Technical Journal Travel Log
Jan
22
2010
Snugly in my audio canal,
Magic, tiny pieces of plastic,
Connected to little silicon boxes,
Blocking the annoying world – fantastic!
Through thin wires of white,
Protecting my fragile mental pop,
Deflecting barbs of inane prattle,
With powerful shields of ZZ Top
American Idol hushed by The Romantics,
Miles blocks a shrill child’s cry,
Those little speakers do their tricks,
Until my batteries run dry
Jan
22
2010
Wow, been a while since I posted anything. Holidays, work, travel, news, snow, and other distractions of life.
I’ll be catching up, and I have posted some things on the travel journal.
Dec
25
2009
Washington Post’s most read article (as of this second) is about a rumored name for the rumored Apple tablet computer which is rumored to be released at the upcoming developer’s conference in a few weeks. Note that the Post’s article is based on an article from Macrumors.com. So much energy in this, but not sure of the purpose. Is ruining announcements of upcoming products what the media focuses on now? At least when they aren’t busy with important Tiger Woods or Balloon Boy news?
I guess the public’s eyes glaze over with all the detail we know of health care reform. Or plans to improve the economy.
(Sorry, the cynicism switch seems to be stuck on “high”)
Dec
5
2009
For the second time in as many months I’ve had the experience of my hotel room key not working when I returned to my room. Apparently, the magnetic stripe on the key can lose its information when placed in the proximity of a cell phone.
Perhaps the hotel industry should try to find a technology for room keys that is not damaged when close to a common object almost everyone carries around with them in their pocket.
Nov
28
2009
Brian Setzer at Strathmore Hall
After avoiding Strathmore Hall for years (a taxpayer protest), this is the third event we’ve been to at Strathmore in two months.
Brian Setzer was there with his big band for a concert billed as a Christmas Extravaganza. While there were a number of Christmas tunes done up in that Rock & Roll/Big Band/Rockabilly style he’s been doing for a while, there were also a number of his recognizable hits including a few numbers done with the Stray Cats trio of Brian, Bass, and small drum kit. And, the stage and costumes were all Christmas themed, including a snow machine for the grand finale.
This was our first time seeing Brian live, and we were real close to the stage for an easy view of his playing. While the style he plays in is somewhat narrow from an electric guitar standpoint, you’d be hard pressed to find a better player as he effortlessly cruises between vintage rock and roll, rockabilly, surf, and swing styles. He does this with a beautiful vintage guitar rig and a long cable, moving (sometimes running, sometimes almost duckwalking) all across the front of the stage and making great connection to the audience.
The martini glass backdrop, Vegas style lounge jackets, emphasis on swing music, create a very high energy performance that we enjoyed from end to end. We really enjoyed the hits like Rock This Town and Sexy and Seventeen, and the swing arrangements of the Christmas songs were a lot more fun and a lot less annoying than the endless repetition that drives you insane by the actual holiday (although it is early in the season). The swing arrangement of the Nutcarcker Suite was fun and creative, and his tribute to Danny Gatton was a great connection to a local player which we enjoyed.
The crowd was a funny mix which we are seeing for this venue, most likely due to the crowd being a mix of fans and theater patrons who are there on a subscription package and not necessarily familiar with the music. Vocals were a little muddy and hard to hear, which we’re now seeing as typical for this venue, unfortunately.
Nov
25
2009
WordPress keeps getting slicker with upgrading in place. Download, unpack, file changes, database updates, all scripted and clean and takes place in seconds. Very impressive.
Oct
29
2009
Container garden in 2009
2009 wasn’t the greatest of years for gardening. We didn’t do the vegetable garden this year due to time constraints. The container gardening on the deck was attacked by a groundhog, then raccoons, then drought. But, not much Japanese Beetles which was good. We also had fun watching a Praying Mantis all summer and some tree frogs decided our umbrella stand was a nice home.
I’m trying an open source photo tool called “gallery” (catchy), and have moved some pictures there. All the shots were taken with our little Canon PowerShot SD 400 camera, which does amazingly well for a little thing as some of the closeups show.
Oct
29
2009
Shelves of old stuff...
I’ve gotten into a bit of a project, which I’ll be providing the technical details of in a few days. But, some personal thoughts…
While we resisted (far longer than most) the migration of our music collection to digital, we eventually felt we had no choice as the vinyl format started to disappear and the CD-ROM took over. So, we started buying CDs like everyone else, and lamented the loss of the large album art and the liner notes in a font size larger than “4 pt”. We also moaned as we purchased favorites already owned on vinyl so we could listen to things in the car. Now, we’re going through this again as we start migrating to MP3/AAC downloads, purchasing things we have no physical evidence of owning.
Partially motivated by cheapness, and partially motivated by the inability to find out of print items, I started thinking about converting all the old things to MP3 myself. After some research (translate as “Google”) and some experimentation (translate as “plug in old hardware”) I discovered that it’s not too hard to convert to MP3 from old sources like vinyl. So, I’ve embarked on a project to convert everything we have so we don’t have to repurchase.
This is not a short term project. Over the years we’ve collected hundreds of pieces of vinyl, dozens of vinyl 45s, hundreds of audio CDs, dozens of cassettes, and concert VHS tapes and DVDs. If you total it all up its more than 1,000 hours of audio. And, there’s no short cut to spending all that time spinning the audio into a computer to convert it. So, this project will literally take months and months. So, we start.
And, it’s turning into a wonderful walk through personal history. There are all kinds of recordings that have been part of our lives as far back as we can remember. There are recordings that we have no idea why we purchased them. There are out of print items. There are audio cassettes of performances of mine from various groups that are poor recording quality, poor performances, and priceless things to possess. Listening to everything is a parade of friends, places, times, experiences, memories almost forgotten and easily retrieved with a drum beat or guitar chord.
It’s going to be a fun two years…
Oct
24
2009
We really love the Craig Ferguson show, which is some insight into our sense of humor and a sign we stay up too late sometimes. And, we really love all things music. So, Craig’s occasional use of music in sketches is a nice combination for us. I’ve pasted a link here just to preserve something that should really be preserved.
I’m not sure why he choose this particular song to be parodied. It’s always fun to ridicule the insanely popular, I guess. In a lot of ways, “Mmm-Bop” is a perfect pop song. Of course, this isn’t the first time it was made fun of:
Favorite part in the second clip? Will Sasso on drums!
9th sphere website design |
