Archive for August, 2006

From the Sandy Floor and Sony Boombox Dept.

Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

It’s interesting how particular music can be so evocative of memories. I dug up some old CDs that remind me of a little field of view in a cottage I stayed in with my family when my sister and I were little. I can remember the whole cabin clearly but the songs on this CD bring back only a particular moment clearly. I’ve been sitting around today after I got home listening to old music that brings back a particular memory. Paul Simon’s Graceland reminds me of sitting in my basement at our old computer with my dad watching an “enhanced CD” through the brand new “CD-ROM Drive” back when Gateway was Gateway2000. Then I remember other things related to that desk and my father. Sitting there reading off a username and password taped to the bottom of the desk to log into some college’s Dial-up Internet connection. In the dark ages before we had Dial-up. A computer without the Internet seems to be essentially castrated of most of it’s functionality. The memory evokes a time when access of all of that was out of reach for most people still, I think around the same time my cousins in Texas used Prodigy to get onto Usenet or BBSs or something. It’s really interesting to just sit and follow these webs of memory that one builds up, interestingly mirroring how the Internet is structured.

I am excited to be headed back to school, where external forces impose an organization onto my life, and I am forced to put boundaries on things, I have deadlines again, a schedule. Normally I loath these things in excess but after a summer of relative sloth and an almost complete breakdown of an structuring forces in my life (ie, employment, normal sleeping patterns, classes, appointments, commitments etc.) these things will come as a welcome addition, at least for a time. In about a week’s time, I take the first major steps toward “real life” that I have since leaving for college. I will be living on in an apartment with some roommates. This, I think, will be good. Adding a notch in both the columns of Freedom and Responsibility, where entrance into Undergraduate dormitory life is largely a big notch in the Freedom column. Remind me to talk again about freedom, I’m slowly working on some thoughts in that area.

Feel free to comment on this either in Blogger or Facebook, if you’re reading it.

Music: Paul Simon – Graceland
Cherish The Ladies – Home
(denotes albums as always)

From the Facebook and Devs Dept.

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

Well I’ve starts updating this again, at least for the moment. I’ve got this “blog” (i’m sorry I’ve finally caved to the ubiquity of the term.) Updating to facebook thanks to expansions in their featureset and the release of their API to the public. In my mind this will solidify features in Facebook that will allow it to further overtake Myspace on even more levels than it has already. For example, facebook has a coherent visual style, something that is necessary in any good design, including web design. I think this second part of design is missing in a large number of websites. People who design websites for the most part are technical not artistic or creative people. Eventually feature sets will exist where an even more minimal technical knowledge will exist for web design. Hopefully this will have a steep enough learning curve where, like photoshop, amateurs are very easily recognized and experts are not given the ‘n00bs’ if you will draw from the same limited bag of tricks. Basically I’m hoping that the world of web design is taken by a sort of paradigm shift toward good design and features without breaking conventions with things like AJAX.

Anyway, I’m not really that well informed about most of that since i’m not a technical person, I just dabble in the consequences and end products of technological advancement.

Music: Barenaked Ladies – Stunt
(oh man, Ninth Grade)

From the Thinking bout Sounds Dept.

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

So I just received one of my new CD purchases in the mail upon my return from Montreal. (more on that later.) So I opened up the cd and popped it into my computer to play it, I looked over the artwork and the case. The thing that struck me even before playing the CD was that the artwork is much more interesting on this CD than the last release by Spiritual Rez. The production values are also higher and the instrumentation seems more varied than on the last self-titled record. The lyrical focus is still at least tangentially on elements of Rastafarian theology. In short, it’s a short but enjoyable record that is essentially another short demo from this band who seems to be slowly recording their catalog of original material. I can’t wait to get to a live show and see this material live again.

Also, the band is releasing all of their recorded live shows to the public through the Internet Archive, though why the band doesn’t use Bit Torrent and a site like this bt.etree.org | Community Tracker escapes me.

Note: I was going to write a full review but I got the record a long time ago and I’m sure sure where my notes are from my first listen or two from the record.

Music: Spiritual Rez – Rising In The East.