ESPN.com is reporting Schilling has agreed to come to the Red Sox!
How about Schilling, Pedro, Lowe, and Wakefield as a starting 4. That's VERY nice.
November 2003 Archives
So, I have one problem so far in using Gentoo Linux. There are certain applications that I want to use bleeding edge software. Things like my new aggregator and my IM client. I pay attention to the development, so using the latest stuff is important. Well, in Gentoo, the way to do this is to tell it to accept packages which aren't yet in the general distribution. Well, since I only want to do this for certain packages brings my problem out.
Normally, to update my system, I would do something like:
emerge sync
emerge -uvDp world (to see what's updated)
emerge -uvD world (to actually update everything)
Well, if you have packages which are still unsupported, trying to do this tries to force downgrades. I feel that it should be smart enough to see that the packages I have installed are newer (which it actually does), but to just ignore them unless there are newer packages instead of trying to downgrade them.
Is there a way to do this that I am missing? I know if I just accepted ALL packages that are in development, I could just add an ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" to my make.conf, but since I only want it for some packages, I don't know if there is a way.
Just a minor problem, but an annoyance, as it makes updating much more difficult.
So, I'm in Boston for Thanksgiving for the first time in 7 years. Usually, I head home, but this year circumstances made that not possible. At home, the night before Thanksgiving is the busiest night of the year for the bars. So, I headed out last night planning on much of the same in the bars around Boston. I headed to Cheers to see Greg play for a while. On the way there, things seemed rather quiet. I was surprised. I got to the bar and there were about 10 or 15 people there. Well, I thought, this is really a tourist spot, mabe the other bars will be more crowded. When I got over to Sissys, it was more crowded, but still nothing compared to the crowds of Long Island.
Talking to a number of people, they felt that it's the townie bars that get the people. People head home and go to local bars. No one really lives in Boston all that much, but rather the suburbs, so they just go to bars there. Interesting, but I guess since I live in the suburbs on LI it makes sense.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Try not to eat too much turkey!
Just got this in e-mail:
On a tour of Florida, the Pope took a couple of days off to visit the coast for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the beach in the Popemobile when there was a frantic commotion just off shore. A helpless man, wearing a New York Yankee's jersey, was struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a 25-foot shark.
As the Pope watched, horrified, a speedboat came racing up with three men wearing Boston Red Sox jerseys aboard. One quickly fired a harpoon into the shark's side. The other two reached out and pulled the bleeding, semi-conscious Yankee fan from the water. Then using (autographed Nomar) baseball bats, the three heroes in red beat the shark to death and hauled it into the boat also.
Immediately the Pope shouted and summoned them to the beach. "I give you my blessing for your brave actions," he told them. "I heard that there was some bitter hatred between Red Sox and Yankee fans, but now I have seen with my own eyes that this is not the truth."
As the Pope drove off, the harpooner asked his buddies "Who was that?"
"It was the Pope," one replied. "He is in direct contact with God and has access to all of God's wisdom."
"Well," the harpooner said, "he may have access to God's wisdom, but he doesn't know crap about shark fishing.... how's the bait holding up?"
I know I should not be talking about politics here, but something I heard on the debate last night (which I watched about half of) that REALLY bothered me.
Clark made this statement: "We want to be ahead of the software revolution. Let them do the software in India; we'll do other things in this country. "
Sorry, but I really am not ready to go back and learn a new trade. I have decided to pursue something I enjoy and I have no need or want to go back to school or anything to learn how to be something different.
Yes, we should be looking forward to new sources for jobs, but at the same time America has many software developers and other technical folks who do not want to have to switch professions. We need to get companies to want to employ people in America and not just sell off the business to the lowest bidder.
Also, outsourcing can lead to other problems. Obviously the biggest of them is the language barrier. Sure, someone in India who speaks perfect English is great and all, but sometimes an accent will make the conversation next to unintelligible to the other person. I have first hand experience with this, as I talk to customers all the time and sometimes, though asked a question in English, cannot understand what the customer is trying to say. Hell, I have even been to Ireland on multiple occassions and their native English speakers and I still can't understand some people with a thick brogue. I guess this is most evident with Dell having to move their technical support back to America after many many complaints.
