3 Stations East

Accelerate

2008-04-08T16:43:16Z

R.E.M.

R.E.M. is the band that essentially introduced me to music. This is no small honor; before them I was listening to the usual B96 style drivel that everyone else was listening to. But Automatic for the People brought me into the fold and soon I wasn't just a fan - I was a fanatic for R.E.M.

Lots of stuff happened along the way, though. My tastes changed a tad over to power pop and other things due in part to the R.E.M.'s influencees and influencers, and R.E.M.'s efforts started lacking urgency and appeal. Around the Sun holds the distinction of being the only album of theirs I don't own - I even found some good in Reveal (and Up has underrated tracks like "Daysleeper".)

That said, Accelerate is R.E.M.'s push to be relevant again. Are they more relevant with me, though? Because I matter the most, you know.

The answer is, "Somewhat." The album has a number of uneven moments but at least it's Weezer-short at just over half an hour. "Man-Sized Wreath" is easily my favorite song on the album in part because of the layers. The lyrics are good but not great, but what did it for me was the almost inaudible reading of the lyrics buried on the left speaker during this tune. Stipe's just there, reading them at a very quiet level. That kind of little attention to detail is something that has been lacking in R.E.M.'s stuff for years, traded in for electronic bleeps and bloops.

"Houston" is another standout, clocking in at just two minutes and recalling "Try Not to Breathe" in its sound. Stipe sets the visual, articulates it, and moves on. "Mr. Richards", a track I initially disliked, came back to me as a strong one. And "Supernatural Superserious", despite nearly being played out on radio, is a good song. "Hollow Man" surprises - after the first verse, one wouldn't expect the chorus to speed up, but thankfully it does. In general I find that any song (outside of "Superserious") that doesn't resemble R.E.M. stuff resonates the most with me.

The remainder of Accelerate is either okay or good but not outstanding. "I'm Gonna DJ" is a modest closer that feels like the band's trying too hard to be "fun" (ie, "Stand".) "Living Well is the Best Revenge" is a good opener, and the segue between "Wreath" and "Supernatural" is smooth and brilliant - Mike Mills carries it. "Sing for the Submarine" has too many cutesy-poo R.E.M. catalog references to be substantial. "Until the Day is Done" lacks charm, "Horse to Water" lacks substance, and the title track - despite another great Mills performance - doesn't seem to say much.

The album as a whole doesn't feel cohesive, but rather like a collection of songs. I have this same feeling about In Rainbows, for what it's worth.

All told I'm pleased that R.E.M. has put out a good album at this stage of their career. I just hope they follow it up with another good one or, better, a great one.

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So long, DreamHost

2008-03-11T12:06:09Z

Next week my DreamHost account expires.

I don't recall exactly how I first heard of DreamHost, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of the blogs and sites I read used them for hosting. I had bounced between a number of different hosts for my sites, but found none that was reliable and had gobs of space. DreamHost filled the bill.

Unbelievably, that was 5 years ago now.

The problems with DreamHost are almost always exaggerated on their blog and others' blogs. But sometimes those descriptions of what's going on are accurate. My sites would occasionally go offline for a while, come back, and support would have no clue what was happening. Or mySQL would die - no idea why. Little things like that.

But I soldiered on. I stuck with them as I thought, still, they had offered me a good deal. The uptime wasn't great, but hey, it was fairly cheap.

I wish I could say, "And then, the most AWFUL THING EVER happened!" but that's not the case. I simply experienced another big outage - email this time, then web - and didn't want to deal with it anymore. I shopped around a bit and moved everything off of DreamHost late last year. I'm extremely happy with Pair, my host for everything now.

It's a little thing to be sure. There are many larger decisions in life. But not having to deal with random site outages with no explanation, random things going wrong, and the like is worth my saving money at Pair. Pair's been cheaper (!), far more reliable, and more like a Real Company. That works for me.

It's been a good run, DreamHost. Thanks.

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Hopscotch

2008-02-14T16:19:09Z

In reviewing my Organization Smackdown post I realized there's one underlying theme with all of these problems: it's not easy to have things available both offline and online.

What would be ideal is a way to automatically and invisibly (that's important) sync all of my PIM-like programs and websites together. I shouldn't have to think about it. I should be able to set up a folder on my SFTP site, tell these programs to store their data there in addition to my local drive, and voila. A program should then store any changes locally before it does it remotely... and let me know (via Growl? Email?) if it fails.

I should then be able to access that file... which would be an open format, of course... on another computer via a program/SFTP combo or directly via a web interface. I shouldn't have to download these files to work with them unless I'm explicitly using another program on another computer.

Let's use RSS as an example, since OPML has a lot of what I'm looking for (although I'm not sure if it stores article state - read/unread... I don't think so, but I'm ignorant about that.) At home I use NNW and have a cronjob set to quit the program at 8am every weekday before I get on the train. This is done so it will force a sync up to FTP, and also so I don't have two newsreaders grabbing stuff all day. Ideally I shouldn't need to quit the program to force a sync.

