adrian is rad

Watching the Penguins the other night, Mike pointed out that Ryan Malone (USC HS, class of ‘98) plays for them now.

It got me thinking. Ryan was on my school bus for many years. Coming back from elementary school, we (the boys, at least) would sing on the bus every afternoon. We only sang two songs: “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” (Righteous Brothers) and “Barbara Ann” (Beach Boys).

I made a static version of my page to see what’s making things so slow.

Tell me which is faster to load:

• static
• dynamic

Or if neither load faster.

Thanks.

I know it’s inevitable that a lot of the members of the 2004 Miracle Red Sox will sign to other teams, even the yankees, but this just sent chills down my spine.

I’ve been thinking that reviews of products that people have used for a while are better than ones where people just got the product and aren’t that familiar with it. This may be the first in a series of “products I use” reviews.

Some of you have probably seen me wearing my shoulder bag around. It’s a Street Scene “Small” bag by Pac Designs.

Background and overview: They’re a Canadian company started by a former Toronto bike messenger. I got the Street Scene Small last August (August 2004) and have been using it extensively since. The most use comes biking 2 miles each way too and from work. Other common uses are as a carry-on bag while traveling and walking to work. My usually load is a Powerbook 12″ laptop (with an InCase Sleeve, though now, I see, they have laptop inserts), a camera, a paperback book or two, two to five CDs in jewel cases, my lunch for the day and various miscellaneous items. I have the left swing blue bag with grey inset diamond and the radio holder option.

I heard about Pac bags from Indy, who has (and can maybe comment on) the Deluxe with a Custom Xiohazard flap.

Pros:

• Rock solid. I’ve had mine for over a year and I don’t see a single thread out of place. It looks basically brand new. I’ve taken this things all around the world (Mexico, London, South Africa, Tanzania, Boston, Pittsburgh) and it really seems like it has just been shipped to me. I have had two clips come off and got a prompt replacement on one; the other one I didn’t use much so I didn’t try to get a replacement.
• Waterproof. A wave hit my bag on a beach while I had two cameras in there. No sign of moisture inside the bag. I’ve walked home in the rain. Similarly, no problems. I haven’t put my bag in the bathtub or anything, but it’s pretty good in my experience.
• Good weight distrubution while cycling. Even with a fairly full load, I hardly feel it while I’m biking to work. This is what these bags were made for (these are messenger bags first and foremost), so it’s good they do this well. It sits nicely on the small of the back/ pelvis.
• Anti-sway strap. I think a lot of shoulder bags have this now, but anti-sway straps are absolutely key if you want to bike with a bag.
• Good for third world traveling. Backpacks are very easily to get pick-pocketed. This bag has two clips and some heavy velcro to open the flap, so it’s too noisy/ difficult to open for pick pockets. I felt a hand on my bag in Tanzania but they didn’t get past the clips even.
• IPod fits in radio holder. I don’t use this as much as I thought I would, but my iPod fits nicely in the radio holder when the holder is fully tightened down. I can even get to the buttons to change volume or skip a track when I’m on the move.

Cons:

• Less than ideal weight distribution while walking. If I have a heavy bag and I’m walking around for hours (like sometimes is the case if I’m sight-seeing), it hurts. One thing I would like to note is that I find I walk with better posture than my normal slouch when I’m walking around wearing the bag.
• X strap and suspension strapping not options for Street Scene. Pac has some neat features for better weight distribution but they are not options for their lower-cost street scene bags.

Overall, I’ve very happy with it. It was about $150 with all the options and whatnot. It’s well worth the price; it’ll last me a lifetime. The price/ use ratio is something to consider if you’re not going to use it for a while or if you aren’t going to use it very often.

Perhaps someday you will be flying a crap airline and they will strand you in Las Vegas when you’re trying to get home for Christmas. Perhaps they will put you up in a hotel (or perhaps they won’t). Perhaps it will already be one in the morning and you don’t want to wait an hour to get your checked luggage. Perhaps that will leave you with only the clothes you have on. Perhaps you will wish to wash your socks and underwear so you don’t have to wear them for many hours on end.

If so, you are in luck. I will tell you what to do.