So, no General Clark, I don't want software to move to India, I want to keep it right here, so I can continue to enjoy my job.
Don and I headed over to Avalon to see Robert Randolph and the Family Band. This was going to be my fifth or sixth time seeing the band and I knew I was in for a good time, I just didn't realize how good a time.
Los Lonely Boys opened up the show. We made sure to get in to see them, as they had been recommended by a co-worker. I liked them, though I feel they need to concentrate a little more. They seemed to play a little of everything. The guitar player needs to shred a little less and play a little more soulful at times.
After a short break, Marcus hit the stage and started out the beat. Then Danyel hit and started laying down a familiar bass line. Jason, the new keyboard player, hit the stage next to get the song really going. I know this song! Robert came out and started playing the vocal line to Billie Jean on his guitar. Interesting song to start with, especially what is going on with MJ these days.
Now that its almost a week later and there were a few drinks involved in the evening, I can't completely remember what was played. Shake Your Hips had the stage filled with women from the crowd doing the hip shake. Hopefully I can find a set list some time.
Overall, am amazing show, as was expected. These guys continue to impress me each and every time I see them. If you haven't seen them, you are definitely missing out.
So, last week I went to see Primus at the Orpheum in Boston with Brian and some of his friends.
Going in, I liked that Les had brought the 2 set idea that he picked up from the jam band scene back to Primus. I especially liked that the second set was going to be
So, the show starts up, and I see what as become to Primus. They have become a jam band. Well, almost. Les really tried to bring the ideas from the jam band scene back to Primus. At time, it worked well. Others, I felt like it wasn't. I feel that Larry missed opportunities at points to really take Primus in to the jam band feel. There were times I felt that Les was laying down something really nice and Larry could have just gone off and really taken a spotlight in the jam, but he didn't.
The first set was alright. I forget that SO much of the music I like of Primus is on Seas of Cheese. The Mr Kringle ending was a good way to end the set on a high note. My favorite piece of the show was American Life with the BEST jam of the night in to Jerry Was A Race Car Driver, a Primus classic. The overall presentation of the Seas of Cheese was really good, though at points, the pieces I expressed above came out. An attempted jam just turned in to Les having some fun on the bass with Larry laying down some random notes. The encore was a severe let down with Mary the Ice Cube from the new CD. It's a slow drifting song, instead of a nice strong ending. But, as the song says, doesn't nothin ever last forever?
The one thing I did learn the night of the show is that Primus is doing the Phish thing and is putting all their shows online at Primus Live. Gonna have to pick up the show once it comes out (a little slow, as opposed to Phish who has them up in like 2 or 3 days).
I had a site that had the set list, but it was somewhat weak (missing the teases and such), so if anyone has a good set list, send it along.
I'm starting to think about writing some music. This would be an attempt at two things. First, it would help me with my guitar playing. Take some of the stuff I have started writing on guitar and turn it in to full fledged songs. The second piece would be to re-learn the music theory I used to know. If I was going to write some music, I would definitely have to re-learn keys and such. The nice thing is re-learning the theory is that I could apply it back to guitar and get better at that.
So, my question is, does anyone know of any music composition software for linux? Open source is obviously first choice. I'd just like something I could basically program music on. Ideas?
Open Source Development Labs has released a new position paper on SCO. From the press release:
In his paper, Professor Moglen makes two main points:
- SCO Group last August showed two examples of what it claimed were infringing literal copies of UNIX software code to Linux, but the demonstration backfired, showing instead SCO's cavalier attitude toward copyright law and its even greater sloppiness at factual research, Moglen argues.
- SCO Group has argued that the GPL software license offers the firmlegal protections while at the same time it argues that the GPL is not valid. SCO's legal situation contains an inherent contradiction, Moglen says.
Neat! My hometown, Kings Park, NY, has a web page. I even know some of the people in the pictures on the top level page. Too bad there are no RSS feeds.
I'm on my way out the door, but I just wanted to post something before I hit the road, so that Halley knows I am really going out and not sitting around not blogging to make people think I am out.
Halley is talking about The Big Saturday Night Lie. She says that many (if not all) of the blog crew are staying in on Saturdays, but not blogging to make it look like they have a life.
Well, I am usually out at least one of the two nights of the weekend. Depends mostly on what's going on, how my cash situation is, my mood, etc. If I am home on a weekend night, one of two things happen.
