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music

you mean, like, every day?!

I figure, if Kristy can do it then I can because I’m a way better person than her. Ok maybe not.

But I’m going to try anyway. NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)! Sure, I missed two days this month already, but, at least I’m starting you out with the right expectations.

Every time I look at the “word” NaBloPoMo it makes me think it has something to do with blood. The “Blo” is obvious there. I guess I think the “Po” is some take on Phlebotomy. Who knows.


Last night I saw two amazing artists in concert.

First, there was Kaki King. She’s a brilliant, beautiful woman, with some mean guitar and a voice that is pure magic. She’s got some amazing music videos on YouTube worth checking out. The art of the videos themselves really compliments her talent. And, if you just want to be in awe of her guitarist prowess, check out this live clip of her playing on David Letterman. Simply amazing.

She was followed by The Mountain Goats, a totally different variety of brilliant. With strong lyrics and emotive vocals, John Darnielle leads the audience through an amazing setlist, perforated with Kaki King on guitar playing some of the tracks from their collaborative album, The Black Pear EP, including the amazing Mosquito Repellent (sorry for the bad audio in that link).

Aside from the show being incredible, it was performed at the Granada, in my opinion, one of the bestmusic venues I’ve been to in DFW. Not only is the building interesting well laid out, the sound and light techs there always perform an outstanding job.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, I got to claim the beautiful, amazing, incredible Erica as my date. She was dressed pulling no punches whatsoever. I considered taking a photograph to share with you all and then decided I would just keep this one all to myself. Consider my selfish. I don’t mind.

The only problem with such an amazing yesterday is that today stands such little chance of living up to that standard.

C’est la vie.

JoCo in the Hizzy

Jess and I will be seeing Jonathan Coulton at Club DaDa this Wednesday night. If you don’t have plans yet, you should be going too.

Jonathan Coulton is absolutely incredible. But don’t take my word for it. Check out these tracks.

Big Bad World One
Code Monkey
Chiron Beta Prime
Stroller Town
Re Your Brains
Shop Vac
Baby Got Back

Give ‘em a listen, order your tickets, and then let me know so we can meet up before the show. 

I hate my iPod Nano

So I did it. I broke down and bought a 8GB iPod Nano yesterday.

And now, less than 24 hours later I can say that I hate my iPod Nano. There’s nothing wrong with the device, exactly. In fact, it stores and plays music just like it promised it would. But I’m still left feeling cheated.

First let me point out that I am not qualified to review personal audio players. I have used very few of them and do not really know what to expect. However, I do know what to expect from software and electronic devices in general, and I base my opinions on that knowledge.

Before I start sobbing uncontrollably, I’d like to remember why I bought the iPod brand in the first place: iTunes and recommendations.

Let’s start with iTunes. From what I’ve been told, if you want to use iTunes to its full capacity you have to have an iPod brand player. And, from what I’ve been told, you want to use iTunes to its full capacity. But, in practice, it doesn’t seem to offer anything that other media managers don’t offer and, in many cases, falls behind. Maybe I don’t know how to use it and maybe I’m just an idiot, but I couldn’t even get it to sync up. iTunes locked up every time I tried to uncheck all of my media so that I could select only a subset of it to send to the iPod. I’ll admit that I didn’t read any kind of manual, but I didn’t read a manual for Media Monkey either. “Media Monkey”:http://www.mediamonkey.com/, however, worked flawlessly and it is what I ended up using to load music on my iPod. Furthermore, even when it was working, iTunes was slower, more difficult to navigate, and less feature-full than Media Monkey.

Now about those recommendations. While I read millions of recommendations for the iPod, I think part of the problem is that technology is no longer reviewed only by technologically inclined people. Everyone uses this new technology and, therefore, their statements cannot be assumed to be educated or experienced. Further more, an iPod is a fashion statement. This makes many of these recommendations merely a review of what’s cool and not what actually works well.

I remember back in the early 90s when people used to swear that Doc Martens were the best boots ever and that there was no comparison and that they were totally worth the extra cost compared to other brands. The truth was, many of the people making such claims had never owned any boot other than Doc Martens and only purchased that brand because it was the “in” thing. Now, I’m not saying Docs weren’t the best. I don’t know, I never owned a pair.

