Tech, music, sports, and other stuff.
In just a few hours, at The Paradise, Dear Leader.
Awesome.
It's a CD release party for The Alarmist (which you can listen to here). I heartily recommend "Nightmare Alleys", "Monuments and Shrines", and "Bleed", but the whole thing is really good. Really good.
Really.
I've been posting about how jazzed I am that Google's setup Google Reader so that you can easily use it on any old web-enabled phone. And it's pretty bad ass. I use it a good bit when I'm waiting in line or grabbing a quick bite to eat .... or on the pooper.
Gmail has always been mobile-friendly, but it used a stripped-down interface. Well, no more: meet the Gmail Mobile application. Now, just boot up the app and see your Gmail interface almost like you were looking at it in Firefox. Almost. It's pretty nifty, if a little slow.
Even more cool, is that pretty much all the nifty Google mobile stuff is integrated into the Google Homepage which also has a mobile version. You just point your phone there and you get your Google Homepage, including a snapshot of (and link to) your Gmail account, a quick view of your RSS feeds in Google Reader, plus headlines from any other RSS feed you might have dropped into your homepage, plus weather and some other fun stuff.
The only thing you don't get? Google Calendar. I'm not entirely sure why I can't just have a read-only agenda view that will show me what I've got coming up that day. That's the only thing missing from me having my life be available to me at all times. Which is both really fun and cool and very, very sad. Mostly sad.
Obviously there are tradeoffs. It's harder to sync to a PDA (but, I don't really use one anymore anyway ... my phone has replaced that). My life lives on Google's servers, so if they turn evil, I'll be hosed.
P.S. You can actually get your GCal agenda via SMS, but that's annoying.
P.P.S. This is really just because I haven't had time to record a new podcast and wanted to write about something.
P.P.P.S. I really wanted to write about PayPerPost, but I want to actually formulate my thoughts before I spew any venom.
(This should have gone up 2 weeks ago, but I was waiting to get pictures.)
A couple of weeks back (October 12th, to be exact), my beloved Hokies were playing the hated Boston College Eagles on a Thursday night on ESPN. Back in 1999, some friends and I made the trek up from Blacksburg to Chestnut Hill to spend Thursday-Saturday with some of my friends who were at BC and take in a game (which VT won in a torrential downpour). We (Aaron, Mike, and Jared) drove up, and given the weather and the amount of time we had before we had to drive back, we didn't see much of the city. Or, I should say, they didn't see much of the city, since they were here for the first time. I'd been to Boston (and BC) a bunch of times, since I'm a Masshole.
Well, 7 years later, with a chance to relive that initial trip, Mike and Jared (henceforth referred to as Billy and Bob, because that's what we call them) decided to come up, take in a game, and crash at my place. It'd give them a chance to see the city, give us a chance to hang out, and hopefully give us a chance to watch our team beat up the Eagles.
The trip got off to a rocky start, as their plane was delayed by Cory Lidle's plane crash. Still, hard to go wrong with a week off and a football game. So, I ventured out to help them do the tourist thing around the city. I really haven't done that in a few years, probably since before college. We started out heading down to Park Street and doing the walk down to Quincy Market, out into the North End, grabbing some dessert at Modern Pastry, then walking all the way down Beacon to give them a glimpse of Fenway. It's a bit of a hike, but hell, we had all day to kill and it was gorgeous out.
Here's me (left, sexy bald head) and Bob (right) walking outside of Fenway. Billy is taking the picture.
Then we headed back and got ready to meet co-worker and Notre Dame fan (so fellow anti-BC rooter) for the game. We were pumped and happy.
Then the game happened. We were not so pumped and happy.
Then Friday came, and we continued the tourist trip. I've been to probably 30 games at Fenway in the last few seasons, but I've never done the tour. So we headed over to do the Fenway tour, got a crazy, awesome old guide who told ridiculously corny and punny jokes (so I thought he was pretty much a comedy god), and got to see the stadium from a few places I've never seen it before (the press box, the new seats at 3rd base). As a Sox fan, I was pretty underwhelmed. The one big selling point for me would be to go on the field and touch the Monster, but apparently they don't do that anymore. But, for folks who don't get to see as many games at Fenway, or who may never have seen a game there (i.e. Bob and Billy), it's a pretty great trip.