1. Take off your socks and underwear.
2. Wash them in the sink. I use fairly warm water and shampoo (from the hotel bathroom). You can also use dish detergent, liquid soap or bar soap. If you’re washing many things, I’d recommend filling the sink with warm soapy water, washing all of the items, draining the sink and then rinsing all of them. On the other hand, if you’re just washing socks and underwear, you can just rub the shampoo into the articles directly. Either way, when you’re washing, rub material against itself. This acts much like a washing machine when it aggitates.
3. Rinse the articles.
4. Ring the articles out over the sink.
5. Use a towel to aid in drying. Take out a (preferably extra) towel and put it on a flat surface. Put your articles on one half. Fold the other half of the towel over it. Roll up the towel with your articles inside. Twist the two ends so your ring the water out of your articles and into the towel.
6. Hang your socks and underwear to dry overnight. Door knobs and towel racks work well.
7. In the morning, they should be dry. When clothing, especially cotton clothing, hangs out to dry, it becomes stiff and “crunchy.” Shaking the article vigorously usually makes it feel soft again.
8. If your clothing is not dry in the morning or if you need it to be dry sooner, just use a hair dryer or hand dryer, if one is available. If there’s radiator or heating vent, those also help dry things out faster.

I did my Christmas radio show today. It had all tracks that were Christmas songs, mentioned Christmas, had a titled including the word “Christmas”, by a band called The Christmas, or had a musical quote of a Christmas carol.

Here’s the playlist.

I started with Johnny Cash, the best way to start, then went into a nice wind band Christmas song, then the indie Christmas music, to the Motown/ early R&B Christmas music, and back to the indie before I did a couple “by request” and novelty songs to finish up.

I also managed to put some 30 seconds or so of dead air before the first Sufjan track. You’d think I’d be pretty good at this stuff after being on the radio over three years. Not so!

I also have a special treat for you: the show in mp3 form! Thanks once again to Jesse for hosting it.

Merry Christmas all.

On August 25th, John Vanderslice played on my show on KZSU, I Once was Canadian, and I interviewed him between songs. He’s the nicest guy in indie rock and he’s really interesting to talk to as well. Oh and his acoustic set was fantastic.

Here’s an mp3 from the show:
John Vanderslice Dear Sarah Shu [Live at KZSU]

I really like the version he did acoustic, moreso than the album version by a lot. I apologize for the sound going to only the right channel for about 2 seconds in there. It only happened on this one song but the song happens to be one of my favorite cuts from the show. Smurph was the engineer for the session.

The set and interview were from about 8:05am to 9:05am, so we were both a little bit loopy. What follows is the full text of the interview:

canuck: John, you are among other things, singer, songwriter, musician,
producer, studio owner, I guess…

John Vanderslice: Yeah, I think. [laughing] It sounds like I’m really like on the ball
when you put it like that. Also, I own a Pentax K1000 camera, which I think
that you just had in there.

canuck: Yeah, I do. I have it right here.

JV: I’m a huge fan.

canuck: Yeah, they’re great things. Actually one of my plans is—I don’t
know if I should reveal this to everybody over the air—I’m going to take
a K1000 and a digital camera and make my own digital SLR.

JV: That’s great. Perfect. I think for the money the K1000 is an absolute
steal. Total bargain. Beautiful camera.

(more…)

I’ve upgraded the RAM on my virtual server. Let me know if you notice it being faster. Otherwise, I’ll probably downgrade.

This is probably only a somewhat temporary solution. I’m thinking about changing my server host entirely.

This post could also be titled “a study in lameness.”

The cover song for this week was Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead (Original). The entry in the covers contest is:

• Dave

I tried a few things but nothing worked out when I was recording.

The results for the covers contest #11 voting (the song was Continuous Hit Music by American Analog Set) were:

Best:
Adrian 3
Dave 0
Andy 2

Most Original:
Adrian 3
Dave 0
Andy 1

I’m a big winner! Because only have has an entry for this week, I’m not going to reset the polls.

I’ll announce the song for contest #13 either sometime next week or early 2006.

I scanned a bunch of pictures over the last couple days and put them online.

[Anchovies swimming around quickly in the Monterey Bay Aquarium]

I’ve added a bunch of new albums, including fall colors, Death Valley, DC for my birthday, Monterey, boston. I also added photos to around Menlo Park and Cabo.

A lot of the black and white photos look really grainy, moreso than other photos with the same film. I’m not exactly sure why.

