Category: tech

Talk about software, hardware, electronics, and a myriad of other sex-repellent topics.

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maybe get sick on candy


Happy Halloween friends and enemies! Let not your modern-day Protestant church rob you of the good times this holiday affords the world! Forsake that “Harvest Festival” or “Fall Celebration” for some good old trick-or-treating with a scary mask and some fake blood! Maybe get sick on candy like you were a kid again. If not tonight, when else?

Tonight (which is last night as you read this, should you know nothing about when/how I blog) Keaton sat on my lap and watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with me (on DVD, of course, since it’s such a classic). To my surprise, she sat right down with me and truly paid attention. I think it’s because she’s able to recognize so many things: pumpkins, ghosts, the moon, a football, a dog, hats, trees, leaves, and mail – just to name a few. Her sense of recognition and memory impresses me on a daily basis, and her vocabulary, word usage, and phrase-building ability boggles my mind. She says things like “Keeper, out, room!” to the cat; “Daddy, reading, book,” to me; “Mommy, cooking, dinner, hungry, eat,” all together like she’s really trying to make a coherent thought. I know it’s like just the beginning of her “grouping” the words she knows around a single binding action or concept, but it’s still pretty amazing. Pretty much every day she says a word I hadn’t even thought she’d known… it’s pretty impressive.

I went to lunch with a fellow manager from work today, and even though I don’t start back there until Monday, I couldn’t help but use our time to begin gearing my mind for the return. I asked about the usual: what’s going on, how’s morale, how are the politics, who’s doing what, what’s coming up, what happened while I was out, and what of the latest rumors and soap opera goings-on. It was a good conversation, but, in the end, it more than reinforced my dream of winning the lottery Saturday night so I just don’t have to go in at all. I’ve waffled here before about my job – which I truly do enjoy, and feel I’m good at – but also on the other hand wouldn’t mind seeing being swallowed up whole by the Earth in some freak geological event. It’s a fine balance, a knife-edge thing of sorts. I fear, however, that I will be going back… that much, at least, is rather inevitable. And, if I’m to go back and continue to do well – I figured I better start those long-rested hamsters a’running again before I walk in on day-one. Sigh… it begins.

Tonight I watched most (not all, I’ll admit, as it began wearing on me) of the Democratic debate on MSNBC. Ugh… people… we’ve got another whole year of this. I don’t know that I can take it. I’m a fairly well-established social liberal, so I like to think I identify with the general current of thought of these people, their platforms. But man, I’m already weary. Anyone else share in my apathy? I hate how politics can just suck the life of out seemingly everything sometimes. Why, when I watch these people, do I take on such an air of doubt… why do I find it so hard to assume they are being honest? What have you done to me, George W. Bush? You’ve ruined me. You’re such a fucker. You’re a fucker and you’ve made me ashamed of my country’s truckballs-style John Wayne politics on the world stage. Ugh… another year.

Finally, before I go, a snippet from a recent interview with Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails frontman and a proponent of various forms of the “new thought” regarding music distribution), where he admits he was an OiNKer (see my earlier entry if the word “OiNKer” means nothing to you), and talks a bit about the former site:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

Man, that sure sounds like it was a cool website… too bad I never got the chance to check it out. In summary: I was never a member. But, if there was some some bizarro world in which I was – I most certainly would’ve only reveled in the site’s groundbreaking role in digital content distribution, and never partook in it’s tainted wares. I’m to straight and narrow to put my neck out there like that… don’t y’all know me at all?

Goodnight.

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suddenly rudderless


Back from Hawaii, and today marks the t-minus one-week mark for my waning sabbatical. I gave up trying to post regularly last week, the draw of the beach and the pool and the nothing was just too strong. I wrote some here and there, but nothing good enough nor substantial enough to publish. Hawaii, though… Hawaii was great. Such a relaxing getaway, and a fitting “closer” for my nine week vacation. We all of us had a great time, and I look forward to going back one day. Anyway, I’m back, and the sense of dread about my return to the sawmill is welling within me. One week left means I need to start training my brain to think work again… to care again… to “turn on” again. I don’t think it’ll be hard to do, rather hard-fought to do. To be clear: If there was a way not to, I wouldn’t.

