ron swanson birthday

Every year, I take a strange delight in turning off my Facebook wall and _not_ allowing a million birthday messages to inundate my wall. It might seem like a jerk move, but a bunch of my wishes come from people that I barely know ... people that I haven't been in touch with for a long time. It just feels vaguely disingenuous to wish someone, not because you remembered their birthday or needed to connect with an old friend, but because a computer program sent you a reminder. Anyway - for those of you that actually mean it, you know how to reach me. 

Notable things that happened in 2013

Dusting off an old unposted entry for the sake of posterity:

I got a road bike.
We went to NZ.
E got a job.
Tinu started 1st grade.
New Bay Bridge.

Fave 2013 records (actually done before the end of the year!)

I'll make a spotify playlist eventually … in the meantime 

Records I liked in 2013:
=================

My Bloody Valentine - MBV. A shoutout to their past that evolves into a futuristic sounding thing. 
http://pitchfork.com/news/49344-my-bloody-valentine-share-new-album-mbv-site-crashes-check-out-cover-art-and-tracklist-now/

Savages - Silence Yourself. A dark nervy record. And they are absolutely fantastic live. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIB8HEmnoY

Devendra Banhart - Mala. Very underrated and cheeky album. 
http://www.nonesuch.com/albums/mala

Bleached - Ride Your Heart. I'm a sucker for shambly C86 style indie pop
https://myspace.com/hellobleached

Kids On A Crime Spree - Creep the Creeps EP. A garagey take on indie pop. Oakland style. 
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/catalog/show/253

Legs - Pass the Ringo. Can I say indie pop Oakland style again?
http://logladyrecords.com/ll012-legs-pass-the-ringo/

Lorde - Pure Heroine. I know she was overplayed, but this kid is only 16. and writes her own music. and she is good. and she is from NZ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc (Yes - you've seen this before, but listen to again anyway)

Daftside - Random Access Memories Memories. Daft Punk never really did it for me. This remix record by Nicolas Jaar et al. (Darkside) was much weirder and far more interesting than RAM IMO.
https://soundcloud.com/daftside-2/sets/random-access-memories-1

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City. They do well-crafted studio pop and they do it right. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANznirklths

Disclosure - Settle. Dark, dancey and british.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18091-disclosure-settle/


Older records deserving a shout:
=======================
Various Artists - Rocket Infinity: The Global Rise Of Rocking Music, 1942-62 - digs up allfthese gems from around the world interpreting early rocknroll. Ace Bunny Killer! 
http://www.discogs.com/Various-Rocket-Infinity-The-Global-Rise-Of-Rocking-Music-1942-62/release/4219704

Suicide - S/T - Holy crap - this is so good and so different from anything else that came out of the 70s. Fuzzy distorted almost-electronic music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LayQ98lR8I

you down with btc?

is there a non-sketchy way to do bitcoin?

Open Letter To Myself

Don't try twerking. You are not a sex object. Plus, you lack the necessary rotational flexibility in your hips.

Also, white lines - don't do it.

Call Me Carly

First read this.

If you still don't appreciate the best song of the decade, well, maybe you hate life. Or maybe you haven't watched the actual video which was kind of a game changer and a subtle sign towards the upcoming political upheavals of the following summer.

Go watch it. I'll wait. There! Feel better? Also - catchy as hell, innit!

OK - you've caught the earworm. Go try this:


Now that you're in the mood, let's slow down the original by a teeny bit:

And we'll close it out with some Star Wars action:

There you go. coredumpin - your one stop shop for the greatest song of the decade. 

Link Dump Saturday

• Octopus Project - Truck: http://vimeo.com/5656770 OMG Earworm!
• Entropy is not as entropic as you think: http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/encryption-is-less-secure-than-we-thought-0814.html
• CS Refresher - Topological Sort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting
• Back when the North Sea was landlocked, we had Doggerland: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-18687504
• This is everything I love about little indie Flash games: http://jayisgames.com/games/experimental-shooter-2/

'twas a good day

• Listening to: Tristeza - Paisajes
• Drinking: Ryan and the Beaster Bunny
• Easting: Leftovers from Nick's and Homeroom
• Reading: Dai Sijie - Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
• Earlier in the day: 
• Coffee at CRO
• Doughnuts at Doughnut Dolly
• Breakfast at Homeroom
• Biking up Cyclotron road (demons bested!)
• Swimming in Roberts Pool

pre-retraction

So I was about to embark on one of my unsolicited rants re: the whole BBQ thing and how I don't get why it is such a popular phenomenon when most barbecued foods are kinda meh etc., when E reminded me that this is probably because I don't eat meat. Oh yeah - good call. I guess barbecue makes a lot more sense when meat is involved. I got nothing.

non-gate

Oh man. The conspiracy theories are starting to fly again. In response, I give you the words of Alan Moore:

“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
–Alan Moore, “The Mindscape of Alan Moore” (2003)

  
I am a big believer in incompetence ultimately triumphing over any well-orchestrated secret plan. Over time, stuff goes wrong and things come out. If anything, the age of the internet has proven that there are no secrets. There is always a whistle-blower, always an anonymous tip that makes it impossible to hide anything for very long. This is not to say that conspiracies don't happen. It is just that incompetence and dysfunction are often better explanations than any grand unified theory of whatever. I've seen all sorts of badly photoshopped images trying to link the Boston / Sandy Hook / 911 etc. to a government cover up, when the reality (botched foreign policy over time leading to radicalization) is more complex and harder to actually fix.

I generally find conspiracy theories to be far too simplistic and neatly tied together i.e. made up. Real conspiracies, more often than not, look nothing like the theories surrounding them. We're at a point where any given major event (good or bad) evokes a set of conspiracy theories without a lot of critical thought going into [i] whether said theory makes any sense, and [ii] whether the conspiracy theory actually detracts from a very real underlying problem. For example it is a lot easier to claim that climate change is a conspiracy and much harder to deal with the reality that we may have irreparably fucked our ecosystem. 

Which is all really just a longer-winded and less articulate version of Alan Moore's quote.

(cobbled together from a longish Facebook thread)

schadenfreude

[Warning: Sports related post ahead]

Top 10 schadenfreude inducers

1. The Utah Jazz (BTW - can we all agree that this is the most ill-fitting team name of all time?)
2. Ryan Lochte
3. Skip Bayless
4. Clay court tennis specialists (Rafa leads the charge on this one)
5. Smokin' Jay Cutler
6. Atlanta Sports Teams (Is it just me or do all Atlanta sports teams blend into one? Like a giant ball of slightly above-average mediocrity)
7. Cristiano Ronaldo
8. The Dallas Cowboys
9. The New York Jets
10. Tim Tebow (the Tebow-NYJ nexus has been schedenfreude heaven)

also, happiness is all the rage

ah - emo! :)

flat design is all the rage

• http://designmodo.github.com/Flat-UI/
• http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-interface-design
• http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/

wait

When did I turn 36?

dst

Some Observations:

• People are not happy about Daylight Saving Time.
• (Some) people are finally catching on to the proper spelling: Daylight Saving Time - no trailing 's' in 'Saving'.
• Be honest now, people. Don't you like having an extra hour of sunlight in the evening? Also, you can look forward to that extra hour of sleep when November 3 finally rolls around.

expiration date

This needs to be a rule: Technical articles and blog posts *must* have a date. Always.