Equipment. Color: Velvia 50, Nikon N70 w/ 28-70mm Sigma f/2.8-4. Black and white: Tri-x 400, Nikon N8008s w/ 28-70mm Sigma f/2.8-4 and 20mm Nikor f/2.8 and Pentax K1000 with 50mm f/2.0.

I was trying to find examples of South Africans talking to play for a coworker and I discovered the International Dialects of English Archive, which has an Accents of South Africa page.

This “heavy accent” sounds like a lot of Afrikaaner women I’ve met or talked to, including the proprieter of The African Hut.

This one is probably my favorite. It’s by an older man who pops his r’s, which I like a lot. I think my granny did that. (The woman in this one practically rolls her r’s. That’s so fun!)

My parents have a fairly weak accent, closest to this one probably, among all of the ones listed.

There are, of course, many recordings from other parts of the world, including many in America. Disappointingly, there aren’t any good recordings of a solid Pittsburgh accent!

You can hear Germans and Irish and English and many other accents (in English) if you click around. It’s pretty interesting stuff.

Pat’s post about the Canon 20D and the following discussion got me thinking about shooting digital photographs as both RAW+JPEG at the same time, which is something I’d read about professional photographers doing.

For a day I couldn’t figure out where it was, then I remembered it was in an article about the Sports Illustrated Super Bowl photography and the tremendous amount of resources they pour into it.

It was tricky searching for it, but I eventually found it. I find this article amazing because no only does it have a human story to it, but it takes you through absolutely every step of getting a photograph from the field to the printing press and exactly what equipment was used at each step. You could recreate a Sports Illustrated Super Bowl photoshoot with the information given; it’s very scientific in that way.

I did my radio show this morning. I went through my top 15 albums of 2005, from number 15 to number 1. The playlist is here.

Here’s the list:

1. Illinois Sufjan Stevens
2. Takk Sigur Ros
3. All Day [EP] Mates of State
4. Pixel Revolt John Vanderslice
5. The Sunset Tree The Mountain Goats
6. Veneer Jose Gonzalez
7. Dignity and Shame Crooked Fingers
8. All Harm Ends Here Early Day Miners
9. Woman King [EP] Iron & Wine
10. Plans Death Cab for Cutie
11. Tiny Cities Sun Kil Moon
12. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning Bright Eyes
13. s/t 13 & God
14. The Great Destroyer Low
15. Devils and Dust Bruce Springsteen

I made the list four times and it was different every time. This was the last. So it’s more like my top 15 albums of 2005 for December 14-15, 2005. Something like that.

Albums that were close: Set Free American Analog Set, Bodies and Minds Great Lake Swimmers, Set Yourself on Fire Stars.

Slightly disappointing albums that would have made the list if they were as good as I’d expected them to be: On My Way to Absence Damien Jurado, Stubbs the Zombie Sountrack, What Comes After the Blues Magnolia Electric Company, In the Reins Calexico and Iron & Wine.

A desperate Steelers team got back to basics and won against the Bears, who were on an 8 game winning streak. Some strange stuff, like Jerome Bettis, who’s ancient by this point, having a 100 yard running and the Steelers had 190 yards rushing against the best ranked defense in the league.

That was all pretty exciting, but a couple almost freakish outcomes created a nice situation. The Dolphins stopping a last minute Chargers touchdown and the Cowboys getting a last minute touchdown puts the Steelers back in the last playoff birth. I think my understanding of the tie-break procedures is correct and this means the Steelers are back in control of their destiny; that is to say, if the Steelers win their last three games of the season they will in playoffs no matter what the other teams do.

this is the point where I assume that you want to buy me stuff.

my christmas list.

my parents ask for a christmas list every year. it’s gotten significantly different in the last couple of years since I’ve been earning money. I tend to buy what I want so there’s not a lot on my “wish list.”

If you haven’t heard that some new old Neutral Milk Hotel material has surfaced or if you have but don’t know where to find the recordings, you ain’t no picasso has step-by-step instructions to getting all the current crop.

If you haven’t heard of Neutral Milk Hotel, Familiarized! Yourself! Now! I still think In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is easily the best (and most important, to me) album from the last ten years.

here’s my playlist for this week’s radioshow.

My plan for the following weeks:
December 15: I’ll run down my top albums of the year.
December 22: Good Christmas music.

Speaking of which, I’ve found a few more indie “Christmas mixes” with lots of songs to download (mostly via brooklynvegan).