One possibility is going the exact opposite of what Halley says and blogging like a maniac. Cleaning up the 20 or 30 web browser windows that have been opened over the course of the last few days and left unread usually leads to at least one or two blog posts. Also, I usually have some other thoughts that come through while sitting in front of the computer with the TV spewing random shows off the TiVo.
On the other hand, if I am home on a weekend night, it usually means there was some reason I couldn't go out. I have had a standby bar for mny years that I have no problem going in all alone. So, if I had a reason for not going out, besides being having something to do at home, it usually means I am in a bad mood. Not being able to go out because of money or not being in a great mood, usually puts me in a even worse mood. If I'm in a bad mood and blog, I usually end up saying too much or whining about the bad things in my life and that's something I try to avoid on my blog, though it does come through from time to time.
So, Halley, track me all you want :) I'm usually out having fun, not hiding from the world trying to put on a big mask for the public.
I got a new laptop from work this week. I've been slowing getting all of the software on it so that it is fully usable. I installed Gentoo Linux on it, as I have become a big fan of it recently. Also, with the recent moves of Red Hat, I think something new and different was worth a try.
Well, now that I have this new laptop, I want to organize the HUGE mess I made on my previous laptop. I probably have 20 gigabytes of data that is strewn throughout the laptop in many different locations and just not really organized. I want to try and take this data and put it in a much more organized format. I also want to clean off any excess data to make the system a bit cleaner. One of the big goals is to get documentation and other files that should be more easily located up to my web site at work. I really want to expand this site from its current state in to something much more useful. I've already put many of the tools in place. It's front end is a MT blog. I also have a few static web pages on it, that I really need to move in to MT to make it much more of a CMS. I also have a wiki up on the site that I have been using a bunch, but I have much more which should/can go up there.
I figure if I can really organize all of this stuff, it can make working much easier. If I don't have to think twice about where i put things, it means extra time to actually work while there. Also, I can use the resources on the web to point other people at the company to and limit the amount of support I end up doing.
I'm hoping over the course of the next week to get this all set up, so when I return to work after Thanksgiving I have a much better operating environment.
Also, hopefully getting my computer organized will lead me to get other things organized in my life.
Finally, you can buy beer on Sundays! I'm starting to feel like I live in a normal state.
A couple of new toys mentioned by Boing Boing this morning.
thewalldirect.com - Pink Floyd The Wall Collector's Boxed Set of Maquettes
The Wall actions figures. Sweet. They look real nice, though at $79.95, this is going to spend some time on the wishlist. And, of course, as a limited edition, it will be well sold out by the time I actually can afford it.
tomatochip.com : USB Christmas Tree Light
Very cute little Christmas tree for your USB port. They already seem backlogged though, says they are taking pre-orders to ship after Thanksgiving.
Sprint has two new services coming out.
Sprint Offers Walkie-Talkie Style Service
Basically, the same thing Nextel and Verizon have now. Known as the beep-beep at work. It would be nice to have this, but it would be even cooler if this was a standard and could work between providers, but I am pretty sure that it will be Sprint to Sprint only.
Real-time TV added to Sprint mobiles
Oh come on! Who needs TV on their phone? The single time I could think of using this would be when watching some sort of breaking news. Something like 9-11 would be about the only time this would be useful. Otherwise, get a damn TiVo.
Man, I have just turned in to a posting monster this year. This is post 800 overall. I would say its almost 600 this year :)
Robert Randolph & The Family Band are coming to Boston on Wednesday. I've been very excited for this show for a while, but haven't spent the cash on tickets yet figuring I could just get them at the door. I was going to order them this weekend, but never got around to it. Well, I am glad I didn't. I just got word from jambase.com that I won tickets! Woo!
The extra nice part is that now that I won't be spending money on those tickets on Wednesday, I am going to grab my buddy's extra ticket for Primus tomorrow night.
Two nights of great bands will make this very long week ahead of me at least a fun long week!
Well, BlogRolling seems to be rather kerfuxored right now, so it is just sending the same URL over and over again for blog rolls. So, no I have no idea of who this Laura chracter is or why her name is over and over again in my blog roll. Hopefully Jason will be fixing soonest.