I was looking around for articles on how to merge my Twitter feed with Blogger. I found a ton of outdated information, that was, of course, *not* actually dated, making it was impossible to gauge relevance. I think I poked around the internet for about half an hour before stumbling upon something that worked.

(Solution that works as of 2013/02/24: Embed the code snippet generated by https://twitter.com/settings/widgets into your blog layout HTML)

With rapid release cycles and constantly evolving software, blog posts have limited shelf-lives and often only apply to specific versions of the product. It is incumbent on anyone that seeks to document or write about software to understand this. The crazy thing is I've seen this on Wired, Salon and a bunch of other reputable publications. A Google search for "add twitter feed to blogger" yields a surprisingly high number of outdated AND undated results.

Now part of this is Twitter's fault for messing with their API and terms of service. But this is unfortunately the way things are when software isn't completely open. The end user is held hostage by the folks controlling the software. OK - Now I'm starting to sound like RMS. Which probably means I should sign off.

But seriously - software really does need to be open.

apologies for 2012

So I never did post a best-of list for 2012. I listened to a lot of music, but somehow very little actually stuck. In the end I felt like I could throw something together but it would be the equivalent of fakin' it.

There was certainly some interesting music. Fiona Apple and Neneh Cherry put out some pretty cool weird-good records (mad newfound respect y'all!). I mean, you can't go wrong with a name like "The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do".  And Ssion did a wonderful Erasure reprisal.

But ultimately, the record that completely and totally rocked my socks off, and made the infinte-repeat playlist for the year was something that was released in 2011. Wax Idols - "No Future" on Hozac. It made a best-of list completely meaningless because nothing in 2012 came close. Yes - it is that good!

The good news is that 2013 is already starting out pretty solid - MBV, Veronica Falls, Eat Skull, Matmos ... and we're only in February.

<full disclosure>I still haven't properly listened to the Frank Ocean album, and I should pretty much stop talking about music until I do that.</full disclosure>

the new thing

This blogger thing has a new composition thing. I think I like it. Dare I post an unmediated opinion without seeking affirmation from the internet first?

safety net

I'm having lots of thoughts and feeling vaguely non-confrontational which means ixnay to the acebookfay.

So I now know at least three people that have given TEDx talks. More power to them. Really - I'm quite happy for them.

On the other hand they all seem to come from fairly privileged backgrounds, where there is a pretty massive familial safety net. I'm really curious about the demographics of the average TEDx speaker. Yes - it is really cool to see folks breaking the mould and scratching their itches and generally inspiring people to do/make/say/think interesting things. But it is much easier to go out and do these things when the price of failure is pretty low. When the worst that can happen is that you end up doing something else.

I'm really curious about what the numbers say. A TEDx talk on the demographics of TEDx mayhaps?

Reflections on the Eve of XXXV

Roman Numerals. You like that? I am on the verge of becoming ancient. Pre-historic even. I am about to be aged out of a critical demographic. After tomorrow, I will no longer be of interest to marketers targeting that oh-so-key 18-34 demographic. As the bald spot on my head grows increasingly prominent, I must confront the possibility of a looming mid-life crisis.

Am I too old for <insert thing i am supposedly too old for>? Should I have done something significant with my life by now? Am I going to fall into a reverie lamenting my place in the world, while simultaneously coming to terms with life, the universe, and everything by having a sudden epiphany about how glorious it is to be the parent of an amazing and wonderful 5 year old? (Whoa - I think that last sentence actually held together!)

This is going nowhere fast. I only have two more hours. I think I'm going to do something more productive. Like opening up a fine bottle of Mikkeller Monk's Brew. The only epiphany here is that my beer gets fancier as I get older. 

clocking in

There, there - you didn't think I'd leave you hanging without a bit of year-end list action, did you now?

Here we go:

2011 Top 10 Tings (since lists of random things seem to be in vogue these days)

1. Celebrating NYE on East Coast time

Parenting is all about tricking the mind into believing insane things.

 

2. Kolaveri Di

Translation: "Why This Murderour Rage, Girl?"

 

3. Google Plus

even if I am one of the only 6 people using it.

 

4. Spotify

 

5. Food Trucks

 

6. Folding laundry while watching sports

or is it Watching sports while folding laundry? Either way - I've discovered the most effective use of my Sundays.

 

7. The importance of the chamois patch, as it pertains to bicycling.

 

8. Megan Rapinoe to Abby Wambach

 

9. Reconnecting

Managed to reconnect with a lot of old peeps this year. Feeling warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.

 

10. Words With Friends

More exciting than Scrabble; better FB and mobile apps.

The question is

Should I switch to Tumblr? All the cool kids are doing it.

Things I don't really get

• Golf
• IPA
• Fugazi
  
• The second amendment
• Aquatic pets (i.e. fish)
  

shiny and new

Just got a new macbook pro. I am loving the speed - 8GB RAM, quadcore, Solid State Disk. And silent. As in - "Real G's move in silence; Just like lasagna".

Anyway here is what I'm putting on there over the base install (It already comes with MS Office, Firefox, Thunderbird and Parallels).

GUI Applications
* Chrome
* TextMate
* Cocoa Emacs
* ITerm
* Dropbox
* Seashore

CLI Stuff
* Homebrew
* RVM + ruby 1.9.2
* git
* node.js

Python Stuff
* pip
* Django
* virtualenv
* yolk

javascript for all

dusting off the cobwebs

Hello there! Yes - serious cobwebage around here. (There is a 'web' pun in there somewhere, but we don't want to force it now, do we?)

In my quest for self-improvement I've started thinking about what I want to start doing better. I'm asking myself - what do I want to learn, as I head into the middle ages?

I've always been really bad at tinkering with mechanical things. I'm just not a very good fix-it-up kinda chappie. Some of this is not having the right baseline knowledge. But much of this comes from good old fashioned mental blocks. A kind of learned helplessness.

So I'm taking the horns by the bull. Or is it catching the tail by the tiger?



Pardon the digression, but really - who doesn't love a little Fraggle Rock in the middle of their epiphanies? As I was saying, I'm trying to fix my mechanical inadequacies. I've also become increasingly interested in bicycles lately (bicycles might just be replacing motorcycles as the symbol of the new urban midlife crisis, but that is a whole post in itself). Ah - bicycles! The simplest of machines - pure Newtonian physics at work. And sexy to boot.

