Camping During the Week

When you camp during the week you avoid all those people that can’t help but bring their obnoxious modern life to the wilderness.

We went to Oscar Scherer State Park last Wednesday for 3 days, 2 nights, just before a different crowd flooded in for the weekend. It’s a good thing, too, because our last trip to Wekiva Springs overlapped a Friday night, where we noticed a big change in the campers. The main point of contention is the need some mid-30s people have to play their radios at their campsites. You know, the type that opens up their car doors to do so. I don’t want to hear your bad radio rock, nor your good indie post-folk alt-country. I’m here to get away from it all, especially you talking on your cell phone.

So don’t be an asshole. Don’t play music at your campsite.

Ok, now more about our trip. Scrub and sugar sand, be damned! That’s a joke. I’m not advocating the leveling of the scrub and the planting of housing communities in it’s stead. Some people find the scrub beautiful. Apparently it’s a good place to bird-watch. Instead, give me tall trees, greenery, and rich, dark soil. I’ve seen scrub all my life. It’s no fun to walk in. You feel like you’re in a palmetto desert. And though burrowing wolf spiders are cool, they’re creepy as hell.

Regardless, many of the trails at Oscar Scherer were beautiful. Our camp site was small, cozy, and right by the river. We heard plenty of raccoons and other animals crunching leaves and sniffing around during the night (1am and later). Apparently, they don’t eat fish scales.

Some squirrels, cardinals, doves and other birds tried to be our friends but we told them to go away by not giving them any food. The most important thing is that I didn’t think about my day job at all. But there was one time I thought about Greaterscope for about an hour in the middle of the night. Sometimes I can’t help myself.

Congrats to Josh Groban, the Aftermath

Nothing monumental happened when I posted my previous entry, but I was amazed at how many people seem to have Google Blog Search alerts set up for “josh groban”.

On March 31, I had 20 visitors that came from their web-based email boxes (15 yahoo, 3 live.com, 2 aol). I’m assuming they were alerted by Google, but I don’t really know. 46 total visitors. 27 people apparently clicked through to the Adult Swim video clip. On April 1, I had 6 visitors from web-based email (3 yahoo, 3 live.com). 18 total views on that entry. 10 clicked through to the clip. April 2 had a similar breakdown, albeit slightly fewer views.

Nobody commented on what I wrote. Maybe they did or maybe they didn’t realize it was riddled with sarcasm. Either way, I was surprised to have even that many visitors. And I surely don’t mind that I can’t get some of those Casey and His Brother songs out of my head.

Congrats to Josh Groban

Josh Groban has finally come of age as a musician. The quality folks at Cinco Musical Tapes have taken special notice of Josh and have given him the noble opportunity to apply his sweetly-maturing voice to such tunes as “Cops and Robbers”, “Time Travel”, and “Horse and Buggy Ride”. Join me in congratulating Josh Groban as he advances from singing cover songs to singing truly inspirational, kick-ass cover songs.

For a limited time you can see clips of Groban singing for the Cinco Musical Tapes collection, Groban Sings Casey. Even in the short amount of video footage available, you’re sure to be moved. Click here, and enjoy.

And the future gets brighter

I’m happy to see things like the Better Place company. Using electricity to power our cars is like using XML for a data interchange format: it’s just a damn good idea. Electricity is the easiest format for energy storage, transfer, and use. It may not be the best, but I’m pretty sure it’s the best we have right now. Battery technology seems to be advancing faster than other forms, so it just makes sense.

Apple computer also deserves mention. Though they provide, more or less, a luxury line of computer systems, I’m just happy there’s a company that isn’t only committed to making things cost less. Cheapness is a false sense of value. Apple is concerned with making things better. Their MacBook Pro notebooks are impressive: better battery life, recyclable aluminum and glass construction, mercury-free display. Now if only there were a software company focused on making software even more efficient…

Google Reader

Started using it 5 months ago for reading RSS feeds. You can find it here. Before Google Reader, I used various tools. I attempted snownews in the past (see item 3 below), and zort which worked pretty well most of the time. Yet, Google Reader’s UI is just better.