Here's a picture of seats, just because I think it looks cool.
After that, we headed over to the Skywalk, which I haven't done in years and don't remember being as costly as it was, but I guess things change in 10 years. It was a gorgeous clear day, so we could pretty much see for miles. Walking around, Billy caught a few good pics. Here's my fave.
We wrapped it up with some good BBQ from Blue Ribbon, called it a night, and then drove back to Logan on Saturday morning. All in all, a fantastic few days, outside of a few hours where our football team forgot how to play (they remember this past Thursday when they beat down #10 Clemson).
I'd forgotten how cool (and small) a city Boston is. I tend to hang out on the Red Line and really only get as far as Park Street to change over to head down to Fenway. Walking around the North End and then down on Boylston and Beacon, if you give in to the romanticism and beauty (and block out the construction), you can still sort of feel like a newcomer, even if you've been here you're entire life.
On a slight tangent, I need to get my walking shoes on again and make my way down to see the statue of Red. My first real sports love wasn't the Sox, it was the Celtics, and that's pretty much solely due to Red Auerbach, who's place in national history is probably grossly understated.
I got a decent response to the first podcast, so here it is, the "long awaited" second episode of the podcast still yet to be named where I bring you music that has caught my ear in the past week or so.
This week you'll hear an artist I mentioned in passing last week who may have my favorite pop song of 2006, a band with what I think is the album of the 2006 (so far), a band that will be releasing a contender for album of 2006 in a couple of weeks, a guy who played in Boston just a couple of days ago, and a pint-sized MC who might have the single of 2006. Sure, it's two months early to be naming off the top anything of the year, but it's a theme and everything needs a theme.
Speaking of themes, Brett's got a pretty cool theme on his podcast over at the Wicked Pissa Podcast. And he threw me a link, so how can I not return the love?
On this episode, you'll hear:
That's it. 5 songs. A few minutes of me rambling.
Get the feed from here or from iTunes. Yes, I'm in iTunes.
I've switched.
I've used Google Reader exclusively for a full week and I'm officially hooked. I think it's successful for a few reasons:
It just works really well. I'm hoping it gets moved out of Google Labs and becomes a first-class Google application, since I think it's a hell of a lot better (and more useful) than Google Groups or even Google Docs/Spreadsheets.
The only thing it's missing is an API to allow you to sync a desktop client (like RSS Bandit) to Google Reader. That ability would be fantastic: use Google Reader whenever you can, but when you need to log off, you could sync your feeds to your client, take it with you, and then sync back up when you're done.
I guess favicon support would be pretty good too.
I'm into about day 4 of using Google Reader for my RSS feed reading. So far, so good. I'm getting through feeds much more quickly; I've even added a few more feeds because I've found it faster getting through feeds in the Reader interface.
Only a couple of flaws at this point:
Otherwise, I haven't found a reason to move back to a desktop client yet. I'm rather impressed.
I use my RSS reader a lot. Currently, I use RSS Bandit, which I like a good bit. It does RSS very well, and doesn't try to do too much more, i.e. it does exactly what I need. I don't need podcatching abilities (though they'll be there in the next version) since I use an iPod and iTunes does an OK enough job.
It even allows me to do some manual syncing of my home computer with work, by FTPing the data files up to my FTP site, then downloading in the new location. So, I can keep my RSS/information habit under control by checking my feeds every few hours at work and at home, and never get overloaded. It's crude, but it works well.
Now, one of the things that popped up in my feeds the past week was about the interface and functionality improvements in Google Reader, Google's online feed reader tool. So, given that I use GMail and GCal, I figured I'd give Reader another shot. I'd tried it when it first came out and found it to be a complete abomination.
I exported my OPML feedlist from RSS Bandit, imported it into Reader, and off I went. The "River of News" view (all stories are sort of thrown together in one long column of news and you scroll through it), which is a view people swear by, but I've found cumbersome in every tool I've ever used. It's perfect in Google Reader. Literally, perfect. I had a few hundred items to read when I imported my feedlist, and I just scrolled through them. It marked them as read as I scrolled past. See something interesting? Stop and read it more closely. It works remarkably well and immediately made me realize I could probably add more feeds to my feedlist and move through them more quickly than I do through RSS Bandit. This shouldn't be construed as a knock on RSS Bandit -- I just think that the Google Reader team has nailed the interface. I'm probably going to spend next week only in Reader and see if I like it enough to switch permanently.
