Just to reinforce how boring a lot of the content on this blog will be, here’s an update on the PSB:
The barbeque is now built. It took me over three hours, somehow. It may have been because I was watching the Canadiens lose in OT, and drinking Boréale. Now, I just need to get a propane tank and hook that up.
If there are no further updates here, feel free to assume that I’ve blown myself up.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
The Name of This Blog
The name of this blog is taken from a Gillian Welch song, called, funnily enough, “One Little Song”:
There’s gotta be a song left to sing
Cause everybody can’t have thought of everything
One little song that ain’t been sung
One little rag that ain’t been wrung out completely yet
Gotta a little left
The last time I tried writing online, I got totally preoccupied with how the work would be perceived, and so shied away from writing about lots of things because I didn’t think I knew enough about them to have something intelligent to say. This time around, bombs away! Expect totally uninformed commentary on anything I happen to find interesting.
I’m trying to improve my writing skills by writing more. I’ve been writing a journal lately, but the problem there is that I’m only talking to myself, so I get all the inside jokes. With this blog, while I imagine I’ll be writing for about eight people, it’s still enough to make me concentrate on readability, and not fall back on some of my lazy writing habits.
The reason then, why I gave the blog the title I did, is that I hope this space does become my one little song. Not a huge song that the whole world will sing along to, but a song I can call my own, and I can share with my friends. Because everyone can’t have thought everything yet, can they?
p.s. If you haven’t actually heard Gillian’s albums Time (The Revelator) or Soul Journey, they’re awesome.
There’s gotta be a song left to sing
Cause everybody can’t have thought of everything
One little song that ain’t been sung
One little rag that ain’t been wrung out completely yet
Gotta a little left
The last time I tried writing online, I got totally preoccupied with how the work would be perceived, and so shied away from writing about lots of things because I didn’t think I knew enough about them to have something intelligent to say. This time around, bombs away! Expect totally uninformed commentary on anything I happen to find interesting.
I’m trying to improve my writing skills by writing more. I’ve been writing a journal lately, but the problem there is that I’m only talking to myself, so I get all the inside jokes. With this blog, while I imagine I’ll be writing for about eight people, it’s still enough to make me concentrate on readability, and not fall back on some of my lazy writing habits.
The reason then, why I gave the blog the title I did, is that I hope this space does become my one little song. Not a huge song that the whole world will sing along to, but a song I can call my own, and I can share with my friends. Because everyone can’t have thought everything yet, can they?
p.s. If you haven’t actually heard Gillian’s albums Time (The Revelator) or Soul Journey, they’re awesome.
Crashing Cucurbita
So it looks like The Smashing Pumpkins (well, Billy and Jimmy at least) are going to record a new album. I’ll wait to actually hear the album before I say either “they were doomed from the start, trying to rehash their past success” or “Damn the nay-sayers, I knew they had another great album in them!”. But I did want to say something about the Pumpkins towards the end of their previous incarnation.
Lots of people seemed to view Adore as a big misstep for the Pumpkins: Jimmy was gone, and they abandoned their traditional wall-of-guitars sound for synthesizers and drum loops. The move was viewed by some as cashing in on the late-90s “electronica” bandwagon. Their followup album, Machina: The Machines of God was then hailed as a “return” to the classic Pumpkins sound, with lots of big guitars everywhere. Fairly soon after the release of Machina, the Pumpkins imploded.
In my own view, in rock as in life, you can’t go home again. Adore definitely had its weak spots - the first single, “Ava Adore”, is totally awful. But that song sticks out like a sore thumb on the album. The rest of the album is really quite good, but not in the same way Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie were. Where their previous work was epic, sort of like a soundtrack for conquering the Universe, Adore is a quieter album. While loneliness was always a predominant theme for the Pumpkins, the loneliness explored in the songs on Adore is much more mature. Whereas Billy is lonely on Siamese Dream because he’s a bit of a geek still, and people always thought he was a weirdo growing up, on Adore he explores the loneliness that comes from losing a parent, or facing death alone. There’s also hope, and redemption, and all that good stuff if you want to dig into it. The music is often quite beautiful also - “To Sheila” strips away almost everything we previously knew about the Pumpkins, using bare keyboard and guitar lines alone, while “For Martha” has Matt Cameron on it (no further explanation required). To my mind, Adore marks a transition for the Pumpkins similar to what Pearl Jam accomplished with No Code, or Wilco with Being There, two of my absolute favourite albums.