Well then, now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to bore you with a mostly music-related blog. But, before that stuff, I’d like to call your attention to a potentially equally ho-hum bit of news. Acting on a suggestion from one of my real-life readers, I’ve added a “view all comments by this person” feature to sounds familiar. Now, when you look at the comments on any post, you should see a link at the end of (nearly) each one which will allow you to view a page containing all the comments that user has ever made here on the blog. Unfortunately, the feature relies on a commenter’s e-mail address to pull the inclusive list – and we here at sounds familiar have never mandated that commenters include an e-mail address when commenting. But, I’ve worked to fix this retroactively by modifying the existing comments in the database to add e-mail addresses (where known) to existing posts from certain users.

Related: This also introduces another change for comments moving forward: the requirement of filling out the e-mail field. You can put a bogus address if you want, it’ll never be shown/shared anyway, even continue to use multiple usernames/aliases, but you do have to put something (and keep it consistent if you want to go back and re-read all your stuff someday). Anyway, it mostly-works now, and I’ll continue formatting and fixing it if I like it (I don’t like where the “View all…” link is butting right up against the comment end). Show me love if you enjoy. (Oh… and, if you’re curious, Pat has the most… at 98.)

Music. Let’s go.

The past few weeks sure have been an interesting few for online music-lovers. First, the Radiohead release, then, the OiNK takedown, and, finally, the leak of the Sgt. Pepper’s multitracks.

About Radiohead and In Rainbows, it looks like the band does plan to release official sales figures for their online album release – but not until sometime later this year. Estimates citing loose-lipped sources “close to the band” say that the average price paid was around ~$5 per download (including the $0 leechers, apparently), and that the band moved 1.2 million copies in the first 24 hours alone. It’s hard to actually guess at a take with such second-hand, not to mention dubious, data – but I bet the posted numbers will raise more than a few industry eyebrows in the end, especially since we’re talking about a much higher profit ratio than a “traditional” type record release. Should be interesting, stay tuned.

Next, I feel like I should write reams and reams about the takedown of the Pink Palace, but, having never, ever, been a member there, it’s hard for me to fathom the impact of the raid. I imagine that, for people who were unlucky enough to have been involved with the fabled music download site, the loss of such a resource must bring biting pain and a crushing sense of loss. I’d wager that those who illegally used the site to illegally download illegal music likely now feel suddenly rudderless, adrift in a sea of crappy P2P alternatives… with not a sound port to put into. I’m sure however, that something will rise to fill the void for those thieving types sooner or later – the internet is a dark world of crime and hate, afterall. Tsk, tsk, busted OiNKers… when will you learn that the only way to legally enjoy music is to trade money for physical product?

About the Sgt. Pepper’s multitracks, maybe you don’t care… but I do. Of course, for those born after 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the Beatles crowning achievement, their 8th LP, and, as some believe, the up-until-now pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll altogether. While recording Pepper, the Beatles’ engineers “bounced down” their layered instrumentation into four separate recorded “tracks,” or tapes. These individual tracks, when played together, “make” the entire song. It’s the old-timey equivalent of today’s modern multi-track recording techniques. Well, somehow, some collector (not a Beatles collector, funnily enough) in England got ahold of the Sgt. Pepper’s four-track multis… and… of course, with the internet and all, they eventually wended their way into the tubes. So then, the isolated four-tracks for some of the songs are now floating around the leaky interweb, and people at home can easily load them into Garage Band or Audacity or CoolEdit and make their own true remixes of actual Beatles songs. It may seem boring, but, for me, being able to hear Ringo’s isolated drums and Paul’s isolated bass from “A Day In The Life” is amazing. I just hope the entire album’s worth of tracks leaks soon…

This week I’m a homebody, so I’ll try and get some pictures uploaded from our trip to Hawaii sooner rather than later, and the blogging should come at more or less its regular cadence again from now on. Thanks for hanging in there while I took my break, and I hope to see you around as we finish out another fine year of writing.