So my new project is to get better at fixing bikes, working my way towards putting together my very own road bicycle. And hopefully, I'll learn a little about tools and grease and how mechanical things go together. Not shooting for genius level wizardry here - I'd be happy if I can simply achieve basic competence. And maybe I can start to have half a clue when my dearest beloved starts to throw down her handygrrrl skills.

the scenic route

This was a bag I had shipped from SF to Oakland. Fedex decided to ship it through San Leandro by way of Sacramento. The sad thing is that the company that makes the bag is all about zero-waste and even mails it to you in a reusable canvas mailer that you return to them upon delivery. Sigh!

rubbish

every time someone has a conversation about astrology, my instinct is to interject with a: this is a nonsensical conversation. this is inane and reductionist and insulting to generations of scientific progress.

but i don't. i smile and nod, and stop myself from being an ass. ah - the tragedy of enlightenment. but really - 2010 and we still believe in this bullshit?

1.0

Feeling re-inspired by v1.0. A lot of it is sophomoric and cringeworthy. But there are also several moments of total fucking genius. And there is some funny shit in there.

I think it was good for me to be prolific. The more I wrote, the better my stuff got. Or at least I managed to hit paydirt more often. Ya know, more darts = more chances to hit bullseye. Umm - WTF - a darts analogy? I think that might be a first.

analog

mark me down, mark me up

I've been recently introduced to Markdown. Markdown provides you with a simple syntax for creating text documentation that can be easily converted to HTML.

If you've ever used a wiki, it is pretty much the same principle. For example, headers are just underlined words. And bulleted lists can be created by simply using a bunch of asterisks. Like zis:


Title
=====
* item 1
* item 2
* item 3


What makes Markdown powerful is that the syntax is decoupled from a specific web service (such as a wiki). This means that you can write your docs in your favorite text editor (insert obligatory emacs vs. vi showdown reference), and convert it to HTML with a single command. The standardized format means you have very elegant looking README text files, that easily turn into first class html pages once passed through the Markdown converter.

There seems to be a whole eco-system that has evolved around Markdown, and it appears to be the format of choice for a number of git based code repositories. Now if only Blogger supported the Markdown syntax.

And once again, I've jumped on the bandwagon much later than I should have.

when in doubt, drop core

Now reading

Bicycle Diaries - David Byrne, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler - Italo Calvino, Pragmatic Thinking - Andy Hunt

Listening to

Brazilian Girls, The XX, Ke$ha (you heard that right - Tik Tok is Da Bomb)

On (internet) TV

Old Lost episodes, Parks and Rec, NBA playoffs

Drinking ...

Ritual Coffee, Beckman Vineyards 2008 Cuvee Le Bec (I bought a case - seriously!)

Current internet hangouts

The Changelog, Mashable, Signal Versus Noise

games

Lately, I've been on a mini-quest to find interesting, well-crafted games that are playable in your browser. I am less concerned with the challenge or level of difficulty associated with a game. Rather, I focus on aesthetics, innovation and ideas. Games that are works of art. Stuff that makes me go Wow! within the first 5 minutes of play. You get the idea.

So if you have any suggestions send them my way. I tend to like logic and puzzle based games, but I'm open to anything that pushes the boundaries of design and concept.

I'll offer up an exhaustive list of my findings down the road. You can get started with these two fantastic gems that I've run into:

• Continuity
  
• Auditorium
  

happy 3

although it sometimes feels like the personal blog has gone the way of Diaryland (remember Diaryland?!!) and that this seems a bit like making sound in a vacuum, it is nice to pop in here now and then. must make sure those database tables are getting exercised every once in a while.

very nice little birthday party in the park for the (not so) tiny (anymore) one. managed to find a balance between grown-up conversation and enjoying the kids playing in the park, which is something that i've been striving towards for the better part of three years now. when you can seamlessly work your way through Raaaaaaaandy, nap schedules, Ruby-On-Rails, indie rock coloring bocks, bike geekery, preschool politics and 90s hiphop, I think you can safely declare WIN.

yes - have to drop a link to Aziz Ansari's genius Raaaaaaaandy videos.

ended the evening with a rare night out - De La Soul show at Yoshi's SF. they've totally still got it going on. thanks for a great birthday weekend tinu.

top 10 tings o' 2009

Dominant memes in my personal zeitgeist for the year:

• Ruby-on-Rails


• Bicycle fever


• Twitter


• School days for the family D.


• Aunt Mary's Cafe


• Travel travel travel


• Sesame Street


• weddings


• Infinite Jest


• The farmer's market

Stuff that hasn't been getting as much play:

• DJing at KALX


• Trivia night at the Nomad Cafe


• Java


• The New Yorker


• International business trips


• Yoga


• Blogging


• 43 folders


• The afternoon nap


• Live shows

naughtie naughtie

there seems to be a backlash against the "lifehack" type productivity blogs. apparently the productivity gurus realized that people seemed to be spending more time diddling with productivity pr0n than actually getting things done. merlin mann of 43 folders has had some particularly lucid rants that are worth reading, in and of themselves.

it looks like we are starting to see casualties from the naughts. 5 years from now we'll all be like - "lifehacks - those were so naughties". That said, I'm not sure that the term naughtie or aughtie or whatever the hell we are calling this decade will make it that far either.

remember, remember, the 4th of november!

Last year, at this time, I cried-

Tears of joy because a certain Barack Hussein Obama II gave me hope that the dream was alive. It made me proud to be the father of a mixed-race kid with a funny name.

Tears of sadness at the travesty that is proposition 8.

Things don't seem any easier now, but we must keep on keepin' on.

Damn - this Dogfishhead Palo Santo is some strong beer. It is making me totally emo.

i can care, but not too much.

as i write this, hideki matsui has just powered the yankees to their 27th title. as much as the yankees are annoying, i feel like america needed this win. it will go a long way towards re-establishing the nation's confidence in "the system". the yankees win the world series and the natural order of things will prevail. the economy will fix itself. the greater good of the nation will trump narrow political maneuvering. or so i keep telling myself. of course, this makes some assumptions about the true "natural order of things", but i'll let my optimism carry me forth for now.

and then there is the whole university of florida coach suspending his player for a whole HALF because he tried to gouge this other player's eyes out. WTF??!!! a. why bother? b. how can you possibly expect not to be called out for this weak-assed half assery? doing nothing would have been less controversial than pretending to "punish" your players. ugh.

not sure why, but i've been more into sports this year, than in a while. i'm probably just using it to avoid thinking about the bigger problems facing the world right now. i guess sport provides you with a microcosm of human interaction and emotion. but at it's very core - it doesn't actually matter. our lives go on. people don't die. you can get really passionate and argumentative, without having to hate your fellow human being. i can care, but not too much.

now we can swim any day in november

we went as rakshasas and butterflies (heliconius erato). as david foster wallaces, complete with footnotes. seriously - that was a killer idea. little notecards on one's feet. anyway - it was nice to get dressed up and get out. and it was unseasonably warm too.

need to start documenting ideas for next year though, so that we can put in more advance prep work.

idea sketches:

• Sexy Abe Lincoln


• Bert and Ernie


• Bake Sale Betty


• Very Hungry Caterpillar (green sleeping bag anyone?)