1. You can easily add and discover feeds, often by simply typing in the website name
2. You can more efficiently read items by clicking the Next and Previous buttons … no more brrrp-brrrp-brrrp mouse-wheeling around
3. It really makes sense to have an RSS reader that’s capable of full browser-like functionality because so many posts contain images and video. Readers that don’t render each post as a web page are backwards.
4. Since it’s a web app, you can catch up on your backlog anywhere
5. It remembers old news items, so you can travel back in time.
6. You can “star” items that you like

I realized there’s no way I can become familiar with good blogs if I don’t get repeated exposure to the quality ones. Waiting for a good article to show on Hacker News isn’t doing me enough good when I want more articles of a certain type. Seems more efficient to just follow the originators of good articles an information.

Cursive Digital Download

I should let the world in on this musical secret. Cursive is offering their new album, Mama, I’m Swollen, to you early as an mp3 download. The price is $5.00 today, and increases by a dollar each day until March 10th. I’ve already purchased my zipped collection of bits. I know, I should have told you sooner.

Happy Hollow was an amazing album. Though, some might consider it blasphemic. I certainly don’t mind. It’s an impressive exploration into the “darker aspects” of life in a way that’s not cliche — in a way that’s NOT like pussified ”I’m always angsty” mainstream rock.

If The Ugly Organ doesn’t make you thrash around, I don’t want to talk to you. If Domestica doesn’t make you feel, something’s wrong. Hopefully I find Mama, I’m Swollen to be of similar caliber when I’m done digesting it.

From what I’ve heard, the new album does feel lighter than Happy Hollow. However, I also thought Happy Hollow felt lighter than The Ugly Organ. But eventually I realized Happy Hollow’s heaviness was in the deep probing lyrics. I don’t skip any songs on the previous albums, but I Couldn’t Love You Anymore might be a song I skip on the new one.

While I’m at it, there tends to be a trend with how long I continue to like what bands put out. With Death Cab I liked the first 3 or so albums. Plans was a descension into mainstream poppy blandness, lacking wit. Stephen Malkmus seemed to have lost his whimsical, zany, dirtiness with the Face the Truth album (but maybe I need to give that one another listen). Maybe Cursive has hit that point AFTER 6 ALBUMS, which means I shouldn’t be overly sad.

Converging Currents

The PBS Nature episode Superfish was enlightening on how much overfishing of billfish has occurred. We’ve mapped out the points in the ocean where currents converge. These places are normally feeding and breeding grounds, but they’re also the perfect places to fish and haul in the biggest possible catch. Problem is, this makes it so much easier to overfish. When hundreds of boats haul up tons of fish every day, it’s easy to see this heading in a bad direction.

Any solution to this will be criticized, but hmmm… Should we be eating fish that we didn’t catch? Problem with this is you can extrapolate it to all food. It’s just not possible to require everyone to grow/kill/catch their own food. Should we be eating things that aren’t present in our immediate vicinity? Should places more than 2 miles from coastlines be allowed to import seafood? Where do we draw the line? I don’t know, I’m just asking questions.

On Writing

I have great difficulty finishing and publishing blog entries. The longer an entry sits, the less substantial it ends up feeling, which means there’s a good change it’ll get deleted before it sees an audience. This might be a good thing, acting as an editors cutting room of sorts, or it may mean there are too many topics I’ve only half-explored.

Either way, it’s Sunday, so I can’t bring myself to do much of anything today.

I’m an old man at heart

I enjoy watching CBS Sunday Morning. It’s on from 9am to 10:30am, so if you extrapolate you can see that it’s not for church-going types. In one episode Bill Geist did a story about the adult entertainment awards … so you can see what I mean. It’s a perfect replacement for the hectic time that normally consists of trying to round up your kids and get them willing or, god-willing, excited to go to church.

It is a very positive and slow-paced program. The disheartening “real news” stories take up a smidgen of time right at the beginning, leaving the rest of the program’s positively lit features to cheer you up. There’s always something the major news networks have missed, like surrogate motherhood, features on little-known authors/artists. It’s oftentimes inspiring. Check it.

(Oh. I’ve been itching to mess with internet video lately, so this might be a great post for me to read at you so you can watch my facial expressions. Now that I’ve posted this I can get back to work.)

A few things I love

The creativity, lyrical quality and instrumental experiments of Bright Eyes.

Programmers that find my projects and consider them highly overlooked.

The way Grandaddy surprises you with their use of synthesizers; such depth. They’ve taken a cue from the jazz mantra that what matters most are the notes you don’t play.

The way it’s somehow still exciting to meet someone new.

The way the grass is always greener across state lines.