As far as the iPod Nano is concerned, yeah it works. It plays music. I can press some buttons and get the device to play a song and I can recognize the song being played as music that I intended to be played. So it certainly meets the base criteria required for a personal audio player. But that doesn’t make it stand out. Almost every player on the market meets this criteria.

From what I can see, the iPod Nano offers few extra features, is constructed in a way that begs it to be scratched, scuffed, and destroyed, is guaranteed to need to be replaced eventually, and serves to lock me into its technology and buying more ipods. Furthermore, in my opinion, it isn’t all that nice looking.

First and foremost, is the battery. The iPod Nano’s battery is locked in place. It’s not “user replaceable”. Yes, it can be replaced, but it hasn’t been designed to be. One day the battery will die and I will be in a situation where I have to decide between having it replaced and buying a new one. Can you guess what Apple is hoping I’ll do?

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the iPod doesn’t even include a wall charger. Without a USB port on a computer that is turned on and powered up, you can’t charge the iPod without buying more equipment. Want to charge your iPod in your hotel room? You’d better have your laptop with you or you’ll need to buy some extra equipment. How silly would it be if laptop vendors only provided a means to charge your laptop from your desktop?

Regardless of these things, the iPod Nano supposedly has a vast array of superior features when compared to other players. Now,We’ve already discussed iTunes and its failings in comparison with Media Monkey. So any feature that is only available due to that software is moot considering that Media Monkey is free and works with many compliant media players, unlike iTunes which will only fully lock and load with an iPod. So how about the features of the device itself. Well, check this out! It offers a calendar! And notes! And you can look at photos! And it has a clock!! Of course, all of these things do nothing for me. Oh, and yeah, it plays music too.

As far as music playing features goes it has all the normal things you’d come to expect from any music player: it plays music, you can skip tracks, you can pause the music, and you can turn it off. In addition, it has the following features that you’d expect from most advanced players: you can select a specific song to be played, you can seek in a track, and you can play an entire Album, Artist, or Playlist. The only special features is has is that it will display album art and you can rate the track you are listening to. That’s it.

To me, those two features alone are not worth the increased price. On top of that, to me, a Nano feels too breakable, seems easily scratchable, and isn’t all that nice looking. When I consider that there are other players with *more* features, wall chargers, a user replaceable battery, and a nicer look and feel for *less* money, buying a Nano seems downright stupid.

Take, for instance, the Creative Zen V. It plays music and has the same basic and advanced features that we’ve come to expect from a full-featured music player. This is basically where the Nano stops. But not the Zen V. In addition, it has a line level input, built in microphone, and FM radio. The battery is user replaceable and, for those who need more battery life, several can be purchased, pre-charged, and replaced when needed.

In addition to these things the Zen V offers some extra features in the music playing department, the most important of which is on-the-fly playlist building (known as DJ mode). To me, building a playlist on the fly is a crucial feature that all audio players should have and the fact that the Nano does not is just silly. I found myself listening to one song and wanting to hear another song next. But, having no way to “queue” it up, I’d have to wait for the song I was listening to to finish, stop the music, browse to the next song, and then start it up again. Some time back I was playing with someone else’s audio player I remember that I used on-the-fly playlist building more than anything else, queueing up song after song and arranging my newly built playlist to my heart’s content. I found this feature to be so crucial that I figured the Nano must include it and actually broke out the manual which is as short and simple as the Nano is featureless. Nope. It doesn’t do it.

So, the price tag on the iPod isn’t for its features, construction, reliability, or interoperability. It’s for the brand name. It’s a fashion statement.

Will I be buying a Creative Zen V? Maybe. Will I be taking my iPod Nano back? Most likely.

If anyone would like to recommend a product OTHER than an iPod, I’d love to hear it. Please state which other audio players you’ve used and when you use words to relate your product to others (like easy, best, better, awesome, and sucks) please indicate what experience or education in this arena you have to allow you to make these qualifications.

iPod Nano vs. the World

I’ve been considering purchasing a portable music player for quite some time now. “Skwid”:http://www.thehumblest.net/?author=2 pretty much sold me last night on the “iPod Nano”:http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/.