• Hipster Elves

and it is still unseasonably warm - november and 70 degrees outside. and with that nablopomo has been kicked off.

A SUPPOSEDLY FUN BOOK

I am about a third of the way through the late David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest", as part of the Infinite Summer online book club. My feelings so far: brilliant, self-indulgent, tedious, funny-in-that-darkly-comic-way, clever, inconsistent. I both love and hate the fact that DFW pretty much makes up words when the occasion calls for it (1). Which gets rather confusing when he also happens to summon his rather prodigious vocabulary of not-made-up words in the same context.

I love his vision of a dystopic near future. Years named after sponsors (2009 would be the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment"). Quebecois Separatists fighting U.S. experialism. Apres-Garde cinema. Very funny, very sardonic, very cyberpunk (in the way that modern fiction writers overtly eschew SF, while ingratiating themselves to it at the same time).

At the same time, he could have really used an editor. I mean, all the ultra-detailed chemical and physiological descriptions of real and/or fictional drugs that you will pretty much forget right away? The pages upon pages of tennis scores interspersed with the occasionally interesting bit of information? And those sentences that last forever (some brilliant, some just plain long). I read somewhere that part of the motivation for the digressions and the footnotes was to control the pacing and flow. But seriously - you could have easily had a 700 page masterpiece instead of a 1000 page flawed work of genius.

What else - There is a strong element of the meta throughout the book, where many of the themes and elements play out in other unrelated parts of the book. His use of language mixes formalisms with, like, the causal patois of the 1990s twenty-something. I like this a lot.

Overall, my enjoyment of this book is similar to how I feel about a lot of experimental art/music. The process is just as important as the work. An indulgence that seems hit-or-miss, but is perhaps necessary to this process. Parts of it are very frustrating, parts of it are confusing, parts of it tickle the cerebrum and parts of it just flat-out blow your mind away.

I am very glad I am reading it as part of a book club, since it provides context and discussion for the overall process. It lets me get through the harder parts knowing that there will be some kind of payoff on the discussion boards - some little connection contained therein that makes you go a-ha. Keepin' on keepin' on for now.



1. "Experialism" isn't a word? Well - it should be. I mean how else would you describe the forced expulsion of territory into foreign hands.(a)

a. Sorry - I promised myself that I wouldn't use footnotes, but it is simply too tempting this far into the book.

not a bad day

started waaay too early. someone decided that 6am was a fine time to be up and about.

brewed up some ikea instant cappuccino which turned out to be surprisingly good.

lego time!

family outing at the farmer's market on our bicycles, with the sea-of-clouds clan.

a very thrilling confederations cup final.

hatching a dinner plan - some masala corn, some cliantro tofu ...

about time ...

they integrated email posts with blogger

post punk post

The Mae Shi / PRE - Pretty rad show last night. Haven't been out to see live music in what seems like forever. Random musings from last night:

At this way underground warehouse. I had to drive around the block 3 times before I could find it. The venue is tiny. And very punk rock. This is either going to be fucking brilliant or fucking awful. Either way "fucking" will be the adjective-du-jour.

Everything smells like stale sweat and cigarette smoke. And I could have sworn that the dude in the mosh-pit looked just like my buddy Paul McGrath, if Paul were 19 and had a goatee.

And everyone here is really young. The weird old dude with the bald patch on his head - wait - that's me. Ack! Being friends with someone in the band mitigates things, but only ever so slightly.

OK - this show is fucking radical. As in rad. Both bands are raw and scream-tastic, but have lots of harmonizing and synthy goodness to mix things up.

And seriously Hillyh totally needs to be retroactively included in my fave records of 2008. So good.

Even have time for a midnight Thai food run. That hit the fucking spot.

state of the wub

i think we're approaching some sort of tipping point with facebook where it will simply implode under its own weight. a lot of very smart people have blogged about the life cycle of social networks. once there are enough "undesirable" people entering your social network (the creepy co-worker, the jackass classmate from your high school, the random stalker you met at a party, the homophobic distant relative), you quickly start to lose interest in wanting to share links and post updates because of the potential for an interaction that you would rather avoid.

all social networks have this problem (see friendster, myspace, orkut ...), given that the success of a social network is directly proportional to its size. of course, the fundamental weakness of a social network is also directly proportional to its size. facebook managed to bypass some of these issues by offering an application rich environment, and operating a closed network with advanced privacy settings. but that is quickly starting to catch up with it. most people don't have the time or the energy to fine tune their settings to their desired level of privacy. managing several "groups" of users is a full-time job.

i'm already starting to see a decline in the quality of interesting links and postings on my facebook feed, where interesting is defined as something that pushes the edges of our socio-cultural norms. and the "25 things" meme might just be the beginning of the end i.e. the high-schoolization of facebook culture.

the sad part is that facebook has really done a fantastic job in terms of developing a rich and usable social platform by opening up their API to the public. allowing users to contribute their own applications was a stroke of genius (though one that was effectively negated by the scrabulous fiasco, but whatever).

i think a number of us are waiting to jump to a facebook like platform without the baggage of a an overbloated network. in other words we're waiting for google to dump orkut and reinvent this particular wheel. we'll see how it goes.

umm

WHAT HAPPENED HERE?

Update:
Nevermind - blogger glitch.

neglected

i guess i've been neglecting the whole blog thing in favor of a more hyper-kinetic short-attention span driven medium.

for whatever reason, i've stopped reading blogs these days. which has also translated into lack of updates on my own blog. i guess one has to be a living, breathing part of the blogosphere - a producer as well as a consumer of the bloggywogs for it to work. and with twitter offering the buzz of instant gratification, well, we have little time for the long-form blog.

all this just to say, we're still around, but our attention has been diverted. hopefully not for much longer.

Top 10 Records of 2008

1. M.I.A. - "Paper Planes [Single]" (XL)
   
2. The Dodos - Visiter (Frenchkiss)
   
3. The Terrordactyls - The Terrordactyls (Pankof)
   
4. TV On The Radio (Dear Science)
   
5. The Cool Kids - Bake Sale (Chocolate Industries)
   
6. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Warp)
   
7. She & Him - Volume One (Merge)
   
8. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (Red Ink)
   
9. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (XL)
   
10. The Bug - London Zoo (Ninja Tune)
    

More here ...

coming soon

more to force me into writing here again, but i'm planning on:

• updating my annual music lists


• waxing poetic on the joys of ruby


• documenting my adventures in home-brewed beer (assume I get around to the brewing part)


• proclaiming that twitter will kill the blog, just like the internet killed your television, or video killed the radio star


• proclaiming that twitter is dead

i'm actually a huge animal collective fan

From the QC twitter feeds:

Marten:
There needs to be a word for "I recognize that [band name] is
critically acclaimed, and rightfully so, but I still don't like them."