Update: Jason has restored from tape and everything is working again. He said it was a tape from Saturday morning, so if you added any links to your blogrolling blog roll since then, they will need to be re-added.
One of my favorite bands, Guster announced in their e-mail newsletter that they have a green light on recording some shows for a live DVD. They will be recording at the State Theater in Portland Maine on Friday, December 19th and Saturday, December 20th. Tickets go on sale in the next few day. If you are in the area and want to see a fun show full of good music, I would definitely recommend going to one of the shows. Since they are filming, there will probably be lots of "special" moments. The favorite to this day is the first time I saw them and they played NIN's Down In It. The reason that was cool? Their instruments are 2 acoustic guitars and some bongos :)
Dave Sifry puts out an update about Technorati Growing Pains.
I actually haven't noticed much of a slow down at all. Probably the ADD kicking in, that I start a search and then go do something else while it loads.
The other thing included in this post is some stats. The one which surprised me most was the fact that there are only 100,000 updates a day. If Dave is tracking over a million web pages, that means 1 in 10 gets updates every day. Well, change that to people who update daily usually have multiple posts and now you are down to 1 in 20 a day. That surprises me. I wonder if this is just people who are pinging technorati and really a lot more people are actually updating that he is not seeing. Everyone should be pinging both Technorati and Blogrolling in addition to any other sites they are already pinging.
Keep Your Brain From Going to Pot
Well, not exactly, but a company is working on a drug based on THC that is seemingly helping people with head trauma from having continued effects after the initial trauma. Neat.
For the first time in who knows how long, I woke up when the clock was still in the 5AM range. (Yes, it was about 10 of 6, but still). This is just way too early for me. Looks like I will be either taking a nap when I get home or else doing some sleeping in tomorrow, since I am working from home.
Update: So, the reason I came in was I was supposed to have a meeting with a potential customer this afternoon. Well, I just found out that it has been cancelled. So, my 3.5 or so hours of sleep could have been 8, but no, now I am here and stuck. Ugh.
Heard on Queer Eye this evening: "These jeans have a special treatment on them, so they stay wrinkled" or something like that. I have a treatment like that too, its called, throw them in a ball on the floor.
Yet ANOTHER one for the Wishlist.
An excellent reminder of why Bush should be fired ASAP. Can't we just impeach him? We impeach a guy for a blowjob, but not for ruining the country.
The teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is out! Looks good, though the teaser doesn't show all that much. So, now the wait begins for the next HP fix on June 4.
redhat.com | Which Red Hat Linux is Right For You?
A chart from Redhat on which version you should be running. Unless you are an enterprise customer, you probably want to use Fedora.
The thing is, Fedora seems to be going completely bleeding edge, much like what Rawhide used to be. So, what is the correct free distro for newbies these days?
Debian, from what I understand, since I have not used it a ton is much more developer oriented. Gentoo stays kind of bleeding edge and the whole concept of having to re-compile each package would scare most newbies away. SUSE seems to be up in the air right now with the Novell purchase. So, is Mandrake the way to go for newbies? I'm not really sure and would like to hear what other people have to say.
The Animation Show is coming to Boston and Cambridge.
It will be in Cambridge on November 14-16 at the Brattle Theater. Then there will be midnight shoings at the Coolidge Corner Theater from November 14 - December 13.
This looks very interesting as Mike Judge of Beavis & Butthead and Office Space fame is one of the animators involved in this.
[ via bradley's almanac ]
Great comment by DL Hughley on Jimmy Kimmel last night. If you don't watch the show, Jimmy has both his Uncle Frank and his cousin Sal as members of the show. Well, DL tonight goes "Yeah, I met your Uncle Frank and your cousin Sal, you're like the white Wayans!"
Report: A-Rod, Nomar deal on table
Dear Theo:
Please don't do this! First off, we don't need to take up so much of the Red Sox salary with one player. Use the money to get some good pitching, not replacing a position where we already have a damn good player. See how Nomar does this season and see how much he wants next year and then decide if you are going to renew his contract. I see no reason to grab A-Rod. We already have great hitting and need pitching much more in order to win the World Series next year. Adding more power does nothing for a team that had the best offensive stats in the league last year. So, go forget A-Rod and start concentrating on getting guys like Pettite or Colon. Maybe pick up a new REAL closer. Let's not get caught up in trying to improve anything BUT pitching right now. You did a great job of finding some diamonds in the rough in terms of offense last year, can't you do the same with pitching this year? Thanks!
