Posted by Patrick on June 5th, 2008
A short list of things I would have written long blog posts if I wasn’t so into the whole parenting thing*.
1. The iPod Touch. I picked this up as one-last-toy-for-me before Ted was born and can’t seem to not have it with me, ever. It’s like the iPhone, but without the phone part (and without the $60/month fees). Music, movies, Gmail and wifi internet in a tiny little package. It’s awesome all around and has totally changed the way I think about the mobile internet and UI’s.
2. The new Portishead album called Third. I listen to it all the time now, it’s great at-work music. It’s been nearly a decade since they put out music, and the wait was well worth it.
3. The inevitable and long overdue demise of the giant SUV as daily driver. Unfortunate that it comes with the price of declining economy, soaring food prices and a certain sense of dread every time I fill up. It is exciting that the capitalism around it is spurring innovation and futurist thinking though. Ted will no doubt fly his jetpack over homes made from recycled Tahoe’s.
4. Web technologies I’m learning about. The past few months at work (and in freelance work) have filled my brain with new exciting knowledge about web design and the construction of websites. I’ve spent a bunch of time learning about Wordpress (the system that powers this blog), Drupal, and the jQuery javascript framework. Learning is good, and I feel more confident about my skills with each passing week.
5. Fatherhood as subject matter. I like writing and would like to write more about being a dad to Ted. It’s the new highlight of my day, coming home to a family and hanging out with Ted on the weekends. He’s high-maintenance, but every time he smiles at me I know what we’ve done is totally worth it. I also know that its probably also diaper-change time.
Hopefully going forward there will be lots more posts on fatherhood.
* Full Disclaimer: I took a two hour nap after coming home from work today. Clearly there’s some time out there, just not as much for blogging.
Posted in Automotive, Baby, Dadness, Employment, Music, Nerdery, Random, Ted, iTunes |
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Posted by Patrick on December 13th, 2007
Since we’re getting ready to make room for a new human life here at Rockland-Ave, we’ve been working hard to save money. Not only am I no longer lighting my cuban cigars with c-notes, I’m also finding ways to not pay huge money for music.
Low cost music doesn’t have to be bad music. Here are some albums that have freshened up the itunes library recently for zero or low dollars.
The Foxboro Hot Tubs: Stop Drop and Roll.
They are, allegedly, Green Day performing under a different name, singing surf rock songs. It certainly sounds like Green Day, and Wikipedia (source of truth on the internet) seems to confirm it.
They released an EP on their website for free, which seem to fit in nicely with my low budget musical needs. I suspect this will be a trend for bands hoping to break out (even established bands trying to break out under a different name), where the first series of songs are released online for free in order to build up some interest, and then the band makes up the difference in touring.
Radiohead: In Rainbows.
Radiohead, like Green Day, have been around for a while. To change things up, and to celebrate their own freedom from a traditional record contract, they released their most recent album online (no longer available for some reason) before it was sold in stores and said pay whatever you want.
I ended up paying about five bucks for the album and it was well worth it. It’s good work-listening music. It reminds me a lot of OK Computer, one of their earlier discs.
Ratatat: Remixes Vol 2.
Kate and I both really dug Ratatat’s last album, Classics, so I was pretty excited to hear they were releasing another remix album, and for free to boot. Lots of excellent guitar music, mixed in with hip-hop. You can download it from their website.
While Classics is excellent for the work day (and well worth paying money for), Remixes Vol 2 has some shady hip-hop lyrics throughout, so you want to keep the headphones on for that.
So, anyone out there hear anything good lately?
Posted in Music, iTunes |
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Posted by Patrick on June 16th, 2007
Oh sweet, sweet weekend!
More Yankee Visitors
Kate’s dad and stepmom came down from up north for a little pre-father’s-day North Carolina visiting action. We had a good time showing them around the house, our rapidly-expanding neighborhood, and also a visit to the Farmer’s Market in Raleigh. They took us out to eat at the Cleveland Draft House and then we got some very tasty bbq at McCall’s. Good eats and good-to-see-family.