Dora:
That word is "Pitchforky." As in, "Animal Collective have some good
songs but overall they're a little Pitchforky for my taste."

Fan Boy

Ok - I'll admit it. I am completely obsessed with all things M.I.A. It all started with her completely brilliant single, Paper Planes. Then I started getting into her Bollywood cover of Jimmy (I posted the videos here on Oct 10th). Now I find out that she has covered Tom Waits' fantastic intro to "The Wire" - another current obsession of mine. And she is having a baby - gotta respect a fellow parent, innit? South Asian massive represent.

The Ballot

Here is what you need to know:

• Barack Obama
• Yes on 1A (bullet train baby!)
• No on 4 (no to right wing anti-abortion fundies)
• No on 8 (no on hate)

For more, read the SF Guardian:
http://tinyurl.com/59lqbl

"the young voter"

so the other night, this hippieish lady comes a-canvassing to our door, telling us about the importance of the election, and not letting up in these waning days of the campaign etc, etc ... donate money to the DNC ... help make calls ... get out the vote. so far, so good - i'm with her and i've even pulled out my checkbook.

then she talks about how young voters are key to the obama campaign, and how important it is to get the youth vote out. and then she adds - "you know how those young voters are: whoa, duude - i totally needed to do something important today, but i can't remember what it is".

umm - wtf? i realize that young voters have traditionally been a flakey demographic, but to think that they aren't voting because they are too stoned/hung-over to remember the election??? i think you've missed the point of the obama campaign which has inspired millions of young people. believe me - they won't be "forgetting" to vote. i have yet to meet a so-called young voter that wasn't voting because they "like forgot and stuff". perhaps, back in your time, you were all too busy tripping on acid and "forgot" to vote against nixon. ok - no more quoted "forgetting". seriously though, folks like this are completely missing the reasons that guide the youth vote. young people often don't vote, because they feel that the issues aren't relevant to them. because they feel alienated and disenfranchised. it is a good thing the obama campaign as a whole understands this and has taken a more respectful approach towards younger voters.

of course, like most polite and slightly confrontation-averse people, this monologue only happened in my head, so that i could blog about it later. i quietly wrote her a check and wished her luck. i wonder how many blog posts stem from exactly these types of unspoken discussions where you badly want to say something but ...

waiting for next tuesday

jimmy

The original:

The remix:

Two years too late, but I'm really hearting M.I.A.'s second album (Kala).

the wire

seriously - if you haven't checked out the show yet, add it to your netflix queue. NOW.

the first couple of episodes scared the crap out of me, because it felt a little too close to home. i live in a fairly diverse neighborhood, with a large african-american population. i have heard those shots, seen kids getting into some bad shit. but i persisted. and there is both hope and despair as you go along. it really becomes pretty riveting by the time you hit episode 6. the show is full of flawed characters flirting with redemption. redeeming characters riddled with flaws. it gets a little coarse at times, but the writing is fantastic.

and once you are well into it, inspire yourself with this 43 folders piece on the wire and creativity.

make it stop

i think i have a problem. i might have an addiction to pre-election polls.

every time there is a poll that shows obama ahead, i get this heady short-term high, even though i realize that it means nothing and that another poll could show a completely different result tomorrow. and every time i see a mccain leaning poll, i seem to cast myself in a pall of doom and gloom. i become anxious and twitchy, constantly checking the news sites for a new poll that has a more favorable result. these short-term swings are complete rubbish, and i should know better than to get caught up in the ebbs and flows of a chaotic system. and yet i can't help myself. just one quick peek ... maybe it will say something i like. and then the inevitable self-loathing, the paranoia, the fear of racism. the occasional wave of excitement and feeling of invincibility; the "yes we can".

all because of the stupid polls. and where are we now? back to the pre-convention pre-bounce deadlock. all that back and forth ... for what?

i need to move on with my life. please!

friday

It's friday, which means I get to drop some of my freshest links at you:

• Ubiquity - the freshest firefox extension since sliced_bread.xpi


• RAD


• POP! menus using jquery


• Gravity games


• hmm...


• Obama rickrolls America - this was funnier a couple of weeks ago

OK - so "freshest" was a bit euphemistic. Still ... enjoy!

water conservation for the rest of us

here is what I came up with for my guest-blog spot on andromeda*arts. enjoy:

we’re in the middle of a water shortage and conservation is the hot new buzzword this summer. so i figured i’d do a post on creative water conservation tips you won’t find elsewhere. yup …

1. drink imported beer instead of water. this way you don’t waste our precious local water reserves (or the precious water reserves that go into local beer). and if you get drunk enough you can conveniently pass out, and forget about all our problems
2. shower at the gym. many gyms have actually turned down the water pressure to deal with the water crisis. also, there is something about public showering that really makes you get in, tend to the essentials and get out. i mean, how many of us want to take ponderous, lingering showers in the company of smelly strangers? and for those of you that like ponderous, lingering showers in public - burning man starts next week.
3. use the toilet at home. that way you can avoid the flush and “keep it mellow” as long as possible. keeping it mellow in public restrooms is not considered polite.
4. if you have a child, use an inflatable bath tub. much less water consumed than filling up a regular bath. if you do not have a child see tip 1.
5. vote obama, support open source software and ride a bike. haven’t quite figured out how to tie these in to water conservation, but i figured it couldn’t hurt, and it gets me up to the magic number of 5.

that’s all i got folks.

tar-jay

Best kept secret in hella-stylin' clothes for guys? The Target women's section. Seriously, I've scored a multiple awesome jackets, hoodies, hats and other miscellaneous accouterments here. The men's section seems to be dominated by lumpy looking midwestern crap that looks like it has been recycled from the 90s. Where the men's S (if it exists), is designed to fit a "small" football player.

The women's section on the other hand seems to have a much better pulse on hip. Fashion has gotten androgynous enough that plenty of the stuff here works irrespective of your gender sensibilty (which was outmoded to begin with). And the sizes are better suited for my smallish frame anyway. Why - I just picked up this sweet patterned hoodie with birds and skulls and keys and anchors and shit.

twiddly deet

As many folks have noticed, this space has been dormant for a while. But, if you noticed carefully, the little sidebar feeds have been chattering away. I've been in more of a microblogging state of mind, so for those of you inclined to follow the background noise of my brain, I'm at http://twitter.com/shreddd. If you are completely new to twitter, it is something of a cross between a blog (with a 140 character per post limit) and a message board. It only starts to make sense once you have a community of interacting twitterers tweeting together. Yes - the whole thing is silly and ridiculous, but it gets vaguely addictive over time.

I also show up occasionally in other random corners of the intarwubs - yelp, goodreads, flickr and offsprung being the places where I'm most likely to post something with any regularity.

