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Vinyl (R)Evolution

Note: This is reposted from my main blog and seems fitting to kick off my Vinyl Music blog with.

When I was 17 or18 years old, I wanted to be a DJ with a friend of mine. I grabbed all of my parents vinyl records, trucked them over to my friend’s house and then… we didn’t do anything. He and I eventually had a falling out and a couple years later when I inquired about getting the records back, I was dismayed to learn that his basement had flooded and they were trashed.

I don’t think my father has forgiven me to this day.

I grew up heavily influenced by music, including my parents listening to their records and favorite artists such as ABBA, Billy Joel and Elton John. I remember periods of my life based on the music I was listening to at the time and if I hear a specific song it can take me back right to that moment.

I’ve been thinking about buying a turntable for the last few years and re-creating some of those memories. I participated inĀ Record Store Day last year shopping at aĀ local store and picking up a number of CDs and this year on Record Store Day I went out and this time picked up someĀ used and new vinyl records and then bought a turntable off Craigslist. (An early 80s Pioneer direct-drive).

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I’m one of growing number of people getting back into vinyl – just visitĀ The Future of Vinyl blog for non-stopĀ media coverage of the growth of vinyl over the last couple years – it’s now the fastest growing segment of the (dying) music industry. EvenĀ large retailers like Best Buy are getting in on it. (Though I found their selection disappointing – very few new records, just 180g re-issues of older material, and for the same prices as the local stores, who I would rather support).

I own more CDs than I can count, and even if it’s in my head, I do think vinyl sounds better. There is something to be said for the crackle and hiss of a well worn and loved album playing on a stereo.

I don’t know what’s more fun – listening to the albums or shopping for them. I’ve already bought over 60 records in the last 6 weeks, the bulk of them at two events. The first was a private collector who put an ad in Craigslist and was selling over 5000 records with most of them going for 3 for a dollar. The second sale was today at theĀ Minnesota Record Show which is held four times a year and features a number of dealers selling records for a few bucks each to rare albums worth hundreds of dollars. On average at an event like this or in the local record stores, used albums are about $3 each. I have bought a few re-issues on 180 gram vinyl of some of my favorite albums of all time, such as Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses. (Most albums are 120 grams – the thicker the album the higher the fidelity).

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But what impresses me the most is the resurgence in current artists releasing vinyl day and date with CD – and including MP3 or FLAC downloads for free when you purchase the vinyl record. I’ve picked up some great new albums, including the latest fromĀ The Hold Steady,Ā The New Pornographers andĀ Broken Bells.

My wife laughs at me every time I say “I’m going downstairs to listen to some records” but I’m enjoying the experience immensely. She also says I’m done collecting for a while, but don’t tell her, I have my eyes on some more new releases and I heard about another upcoming show…

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  • 1 min read

The Day the Saucers Came

Neil Gaiman continues to be one of my favorite authors (and tweeters). I bought a print of his poem “The Day the Saucers Came” in 2007 when it first came out and finally have gotten around to having it framed. (And I have #69 of 750 made, a nice low number!)

“The Day the Saucers Came” was originally published in Neil Gaiman’s short story collection, “Fragile Things” and was one of my favorite stories included. The fact that it became the first print available illustrated by Jouni Koponen was even better.

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  • 1 min read

What a week

I’m glad this week is over.

The good:

  • My dad drove up and visited for a few days, spending a day at the PGA championship, which is in my suburb outside of Minneapolis.
  • My dad left, and my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came up to visit with my wife and the kids.

The bad:

  • Alex broke his arm within a couple weeks of buying his first skateboard.
  • The PGA Championship was in town. Lots of lost people driving around, and traffic was terrible in my little suburb.
  • With the in-laws in town Friday morning, I woke up early and went to the coffee shop to do some work. Renewed a domain there, and I’m guessing via the open wifi, my credit card was stolen. Apparently I need to learn more about SSL – the good news is Chase stopped it all. Who signs up for a $2000 sports camp (for their kids?) with a stolen card. Oh, and lots of iTunes purchases – software I never have (and probably never will) use.

With everything going on, I’m feeling behind with some of my work in GNOME. First up, working on the release notes for 2.28!