At this point, I should have an OPMLish file on my server. I should be able to go to any computer, use a web-based reader (Google Reader), and tell it to always use that same OPML file.

Likewise I should be able to go to work, fire up NNW, and have it grab that same OPML file as its subscription list.

I can understand and appreciate the programming challenge behind this: what happens when the files don't sync? What if I decide to unsubscribe from 50 feeds at Google Reader? Well, I should be asked about that. I should also be able to say that all of my changes from source X are gospel - ie, if I change something at NNW at work, always accept those changes.

This sounds more and more like a system-level service to me. It would be a ridiculous task to build into every piece of software. It seems that .Mac provides some of these tools but everything I've read about syncing with .Mac suggests it's crap. That's too bad.

What's needed is a platform and program agnostic sync mechanism that can fool programs into thinking they're working with a local file when it's really a remote one, yet fallback to a local file if something fails.

In the meantime, I need to live with this silly game of hopscotch. Too bad.

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Privilege Meme

2008-02-13T19:52:31Z

The list is based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. The exercise developers ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.

Father went to college

Father finished college

Mother went to college

Mother finished college

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor

Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home

Had more than 500 books in your childhood home

Were read children's books by a parent

Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively

Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs

Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs

Went to a private high school

Went to summer camp

Had a private tutor before you turned 18

Family vacations involved staying at hotels

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18

Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them

There was original art in your house when you were a child

Had a phone in your room before you turned 18

You and your family lived in a single family house

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home

You had your own room as a child

Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course

Had your own TV in your room in High School

Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College

Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16

Went on a cruise with your family

Went on more than one cruise with your family

Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

And there you have it. Thanks to Cinnamon for posting this.

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Organizational Smackdown Update

2008-02-13T19:44:36Z

Back in December I started to evaluate the way I collect and store information. Some of it frustrated me, some of it worked fine but all in all I felt I needed a better system.

It's been a couple of months now, so I thought I'd provide an update for the 6 of you reading this.

RSS

RSS wasn't a big problem for me, or so I thought. Vienna and Google Reader initially teamed up to cover my needs but didn't sync in any way - a small problem that I ignored. I then switched to Google Reader exclusively and liked it, but still missed the convenience of a desktop reader.

Then NetNewsWire 3 came out for free and kinda smooshed Google Reader. I always liked NNW but didn't want to pay for it (cheap!) and Vienna was a strong, free alternative. But NNW 3 had everything I wanted plus - plus! - FTP-based syncing. Thus I was able to solve my syncing problem and enjoy the benefits of a desktop newsreader. Great great solution. Too bad that FTP syncing is going to be deprecated with the next release, dammit.

WSFL

Will Save For Later is what I tag any links from anywhere that I can't read right now, but will need to look at or want to look at in the future. Until a couple of weeks ago I was using the tag in delicious and subscribing to it in NNW. Kinda weird. Then Instapaper came along and solved everything! It's WSFL all the way, and is perfect. A JavaScript bookmarklet lets me save things to Instapaper, and it's always there when I need it. Instapaper is awesome, just awesome.

Calendars

I had decided that it'd be nice to sync up online and offline calendars. Truth of the matter is that I don't use offline calendars hardly at all. Ryan had said once, "I bet you don't need offline calendaring." He was right. Google Calendar marches on solo.

Quick Reminders

Sandy wins pure and simple. I still love the functionality I'd touched on earlier, and the Jott integration is beautiful. I noticed that I haven't set any reminders for myself in the past week or so. Hm.

Undated To Dos

As mentioned in the Quick Reminders post, there's a lot of To Do stuff I need to track. I've divided them up into dated and undated. Undated to dos are akin to "someday" tasks - things which may or may not take a lot of time, but should/could be done at some point and are not time sensitive. Obviously.

My initial plan was to put these into Yojimbo, but I stopped using Yojimbo altogether as it felt like a dead-end to me. Then there was Remember the Milk which was going to house both my dated and undated to dos... and yet, I went cold on RTM quickly. I just stopped using it. I didn't find it to be compelling enough to warrant my time. Feature-wise, it's got everything but something left me feeling weird about it. (Maybe the UI?)

That brought me back to Backpack, of all places. I'm still on the free plan - and will await the next version to decide on paying for it - but I simply popped in a new list on my home page. This is a regular ol' checkbox list. I find it's getting pretty long but it's also a great dumping ground for little things that pop into my head. It's very very useful. Yes, it's online only, but I can deal.

Dated To Dos

So far, no solution. I could use Backpack without any real time sensitivity built-in. I could use Things, which is powerful for me at the day job. But I use neither. I suspect that for this stuff I'll end up using a combo of Backpack and Sandy, or maybe just Sandy. This will take a bit of a leap of faith; I'll need to think of Sandy as a REAL TO DO LIST PROGRAM versus just a handy reminder thing.