OK - now you know where to find me if you are truly motivated.

whitespace, curly braces and other programming constructs

I've been toying with Ruby and Python lately. There are some very very nice features built into their programming ethos. /* If you don't care about programming, stop reading now */

However, there are certain syntactical vagaries that have been bothering me.
1. Using whitespace to demarcate blocks of code
This is a good idea in terms of readability. However, it is a *terrible* idea when trying to parse through diffs, or sorting out levels of nesting. In general, whitespace shouldn't matter when you do a diff. Except, now it does. Curly braces are a really nice way to differentiate levels of nesting and blocks of code. At least Ruby allows this, which is why I might migrate from Python to Ruby with braces.

2. Passing in function parameters without parentheses
Perl tried to create a programming language syntax that incorporated all existing syntaxes known to man. There are, like, 256 different ways to invoke a function. Which is completely unnecessary. C actually got this right early on. Function parameters go in () and are separated by commas like this: (param1, param2). This is clean and intuitive. While Python and Ruby support this form, they also borrowed a bad idea from perl - simply using whitespace to separate parameter names from functions, and from each other. You don't really want to sit and wonder as to whether something is a keyword or a function parameter or something else. You never want to borrow programming constructs from Perl. As useful as it is, Perl is the epitome of a hacky language. A bit like English - very versatile and robust, but extremely irregular.

3. Lack of strong typing
I go back and forth on this one. You might argue that Python/Ruby are in fact strongly typed. But anytime you can call a function and not be sure as to whether it returns a string or an int (unless by design) you have the potential for some crazy typecasting.

That having been said, I really like some aspects of these languages:
1. Iterables (yummy!)
2. Forcing code blocks to be indented at the same level. There are some good things about readability - I just think it should go hand in hand with the curlies.
3. No terminating semi-colons
4. Intuitive use of operands
5. Very powerful and simple parsing libraries
6. More to come ...

Like I said, I'm still a n00b with these languages, so call me out if I'm wrong here.

Introducing Jay Smooth

I ran into the Ill Doctrine vlog a little late in the game (thanks Lil), but this man represents all the reasons why I fell in love with hiphop way back when. Smart, political and irreverent are all spliced together in this video blog. And he actually understands hiphop from the inside.

Check out this nugget:
"Science has proven that any meme becomes played out precisely at the moment when people start calling it a meme".

And if you want to delve deeper, here is a nice little clip on race:
http://www.illdoctrine.com/2008/07/how_to_tell_people_they_sound.html

To ER and back

As the tinu would say - "Uh! Oh!".

We were walking over to a friend's when her eye started to swell up. Her lip started getting all fat. Puffy cheeks. Hives. We were in the midst of a full blown allergy attack. Neither of us had dealt with a massive allergy before, so we were a little confused. But we managed to make it to the E.R. (Thanks Mike). A bit of shouting, some benadryl and a nap later she seemed to be on the mend. But it was all a little freaky.

The scary thing is that we still have no idea what triggered the reaction.

Observation: The Kaiser E.R. doctors are incredibly nice! I feel very grateful.

Update: Post E.R. photo

Yes, I was mean ...

... in calling a friend out for sending me a forward, but alarmist spam really bugs me.

I guess I won't bother with a "top ten ways to identify a bogus forward" list, but I did find this bit of advice that I found online useful:

Take your time. Resist any urge to “act now”.

When you get a forwarded mail, your impulse should not be - ohmigodletmesendthistoeveryoneiknow. Instead, consider sitting on it. Don't ask yourself - could this be real? Ask yourself - could this be spam? If the answer is even maybe, then it is probably junk.

if moon was cookie

does not refer to magnetic north pole

ff3 update

so i've been sampling the three different ports (win/mac/linux). one of the key developments with this release is the decision to "go native" with the UI. in other words, the browser is much more tightly integrated with the look and feel of the underlying OS.

the mac version is slick, and feels like a bonafide apple browser. the windows version is shiny and vistafied, but i'll probably get used to it soon enough. and then there is the linux version. the firefox people took the "go native" directive a little too seriously here, which means that the linux version looks like crap. yup - it has shitty icons, mismatched fonts, and poor anti-aliasing ... everything we love about linux based UIs. one of the nice things about the old firefox was that it had a clean simple design, and generally looked good, even under linux. i'm hoping i can reskin it back to the old look, and i'm hoping that mozilla realizes that they have better graphic designers than the bit bangers that work on linux (who are extremely smart people but a little command line happy). just because you can dereference a pointer doesn't make you a visual artist.

ff3

I just got the new Firefox, and it is *blazing* fast. Slick looking too! Me likey.

If I ever get around to it, I will post a completely subjective, opinionated and non-comprehensive review pimping the Firefox. But a lot of the memory and speed issues that dogged the old version seem to have gone away.

Punch IE in the Face

bikes on board

i've been pretty good about riding my bike in to the oakland office when i can. but the berkeley site has always been slightly more challenging, because it is way high on top of a hill. ok - that is really just an excuse, because they have a shuttle where one could theoretically load one's bike on the rack, and simply bus it to the top. really this is all about my irrational fear of loading my bike on the rack. which translates to embarrassment at not knowing how to do it properly, and being slightly shy and afraid to ask someone for help in the middle of the commuting time crunch. so yeah - i've been too afraid to try.

UNTIL NOW!

i am happy to announce, that i successfully loaded my bike on the bus today. i even found a nice helpful instructional video, in case you've been grappling with similar issues:

http://www.actransit.org/riderinfo/bikes.wu

saving the world one irrational fear at a time. YES WE CAN!

back in black

yup - the good ol' craptastic "minima" template is back.

mangled

Apparently, I am Shrevas Chiolia (at least according to the Globusworld agenda).

More Chris Glass

Taking the kids to Target


Originally uploaded by chrisglass

I'm feeling a lot of love towards Chris Glass of glass.typepad.com

From the hit new movie ...

"They're zombies.
No, they're strippers.
No, they're... zombie strippers."

I think Snakes On A Plane just got some competition!

non-conundrums

i guess most of our so-called ancient philosophical problems have been solved by science. think about it:

1. chicken and egg - umm - easy - egg - the evolutionary parent of the chicken lays an egg with a slightly mutated piece of DNA, and voila - we have the first chicken egg. Once you start using biological markers to differentiate species, this stops being interesting.

2. tree falls in the forest - NO - it does not make a sound, if there isn't a sound perceiving agent around. sound is a psychological construct, and simply how we perceive vibrations in a medium. no "we" - no sound.

3. one hand clapping - either bart simpson has already solved this one, or this is a semantic argument, and thus uninteresting from a philosophical standpoint. (As in, you've already defined a clap as the product of two hands striking each other, so you either have to redefine your original terms or eliminate your wankage. it's like asking what if 2 times 2 were 13 [assume base10 here])

monster noises

can i just say that it is an absolutely sublime moment when you are finally able to go GNNHHRHHHR to your child, and she responds back with another GNNHHRHHHR. we are communicating!

just like that

we have a new look.

and just for being patient with my whims and fancies, i'll leave you with some gorgeous shots of ancient computer hardware: http://www.corememoryproject.com/main.php

when duke is not duke

an observation - when duke is a #1 seed, it generally means that they've got a great record and are actually good. #2 or lower means that they've had a few losses but the committee wouldn't dare give duke a lower seed, because they have so much cachet. any time duke is a 2 or 3 is a good year to pick against them in the early rounds, since it screams overrated.

dammit

boredoms were playing last week and i just found out. i think i'm going to compile a list of awesome shows that i've missed this year. pre-boredoms, we've already got the mag fields, and the mountain goats.