ScriptureLinker looks like a MT plugin that AKMA would enjoy.
to all the veterans out there on this Veteran's day.
This year, Veteran's Day means a lot more to me, as I have friends who are over fighting wars for this country. If people like my friend J had not decided to fight over the years, we would not be the country we are today. Who knows, we all could be speaking German.
So, thank you, and to all those still involved in wars around the world, stay safe.
New show: 'Straight Plan for the Gay Man'
This should be amusing. They should get Matt & Trey from South Park to work on it, as they did a great job of doing a parody of Queer Eye on South Park a few weeks back.
Beyond the Beyond by Bruce Sterling turned on it's RSS Feed. Yay! It's here.
This letter received by the RMV shows what happens when people try to use electronic translators and they just translate a little too literally.
Berklee College of Music has a new online site called Berklee Shares. This site is full of lessons from both faculty and alumni of Berklee. These are not just instrument lessons, but also lessons in song writing, production, technology, business, etc. The best part? It's all free and released under a Creative Commons license.
So, now I will have to delve in to these lessons and learn as much as I can. Hopefully, I can learn more than just some cool stuff on my guitar, but also some more about music in general.
[ via Lessig Blog ]
In Halley's post Spelling Bee, she talks about how young girls are good spellers and how later in life they never spell anything out. Ain't that all too true.
How about dumbest? Jessica Simpson to get own series
My favorite quote from the article: "We're looking forward to developing the ideal showcase for her considerable talents."
So, this is going to be on Playboy or something? I mean her only talents I can see are being so ridiculously dumb that it's hilarious and she's got a nice rack :) So, is she going to run around naked saying stupid shit?
This is just not the way to start a week.
I got up at before 7AM this morning, so I could move my car for street cleaning. In my neighborhood, they clean either side of the street once a week. On Mondays, they do it from 8-12. So, I get up, head downstairs and wait for someone on the other side of the street to move. After about 30 or so minutes with no one moving, I decided I would start doing some looping. Well, I knew my car was not doing well, but trying to move the car went worse than I thought, so I pulled back over to the side of the street where I had to move my car from to see if someone further down the street would move because looping just wasn't going to happen. Well, after another 20 minutes or so, I gave up. Fuck it, I'll take the damn ticket. The only small problem with that is that I have a couple of tickets I am behind on and it is possible that I am going to get a boot on my car. I really hope this doesn't happen, but whatever. I can't deal. I was in the car for like an hour and no one was moving and my car wasn't moving all that well.
So, now, it's 8:30. I've been awake for more than 90 minutes. I feel like shit, I'm pissed off and I really just want to go back to bed. ARGH.
Watching Modern Marvels from the History Channel and they just said this:
"Hoover Dam is one of the primary attractions for those visiting Las Vegas"
I could have sworn the gambling, shows, strippers, alcohol and all forms of legal (and some illegal) sin were the attractions of Vegas :)
A couple of recent TV shows have reminded me how it would be real nice to have some editing and / or exporting capabilities in the TiVo. Thursday night Jimmy Kimmel had the greatest band in the universe on and then on Saturday, SNL had Dave Matthews on. It would be real nice to just cut the performaces out of these shows and just save them and not the rest of it. Also, it would be even better to be able to then save them off on another system, rather than take up TiVo HD space.
Frrom my tool bar:
With all the helicopter crashes and shootdowns lately, I have been very worried about my buddy over in Iraq who pilot choppers. A mutual friend of ours sent me an e-mail yesterday and it reminded me to drop by buddy a line. He actually responded rather quickly which made me very happy. He is still doing very well over in Iraq, as he is far from the major fighting. He is currently worried about some friends from his sister battalion., as that battalion was involved in one of the recent crashes. But all in all, he is well. It's always good to hear from friends who you are worried about.