Goodnight.

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this is sabbatical


Today I had the day to myself; well, Keaton and I, that is. Let me tell you, today was “sabbatical.” My time alone with Keaton this morning embodied everything I fantasized about before leaving for this nine week vacation. I rose early and showered, prepared for the day, and bid farewell to Sharaun and our houseguests as they departed on a sightseeing trip to San Francisco. Keaton and I had made plans to go to the park, and I leisurely readied her diaper bag and stroller. After some sunscreen for her and I (a bright, overly-warm sunny day today in northern California), we set off on the mile-ish walk to the closest public park. I brought along my iPod for the trip, set on random, but kept the volume low enough to converse with Keaton along the way: “Truck!,” she’d say. “That’s right,” I’d reply, “That’s a truck!” “Plane!,” she’d exclaim. “You’re right,” I’d confirm, “That’s a plane you’re hearing.” It went on like this: “tree,” “rock,” “car,” and, eventually, “slide!”

I was the sole dad at the park, and we had walked right into a local “mom’s group” who had convened there for a “playdate.” This thing is quite common among the stay-at-homes, I’ve come to learn. At first, there was some hesitation, but soon the matrons accepted me into the fold – and we were all conversing as we watching the children play. We exchanges ages, talked about language development and diet, and fawned over the cuteness of our collective brood. It was fun, actually, and I could all of the sudden see myself perhaps enjoying being a stay-at-home Mr. Mom. Now, in reality I’m much to selfish for such a job – but it was fun to entertain the thought.

We stayed at the playground for an hour or so, sliding on slides, playing in sand, and running around in the mulch. It was on the walk back home, though, that things really began to sink in. Thinking to myself, I wondered: was it Thursday?, no, maybe… Wednesday? Ahhh… who cares anyway, look at that blue sky! Here I am, walking home from spending an hour at the park with my daughter, and I have nothing to do at all for the rest of the day. In fact, I can read my book, maybe write a little, but most of all lounge around on the couch listening to the “Deep Tracks” channel I love so much on XM. Whatever I want, that’s what I’m gonna do; Nothing, that’s what I have to do. Feed Keaton some chicken and broccoli and put her down for a nap. Man it’s a beautiful day… this truly is what sabbatical must be all about. I think it’s finally sunk in. And, friends, the real loveliness of this is that, as I sit here today, I’m not even to the halfway point. Still plenty of loafing to do.

Anyway, here are some images of our daddy/daughter trip to the park today. I took Ben’s advice and used a new kind of WordPress plugin, so the below images are kinda fancy-like (g’head, click on ’em and see for yourself). Not sure if I like it, lemme know if you have some feedback.

I actually think it’s pretty slick, no? Yeah, it took me about an hour to get WordPress 2.3 installed and fiddle with the new plugin. Anyway, it’s tough because it’s so sweet, but I don’t want to completely abandon my Coppermine gallery install – where all my pictures have traditionally lived up until this point. We’ll have to see how well I like this style before I decide to do any mass migration. Enough, nerd talk, yes?

I originally had another bunch of paragraphs after this one, all on a completely different topic – but decided to cut them out and use them later in the week. So, as of now, I’m officially ending this post. Peace out and I’ll holler at you later. Time to go read my book and perhaps catch a nap coincident with the baby.

See ya.

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another fine day


Another fine day in sabbatical land. We went to visit my Uncle Tom today, spent a few good hours hanging out and visiting, and also managed to watch Dr. Strangelove, a movie I’ve always meant to see, but have only managed to catch bits and pieces of over the years. As I suspected, it was great.

Anyway, Sharaun’s cooking some spaghetti tonight and the whole family is gonna come over to mange. Should be a good time, and it’s one night we don’t have an obligation (every night from here until we leave is booked at this point).

