Moby's New Album Sucks

And what's worse - it sucks that it sucks. After a string of good to great albums, Moby has released a real stinker with Hotel. And what really gets me is that this is probably one of his best-selling albums. Ergh.

I'll get around to writing a full review soon, but in summary:
- It's way too guitar-pop & mainstream-sounding. Gone are the dance anthems. Adios, samples of Spirituals/Gospels. Wait, there's a bit of electronic piano in there...nope, that doesn't save it.
- The lyrics are some of the most un-inspired I've heard in the past 3 years. Examples:

If I could kiss you now\ I'd kiss you now again and again\ I don't know where I begin\ And where you End

Gag!

Come back to us spiders\ Come uncrush my hands\ Let me send beauty rain\ And bring us love again, like you can

What?

Oh, and it's raining\ Raining again\ Oh, and it's raining\ Raining again

*snore*

- Hi post-pubescent angsty style of whiny singing makes for an unimpressive, if not downright irritating sound.
- Gone is the variation between songs that his albums used to have. He sticks with tried and true progressions and verse-chorus structures on most every song, and that gets really old, really fast after you listen to about three of them.

Hotel's 2nd CD is filled with ambient music. This CD is certainly passable. Too bad I have to listen to it right after scalding my ears with the bitter hot dung that is the 1st CD.

Sorry, Moby. I wish I would have liked Hotel. I just can't bring myself to listen to it anymore. It's really that bad.

Photo Retouch Magic

I'm consistently amazed by what people can do in the digital photo retouching world. Greg Apodaca has a great page of samples of his work. You can view the before and after shots of people, movie stills, outdoor shots, and close-ups.

Makes me want to grab a nice digital camera and experiment. Who knows? Maybe I can make a shot of Seattle today look sunny instead of overcast.

San Francisco: Day 3

Wednesday was a short day conference-wise, which let me do some more walking around San Francisco. This time I walked through North Beach up to the water, and then over to the park just southeast of the Golden Gate. The weather was nice and lots of people were out and about; it was interesting to see the city at a time other than in the evening.

The flight back was uneventful. Only regret is that I left sunny, 60-degree San Francisco for rainy Seattle. Next week should have us matching this weather, though.

San Francisco: Day 2

I spent some time yesterday evening at Caffe Greco, which is around the border between North Beach and Chinatown. Good coffee, laid back crowd. I had a chance to catch up on a bit more reading there as well.

Today was chock full of conference fun. I got a chance to meet a former MS-er, as well as several other customers trying to implement this thing called content management. Then, there was a post-conference reception at the Thirsty Bear; I can't say no to free food and beer.

After that, the weather was nice and the sun was still out, so I took a walk around downtown San Francisco before grabbing some dinner to go. SF certainly feels like a larger and more urban city than Seattle. That has its pros and cons; I like to visit but I couldn't say I'd want to live here.

Tomorrow, there's half a day of conferencing left, and then it's back to Seattle. I have an afternoon to spend before my flight leaves. I'm thinking either Mission District or Golden Gate. I've been to the latter, and have been advised by one person at work to not miss the opportunity to try a Mission Burrito before I leave.

San Francisco: Day 1

I'm in San Francisco for a few days for a conference, so I thought I'd do a little "remote posting". Details so far:
- Flight was uneventful. Alaska Air didn't provide much other than the obligatory bag of party mix and a soft drink. Still, 2 hours spent catching up on old Believers isn't that bad.
- Taxi driver from the airport to the hotel drove quickly. I mean, fast. Like, "I like to beat every one else from the starting line when the light turns green" fast. Wasn't too scared though, as he seemed quite aware of what cars were around him, etc. Drag-racer in a former career, maybe?
- My hotel room number? 666. Room's fine, though.
- Conference is going well. Too many details to share here. Ping me if you really care. :)

I should find a coffee shop with wireless post-dinner. Hmm - I'm in San Fran right? Shouldn't be a problem...

Spring Forward

This time-change thing always catches me off-guard. We were at dinner with Sarah and her sister at La Carta de Oaxaca in Ballard. Over a tasty dinner of fairly authentic Oaxacan cuisine, convesation turns to Daylight Saving Time. "Hey, remember, we 'spring forward' tonight."

Dammit! I HATE that. I mean, I know why we do it, but I still feel that putting an hour of weekend time in a lockbox for 6 months, only to remove it when we're in a slow descent towards winter, doesn't raise my spirits too much.

Oh well ... speaking of spirits, I tried Belhaven's Scottish Ale last night, courtesy of Bottleworks. It was quite tasty, and dulled the Daylight Saving pain.

Rant: Curse You, Louisville!

Argh! What is UP, Louisville Cardinals? First, you beat my alma mater by 20+ points. Then, you beat the hometown heroes by 14. This will not stand. Know, Lousiville Cardinals, that I am now applying the "root" towards your next adversary, hoping they beat you soundly.

Grr...

Wikipedia: I'm Addicted

I've been finding myself drawn back to Wikipedia more and more as of late. It's amazing how many articles (508K and counting) it has, and how large a community has convened around it.