Another article on my company, this time in Forbes.
always seem to go wrong in the end. I was supposed ot be having a guest for a few weeks starting tomorrow. I was totally psyched up for this visit. I was psyched up to the point that I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday and was totally psyched until my sleep fogged brain realized it was only Wednesday. Well, I found out tonight my friend had some last minute issues and now won't be coming. I'm totally bummed. I was looking forward to this visit for a while, as it had already been pushed back on multiple occassions. Now, I sit here with my mood completely crashing from the high it was on and quickly getting very very low. Argh, this sucks.
Fox cancels 'Skin' after three airings
Not terribly unexpected. Though the first episode was pretty good, this show definitely had one season only written all over it and the second 2 shows were pretty much re-hashes of the first show.
Microsoft offers bounty on hackers
Wouldn't it be MUCH better if MS spent the money on coders and QA people to write and check code that wouldn't ALLOW such virii to occur rather than just trying to prosecute the people who are writing the virii? Seems to me that bounty hunting never ends if the code is never cleaned up to make sure it can't happen.
Novell Announces Agreement to Acquire Leading Enterprise Linux Technology Company SUSE LINUX
When Novell bought Ximian a few months ago, I felt it was at least a good move from Ximian. I felt some extra financial backing would help them out. I also saw that Novell could possibly make this a good investment by making themselves some extra cash.
Also, I think that if Novell did things well, they would put out an amazing version of Netware on Linux with some kickass GUI tools (from the Ximian folks). A strong directory service that was cross platform to Windows and Linux would be a plus for both, plus it does damage to Microsoft by pushing away things like Active Directory, which is Windows specific (well, unless you include a Samba and Kerberos hack).
So, Novell buying SUSE could be a good thing. It means deeper integration of Ximian, SUSE and Novell. It means the same system across the whole enterprise. The problem, it means deeper integration and the same system across the whole enterprise. Does this mean both Ximian's and Novell's products are now going to cater to ONLY the new Novell Linux? That worries me.
The biggest reason it worries me? If I can't get Ximian Desktop working on my linux dist, I am going to be very annoyed. I really dig Ximian, have used Evolution forever (I started using Evolution in late 2000) and would be really unhappy if I was forced to use Novell Linux to run it.
The second reason it worries me is Novell almost seems to be making the Netware mistake again. If they pigeonhole their customers and potential customers in to a single system (like Netware is these days) it would be a very bad thing and they would lose potential customers. If an enterprise is already standardized on something like Red Hat, they aren't going to want to run different system just for their directory services.
So, we'll see what happens. Hopefully they will be smart about all this and it will help propel Novell and Linux forward.
Study: 'Oprah' Fans More Likely To Be Stressed
I really hope that Jimmy Kimmel picks up on this, as he loves Oprah so.
So, Bruce Sterling has a blog (Beyond the Beyond) over at Wired. One gapping problem? No RSS feed that I can find. Is Wired this disconnected from the blog world that they don't realize this is a necessity?
Stpehen King announced on his web site that the The Dark Tower series is DONE!
Book 5,
Fast Company has an article entitled The Blog of Things To Come which is all about Joi's online community.
I participate in this community via Joi's irc channel. It's a great place to hang out for lots of reasons. The biggest one is the people. Conversations like the one I last night are commonplace. Their are lots of interesting people who come from all different aspects of technology and from all over the world. We have people who are students, people who are CxO level people, people who are tech employees like me, etc. The great part is all of these different people interact like they are all on the same level. I can jump in to the channel, ask a question, get answers from all sorts of people who just want to help out. It's just a really great community to be a part of and I am glad that I am.
CNN.com - Tenacious D: We'll starve for rock
Actor/singer/guitarist Black said the strike would end early on one of three conditions: if "The Complete Masterworks" goes platinum, if "hunger is solved" or if there is peace in Middle East.
I'm scared to see what would happen if these guys went too long on this, so everyone should go out and pick up their new DVD first thing Tuesday morning, so they make it to platinum quick.
It's Joey aka The Accordion Guy's birthday. Everyone should go wish him a happy birthday.
Adam is looking for some CSS help. with the new incarnation of Boston Common. Help him out if you can.
I spent a while this evening talking to Jake Walker of DiscLive on #joiito.
DiscLive is a service which is basically in competition with Clear Channel's live CD service. Basically, the concept is that you can leave the concert you are at with a CD (or CD set) from the show you just went to within about 5 or 10 minutes of the show ending.