Before we go on, I did manage to post two new galleries full of pictures:

I was so happy to read about the new iPod, which comes in a massive 160GB model (double what I have now), and is now dubbed the “classic” model to differentiate it from the also-new iPod “touch,” which seems to be just an iPhone sans the phone. As a solemn promise to myself, I decree that I will be carrying this new iPod with me to Oktoberfest. That’s how serious I am about getting it. Just think about how much media I can get on that thing, I can have all sorts of “good… but not good enough to take up space on my iPod” albums on there now, just in case I get the urge to listen to ’em. I will buy this. Perhaps even this weekend in Orlando, where I’m pretty sure there’s an Apple store (providing they’re not sold out).

Meanwhile, plans for our remaining days in Florida are coming together. It always seems like we end up blocking off time for this and for that, with little room left for improv. That’s the hard part about “vacationing” in the place where you grew up. The visits with friends and relatives, while not compulsory, always seem to fill up the calendar quite quickly. This coming Monday, my old buddy Kyle and I decided to catch The National in concert over in Orlando. I liked the National’s album Alligator, but have had a hard time getting into their 2007 effort. Maybe seeing them play some of the numbers live will cast them in a new light. I’m excited about that, actually, as I think the last “real” concert I saw with Kyle was a Bob Dylan / Carlos Santana double-headliner – a bit of a stylistic mismatch, but two heavyweights in their own right. Still, I feel now that I was too young to truly appreciate the show (plus, I remember having a killer headache that wrecked much of the evening for me). Should be fun to make the pilgrimage and see a gig.

I’ve been trying to work out WordPress’s “post via e-mail” feature lately. This neat functionality allows you to send an entry to an e-mail address, and have it auto-magically appear on your blog. WordPress checks the mail via POP3 and posts whatever’s in there. I had it working before, but had no real use for it. Now that I’m on sabbatical, and that I have a more thumb-typing friendly BlackBerry, I figured I may actually get some mileage out of it. Problem is, I switched hosting companies recently, to GoDaddy, and, for some reason, GoDaddy doesn’t like the WordPress POP3 methods. The PHP times out, it’s apparently a semi-known issue with GoDaddy. What’s worse, WordPress doesn’t support SSL connections (this means no Yahoo mail and no Gmail). I also can’t use free POP-able mail services that send e-mail advertisements as part of the deal, as anything new gets autoposted. Anyone know a good, free, non-SSL, POP3-readable, e-mail service that has good spam blocking capabilities? Lemme know.

Until later.

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another iPod one


Well, I’m off to Houston early tomorrow morning – humid, hot, swampy Houston. It’ll be a short trip, with a good bit of the two days I’m gone being devoted to travel. I’m not looking forward to it, I just don’t want to go… there’s all sorts of reasons I’d rather stay here instead: mowing the lawn, playing with Keaton, sleeping in my own bed, and not having to present to customers. Alas, however, I’ll go. Bright and early to the skies and back late the next night. Enough lamentation though, eh?

Remember back a while ago I mentioned that I’d submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI in attempts to find out if there was any juicy information out there to be hand about my grandfather? I was inspired by the Get Grandpa’s FBI Files website, and half figured I’d never hear anything at all. The other day, though, I got confirmations from both the local field office and the DC headquarters that they had received my request and had assigned me a FIOA tracking number. Not that it means I’ll actually get some dirt on Grandpa, but was still a neat “next step” to get a couple letters from the FBI.

Gonna get nerdy now.

If you’re like me, you have a huge distribution of music on your iPod, spanning decades, genres, and focus. One of the classic problems I used to run into was maintaining a peaceful iPod coexistence between music that I really enjoy on some occasions, but don’t necessarily want to hear on shuffle. That may seem odd, but I submit that there are plenty of musical scenarios for which this sort of “selective shuffling” would be desirable.

Take for instance the case of holiday music, who doesn’t love a nice collection of time-honored Christmas classics to put on shuffle while the family sits around in pajamas sipping coffee and opening presents? You may only listen to it once a year, but it’s an important asset to your iPod’s overall portfolio. Problem is, you don’t exactly want Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” to get served up along with your “general purpose” library during, say, a Saturday afternoon wakeboarding or, worse still, a beer-drenched evening throwing darts in the garage with the boys.