I mean, who isn't tempted to check out the article on baskets and contribute their knowledge about the difference between cloth weaving and basket weaving? Or write about their hometown? Or explain the mysteries of Bigfoot?

Interestingly, what's drawn me back is a chance to create an account (super-easy: username and password is all they need), write a new article or make some edits to an existing article, and then see how your article or edits change over time as others touch the same page.

Seattle, California

At first it was an oddity. "Hey, it's February, and the weather's nice!" People wrote it off as a fluke, counting on rain and cold to come back in a few days.

Now, almost a month later, the nice weather remains. We've had beautiful sunny days, 60+ degree highs, and barely a drizzle this past week. All the while as the Northeast continues to get snow, and California is recovering from heavy rainfall and mudslides.

I'm not going to make any predictions here, other than to say that these are oddities. Deviations from the norm. Whether we're establishing a new norm of whether these events are just a blip on the curve will remain to be seen.

As for Seattle, seems that the rains will eventually return:

Before There Were Spinners

This is old, I know. But I was reminded of Bubb Rubb and his whistle tips after seeing the popularity of wheel spinners take off.

Yes, those whistles do indeed go "Whoo Whoo".

Popularity Contest

Ever wonder how popular your name is now, versus 10, 50, or even 100 years ago? Check out NameVoyager for a nice graphical display of this info.

Disappointingly, my name has declined in popularity now (#137) versus 1900 (#4!). But the name DOES have some connotations with a current world leader, so I don't blame parents (ed. note: I will blame them starting in 2008).

Google Movie Search

Cool new feature from Google. If you prefix your search with "movie:", you get to limit your search to movies. This includes:

• Searching for famous quotes in movies - movie: "shall we play a game"
• Searching for movie scenes - movie: red pill blue pill movie: sharks eat LL Cool J
• Searching for where a movie is playing in your area - movie: Constantine
• Searching for movies playing in your area, by theater - movie: seattle

Friday Curling Action

Last Friday, I joined my team from work to an afternoon of beer, snacks, and curling. "Curling?" you say? No, not a workout. The sport!

In a nutshell, curling is a team game that's all about sliding granite stones across a sheet of ice in an attempt to get the most stones in a certain area. To help matters, teammates use brushes to sweep the ice in front of the stones in an effort to make the stones go farther. Sounds bizarre, but it's quite fun.

After a morning of work, we trekked over to the Granite Curling Club. There, we proceeded to have some food and drink, learned how to curl, and played a few games for the remainder of the day.

What I learned:
- Curling's harder than you think, technique-wise. It takes quite a bit of accuracy to get the stone going with the right amount of force & rotation to land roughly in the right spot 120 feet away.
- Sweeping is harder than you think, physically. Rubbing ice with a broom while you walk briskly, making sure you don't fall, and listening to directions from your teammates, is not trivial.
- In curling, everything has a name. And I do mean everything.

An action shot, courtesy of a co-worker of mine.

"Like a train wreck for your ears"

That's how a friend described this sound clip when he sent it around at work. It's an a cappella rendition of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Turns out the artist, Dokaka, has a claim to fame for mixing himself humming along with famous tunes. He's got a whole page full of these things.

It's funny at first, but then it gets quite annoying. At the end, I couldn't decide which was worse: this or nails on a chalkboard.

But I'll cut him some slack. He looks quite fly in that yellow cap, don't you think?

"Halo - The Movie" article indirectly disses me

According to this article in the Seattle Times, there may be a Halo movie in the works. But what I noticed in the article was this line:

To be sure, there is little else in Microsoft's product library that could similarly inspire Hollywood. "The Adventures of SharePoint Portal Server 2003," anyone? Anyone?

Hey, wait a sec - I worked on that product! I'm sure we could have 90 minutes of entertainment in, er...building intranet portals, crawling documents, finding information that I need...yeah...that's it.

Cartography for the masses

Google has launched a new tool, Google Maps. Nice interaction model and pretty graphics for an online app (drag handles, zoom in and out, "pins" in the map). Interesting to try a general search like "starbucks seattle" and...Oh look! 8 Starbucks in a 10-block radius downtown! :)

Chocolate Chocolate!

I posted a review of Starbucks' new Chantico beverage in the new Marketplace section of the site. Read it for a virtual chocolate buzz and sugar high.

From the "too much time" department

Jeff Tweiten is a resident of Seattle. He's camping out for five months outside of the Cinerama theater in Seattle, awaiting the release of Star Wars Episode 3. He has a blog where he's posting updates in this adventure.

"Wait, back up...5 months?!" You bet. And according to local press, this isn't the first time Jeff's done this. And he has all of the logistics worked out, it seems.

The Cinerama is about a 5 minute drive from my place. If anyone wants me to deliver something to Jeff, let me know.

Local color

PBS.com has a nice website around their new program, "Do you speak American?". It has quite a few articles that discuss local dialects from different regions of the U.S. Fun to read about some examples of pronunciation and grammar that people use, and goes to show how many different countries and cultures of origin there are in this country.

Bagpipes v0.1

I've created a page on bagpiping. You can find it here as well as from the top navigation bar on this page. It's just a few links and blurbs right now, but I hope to grow it with some articles on the instrument, the music, and other related info before too long.