But as I said before, people didn’t really like Adore. So a few years later, with Jimmy back and D’arcy on the way out, we got Machina. The giant waves of guitars were back, and the openness in the lyrics of Adore was replaced by obscurantism - a story that listeners were supposed to decipher from the lyrics and booklet. I believe there was actually a contest - the person who could “most correctly” infer Billy’s vision won some prize. In sum, the album felt like a calculated attempt by the Pumpkins to recapture their former glory. Where Adore was risky, Machina was safe, and there’s nothing more dull than a rock band playing it safe.
Lots of people seemed to view Adore as a big misstep for the Pumpkins: Jimmy was gone, and they abandoned their traditional wall-of-guitars sound for synthesizers and drum loops. The move was viewed by some as cashing in on the late-90s “electronica” bandwagon. Their followup album, Machina: The Machines of God was then hailed as a “return” to the classic Pumpkins sound, with lots of big guitars everywhere. Fairly soon after the release of Machina, the Pumpkins imploded.
In my own view, in rock as in life, you can’t go home again. Adore definitely had its weak spots - the first single, “Ava Adore”, is totally awful. But that song sticks out like a sore thumb on the album. The rest of the album is really quite good, but not in the same way Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie were. Where their previous work was epic, sort of like a soundtrack for conquering the Universe, Adore is a quieter album. While loneliness was always a predominant theme for the Pumpkins, the loneliness explored in the songs on Adore is much more mature. Whereas Billy is lonely on Siamese Dream because he’s a bit of a geek still, and people always thought he was a weirdo growing up, on Adore he explores the loneliness that comes from losing a parent, or facing death alone. There’s also hope, and redemption, and all that good stuff if you want to dig into it. The music is often quite beautiful also - “To Sheila” strips away almost everything we previously knew about the Pumpkins, using bare keyboard and guitar lines alone, while “For Martha” has Matt Cameron on it (no further explanation required). To my mind, Adore marks a transition for the Pumpkins similar to what Pearl Jam accomplished with No Code, or Wilco with Being There, two of my absolute favourite albums.
But as I said before, people didn’t really like Adore. So a few years later, with Jimmy back and D’arcy on the way out, we got Machina. The giant waves of guitars were back, and the openness in the lyrics of Adore was replaced by obscurantism - a story that listeners were supposed to decipher from the lyrics and booklet. I believe there was actually a contest - the person who could “most correctly” infer Billy’s vision won some prize. In sum, the album felt like a calculated attempt by the Pumpkins to recapture their former glory. Where Adore was risky, Machina was safe, and there’s nothing more dull than a rock band playing it safe.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
iTunes is exposing my inner awful-music lover
I was initially skeptical about the iTunes music store. While I thought that selling music digitally was definitely the way the industry should move, I didn’t think I’d end up using the iTMS for a few reasons.
First, I love albums. I love reading the lyrics, I love having the artwork, I loved seeing all my CD’s next to each other (until they all got stolen, at least). I would spend hours sorting my albums, remembering where I was when I first heard it, though I don’t think I could pull off an autobiographical sort. While you can buy all the music from the iTMS, you lose out on some of the fun aspects of collecting music.
Secondly, the music sold on the iTMS is compressed as AAC files. While they sound fine, for the most part, I’m always worried that if I invested in a lot of iTMS albums, someday I’d buy an awesome sound system and hear all the artifacts.
Finally, music from the iTMS is protected by DRM. I’m not criticizing Apple for this - it’s the only way they could pull the whole thing off. So if I have the choice of paying ~$10 for a version of an album that comes without the case and booklet, in a lossy compression format, and is playable on only a few devices, versus a regular CD for ~$15, I’d still take the CD.