• Test Pilot Holiday Mix
• Krismus Karols at Sounds are Active, with some songs by Half Handed Cloud and more
• Indie Christmas Mix at Gorilla vs. Bear

Anyone know of any other ones?

There are places that serve a thanksgiving sandwich all year around but mine is a bit different from what I’ve seen. here’s exactly what I’m using.

• whole wheat nut bread
• trader joe’s dried cranberries
• light cream cheese
• dinner roast deli turkey (this is pretty thick compared to say deli ham)

Spread a light layer of cream cheese on one half of the bread. Put a solid layer of the dried cranberries. Add a couple slices of turkey on and you’re done.

I’ve been making this every morning this week and it takes probably under two minutes and they taste pretty good. The sweetness of the dried cranberries is nice to offset the turkey and the cream cheese makes sure it isn’t too dry.

We have 3 entries in this week’s covers contest. The original, as you may recall, was “Continuous Hit Music” by American Analog Set.

Here are the entries:

• Dave
• Andy
• Adrian

After you’ve listened to all of them, you may vote on the best and most original versions.

The song for next week will be “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead (Original). It was Dave’s turn to pick.

I guess those covers will be due Monday December 19 at midnight local time.

The results of the voting for last cover (”Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson) were as follows:
Best:
Adrian 1
Dave 5

Most Original:
Adrian 2
Dave 4

Congrats to Dave on both.

While getting my song recorded for this week’s cover’s contest, I ran across some old recordings I made. Some were total total crap of course. None were really polished and done, but some I liked anyway.

So I decided to share with you a few of these “lost songs.” These could also be called “unfinished songs.” Note that all of these are completely embarrassing in their own ways.

Freak in Me formerly known simply as piano1. I recorded this partly in the practice rooms at MIT so it had to have been July 2003. I haven’t touched it since. This may well have been the first thing I recorded with my own protools set up and microphone. The piano part sounds like a lot of the piano parts I wrote in those years but it’s good. The end is a bit freaky. I think I wanted that juxtaposition between the prettier piano part and the ending.
Freak in Me

Freak in Me (first.class.airline remix) While we were on our roadtrip, zooming across Colorado probably, our very own Andy was remixing piano1. All of the sounds in this song are from my version of the song, just heavily processed. This amazed me then and it amazes me now.
Freak in Me (first.class.airline remix)

Not now I guess I recorded this last January. It’s about a girl, of course. Some multi-parted song action, with my first recording of a wurlitzer.
not now

Highland Cathedral and Wings and Murdo’s Wedding My friend Indy was getting married and I was going to play the pipes at his wedding. He wanted to hear some of the options before the wedding so a few weeks before, I put these down very quickly using my fireside pipes. I hear tons of mistakes throughout (and my pipes aren’t 100% in tune), but that’s because I hadn’t actually learned the songs yet, I was just running through them from a book. I haven’t played much of the pipes lately, but maybe I’ll start playing again.
Highland Cathedral
Wings and Murdo’s Wedding

38-31 against the Bungles of all teams. That was disappointing. Upside, Ben can throw for Manning-like yards with a hurt thumb. Downside: he can throw for Maddox-like interceptions.

I’m nervous for the rest of the season.

Since swimming on Friday, my right ear has made an occasional, sometimes frequent clicking sound as if theres’ still water in there (though there doesn’t feel like there is and I’ve done the water-in-the-ear jump-dance and felt no water moving around). It’s as if it’s pressurizing and depressurizing like on a plane, but repeatedly.

I think I’m going to do the Mystery Hunt for the seventh time this year, which is pretty funny considering that I’m not particuarly good at it nor do I take it particularly seriously.

It made me pretty happy when I was poking around the wikipedia article on the Mystery Hunt today that I remember a lot of the “notable events” and, in fact, know the named people in them.

After not knowing where it was for about a month and a half and having written it off as lost, I found my brass rat today. It was in the washing machine after I washed some clothes. I do my darks more than once every one and a half months so I can only guess it must have been in some pocket for two cycles.

As other people have noted, Walk the Line is a very good movie. The leads do a fantastic job.

Go see it!

I found out that Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set was at one point a PhD candidate in Biochemistry at Columbia before he took time off to do more music. That’s pretty badass.

I’m on the radio in about 45 minutes. I have no idea what I’m going to play.

Meantime, here’s where the playlist is going to be.