Oh, and, like GMail, you can use it from your mobile device (i.e. your cell phone). Again, it just sort of works the way you'd expect, and gives me something to read when I'm grabbing a meal or waiting in line.
Of course, since it's web-based, I can view my feeds from anywhere. No cumbersome syncing. That's handy.
The only knock on it, at least so far in a few days of use, is that it's not nicely integrated into the Google interface, I'll say. I don't use the Google Personalized homepage that much (I generally search right out of the search toolbar in Firefox). It's not part of the upper left nav in GMail or Google Calendar. I know Google Reader is technically still part of Labs, but I'd love if I could customize the Google upper left nav and add/replace links there. A real integration, just as a link there, would make it much easier for me to pop open the 3 Google apps I use.
Hopefully, I'll check back next week to update on how my switch to Reader has worked. I haven't even scratched the surface of some of the functionality -- like reading lists, where you can mark something you've read to share and then publish your reading list (as HTML or as a feed), which is kinda like del.icio.us without tagging. It's the old link-blog model, but done in a really really easy way.
On to other topics ...
I've been on vacation this week, with the last few days spent with some friends who came up to visit (and go to a football game that shall not be mentioned). Stories forthcoming. However, it sort of caused me to fall behind on my podcast listening. My RSS-based information consuming habit is sort of overbearing at times, but I'm becoming very good at skimming and not needing to check everything out.
I open iTunes, find 10 podcasts to listen to, and notice that 5 of them are the new Gillmor Gang episode. The show has already started testing my patience with it's 4.5 minutes of ads to start the show, and another 30 seconds at the end. Sure, I can skip through it with my iPod or iTunes (and I do), but it means that each individual episode is about 20-22 minutes of real audio, broken up into 4 or 5 chunks, and I just find it terribly annoying. On top of that, I've just found the content utterly lacking in anything meaningful for probably the past few months. It's not the Gang of old, with Jon Udell and nice guests talking about identity or groupware. You know, interesting technology discussion driven by the technology and accentuated by the knowledge and personalities of the participants.
Since the move to Podshow, the Gillmor Gang has been pretty much unlistenable and a general waste of time. There's little insight to be found, as it's simply a platform for the participants to bitch or proselytize for their meme of the day. I've stuck with it, hoping that it would eventually veer back into what made the show great. It hasn't, and after listening to one chunk of the latest show, I've decided I'm done. It's like 24. I gave it two years and gave up.
Now, what that has done, is reminded me that I most enjoyed the work of Jon Udell on the show. Fittingly, he had left the Gang a while back, and the show lacked his ability to take a new technology and immediately make real world sense of it. It was his explanation (and demo) of del.icio.us that made me go "a-ha" and realize what it was all about. Well, he's got a weekly podcast that much closer to what the Gillmor Gang used to be, and I've dropped the Gang in favor of his show, and I'm smarter for it.
Finally ...
For those of you who missed it, I'm trying the podcasting thing. Check out my last post for the details and give it a listen. I realized today that I hadn't included and obvious link to the podcast feed to add it to your iTunes or your podcatcher of choice, so that's now linked there. I've also submitted it for inclusion in iTunes, so we'll see how that goes.
I'm so funny. Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Timely, and amusing.
Yes, I made a podcast. I've been fooling around with it for a while, never really zeroing in on what to do. Some folks were encouraging me to do a basketball podcast (which still might happen). But, I realized that I spend the bulk of my time here writing about the music I'm listening to and shows I go to, but I don't really expose anyone to that music, other than a few mp3s or links here and there.
So now I can force my music upon the four or five people who actually come to the site.
For now, I think the podcast will live as an off-shoot of my blog. If I keep it up, or people like it, maybe it'll get its own place to live. Or, maybe I'll get a cease and desist long before that happens.
