writ. dodging classification

So today I headed down to this place thats just opening up in the hamden area of baltimore called the Musical Exchange. The guy who owns it used to have a place on Eastern Ave. and he’s a bank customer of my friend Jason. The place really isn’t even setup and organized much yet, but he’s got it all out there and some of the better stuff that he’s gotten to, on the walls already. Oh to backup .. it s Record shop. All vinyl, and some used CD’s. The main pull of the place is of course the records. Most anything thats not rare is 5 bucks if in good condition or a dollar for questionable stuff, or if its just worth a buck. Anyways, even with the lack of organization yet, I was able to ferret out 4 cool records to add to my collection of Vinyl. Things worth having on vinyl and not just CD.

David Bowie – Heroes
The Doors – LA Woman
The Who – Odds and Sods
Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense

I was looking for Bob Dylan’s – Blood on the Tracks, and apparently I was the second guy that week looking for it, but to no avail he didn’t have it for either of us. He had a bunch of other Bob Dylan records, some stuff I may have thought to get but I really wasn’t looking for them. I kind of had focused that if I bought a Dylan record today it’d have been Blood on the Tracks. With that I also had some ideas to buy some P-Funk, of the Funkadelic era. I saw some Parliament, but the record that he had was pretty much a lot of stuff I already have on a compilation CD of Parliament stuff.

All in all a good vinyl day. I’m definitely going back to this place when it looks like he’s a bit more organized.

With that .. I also got some film developed today so that will be incoming soon to the gallery (once i get off my ass and hook up my scanner).

1. Go get some film developed
2. Hook up my scanner
3. Get me a Dairy Queen blizzard.
4. Order my XM thingy
5. Resist the urge to buy this.
6. resolve a conflict in my head and just get it over with and just say something.
7. … (how bout somebody make a comment and tell me what else i should make a note of)

new music abound
ears searching for the unheard
compulsion drives me

New CDs this week:

G-Love – The Hustle
Talking Heads – The name of the band is..
The Prodigy – Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned
Wilco – A Ghost Is born
Beastie Boys – To the 5 Boroughs

I haven’t given any of them a good listen yet, as i just bought them last night. I love having more new music than I know what to do with. This acquisition should keep me going for a while. I think so far i’ve listened to the Prodigy album the most. I’m still forming an opinion. Prodigy records have always made me appreciate really good rap lyricists. This album is no different, it integrates it well.

My friend Jason sent me this link the other day. I didn’t get any time to look at it till this morning. Its a puzzle. Its pretty neat. Not *that* challenging, but it did hold my interest for quite a bit trying to figure out how to solve it.

http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland/

Hints: You gotta get two guys into the two doors, Timing is key, Its a bitch to do with a touchpad on a laptop, unless you’re really skilled at moving the mouse key relatively quickly and accurately, so I suggest using a normal mouse. I’d like to see other puzzles by whoever made this its pretty well done. (kinda reminds me a little of lemmings)

have fun. I looked at it last night, but didn’t really get much time. Today when i sat down with it as the only thing I was concentrating on, it took me about a half hour maybe to figure out.

CDs:
Talking Heads – Sand in the Vaseline: I was watching Mat and Eric and their band play at the Mojo the other week. They had gone on a break, and I was talking to Mat for like a minute. Right before he walked back over to his drum set he said to Al and I, “I think we’ve got a treat for you guys coming up next” or said something to that effect. I thought to myself “hmm what could this be”. A short few seconds later they started playing. I knew I recognized it but I didn’t really have it fully till Eric started in on the lyrics in his best David Byrnesque vocals. Thus started their quasi-cover of “Life During Wartime” from the Talking Heads. I say quasi-cover because they did the whole song, but about half way through they kinda broke into what best I could tell to be a jam of a bunch of other stuff, including original songs of their own. At one point breaking into their song “Matsushima”. There was probably other stuff in there that I’m missing but you get the jist of it. Then when you least expected it they pulled it all back together to reprise the medley by covering the last half now of “Life During Wartime”. It was a pretty cool song, I was glad to have seen it. I keep wondering how it turned out in the recording of the show. I’d definately be intersted in hearing the recording sometime. Anyways, Why am I saying this you ask? Well its cause I didn’t have any Talking Heads in my CD collection till today. I mean I’ve listened to them before, but i was lacking it in my collection. Seeing those guys cover that song made me realize that i was in error not having any Talking Heads in my collection. So as of today I’ve corrected that error ;).

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: No big story .. i just felt like being hip.

Book:

The Photographer’s Handbook, Third Edition: Well with my new affinity for Photography I figured I wanted a foto reference. This looked to be the best one in Barnes & Nobles, so I bought it. I plan on reading it all the way through, so I’m smart on all the lingo. Plus you can’t really have too many books.

Hmm thats about all fo today.

So last week i think i began a search that may become some what of an obsession until i really do find the exact thing I’m looking for. For about a year or more now I haven’t worn a watch at all. The reasons for this are various. Mainly it came down to my previous watch breaking. I didn’t have much a desire to get another watch.

