2005
Some Children's Parents
Alex just finished his Little League season. There was one particular mother who rode her son to no end. About halfway through the season, he snapped, and told her off publically during the middle of the game. She rode him about where he stood at the plate, his constant strikeouts (poor kid was stressed by her, there wasn’t any pressure there, really), and his fielding. During one game, after striking out for the second time, she pulled him off the bench and told him she was going to teach him how to bunt since he couldn’t get a hit, and practiced that until the inning ended and they had to take the field.
Now, I’m no perfect parent either – there is no question I could be more active, and practice with my son more, or offer better encouragement.
But then I read this story about a Coach who paid one of his players $25 to hit a disabled child in the head with a bat. This coach had two daughters on his T-ball team, and didn’t want to coach an 8 year old disabled child. (Via Bob Mould’s blog)
These poor children.
Everybody Loves Ludwig
Via Slashdot, comes a story at the Guardian that the BBC’s free downloads of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s symphonies have become the most popular songs ever legally downloaded.
Amazing:
Final figures from the BBC show that the complete Beethoven symphonies on its website were downloaded 1.4m times, with individual works downloaded between 89,000 and 220,000 times. The works were each available for a week, in two tranches, in June.
What does this teach? Free music works. And Classical has proved it – the music industry is amazed by it. And scared:
Not everyone was so positive. Some from the recording industry expressed concerns that the BBC was setting itself up as unfair competition in the recording market.
Mr Cosgrove said: “I would be worried if the BBC repeated the experiment. We would take an extremely dim view if it happened repeatedly.” But, he added: “It’s caused quite a bit of controversy – but it has also provided us with an amazing piece of free market research. I don’t think anyone had any idea in their wildest dreams that there would be this level of response. Yes, the downloads were free – but if charged at a commercial rate that would have been a huge amount of revenue.”
You know what music industry? Screw you. This music is in the public domain, and you haven’t served your market for offering classical music downloads as the article says. Once again, your arrogance has failed you.
Kudo’s to the BBC – They put on the concert, broadcast, and distributed it. And consumers listened and downloaded and the BBC gained customers.
And I was one of them, I downlaoded it.
Star Tribune on The Current
Two Minneapolis Star Tribune writers have a back and forth discussionon what they like and don’t like about 89.3, The Current.
It’s an above average article, and while I agree with most of it, there are parts I disagree with, though it does give you a good feeling for the station as a whole.
JB: What I want from a radio station is a DJ I could talk music with. On the Current, I could definitely talk music with Mary Lucia and Bill DeVille — my two favorites. I loved the other day when Mary said, “I’m still loving this, and I’ll slap anyone who says otherwise. Here’s the Redwalls.” And I could talk with Mark Wheat and Jill Riley, who I think is really improving. But for Thorn [DJ Skroch], I think our conversation would have to be via e-mail.
CR: Ultimately, I don’t care what their personalities are; I care about what they play. Bill DeVille definitely gets my vote in that department. I did a road trip on July 4th and didn’t once put in a CD thanks to him. He played sets such as Boomtown Rats with Betty Serveert with Gram Parsons with one of those especially weird new White Stripes songs.
Nice Touch
I installed a Netgear XE102 powerline to wireless adapter this morning to see if I could get my X-Box a better wireless signal.
Installation was a snap – I’m very imperssed how far powerline has come. Plug the powerline adapter into the wall, plug an ethernet cable into the same adapter in my den and into a switch. In my living room, I then plug in another adapter, and voila, instant wireless range extender. No setup, just works. And my X-Box went from poor to good signal quality (I’ll talk about my X-Box Media Center Extender experience in another post later).
Tied for the best experience with the installation, was the bright yellow business card I found in the Netgear box. With a big Netgear logo at the top, there is a paragraph of information underneath it that informs you that software used in building the product uses the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License. It also gives you a link to download the sourcecode on Netgear.com. (Ironic that a source code link directs you to an ASP page).