I had previously been considering the “Frontier NEXBlack”:http://frontierstore.stores.yahoo.net/nexblackbare.html. However, according to Skwid, “iTunes”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/ is, by far, the best music management software available and, despite being free to all, it only fully integrates with iPod products. All told, comparing the 8GB models, I’d be losing the flexibility of using swappable Compact Flash Cards, the voice recorder, the use of AA batteries, and $25 extra in exchange for *much* better software, and proven usability. Seems like a pretty fair swap. I just wish I could have the best of both worlds.

If you have any other advice to offer on this matter, speak now or forever hold your peace (or piece, if you pack).

support the things you love

Last night Jess and I stopped by “Art Six”:http://www.myspace.com/artsixcoffee for a cup of coffee. This place has everything that I look for in a coffee house. First and foremost, it makes good coffee. It also has nice cozy places to sit, lots of tables, lots of corners to hide in with a book, and lots of open space to be social with whomever else happens to be there. There’s always a friendly face behind the counter, art on the walls, and, fairly often, live music. If you’ve never been, give me a call and I’ll personally take you there and buy you your first cup.

This time, pouring out from the back room, was the beautiful, soulful voice of “Arielle Silver”:http://www.ariellesilver.com/ (on “MySpace”:http://www.myspace.com/ariellesilver) accompanied by rich, fluid bass and percussion with subtlety and finesse, something sure to make the misses a very happy woman. I’d never heard of them before but I’m glad I found them there. The poetic lyrics, complicated melodies, and tight rhythm give them polished sound of “real musicians” yet leave them with enough of a raw edge to keep them interesting. Give them a listen, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. They are playing tonight at the “Standards and Pours”:http://www.standardandpours.com/ coffee house and are currently “touring all over the US”:http://www.ariellesilver.com/calendar.html. Find out when they’ll be near you and check them out.

In this morning’s dose of the world wide web, I learned that David Hobby, photographer for the Baltimore Sun and creator and author of “Strobist”:http://strobist.com/, is feeling the pain of “putting in too much personal time for not nearly enough money”:http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/strobists-next-phase.html, something I’m all too familiar with.

For the photographers in my readership, “Strobist”:http://strobist.com/ is a website that encourages the use of small, inexpensive, off-camera flashes and simple light modifiers in a manual fashion to allow lit photography to become a often used tool in every photographers repertoire. David offers “well written instruction”:http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html, provides a wide range of “well explained examples”:http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/on-assignment.html, gives his opinion on a big selection of “related gear”:http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/04/gear-articles-and-reviews.html and is holding a “lighting boot camp”:http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/06/lighting-boot-camp-archive-page.html where he encourages his readers, assignment after assignment, to take the flashes off their cameras and make some incredible images. Check it out! It’ll change the way you look at flash photography.

Unfortunately for this budding new blogger, David is learning that most people these days expect handouts and a free ride and are rarely willing to part with their own money, time, or resources when they don’t have to. Despite thousands of new readers all scraping together equipment based on David’s simple suggestions and millions of hits to his website from all parts of the world, he’s making very little from his affiliate banners, product links, and advertising. Why? Because people are too lazy to be bothered to use a link from David’s site to buy the products he recommends.

I make it a point to use links from David’s site (or other sites like his that I support) even when purchasing products he didn’t recommend because it’s important to me to have such a valuable resource (and others like it) continue to exist. It’s important to me that a place like Art Six exists that, even when it’s a longer drive than other places for me, I still make the effort to get out there and I always leave a good tip. While I’m grateful that Arielle Silver was able to gain some exposure last night, it really made me sad to see so many people enjoying this music and yet so few willing to drop a few bucks in the tip jar or buy a CD. Jess and I bought a CD and a small tip, though it doesn’t even cover their hotel room for the evening, let alone gas, food, equipment and a decent wage for the three of them.

If you don’t support the things you love they will go away.

Ryan reviews music: James Blunt

Every couple of days Ryan posts a short music review. Today’s “review of a track from James Blunt’s newest album”:http://tinyurl.com/hmosy has me in stiches:

bq. “So Long Jimmy” is James Blunt’s equivalent to finding a blue plate meatloaf special at the bottom of the menu at your girlfriend’s favorite leftist vegetarian restaurant.

I’ve heard “Beautiful” many, many times in the past few months. I liked it the first 15 times. Now it’s getting a bit old and most of the crystal in the house has shattered. I’ve got to get my hands on “So Long Jimmy”. It’s time for some meatloaf.