With that said .. i really do love unique watches. Stuff thats interesting. I think over the last couple months I’ve been thinking about getting a good watch again. I have a couple of pre-requisites for this watch though. I don’t really want a run of the mill watch. I don’t really want it to be something i can head out to Boscovs and slag a couple of bucks down and buy. If I wanted a watch like that… I’d have bought one a month after my last one broke.

I think i’m looking for a collectors item I guess.. though I’m not going to pigeon hole myself into that. I know for a fact I’m looking for something that doesn’t need a battery. Auto-wind preferrably .. or manual wind, whichever. I guess i’m just looking for something a little unique. I also think i get a little enfatuated with watches sometimes. With that said… the begginings of my search have led me to be interested in vintage military style watches. This guy has a pretty cool collection.

I think my favorite so far is this (click on picture for info on it)

Anyways the search goes on ;) .. i’ll probably keep posting my finds in here as I find stuff that might fit what I’m looking for.

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,66079,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

more reasons i love NASA:

NASA Scientist 1: Hey whats a comet made of under the surface?
NASA Scientist 2: I dunno, lets just chuck a big rock at it and see how big the hole is and what breaks off.
NASA Scientist 1: I’m so on-board with this plan, HIGH FIVE!
[high five between the scientists]

Thats my simulation of how this idea was formed lol.

Ok officially I am getting weary from traveling every two weaks. It really isn’t that bad. I’m just tired from a long straight through flight from Dallas to BWI, and the fact i had a long day on tuesday in Texas for the meeting, and my flight on monday didn’t get me into my hotel till about 11:30. So pretty much I’m glad I have off on thursday so I can recooperate (sp?).

One really cool thing though. While I was out in Texas the company I was visiting also has a contract with NASA to build their SOFIA, airborne Infrared Telescope. Basically the idea is this thing goes up about 45,000 feet and gets above about 95% of the atmosphere. It opens the hatch and the telescope looks out with a virtually clear view rivalling the space telescopes. Also, while its been a long time building it apparantly will be wildly cheaper and more versatile for repairs than something like Hubble. Not as much of a urgent need to have everything exactly right and unchangable from the beggining. I guess sometime next year this thing will be up and taking pictures. It’ll be so cool. I look forward to looking at cool space pictures from it, off the NASA website eventually.

Well I got home from my boston trip this early afternoon. Low and behold what do I find patiently sitting on my couch? None other than my new turntable. Yes! Ok well the excitement didn’t stop there. I realized that I had ordered my needle cartridge seperately, and that it had not arrived just yet. More over that I checked my e-mail and saw that my order had been delayed because they ran out of the needle I had ordered so it would take another week or so. I couldnt’ have any of this so I changed my order with them and ended up getting a little better needle as far as sound quality goes and they gave me 2 day shipping all for the same charge that my other cartridge would have been. Now the big question “What do I do now?” I have a record player with no needle. I did what any person on a tear for vinyl would do. I went out and found myself a stand in needle for the time being. My finaly decision landed me at Guitar Center talking to the guy at the DJ equipment desk. Things worked out fine because I ended up getting a formidable inexpensive DJ needle for my turntable, which I am currently enjoying listening to Breakbeat Era through. This is a good contrast because the needle I ordered was not a DJ needle, its focus is on sound quality and would not hold up to the tracking forces required for scratching (ok who knows if i really will do that.. but its nice to have flexibility). So now i’ve got a needle for all applications. Everybody wins!

Ok so here’s some pics of it:

Interesting article here. Take a look.
http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html

Pretty interesting article on the dot.com boom, and its subsequent dot.bomb. It sites a good amount of things that can be learned from what happened with the dot.com businesses. Its not talking about the stigma attached to it now, its talking about good things that dot.com companies brought out, and things that can be learned. As with everything that is good, its only good in moderation. The bubble, was a bubble and it invariably burst. Not all things in it were bad. There is a whole slew of things that survived and are quite successful today.

One of the more interesting business practices that is sited in the article is the idea of building a startup from day one that is intended to be sold to a larger company, along with all its technological innovations or whatever else they innovated. I have to say I’ve thought of this very idea myself. Small companies have nothing to loose by trying something new. Thats what they are, something new, its inherent. Big companies excel at getting product to the masses. New things don’t really feed their bottom line. Its far easier for the big company just to buy the new innovative thing and then do what they do best, punt it out to every breathing body that they can.

You know, i can’t really say i blame big companies for doing this sort of thing. I was reading a conversation that I had with my friend Dan a little while ago, and saw a comment about Microsofts business practices. He was referring to the fact that they buy up anything that comes along and assimilates it into the M$ fold. I mean is that really evil? Some say yes. I’m not too sure I know. On one side its like the little guy has no chance. On the other hand. Those little guys sold out cause they got a whole freakin lotta money from M$. So really? did the little guy loose out there? The small company got bought, and now its innovation are gonna reach everybody? How is that bad? Sure ok, you can say maybe M$ bought some company like that just to shelve its product, but really, there is two sides to it. That little company that got shelved didn’t have to sell themselves. They could have stayed a small company and found other people to buy them who would actually put their product out. But they did sell. What does that say about the people behind the product? I bet you’d have never seen that product anyways. You didn’t loose that product to M$, because it probably never would have seen that light of day.

Hey this is all just me spouting off B.S. lol, so go read that article, its pretty excellent.