Bravo Netgear! Bravo for calling out that you use open source in a document external to the manual or just in a website like some of your competitors.
Bob Mould: Body of Song
Bob Mould recently did an interview on 89.3 The Currentand after listening to the interview on-line (I only caught part of it in the car) he mentioned he had a new album coming out.
Sure enough, Googling for Bob Mould turns up his weblog with a big link to pre-order his new CD. The album comes out July 26 unless you pre-orded from Yep Rock Records in time, which I did. It shipped last Tuesday, and I received it yesterday.
The album is great. Vintage Bob Mould, he returns to his 90’s sound with guitar driven sound, and hints of his recent foray into electronica with his last album Modulate. A good example of where the guitar + minor bits of electronica is (Shine Your) Light Love Hope, which mixes both sounds very well, as does I am Vision I am Sound. The next track on the album, Paralyzed is a great example of the power guitar that made Sugar and Bob Mould’s albums so well done. Best Thing, Underneath Days and Missing You are a fewyou have to check out for the signature Bob Mould guitar sound.
A few ballads are even thrown in to mix it up – High Fidelity slows it down, while Gauze of Friendship is well done on the acoustic guitar.
I purchased the 2 disc special edition, and am happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I got the 2nd (bonus) 9 track CD, with 2 remixes of (Shine Your) Light Love Hope and a remix of Paralyzed. The 2 disc set comes in a box, with extra artwork and the second disc (photo below).
I’m disappointed in that both discs are enclosed in a paper case, rather than a nicer jewel case. The artwork, while well done, as loose sheets that are jewel case sized, will probably never see the light of day outside the special edition box. I would have preferred a slightly larger box with both discs in a hard jewel case, which would make using in the car and treating right much easier.
The price for the pre-order was right – at first I thought $25 + $4 shipping was a bit high, but looking at Amazon’s pre-order price with a $29 retail and everyday price of $26 I actually got a deal. The music is vintage Bob Mould, well done, and well worth the money spent.
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EFF Suprise
I was surprised in the mail about a week and a half ago, when out of the blue I received:
I had re-upped my membership with the EFF in May, like I have for the last few years, and I was delighted to receive the bumper sticker, especially as I wasn’t expecting it. It was a nice touch, as was the accompanying letter.
Once I get this basement finished (someday), I’m going to have Kelly build me a shadow box to put that in, along with the silver membership sticker and letter I received when I first joined. It’s probably best to frame it, as I’m looking to sell my car in the next year or so.
Fun with Flickr
As I mentioned two weeks ago, I’ve uploaded all the old photo’s I had to my Flickr.
It turned out to be just over a 1000 photo’s, with the most in the last two years. I had some good ones of Alex going back to 2001, and a ton of Zoe baby pictures.
They’re all uploaded, grouped in to sets, and I re-orded my set list to be in chronological order with all the kid photo’s.
I’ve added our Fourth of July photos, and we’re caught up in the present again.
Harry Potter
I have never read a Harry Potter book. As avid a reader as I am, once something hits the mainstream, especially so ferociously, I just have to be different and not do it. (I’ve never seen Titanic either).
With that said, I took Alex this morning to Target post-haste and we purchased Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
A number of years back when Harry Potter was just starting to become popular, my wife bought a couple of the books and read them to decide if we could read them aloud to Alex or let him read them when he was older. She loved them, and he has loved them for the past couple of years.
Which led to being a good little American consumer this morning. I figure I won’t see Alex for a day or two until he’s done reading it.
Misc. Stuff
I’m back from California, and getting caught up on misc. stuff.
I’ve updated the theme to K2 Alpha 3, added a new Flickr badge, and still don’t care that it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer. Go get Firefox already.
I mentioned the Burn It Club a while back. The summer Burn It session is now on if any of my three readers want to do it with me. I have to say I’m struggling with the theme, but I really want to participate.
I have a ton of stuff do this weekend, more as my muse wills later.