April 27th, 2005:

So I broke down and bought Mike Doughty’s new album, “Haughty Melodic”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=revjimnet-20&creative=9325&camp=1789&link_code=ur2&path=tg/detail/-/B00080EV7A/ref=pd_sim_music_5?v=glance%26s=music, from Amazon because it lets me hear the album now, despite the fact that it’s not released yet.

It’s phenomenal! It’s everything that I ever felt was amazing about Soul Coughing, with it’s own fresh edge and meaning. The music is incredible. Mike’s percussive voice is beautiful, and soothing, and awakening at all the right times. The lyrics are moving, and meaningful.

My only complaint is in regard to Amazon’s Digital Locker. The items that I can listen to from Amazon seem to only be playable under Windows. Despite the huge annoyance involved there, it’s even worse because, once I play it in windows I can’t seem to find any way to download it. So, I can only listen to it on a windows computer. There’s no way to move it to my Linux box, play it on my TiVo, or enjoy it in the car on the way home. Luckily, the real album will be in my hot hands in a week or so. I can’t wait.

As of right now with my brief introduction to this new album, “His Truth is Marching On” is striking a strong chord with me so I’ll leave you with a few lyrics from it (and I apologize if they are wrong):

bq. They say that God is great. They say that God is love. And I believe them. Don’t fear the random fate. I trust the hand of the almighty and the infinite. His truth is marching on. Let me know your enormity and my tininess. And help me see your infinity and my finiteness. I’m frickin’ starved for love. I deeply need to feel connection with the infinite. I want the nourishment and I need to drink it just like water and it will sustain me. — Mike Doughty / His Truth is Marching On / Haughty Melodic

Buy this album!

I’ve got a file I keep on my computer with snippets of things that I’d like to write here but haven’t had the time to flesh out. That file is getting quite large. So, I pushed a bunch of the stuff from that file that was just links witha snippet of commentary into “Del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/revjim/. You can see those links up there at the top of the front page of *revjim.net*, however, I’m afriad that there aren’t that many people that remember to read them. As soon as I make a few other changes around here, I intend to implement an automatic Del.icio.us recap that will syndicate a list of links and commentary from those that have been posted each day. However, until I get that done, here’s a list of a few things that I think are interesting. If you check my links often, you may find some duplicates here.

h3. Photography

“Photographic Cheat Sheet”:http://www.night-ray.com/comments.php?id=59_0_5_0_C
Information showing proper exposure, handheld shot guidelines, and flash information for popular flashes. If you haven’t commited this stuff to memory yet, printing this out and carrying it with you might not be a bad idea.

“Two new Nikon AF-S DX lenses announced”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042001nikondxlenses.asp
18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED and 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED. This should fill a void in some people’s arsenals.

“Nikon D70s announced”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042003nikond70s.asp
As best as I can tell, the only thing different from the D70 is the sensor, and the size is even the same.

“Nikon encrypts white balance data”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05041901nikon_encryptnef.asp
Information regarding the encryption of white balance data in Nikon’s RAW format from new firmwares for Digital SLRs. This will piss off a lot of people.

“Nikon D50 Preview”:http://www.dpreview.com/articles/nikond50/
It’s basically a toned down, cheaper version of the D70s.

“Nikon D70 firmware announcement”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042002nikon70firmware.asp
This should add most of the D70s’ improvements to the D70.

h3. The Web

“grat.uito.us”:http://grat.uito.us/
A very Del.icio.us WishList

“GreenZap”:http://www.greenzap.com/revjim
A PayPal Alternative scheduled to open in the Summer of 2005. Sign up now and get $25 free. There’s a lot of noise going around about how this is just an MLM scam. A lot of people are linking this site to wrong doing by absurd means. As best as I can tell, it is legit. They ask for your name and address upfront, so, even if it is a scam, you aren’t out all that much.

h3. Technology

“Flickr.rb”:http://redgreenblu.com/flickr/
A Ruby library to make Flickr integration dead simple.

“Ruby-MemCache”:http://www.deveiate.org/code/Ruby-MemCache.html
A MemCacheD (of LiveJournal/Danga fame) client library for Ruby.

“Klogger 0.0.1″:http://www.hyperionreactor.net/node/55
A weblogging (BloggerAPI / MetaWeblogAPI) client written in Ruby for KDE.

“Perl for Series 60″:http://www.postneo.com/2005/04/18/perl-for-series-60
Perl for Series 60 smartphones!