On this show:
Here's the feed to just the podcast (in case you don't care about my ramblings).
In the interest of full disclosure, I've setup a little Amazon affiliate thing so if you like a song and go buy the CD from Amazon, I get like 5 cents.
For a while now, I'd been keeping in the back of my mind that Harvey Danger was coming to Great Scott on a Thursday night. I was all jazzed to see them, but I also knew that I might have a basketball game that night, when we'd already be short players. So I didn't buy a ticket ahead of time.
Thursday rolls around, my game is at 7pm, and the show is at 9pm (which means HD probably don't go on until 11:15 or so). I get out of work and fight traffic to get down to Waltham on time for the game. It's the first game of the season, so it's always a bit of an adjustment to get back into the flow. I also have a tendency to be overly critical of my own play. However, I rocked. Probably the best I've played in a few years, which I think was directly related to the fact that the other team constantly kept throwing passes that I could just rip and start running the other way for easy hoops. So, it's probably a whole lot less my good than the other team's bad. But whatever. I'll take what I can get.
After our victory (a narrow 1 point win because we were short players and played 4 on 5), I drove home and checked out the Great Scott website just to make sure the show wasn't sold out. Of course, they just can't tell me, so I call them and the fellow answering the phone is nice enough to let me know that they're definitely not sold out yet, but it looks like the crowd is starting to get there. So I should hurry.
I hop into the shower and remember that I'm out of shower wash or body wash or whatever you call it. So I squeeze out a couple of handfuls of the anti-bacterial hand soap that's on the bathroom sink and use that. I'll smell like hand soap, but I'll be germ free. I throw on my rockin' Dear Leader tee and my nerd glasses and get into the car, realizing that I've yet to eat dinner and I'm certainly not going to eat it at Great Scott. Needing money, I stop at Walgreen's to hit the ATM and grab some quick food. I buy a fruit punch Gatorade, some weird caramel nut balance bar, and a bag of Jelly Bellys. Quite frankly, if I pass a bag of Jelly Bellys, I have to buy them.
Guzzling Gatorade and eating something that passes as chocolate, I head down Fresh Pond towards Soldiers Field Road. My normal route takes me up Market St. then back down Cambridge St., but only because I've never figured out which road crosses the two (I now know which one!). I turn down Harvard Ave. for parking, before realizing I'm about to park to go into Harpers Ferry. It is just now, right about 9pm, that I realize I don't remember exactly where Great Scott is.
Making my life more ridiculous, it's at this moment that I crack open the bag of Jelly Bellys and pull out the first one ... which I get into my mouth only to realize it's plum, the bastard child of all Jelly Bellys. I hate plum.
Thankfully, I notice some people walking and realize that I'm not insane and Great Scott is just another block down. I slide down, hang a left on Comm Ave., just hoping I can luck into a parking spot.
And I do. About a block from Great Scott. Things are looking up. Haven't hit another plum bean and I found free parking in a great spot like a block away.
I head up to the door, walk in, pay for my ticket, and get a Sam Adams Octoberfest. It's a decent crowd, though when you're in Allston and school is in session, it's hard to gauge how many folks are there for the show versus how many just decided they wanted to hang out for the evening. As I'm looking around, Sean Nelson, the lead singer of Harvey Danger, walks by. He's not a small man. Probably 6'2" or 6'3".
The opening band, Harris, is just getting ready to start, and I find myself a nice spot on the wall where I can lean and not be too much in the way. Harris starts off and their guitarist closest to me is just all over the place and really fun to watch. As local bands go, these guys were pretty good. They obviously have a little bit of a base, as they had some folks there singing along with them. They had one song, "Carousel", that stuck in my head and could easily be on the radio. The rest of it still seemed a bit rough around the edges. But, apparently they'd had a shakeup in the band and people were playing different instruments. They seemed like nice guys, too. A pretty decent opener and the set break allowed me to go get another Octoberfest.
So Many Dynamos followed up Harris. They're out of St. Louis and they play music that I don't generally find enjoyable. Except they rocked. They are an indie rock/pop/electronic band; it's not really my genre, so I wouldn't even know who to compare them to. And, quite frankly, if I heard that album, I'd probably be pretty disinterested. But they were just so fun on stage, bouncing around, bantering wittily ("We're halfway through the set. I'm feeling pretty good: I only feel like we're a third of the way through"), and just having a good time. It was infectous.