/regex art/

i wonder if anyone has thought of creating literary art using regular expressions. i'm thinking of something along the lines of e.e.cummings but with regular expressions as modifiers instead of whitespace. ideally, it would still hold meaning for the casual viewer, while offering up hidden treats for the l33t.

hmm - now, i'm afraid to google it, because i'll find that someone has already stolen my genius idea before i even thought of it.

and yes - i know that examples would be nice, but it is still only in the concept phase. which means that this may not quite be the genius idea that i made it out to be, once i flesh it out a bit.

telephone hunting

Who knew that buying a regular old phone - the kind that you use for your standard landline hookup - could be such a pain?!! Having only used hand-me-down units for the past several years, and given that my work-from-home schedule requires me to get something slightly less craptastic, I found myself in the market for a new phone. However, the people designing these phones would appear to have never used one before. Seriously, I went in looking for a pretty basic set of features:

• Mute
• Speakerphone
• Ringer on/off switch
• Caller ID
• Cordless handset

Unfortunately, modern phones seem to be chock full of useless features that are never the ones you need. For some reason cordless handsets are getting their design inspirations from cellphones. WTF?? Cellphones are getting smaller to make them easier to fit into your pocket, not because they feel comfortable to hold or talk into. I like the bulkiness of a large handset as you cradle it between your neck and shoulder. Cellphones are actually really cumbersome to use because they are typically the wrong shape and size for an ergonomically sound phone conversation. Now why would you make cordless phones increasingly smaller? Who the hell wants to carry a cordless phone in their pocket? Talk about misguided design choices!

In addition to making these things small and sleek, the manufacturers seem to throw in things like bluetooth and musical ringtones. But it doesn't occur to them to include a mute button or a fracking off switch. Grrr!

And you can't just get a simple phone any more without getting 4 additional handsets to decorate your house. In the end, I got the one phone that the customer rep was embarrassed to have in stock. The "grandma" phone as we like to call it:

Complete with a flashing visual ringer for when the baby is asleep!

James Joyce Predicts the Winner of the Super Bowl

Thusly and thricely slaked he uptrod the spiral staircase and fancied for himself only a briny frieze.

— Give out, Jesuit, or forever in peace may you lie.

Sardonic, sardonic was the smile then adopted. It can twist forever (if the vicars will allow, if the oxen pull the plow).

— Dearly beloved, he quipped through shut mouth, did not Rapunzel cry from on high?

She skipped with a slow whistle to the first stone slab. As at Young Colin's, on the eve of Fata Morgana, all rose quietly. How could it be remiss?

Thanatopsis. Requiescat In Pace.

Prediction: Unclear

JJ and other famous authors call the big game at McSweeney's.

if you has got pubes you can vote

I had an Ali-G moment, and totally couldn't remember the name of that pet detective guy or whatever.

And Finally - Top 10 records of 2007

Which really should have been Top 10 #2 albums of 2007, since all of these were very deserving records, and yet, I couldn't justify a #1 slot for any of these.

• The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
  
• Social Studies - This is the World’s Biggest Hammer (Homeroom)
  
• Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam (Domino)
  
• M.I.A. - Kala (Interscope)
  
• Nathamuni Brothers - Madras 1974 (Fire Museum)
  
• Soundtrack - THE DARJEELING LIMITED (Abkco)
  
• Battles - Mirrored (Warp)
  
• Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash (Drag City)
  
• Jose Gonzalez - In Our Nature (Mute)
  
• Radiohead - In Rainbows (S/R)
  

Reviews and other possibilities for this list (stuff I haven't had a chance to check out yet) to follow ...

Top 6 The Only Movies I saw in 2007

Which roughly translates to movies playing at the Parkway/Cerrito theatres during Baby Brigade night.

• Pan's Labyrinth
• Knocked Up
• Death at a Funeral
• The Darjeeling Limited
• Dan in Real Life
• Beowulf

Top10RecordsNotActuallyReleasedThisYear

Much of the music I ended up really digging this year wasn't actually put out in 2007. In fact, my 2007 list seems a bit underwhelming in terms of my relative enjoyment of the music. So this is really the list closest to my heart ...

10. Darc Mind - Symptomatic of a Greater Ill [Anticon] (1997/2006)
The lost hiphop album from 1997, this record finally saw the light of day in late 2006, thanks to the kind folks at Anticon. Dense and brooding, rich and intelligent in that mid 90s NYC kinda way. This is everything that I miss about hiphop.

9. Prince Rakeem - Ooh, I Love You Rakeem [12" Single - Tommy Boy] (1991)
Pre Wu-Tang era RZA kicking it, back in the halcyon days of hiphop. An insanely catchy riff (that sounds scarily like "Summer Nights" from Grease) with charming lines like "I've got too many ladies \ I just gotta learn to say no" - yes indeed - we love you Rakeem.

8. The Left Banke - I've Got Something On My Mind [12" Single - World United Studios] (1967)
I ran into this song via a sample in Jens Lekman's "Black Cab". One way to discover great music is to shamelessly track everything Jens Lekman has ever sampled. The man's taste is impeccable. This is a forgotten British invasion band (probably because they were actually from New York), doing a lesser known single (they are best known for "Walk Away Renee") - glorious pop in all its baroque sixties flavor.

7. Dirty On Purpose - Hallelujah Sirens [North Street] (2006)
Beautiful droney shoegazer indie-rock. I will always remember this record (and specifically the song "Your Summer Dress") as the soundtrack to the day Satya was born. It provided me with hope and confidence and meaning for everything that was to come.

6. Various Artists - Colours Are Brighter [Rough Trade] (2006)
This is what you get when indie musicians start breeding. Rough Trade released this compilation CD of kid's music featuring the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Fourtet and The Flaming Lips. This was designed specifically with a certain brand of hipster parent in mind - the kind that is trying to maintain their last remaining shred of indie cred, now that the days of drunken punk shows and 3am techno and dirty toilet sex are a distant memory. Or for people who never actually experienced any of those things, and used music as a substitute for their lack of a sex life. ANYWAY - this comp is good, clean fun with plenty of weird and a very strong cast of musicians. Also, your kid can now claim that the first record they ever listened to was something on Rough Trade.

5. Huun Huur Tu - The Orphans Lament [Shanachie] (1994)
Tuvan throat singing is fucking genius. And these guys are the best in the biz. We used this record and the low baritones of the kargyraa to soothe Satya in the early days. She still seems to have a special affection for deep rumbling noises. I'm so proud!