Similarly, what about artists that you really like – but only when the mood strikes? For me, that’d be the Grateful Dead. I absolutely love a good, long, noodly Dead jam – and the more live shows I have on my iPod, the better chance I have at hearing something new and unique. So, my ‘Pod is disproportionally packed with the Dead, I have like all the Dick’s Picks series and more on there, gigs and gigs of live Dead. So much so, in fact, that statistically, a Dead track is more likely to be shuffled up than a non-Dead track – and I run the risk of overly-Dead “random” shuffles. This, again, can be a mood killer when you desire a truly random mix of your tunes. I face a similar issue with my large stacking of Beatles music, I’m sure I’m not alone.

My solution to these issues is to implement smart playlist based shuffling. Here’s how you do it, using Christmas music as an example: Highlight all your Christmas music in iTunes and right-click to “Get Info,” in the options screen that appears, tick the box titled “Skip when shuffling.” This means that all your Christmas music will no longer be considered when you choose “Shuffle Songs” from the main menu. However, it also means that, if you have the Main|Settings|Shuffle|Songs enabled in the Settings menu – the songs you just ticked will be ignored, and won’t be played. Seems like a quandary, right? You don’t want Christmas music shuffled in with your normal jams, but you most definitely want to put all those Christmas songs on shuffle while you open presents. What to do?

Never fear, Smart Playlists offer a perfect solution. First, make sure that all that Christmas music (or those live Dead jams) is set to “Skip When Shuffling.” Then, with your iPod highlighted in the lefthand iTunes pane, choose “New Smart Playlist.” Now, define your smart playlist so that it chooses those songs (for Christmas music, I suggest defining your playlist on the “genre” tag – assuming you’ve assigned the Christmas tunes to the Christmas genre; for the Dead, you can filter on “artist;” for others, get creative). Limit the playlist to however many songs you want (use a high number if you want them all), and set “select by” to “random.” Next, tick the “Live Updating” box and save the list. Voila! Non-shuffled songs in shuffle mode, ripe for that special occasion without having to worry about them popping up at the wrong time. For some more cool Smart Playlist ideas, check out this page (you can really do some cool stuff with these things).

Jeez, after typing that, it seems like such a waste of effort.

Goodnight.

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as many a young lad do become


Good evening folks, and a happy Tuesday to ya. T’was a rare humid day here in Northern California, somewhat cloudy by late afternoon and evening threatening rain. But, we got no rain. Came to the conclusion today that I need a bigger iPod. Or, alternately, another iPod altogether on which I can store only certain items – I’m thinking Beatles bootlegs, for instance, or bootlegs and live-albums in general. My 60GB just ain’t getting it done anymore…

When I was a young lad, somewhere around the tender age of twelve or thirteen, I became quite enamored, as many a young lad do become, with the beauty of the female form. And, while this blossoming interest in all things woman was less of something scholarly or noble, and more of something perverse and puberty-driven, my motivations didn’t provide with my enough shame to want to hide my burgeoning libido. So, I took the conspicuous approach – and plastered my pre-teen lair with racy imagery. Being a kid, however, and still having parents – I couldn’t easily cover my walls with the likes of Playboy centerfolds… I instead had to go with what I could get. And, that, my friends, is how the small alcove on the top bunk where I spent my nights became wallpapered with images cut deftly from the JC Penny catalog. That’s right, I had underwear models, swimsuit models, and the like, all taped from top-to-bottom in some crazy collage of unintentional soft-porn.