If you're wondering, most reviews seem to compare the band to The Dismemberment Plan and as a punkier Hot Hot Heat. I've sadly never heard the former, and can sort of see the latter comparison. Very "sort of".
Smartly, I took a moment between songs to go grab another beer and hit the bathroom (except in reverse order). If you've ever been to a show at a place like Great Scott or TT the Bear's, you know why.
When So Many Dynamos finished, things got crowded fast. All of the folks who were only there to see Harvey Danger, sort of stormed to the front. I don't mind so much when it's people who seem to actually dig the band (in this case, it was mostly those type of fans). I do mind when it's people who've heard one song and think that entitles them to push their way to the front. Which always reminds me of the night at a Fountains of Wayne show when I saw two college aged girls try to push their way to the front, bitching at people left and right. One of them tried to push past the wrong people and got laid out (right in front of me!). It made my night.
I digress.
I had my spot, had a beer, and was ready for Harvey Danger. I have a tendency to check out band sites before a show to get an idea of what the set might be like, and I'd learned that the aforementioned Mr. Nelson had been having some throat/voice issues. As he took the stage, he acknowledged as much and said they were going to start out with a quieter song to get warmed up. He breaks into "Pike St./Park Slope", which is a fantastic song and helps to illustrate some of the, shall we say, verbose lyrics that Harvey Danger utilizes.
Maybe we could run away and start a little repertory moviehouse or something.
She said, "sorry but I think you might be just projecting on to me. Why don’t you try LA?"
Repertory. Awesome. I mean, come on, this is a band that can work the word interminable into a song. How can you not dig that?
After that, I don't really remember the setlist. They played a great mix of stuff off of all 3 CDs, and sounded pretty amazing for a band that hadn't toured in 5+ years. They turned a song off of the re-released version of Little by Little called "Picture Picture" into a crowd sing along, which was lead into by a very funny 60 second or so monologue describing the "sacred covenent between an audience and performer" in a call-and-response chorus. There were even helpful cue cards to make it easy. That sounds like it could be very pretentious or even cloying, but it wasn't. It was really cleverly done. The band worked into "Little Round Mirrors", which I enjoy a lot, neatly working the chorus from Guns-N-Roses "Paradise City" into it.
At some point, I can't remember if it was during the normal set or as part of the encore, they pulled up a woman onto the stage (she was a friend of the band, it seemed) and she did the female backing vocals to "Old Hat", which is probably my favorite Harvey Danger song. Just an all around great set, with no discernable voice problems, no discernable jackasses, no problems at all.
They finished the set with "Flagpole Sitta", which is the song that they're most famous for, but, as you'd expect, has a tendency to bring out the douchebags. And bring out the douchebags it did, as someone decided it was a good opportunity to start a mosh pit. But, my faith in humanity was restored when his girlfriend yanked him down to the floor by the back of his shirt. Ah, I loves the rock.
After that, I made the quick walk back to my car, and headed home. I had some Jelly Bellys on the way home, and even the plums tasted ok.
(Image from Flickr via splunkton who I don't know, but I found the image then followed to his website which is ridiculously awesome. Seriously. Check it out.)
So, this past Saturday was my 10 year High School Reunion.
I'm honestly not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, it was pretty cool to see some people I hadn't seen since June of 1996, many of whom have obviously grown up, matured, gotten married, had kids, but still seem almost exactly the same. On the other hand, it was odd to be standing there surrounded by people who've grown up, matured, gotten married, had kids, and I'm still living in an apartment, playing video games, and trying to avoid doing anything that requires responsibility. On the snarky hand, there were enough people who've put on a lot of weight to make me feel good about where I'm at physically. It sounds mean, but I'm sure people were mocking my shaved head and nerdy glasses. So nyah.
Advice on surviving your reunion:
In all honesty, it was a pretty good time, and I survived and even saw some people that I wish I had seen more over the past 10 years. I'll enjoy it again in another 5 or 10 years.
In other news ...
Harvey Danger tomorrow night!