4. Mathematicians - Level Two [S/R] (2006)
This album is crazy and all over the place. The only coherent theme between the songs is math. Songs range from angular post-punk to synthy rap to soulful R&B. And yet every single song is good. And super dorky. "We'll be just fine \ when the number is prime" - Hell Yeah!

3. The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee [4AD] (2002)
John Darnielle gives up his low-fi DIY ethos for a more full blown studio sound in this concept album. While some may argue that his newer work borders on saccharine and over-produced, this, right here, is perfection. Just enough production to really bring out the music, but still raw and earnest in keeping with his earlier stuff.

2. Jose Gonzalez - Veneer [Hidden Agenda] (2005)
We keep rocking gently on this list, thanks to Swedish boy#2. Lovely syncopated guitars, an angsty yet soothing voice, and a fantastic cover of "Heartbeats" (originally done by fellow Swedes, the Knife). Funny thing is JG seems to be at his best when he does acoustic covers of electronic music - maybe he should do an entire album devoted to this genre.

1. Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent Jens [Secretly Canadian] (2005)
We have a Swedish meatball sandwich here at the top of the list. Ok - more like a Swedish veggie-meatball sandwich. Anyway - we played this album over and over and over again all year long. And then we played it some more. And yet, it never got old. Jens Lekman also has fantastic taste, and liberally samples the music he loves. You can definitely hear him channeling the Magnetic Fields throughout the album, but he also has plenty of other, more obscure influences (See #8). This is the kind of album you play while falling in love. And since this year has been all about falling in love with our little tinyness, this pretty much had to be the album of the year.

listmania

Instead of simple list format, I will actually include a mini-commentary for my end of the year lists this time around.

Here we go ...

17 months

Why do so many parents insist on giving out their children's ages in months? It always creates this dissonant pause in my head, while I quickly try to extract a remainder from the ensuing mental long division (in base 12 no less). See - it took you a while just to parse that sentence! That is what "Oh - she'll be 17 months in 2 weeks" does to me. They have units for a reason, people. Seriously, what is so hard about saying 1 year and 5 months? Gads ...

it's no rushmore, but ...

the darjeeling limited is still an entertaining movie. a little disjointed, and a little euro-centric in its depiction of india, perhaps, but still worth a dekho as they say in the desh.

i was a little confused by the signature track (where do you go to my lovely - peter sarstedt), but i just discovered that mr. sarstedt was born in india, as were his two brothers, and suddenly it makes perfect sense.

in the mail

my new toy

WTF?

Umm - why have I had the pantsless leprechaun story headlining my blog for so long?

In other news, I'm back from Chile.

Leprechaun Opens Car Door for Pantsless Man

On BoingBoing:

Posted by David Pescovitz, October 17, 2007 4:01 PM | permalink

This gentleman, Kim Leblanc, was arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio on Tuesday morning sitting in someone else's car and not wearing any pants. According to an article on WLWT.com, Leblanc told police that "he had done drugs and believed that a leprechaun had let him into the car." [Link]




... and some featured comments ...
Comment #4
All right, sir. A leprechaun led you here."
"Yes, officer. That's correct. A leprechaun!"
"Okay, sir, now what about the pants?"
"The pants?"
"You're not wearing any pants."
"CURSE YOU MAGICAL IRISH BASTARD!!!"

Comment #12
I appreciate the guy's honesty. "Listen, officer. I was tripping balls and this leprechaun told me to drop trou and get in the car. What the hell was I supposed to do? Say NO!??"

configure; make

i've been hearting technology lately.

i just discovered google's street level 3d view. holy crap - it is pretty fantastic. some scary ramifications w.r.t. the whole surveillance society thing, but it makes for a pretty nice navigation tool.

yay for subversion!

trying to scrobble my xmms playlists to last.fm has been a pain in the ass. and building the regular last.fm player has been an adventure in dependency hell. i think i finally have something working though. oh - wait no ... i hate linux. wait - i didn't mean that. linux is awesome. linux is like sliced bread. like butter. like butter on sliced bread. like ... forget it.

the real issue is that my playlists seem to get pushed out, but then end up somewhere in the void. the idea of the internet void is an interesting one - a place where forgotten bits end up. packets without a recipient. the informational equivalent of the dryer sock fairy. or entropy. hmm - should explore that idea sometime.

new radiohead - drm free, sliding scale and completely downloadable. this is the future. it is really special that the biggest band in the world is offering up a great big fuck you to the riaa. nice.

update:
i almost missed the nextbus (hurrr for the pun). yes - this is truly the way to ride. now i know exactly when to time my mad sprint for the bus stop to minimize rain soakage. what's YOUR bus?

Less Than Zero

I must have gotten on a list somewhere, because I've now been part of two telephonic polls in the span of a week. The first one was survey on radio listening habits. The other one was a political survey of some sort, possibly related to MoveOn. In both polls I got to hand out zeroes - a zero for a certain new-country selection that made me want to rip my ears out, and a zero for one Mr. Bush that makes me want to rip out every other part of my body.

Speaking of opinion polls. It seems that these have effectively replaced the actual electoral process when big decisions get made by big people in between elections i.e. the other 363 days of the year. This makes its one's duty to take as many surveys and opinion polls as possible, since opinion polls seem to carry just as much weight as actual elections these days. Gotta represent!

got_it

must. eat. camera.
Originally uploaded by shreddd

Kiddoes are unpredictable. One week it seems like they just fit into everything that you want to do ... you're eating out, seeing the occasional show, going to parties, yadda yadda yadda (My first yadda yadda yadda in writing btw). And then suddenly they are fussy and needy and catch colds, and even watching an hour of TV becomes impossible (or something you have to break down into 10 minute increments). Such is the life. She is pretty damn cute though.

twittering

I am playing with Twitter in an attempt to completely sell out to the Web 2.0 revolution. You can now follow my every single mundane micro moment (now conveniently located right *here*) as I twitter my way towards post-humanism. Once the web becomes sentient, my persona will exist into eternity. Whoa!

ugh

yesterday was a really crap morning. we were already spooked about having to take the babezorz in for a kidney test and didn't sleep much the previous night. then, on our way out the door to the hospital, i tripped over the stairs - HARD. as in badly twisted my ankle, rolled over twice and bumped my head hard. as in, passed out in pain while trying to get back in the house (and bumping my head again) hard.

which meant that poor e had to take the baby in by herself for the test. which meant that she had to try and console a 5 month old as they poked at her with an iv for half an hour. watching a strapped down, screaming infant will pretty much break your heart. e - i am so incredibly sorry that you had to go through that, and that i wasn't able to make it.

and now we have to deal with the very real possibility of surgery in the coming months. like i said - not a good morning.

os x-pert

so i'm getting a little better at moving around and manipulating things on the new macbook. adding a three button mouse was a life saver - i can right click again!

seriously though - i'm still looking for tips to create a more zen like state of flow in my computering. any specific tools / applications / hints are very welcome ...