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  • 1 min read

Things I dislike about traveling

In no particular order:

  • Airports & airport security. Food courts and choices at airports, especially as I think they over charge. (Is their rent that expensive?)
  • Airplanes. Being crammed into a small seat with no legroom for ~4 hours, I always seem to hurt my shoulder somehow twisting around.
  • Being out of the loop on the outside world. I find when I travel, and work across the country, between being busy in the office, and then dinners with co-workers, I miss the news on TV and the internet.
  • Hotels. I never sleep well anymore. I did when I was younger.
  • Hotel showers. I hate their shower heads.
  • My feedreader explodes. I don’t have time to browse the internet, and my feedreader has hundreds of items to catch up.
  • Red-eye flights. Enough said.
  • Getting home, tired, and not having the proper energy to spend with the kids and / or wife. Lots of guilt over this one.
  • Catching up on my DVR. See feedreader above.

Planet Foresight is moving

Planet Foresight is moving!

Currently located at www.foresightlinux.org/planet you may have noticed that it now only updates once a day. The current planet uses Feedjack, a Django module, which was crashing our webserver for some unknown reason and we had to turn off updates and instead run a cron job.

Our resident Alaskan, smithj (with his own shiny new blog!), has been kind enough to set us up with our own Venus planet appliance, now at http://planet.foresightlinux.org.

If you subscribe to the current planet in a feedreader via RSS, please update your feed to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/foresightplanet

We will be migrating the official feed in about a week.

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  • 2 min read

Runnin' down a dream

In almost 5 years of blogging, one of my cardinal rules, though unwritten, was to not talk about work and my job on this blog. You hear stories today about prospective employers doing Google searches on interviewees or looking them up on MySpace or Facebook. (Interesting sidenote: since converting my blog’s identity from silwenae to Paul Cutler, a Google Search of my name takes me to the #2 result on Google, up from about 10 6 months ago).

Rules are made to be broken.

After 15 years of working at Best Buy, I resigned my position this morning. I believe it came as a surprise to most of my co-workers, who thought me a “lifer”. But this past year has been one of reflection for me, as January was my 10 year anniversary of working at the corporate office after 5 years in the retail stores, and May was my 15 year anniversary.

I’m not leaving retail behind forever, as I’m going to a small software publisher, who, well, publishes software to sell at retailers.

Best Buy has changed immensely since I’ve started. From 75 stores in 13 states, we now have 875 stores in 49 states in the US, as well as stores in Canada, China and operations in the U.K. I started as a part time cashier, and worked my way up the ladder managing my own store as a General Manager in 5 years. I then spent 10 years at the corporate office, holding positions as a Product Manager, Sr Buyer, and others working in Service, Business Development and lastly as a Merchant.

Change is hard, and a bit scary – Best Buy is really the only job and career I’ve had in my adult life. But I’m looking forward to the challenge of a new position, and in a way starting over. I’m going from a company of 120,000+ employees (5500 at our corporate office) to a company with 45 employees.

One of my co-workers who I have grown close to over the past few years left me a card and a CD with songs she thought was appropriate to me leaving. The song choices were amazing – and one of them was Tom Petty’s Running Down a Dream. I’ll post the set list in a few days.

I’m excited at the opportunity, and I’m looking forward to the change. And don’t worry, I’m back to my unwritten rule of not talking about work and my day job.

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  • 1 min read

Boom! Crash!

The shelving in my office closet came crashing down a couple of days ago. Lots of books, CDs, computer parts and boxes are currently strewn about my office. This picture doesn’t do the mess justice:

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It’s been a long week between my hard drive crashing, the shelving ripped out of the wall, and my onging DirecTV nightmare, which I’ll expound upon once it’s over.

Where'd who go?

I haven’t blogged much in August, and here it is at month end already. Things should be settling down soon (I hope) leaving me more to blog and get back to work on Foresight.

I had a couple trips in August, lots of stuff going on at work, and we’re looking at building a new house, so the month just flew by.

The storm two days ago knocked my DirecTV dish out of alignment – not having TV for a week should free up some time. More on that later, but at least I have HD off air so I can watch the (7th ranked!) Badgers kick off the the college football season tomorrow.

I’m also in the process of transferring all my websites to a new server, so that’s eaten up some time. I spent almost a weekend working on getting apatheia.org moved from my account to a friends who is paying for it now.

More to come soon.