Etsy
As we speak Kate is rocking some Etsy product using Adobe Illustrator. She’s quickly picked up one of the harder to learn design software programs. While I spent all sorts of time over the past few years learning the intricate details of Photoshop (Illustrator’s more photogenic cousin), I had forgotten a ton about Illustrator, so it’s been a learning (re-learning?) experience for both of us. Good stuff being done here, so be sure to check out MoseandZoe.com in the coming weeks for new stuff. Or check it out now, for slightly-less-new-but-still-very-cool hand-made crafts.
Movie Night
We watched The Pursuit of Happyness with The Fresh Prince. It was pretty good. Tonight I think we’re watching Running with Scissors.
Safari
Spent a few minutes this week playing around with the Windows version of Apple’s Safari web browser. Much like iTunes for windows, it’s just not as good when its not on the OS X platform. It certainly displays the pages quickly enough, but there’s no advantage to using it over say Firefox or Opera. Maybe someday, though.
Posted in Etsy, family, flicks, iTunes |
1 Comment »
Posted by Patrick on February 18th, 2007
After five months into working-from-home I can say that one of the nicer perks (besides extra sleep and sometimes going more then a month without gassing up the Celica) is being able to listen to a wide variety of music uninterrupted. My responsibilities at work have shifted away from talking to people on the phone, so I can now listen to an entire album without having to answer the phone.
Here are five albums I’ve been listening to in excess in the recent weeks:
The Allman Brothers Band
A Decade of Hits 1969-1979
Here I am, getting closer to thirty, and I’m just now discovering The Allman Brothers and their high quality southern rock? So good! I got hooked on the song Jessica after watching reruns of Top Gear, and was curious about the rest of their music. What a great CD all the way through. Makes me want to take a road trip.
Muse
Black Holes and Revelations
I like Muse because they sound like what I wish Radiohead might sound like without all the beeps and boops and noise. I suspect their albums are meant to be listened to in single sittings, rather then in single songs. I like this CD, although not as much as Absolution which is excellent.
Tom Petty
Highway Companion
More great solo Tom Petty. His last solo disc Wildflowers is also super good all the way through. I just noticed that the cover of this album is kinda similar to the cover of the Muse album above. Eerie?
Ratatat
Classics
Kate and I are both listening to lots of Ratatat. It’s all instrumental rock, but with lots of electronic sampling. Very distinct sounding, and easy to listen to while working.
Sleater-Kinney
The Woods
Solid rock from a recently-broken-up pacfic northwest band. I first heard of them while working for the campus radio station at FSC.
What does everyone out there like to listen to these days?
Posted in Music, iTunes |
6 Comments »
Posted by Patrick on October 17th, 2006
Those of you who read my epic-length post on iTunes last month will remember that not all was well in the electronic music world. Well, as the days moved on it just became more and more aggrivating. Album covers were wrong or missing, and songs were skipping around more than a broken iPod. When I tried to use it and, say, any other program, the whole computer ground to a halt.
It should not take seven hundred megabytes of ram to play a song correctly. Whatever. Last weekend I reinstall Windows on a reformatted hard drive and put all the music on another drive inside the computer. Music should be playing perfectly now – clean install, music on a separate internal drive.
And it’s still not working right. I tried everything I could to get it to work, but there’s still a 3-second delay when clicking on something in the program. And then I thought is this really worth the time?. There are so many other important things going on, that this just isn’t worth it.
I dug around the internets and found exactly what I needed. A copy of version 6, left on the apple.com website. It was everything I had hoped for. Songs played, programs ran simultaneously, life is good. For any of our readers out there who downloaded version 7 and regrets their decision as much as I did, here’s a download link for version 6.
The moral of the story? Don’t upgrade on the first day, and um, your 5 year old computer might not be as fast as you think it is.
PS: We’re still in our real-estate holding pattern, but hopefully we’ll be more-in-the-know by the end of this week.
Posted in iTunes |
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