I think this type of service is an awesome service for all bands, but I think it works best with bands who do something different every night. Bands that do the same show every night, with the same songs and the same dance moves in the same order every night don't really offer much from having discs of each show recorded. Though, as Jake pointed out to me, some people would just enjoy hearing their favorite artist saying "Hello Boston!" or something.
I would definitely buy CDs from a service like this. I see it as a much better souvenir than a $30 t-shirt. Jake says they are selling discs for about $20-$25 a set. They have full color packaging and discs, so you aren't just getting some burned CDs and a piece of paper with the band's name.
I really think artists would buy in to this as well. Many bands are against bootlegs for 2 reasons. The first being other people making money off their music. Well, with this service, the band takes most of the cash, the company just charges a per disc service charge of about $6 per set. The second big reason bands give against bootlegs is quality. They don't like their music out there that sounds like crap, which is a very valid point. Well, this is recorded directly off the soundboard and with the addition of some ambient mics. So, you get good quality boots and great souvenirs.
I would much rather see a company like DiscLive thrive in this business than a giant like Clear Channel. A small company is going to strive to create the best product possible where someone like Clear Channel would probably just try to make the cheapest possible, largest profit discs.
Currently DiscLive is trying to work directly with artists and possibly just tour with an artist (one for now, hopefully more once enough money is there to buy and build more rigs). I think it would be awesome for a medium sized band who plays a different kind of show every night to take these guys out with them. Think of someone like moe or Gov't Mule. They play theater shows, but still have a good following and mix the set up pretty nicely.
I guess the one worry in the jam band community would be the lose of tape trading and the like, but at the same time, I would MUCH rather pay $25 for a perfect recording of a show than trade blanks for an ok version taken from someone's mics.
I'm going to try and keep an eye on these guys and see how they do. If you happen to be in a band that plays in venues around the size of 2500 people or so, talk with these guys and hopefully you can make many fans happy to go home with a great souvenir.
A while back, I heard about Dashboard. It's a program to associate information from many different programs and join it all together. It seemed really neat at the time, but I didn't have the time to dig in to it much.
Recently I started thinking about it again and took a look and see that nothing has been done on the project in over 3 months. This sucks. This seemed like it would be a great program to help out organizing information and using it in new ways.
The biggest obstacle to overcome when I originally looked at this project was the lack of projects supporting it. Many required patches or CVS releases with patches. Not fun to try and rebuild a all sorts of applications just to support one product.
I was really hoping in the few months that I wasn't paying attention to this product that some of that work would have been fully integrated in to applications and maybe even some support from more applications.
Well, hopefully Nat & crew will pick up work on this again some time soon. Maybe I will even drop him an e-mail and see what the status is.
I went to see KMFDM last night at Axis with Tim. There was an opening band called Bile or something who were on stage when we got there. They were not all that great, though Tim claims their older stuff is better. Though PIG was supposedly going to play, I heard that someone was sick or something. I'm still not 100% sure of what was supposed to go on, as Raymond from PIG came out and did almost the whole show with KMFDM.
KMFDM started off the show with WWIII with the same intro from the new album. The set list was ok. There was too much off the discs I'm not a huge fan of/haven't listened to much, like XTORT, Adios and ATTAK. They did play some good stuff though. I was disappointed in the lack of songs like Anarchy and Drug Against War. The worst part was the one song encore when they were supposedly scheduled to play for another 20 mins or so. The band did sound good all night though the vocals were a little low in the mix for much of the night.
Lucia Cifarelli is totally cute, she was fun to watch :)
The forecast:
This Afternoon...Partly sunny. Near record warmth...Highs in the mid 70s. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph.
Windows opened wide and heat off, excellent.
I'm breaking my one rule of concert going currently.
Tonight, I am going to see KMFDM over at Avalon with Tim. My one rule of concert going is to never listen to the band I am going to see the day of the show. I do this mostly because I don't want the CDs in my head when I go to see the band, I just want to be totally open to the music. Usually, I spend a lot of time the week before the show listening to the band, but day of, I avoid the band. Well, this week I have really only listened to the new KMFDM, WWIII and not the older stuff, so I decided I was going to blast some KMFDM to get me going today.
As always, rules are just made to be broken.