I can remember flipping to the middle of the thick color catalog, to the index, and looking for the keywords which would become my new decorations: “bra,” “bikinis,” “panties.” At the time, I don’t know why I wasn’t more embarrassed by my scantily-clad homemade pinups – it’s terribly humiliating to think back on now, and I can remember being somewhat disgusted with myself the day I tore it all down and replaced it with an equally idolatrous picture-collage of black-and-white images of the Beatles I’d clipped from a public library book (without regard, I might add, for others who may have one day checked out said book). But, at the time, I remember carefully tracing the edges of the models with the scissors, being careful not to shear off any boob- or butt-profile in doing so. What a disgusting, and outwardly needy-seeming, thing to do, right? What was wrong with me?

Finally, in the you-thought-you’d-never-see-the-day department: Keaton is, as suddenly as of just this morning, cutting her top two front teeth. Yes, that’s right. This near 17-month old baby of only two teeth is finally giving her bottom two buckies a couple buddies to hang out with. Her sleeping tonight has been fitful, she wakes often crying and we go in to put some numbing stuff on them. Funny that most parents have probably already experienced this by 17 months, but not us. Her teeth are just slow starters, I suppose. I’ll post some pictures of her with her shiny new top-fronts as soon as they’re nice and erupted.

Goodnight.

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out loud regardless


Tonight I can’t seem to get enough to eat. We got home from dropping off Sharaun’s folks at the airport and I played with Keaton for twenty minutes before putting her to bed, Sharaun split right away for her volleyball game. And, even though we’d had dinner shortly before leaving for the airport, I came home and ate a heaping bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios (in whole milk – I’ve become addicted to its creamy sweetness ever since we’ve started keeping it in the fridge as part of Keaton’s diet). After the Cheerios, I finished off the leavings in a bag of Gardetto’s snack mix we’d taken down to the cabin with us last week. After the Cheerios and the Gardettos, I chewed a couple pulls of jerky, the sweet-hot and peppered kind; also obtained on that trip down south for the Fourth.

And now I sit here, listening to the new Animal Collective album for what must be the seven-billionth time this week (I’m not getting into it now, but let’s just say this album is waay radder than the stuff which spurred me to write this). Anyway – I think I’ve eaten enough now, and it’s time to burn some calories on the keys.

I love my time alone like this. I think it’s made even more important in this particular instance because we’ve had company the past week. Not that I didn’t enjoy our time together with family, it’s just nice to sometimes have the run of the castle. I can put on music at my preferred volume (the volume Sharaun calls, “Turn that crap down! How can you think that guys whiny voice sounds good on top of all that treble?”), I can eat sweet and salty snacks, and I can fart out loud (OK, I fart out loud regardless… don’t hate). It was kinda cloudy this afternoon, and I think I even saw a couple raindrops manifest themselves – which made it cool enough for me to open the windows when I got home: another bonus of my alone-time, the fresh air. Don’t ever let the opportunity to sneak away for some “you time” get away from you, folks. And I’m not even talking about masturbation (although that’s probably up there on the list); I’m just talking about good ‘ol leave-me-alone with my thoughts time. Get it.

In anticipation of my near four hours of travel time tomorrow (the airport time, the in-flight time, and the public transpo time from the airport to the Oregon sawmill), and, as a first for me, I’ve loaded up my iPod with some movies. I’ve got Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (still haven’t seen it), the BBC’s controversial rebuttal The Great Global Warming Swindle, and Michael Moore’s newest, Sicko. A regular card-carrying Sierra Club Democrat’s playlist, I reckon. I’m looking forward to seeing them all, but I think I’ll begin with Sicko, mainly do to the insane amount of press it’s been getting lately all about the internets. I never figured myself as someone who’d watch movies on his iPod, that tiny screen always seemed a roadblock to my enjoyment. But after a test with some short clips I found it quite passable and somewhat convenient. I’m gonna need a bigger iPod…

Before I go, one last little morsel; indulge me: I’ve written several times about the writings of this writer, but I found this semi-recent blog entry of his simply perfect, as blogging goes, by my standards, at least, or something. Oh to write like that.

Well, as much as I wanted to mow the lawn and get a haircut before leaving for Oregon – it just ain’t gonna happen. Until tomorrow then, when I should have ample time to write – Goodnight.

iPhone. Ron Paul. Bush. Iraq.