it wasn’t even 10am. The most current song? Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers - All the Gold in California. It’s to early for country.
And speaking of Last.Fm - anyone else a member? I’d love to add some more people to it - I know JACC listens to some cool stuff. And Robert won’t shut up about John Kruth. So if you’re on it, add me - if not, get on it! Or tell me what you are using. I really like Last.FM’s Scrobbler, which hooks up to my iPod and automatically logs what I listen to - even when the iPod isn’t connected to the computer1. Plus they have a lot of great free music downloads and a sweet event calendar so I can see who else is going to the shows I’m going to. It’s win win!
Footnotes listed in the above post:
Though they call this experimental, and from what I’ve seen it is - it works great if you don’t skip any tracks, otherwise it won’t have anything to scrobble [↩]
What the sign meant to say is the meeting was to be held at Senor Wong’s - an Asian/Mexican fusion place a few doors down from where we live.
Two:
Oh yes, I’m going to NOFX baby! I’m sure tickets are still available, come join me! This is the second time I’ve seen them, the first being at the Triple Rock when I was dressed as a priest for the shooting of their music video “Seeing Double at the Triple Rock” That also means that in preperation for Sunday, I will be listening to NOFX, NuFan and The Flatliners all day. And Bad Religion. They’re a staple in my diet of Awesomeness.
FYI: Here’s the video. I’m in it, but you have to really look for me - apparently the authentic Spanish Padre look wasn’t exactly what they wanted.
Ok, so they actually didn’t, but they both did do something really cool - made something, then gave it away for free.
Neil Gaiman wrote “American Gods” in 2001. It’s an absolutely amazing book that I can’t do justice in even attempting to explain it, but I’ll try. American Gods is the story of Shadow, released early from prison when his wife was killed in a car crash. Along the way he hooks up with a mysterious fellow named Wednesday, who is more then he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old God, once known as Odin, crossing the country gathering the support of the other old Gods in preparation for an epic battle with the Gods of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired.
In celebration of his blog’s 7th birthday, he decided to place a book online for free - which book, however, was up to us. After a week, it was quite obvious from the results that American Gods won. And recently they put it up, and here it is. Enjoy! And then go out and buy it.
And then Trent. Last year Nine Inch Nails were released from their contract, allowing them the freedom to do more. As such, they decided to follow the lead Radiohead put out there and released their newest album, Ghosts, for free. Really, sorta free. The first 9 tracks were released free of charge, along with cover art, web art and a 40 page PDF booklet. I’ve listened to the free tracks and the first thing that popped into my head when I heard it was Frank Zappa’s “Jazz From Hell“. It too was a very experimental instrumental album, that took sound to a new level - not necessarily with great success. So really, I didn’t like it - but I didn’t give it the 4-5 complete listen that I need to before I can fully appreciate something at this level. In fact, I spent the $10 for the 2-CD set, which also came with an instant download of the entire 36 track album1. I give it the complete listen it needs, and report back later.
So there you go, a couple of free ways to expand your cultural horizon. Enjoy em!
Footnotes listed in the above post:
In multiple formats, which is awesome - from 320kbps MP3, to FLAC lossless or Apple lossless [↩]
First off - Vita.Mn has announced it’s one-year anniversary. What’s Vita.Mn you ask? Vita.Mn is a website owned and operated by the Star Tribune and bills itself as “your ultimate guide to what’s going on in the Twin Cities. Here you can connect with other locals to share thoughts and recommendations on Twin Cities hotspots and happenings.”
Project MBOT is a direct competitor to this. It’s for people that love music and art. It features a quick clean design and lets you subscribe to bands you like (Such as NOFX, Bad Religion, Deathcab for Cutie, etc) and you will be alerted to concerts happening within a radius you define. It’s running on an engine I’ve been working on called StarShine. StarShine is a highly adaptable screen scraper/XML reader that uses fuzzy logic to match band information.
Eh? Ok, but really, I don’t quite understand. Ok, after the jump I’ll tell you more about it.
That? That’s my iTunes.
I’ve been using iTunes now for about 5 years, and realized the other day I never actually looked at much of the options. For me, it was simply a way of playing my iPod while docked, or a way to fill it up with more tunes.
But the other day I stopped and actually starting looking at some of the options available.
There are the typical options that you would expect to see in a DAP media center software - ripping type, syncing, downloading podcasts, etc. But what I found simply amazing was the avalanche of options available in the playback window - the one you’re normally looking at. The one that tells you what song is playing right now.
It’s been a few days, and I apologize. Normally I steal some time away from work with which to write but time has been fairly short - not to mention, we’ve been taken things easy lately - beginning to wind down.
I may head to the Minnesota Music Festival today - it’s a mile away, well within walking distance. Not sure though, tickets are $30 a pop and there’s the 2 of us.
Today marks my month anniversary of not smoking. I’ve gained some weight - though I’m not sure if it’s because I’m eating more or because I no longer take the 5+ minute walk to the smoking area several times a day. It doesn’t matter, I’m taking care of it - need to exercise more, but the eating side is under control - a lot more water and a lot less soda. In fact, except for coffee I’m slowing down on the caffeine consumption as well.
I bought Mishka a couple dozen roses last week and a balloon. She’s spent a lot of money on me for my birthday, I can just tell, and I feel so guilty about it - no one ever really spends money on me, girlfriends included. So I had to ‘give something back’.
This is going to be a long post, so I’ll cut it short here - click to read the rest of it.
I finally won something of significance! I and 3 of my friends will be headed to the luxurious Roy Wilkins Auditorium on October 2nd to see The Smashing Pumpkins live! Hell yes! I checked on ticketmaster and after all the fees those 4 tickets are worth about $210!
Truth be told, I can’t sell any of them, as they are now already spoken for, and have been about 3 minutes after I received the email stating I won.
I’m happy, though to be honest I kind of wish I won tickets to Urinetown instead. Oh well, picking those up tomorrow hopefully, though I can’t remember where it’s being held - need to grab the paper again. But, I did see that AVENUE Q IS COMING HERE IN JANUARY!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Well, I had my first true night* on the new Sleep Number bed and wow, it was awesome. I was up the second the alarm went off, shower, then Mishka and I went downstairs to Key’s Cafe and had some omelets and then I got to work 45 minutes earlier then normal. I like living in the city
Pickup the U-Haul at 3pm or so, start loading, hopefully get it all loaded since there’s a 70% chance of rain tomorrow - pay the other places rent, get back to St. Paul, unload, unpack, live happily ever after.
Currently, I’m listening to Kimya Dawson and The Moldy Peaches, check em out - Anti-Folk and all. (Also listening to an older Eels and the newest Gogol Bordello)
*Note: This is actually the second night of the new bed, but the first night I didn’t sleep well at all due to the fact that the controller was under my head and during the course of my slumber I managed to hit it enough that my number went from 40 to 85 - so the bed was sorta rock hard by the time I got up heh.
If you want to see me in action, I’ll be doing a photo shoot for Unknown Prophets June 16th at the Dinkytowner Cafe in Minneapolis - come see them, come see me, I’ll be the guy with the big glass. Good food, good friends, good music. It’s all there.
Just noticed that depending on the season, and how I’m feeling, my music tastes change - here’s the past year in music for me - what’s your past year look like?
Oh, and apparently my World of Warcraft fetish might be a positive thing, there’s a good chance I’m going to be in a documentary this summer about geeks and the things that turn us on. It’s called tentatively Dorks, though I object over the title.