Junk Drawer

Yojimbo was acting as my junk drawer. But, again, I wasn't thrilled with it. No solution here either - I'm using a scattering of Stickies and text documents again. Blah.

And there you have it.

For what it's worth, I'm thinking of giving VoodooPad a spin (maybe in place of Backpack?) I've never heard of anyone using it, though.

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Die, Spam, Die!

2008-02-08T16:33:45Z

It's been a couple of days since I changed my email setup, mostly based on the Ryan MacMichael model. I have all my paul@ email forward to Gmail, which then forwards to a secret mailbox at my domain. I have filtering on for both of the first two steps - at Pair and at Gmail - and as a bonus, Mail.app will catch any reminders. But ideally, I don't even want them to get to Mail.app.

The good news is that the results are very impressive thus far. I had to rejigger the filtering a bit later on that first day, as a few had gotten through.

169 spams caught by Pair's "aggressive" filters (impressive - this is a fine-tuned machine)

51 spams caught by Gmail's filters

3 false positives (sad!)

1 false negative

That's pretty good, I'd say. It's oddly calming to look at my inbox and not see a bunch of mails flagged with **JUNK** nor the occasional "This looks real!" crap find its way there. Just... real mail. Like the old days. Aaaah.

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Rough Day

2008-02-01T16:04:31Z

Today has been rough.

Wally woke up at 5:30, a solid hour earlier than usual, and whined for 30 minutes. I caved at 6 and took him out, fed him, etc.
Decided that I should catch an early train due to the snow and a meeting at work, so I left at 7:40ish. Walked through the 6" of mostly unshoveled sidewalks. Made it to the train station and discovered I didn't have my wallet. Had to turn around and go home.
Had a panic moment at home when my wallet wasn't in its usual place. Jeani helped me find it (it was in yesterday's jeans, in the hamper.)
When I got to work, realized I had forgotten to bring a banana or apple as early snack.
Got an email from my friend who had to cancel lunch because he's sick.
Most of my teammates aren't in today due to the snow.
Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo!
Some jackass in Mississippi has proposed a bill banning people with a BMI over 30 from restaurants - all restaurants - and requiring all restaurants to have scales outside. He's serious.
Frustrated that so far no national organization has done anything about the above.

On the plus side, I'm doing well with my actual work!

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Stop and Go

2008-01-26T17:42:33Z

One of the things I've always wanted to do is create video from still images. Thanks to my TZ1 (though the K100D could've done it too), iMovie, and a little bit of time I did it. Stop and Go is my first foray, and I'm sure there'll be more in the future.

Of note, the speed is a little too fast - 2s per still. And, that's 188 images that go by ever so quickly.

Enjoy!

Stop and Go

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I Am America (and So Can You!)

2008-01-03T21:44:26Z

I Am America (And So Can You!)

Stephen Colbert

Verdict: funny, quick read.

I'm now through 1.5 of the 3 books I got for Christmas. GO ME.

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Organizational Smackdown: Calendars

2007-12-21T12:56:51Z

Gee whiz, calendaring is a mess. But maybe it doesn't need to be.

The simple fact of the matter is this: I don't use calendars very often. I mostly use them for events I know are coming but are a week to a month (or more) down the road. And if I were to analyze it I'd probably just classify everything as something that needs a reminder instead, and there you go - problem solved.

I currently use Google Calendar. I used to use iCal for events but found the lack of on-the-go support frustrating. GCal is a natural fit for me: it's available online and thus anywhere, it's easy to use, and it's AJAXrific. The only limitation I have right now is that it's not available offline.

I investigated my options for bringing GCal into the real world. They're slim.

The first option is a piece of software, Spanning Sync. This $25/yr or $65/lifetime software acts as a conduit between iCal and GCal. That's it. I've been using it for a couple of days but, honestly, I haven't used my calendar in a couple of days! It seems to work, runs in the background, etc. This is a tough one to choose for a couple of reasons: 1, I don't use iCal often anymore and find it a little bulky (in 10.4); 2, it costs money and for what it does, it shouldn't.

Some people at 43folders suggested Plaxo as a free alternative to Spanning Sync. I signed up but was turned off by various blog posts stating that they would spam one's address book and the like. No thank you.

Another out-there option is .Mac from a little company called Apple. It's pretty much overkill but I brought it into consideration: $99/year for calendar syncing (and a bunch of other stuff). But it's not worth it to me and besides, I'm already paying for hosting space. At that price, .Mac is redundant.

So as I said, Spanning Sync is where I'm at right now. I'm going to let the trial run out and then, honestly, I'll probably delete it from the MacBook, forget about it, and go back to using Google Calendar exclusively - offline be-damned. I do think the bigger mental shift for me is to think of these big events as to-dos with reminders... then I could pop them into Sandy or Remember the Milk (but most likely Sandy.)

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