Unfortunately for my credit card, I’ve recently stumbled upon the facet of the iTMS that works for me. “Eye of the Tiger”. “The Final Countdown”. “The Gambler”. “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”. All awful, awful, songs. I love them all. While I’d never want to get the albums these songs come from, I’m completely happy to pay $1 to be able to hear them. The iTMS is awful (and by awful I mean awesome) for impulse-purchases of one-hit-wonders, songs that were popular while I was growing up, or misadventures of Willie Nelson.
So while I think I’ll stick to CDs for most of my collection, iTMS is great for a rainy afternoon when you really need to hear some Boyz II Men.
First, I love albums. I love reading the lyrics, I love having the artwork, I loved seeing all my CD’s next to each other (until they all got stolen, at least). I would spend hours sorting my albums, remembering where I was when I first heard it, though I don’t think I could pull off an autobiographical sort. While you can buy all the music from the iTMS, you lose out on some of the fun aspects of collecting music.
Secondly, the music sold on the iTMS is compressed as AAC files. While they sound fine, for the most part, I’m always worried that if I invested in a lot of iTMS albums, someday I’d buy an awesome sound system and hear all the artifacts.
Finally, music from the iTMS is protected by DRM. I’m not criticizing Apple for this - it’s the only way they could pull the whole thing off. So if I have the choice of paying ~$10 for a version of an album that comes without the case and booklet, in a lossy compression format, and is playable on only a few devices, versus a regular CD for ~$15, I’d still take the CD.
Unfortunately for my credit card, I’ve recently stumbled upon the facet of the iTMS that works for me. “Eye of the Tiger”. “The Final Countdown”. “The Gambler”. “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”. All awful, awful, songs. I love them all. While I’d never want to get the albums these songs come from, I’m completely happy to pay $1 to be able to hear them. The iTMS is awful (and by awful I mean awesome) for impulse-purchases of one-hit-wonders, songs that were popular while I was growing up, or misadventures of Willie Nelson.
So while I think I’ll stick to CDs for most of my collection, iTMS is great for a rainy afternoon when you really need to hear some Boyz II Men.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Moving In Continued
I’m continuing to move into this space bit by bit. Today I’ve messed around with the sidebar, and tossed up a bunch of links. As will probably become a trend here, I’m shamelessly stealing from (or paying homage, if you prefer) to the late Douglas Adams. The link categories for now are Life, The Universe, and Everything. Links in the “Life” category are people I know who also have websites. “The Universe” has a bunch of science- and evolution-related stuff, and “Everything” is, well, everything else.
The next step in moving in is to modify the theme colour scheme and template a bit, so the site doesn’t look exactly like 10 million other Blogger blogs. Also, to actually write enough here so that the “content” isn’t greatly outmatched by the sidebar.
The next step in moving in is to modify the theme colour scheme and template a bit, so the site doesn’t look exactly like 10 million other Blogger blogs. Also, to actually write enough here so that the “content” isn’t greatly outmatched by the sidebar.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Hello World
So here’s my new blog. I tried this once before, but didn’t really use it effectively or update it often. Last time around, I went really deep into the technical side of things: I set up my own Movable Type and Gallery installations, registered a domain name, got some shared hosting with my friend Greg, and even wrote a manifesto!
Things are a little more low-tech this time. I’m using the free tools at Blogger, and I’ll probably upload pictures later to one of the free online services (e.g. Flickr). I’m composing this entry with one of my favourite pieces of Mac software, MacJournal, which has a really nice export-to-Blogger feature.
I still have a lot of tinkering to do before I can really get comfortable with the site. For example, I’d like to create my own CSS layout for the site (or at least heavily modify an existing one). But for now, posting works, as should the RSS feeds.
Things are a little more low-tech this time. I’m using the free tools at Blogger, and I’ll probably upload pictures later to one of the free online services (e.g. Flickr). I’m composing this entry with one of my favourite pieces of Mac software, MacJournal, which has a really nice export-to-Blogger feature.
I still have a lot of tinkering to do before I can really get comfortable with the site. For example, I’d like to create my own CSS layout for the site (or at least heavily modify an existing one). But for now, posting works, as should the RSS feeds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)