The wife gives me grief for occasionally “ego surfing” on Google. I suppose it sounds like a really self-centered thing to do, but since I’ve been promoting my original music and various web sites since 1995, I’ve always been curious to know what pages my name might turn up on. I have other excuses too, but I’ll save them for the wife.

The search usually turns up the same basic list of ham radio, original music, and weather station pages, but something new and odd will turn up from time to time. The last time, I found my music listed on a Japanese site that may or may not be called “goo”.

Click here for … goo?

From what little I can read on the page, I apparently sound like Chick Corea and Return to Forever. While I am a huge fan of Chick Corea, I don’t consider myself in the same league. Who knows, maybe it says something like “he could never be as good as Chick Corea and Return to Forever.” Flattering none-the-less.

The new discovery this time out was finding my old general MIDI songs for sale on a CD in the Netherlands.

Click here.

You can find me in the huge listing of artists right in between Boyz 2 Men and Brahams (yuck and yuck, respectively) as having “27 nummers” on the CD. Thanks to Babel Fish, my suspicion was confirmed: nummers means numbers! (duh) You know, I don’t honestly recall ever having put 27 general MIDI files on the web. Maybe 10 or 12. What gives?

Since I’ve yet to find another person on the Internet with the same name, let alone somebody with the same name who also posted original MIDI files on the web, it has to be me. So curious. I guess I’ll try to buy the CD if I can even figure out how…

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I recently decided to replace my little portable shortwave radio, the Sangean ATS-505, with something better. My #1 requirement was to get something that didn’t have the “chuffing” problem. When using the tuning knob, the sound is muted between every frequency. My main use is to tune through the amateur radio bands, so chuffing is very annoying. Getting better sensitivity and a backlight color other than puke-green were secondary wishes.

After a lot of online research, I thought maybe the Sangean ATS-909 would do, but I would still need to do the anti-chuffing modification. Then I ran across RadioLabs and their “Super 909“. This is an ATS-909 with many great modifications. New filters, a better speaker, a blue backlight, increased sensitivity, anti-chuffing, and removal of the tuning knob detent for smooth tuning. There were several favorable reviews of the Super 909 version of the radio on eHam.net, so I pulled the trigger.

I labored a bit over whether or not to pay $100 more for the mods, but ended up deciding it would be worth it. Well, I was right. With regard to both sensitivity and audio quality, it outperforms the 505 by leaps and bounds. I could only hear the strongest signals with the 505 and a longwire. With the Super 909 and the telescoping whip, I hear so much more. And with a longwire or active antenna, it rivals my ham HF gear. Granted, this isn’t the best comparison - I wish I could hear the difference between it and an un-modded ATS-909. Speaking of which, they will mod your existing ATS-909 with these modifications if you already have one.

As odd as it sounds, my only complaint was the way they offered free ground shipping on the Super 909. They had it set up as the only shipping option. I would gladly have paid more to get the radio here more quickly. Since it was traveling from California to Ohio, it took almost two weeks to arrive. Very aggravating.

But I’ve been enjoying listening to the HF ham bands without having to go into the shack for several weeks now, and I’m damn happy. I highly recommend this modded version of the radio. Good job, RadioLabs!

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A couple years ago, I ran across a story on 60 Minutes that opened with, “Chances are you have never heard of Tim Howard, and if you don’t follow a sport Americans call soccer, there is no reason you should know the name.” It told of a mild-mannered goalkeeper dealing with Tourette’s Syndrome. And it told of his excellent first season at one of the biggest football clubs in one of the most widely followed football leagues in the world: Manchester United and the English Premier League (EPL). Shortly after, I discovered that one could watch Tim Howard and Manchester United play regularly on the Fox Soccer Channel. Having played a year of little league soccer in elementary school, I was already familiar with the particulars of the game … and thus started my recent slow road to Soccer fandom.

But by this time, Howard had found his way into the ManU doghouse and was only starting occasionally. Luckily, it turned out to be equally intriguing to follow some of the team’s other star players instead. Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, in particular. This last season, my interest expanded even more while keeping tabs on other American players in the EPL, such as Brad Friedel at Blackburn Rovers, and Clint Dempsey at Fulham. (See Yanks Abroad.) That led to following other individual players on other teams in the EPL, such as Didier Drogba and Joe Cole at Chelsea, and Dimitar Berbatov at Tottenham Hotspur. Finally, I started reading up on the history of the English Premiership League and how it works within FIFA (the world), UEFA (Europe), and the FA (England). Especially interesting is the relegation of the bottom three teams to a lower English league every season. So cutthroat.

As the EPL season was wrapping up in May with a fantastic title by Manchester United, attention started turning toward Major League Soccer (MLS) in the USA. Despite trying, and failing, to become interested in the MLS last year, I decided to buy the MLS Direct Kick package on cable this year. My main intention was to follow the Columbus Crew as my home team. And since David Beckham will be coming to the LA Galaxy in July, I figured I’d follow them too. Between the EPL and the MLS, I started packing two DVRs with games every week - the wife accused me of becoming a full-blown addict!

Although the Columbus Crew have crawled along near the bottom of the league during the first couple months, they’re currently on a three game winning streak, unbeaten in the last five, and are moving toward the middle of the pack in the Eastern division. I’m optimistic with the likes of Frankie Hejduk, Ned Grabavoy, and newly signed Guillermo Barros Schelotto from the famed Boca Juniors in Argentina. The LA Galaxy aren’t faring so well and remain in the basement in the west. But, the arrival of David Beckham will be a fun circus any way you slice it, so they’re still a team to look forward to.

Even though Tim Howard was loaned to Everton, and eventually signed with them permanently, I continue to rabidly follow Manchester United as though they’re my home team. As the EPL starts up again in August, it will be curious to see if the new interest in soccer can compete with an already long-term interest in the NFL, and the long and sordid plight of the Cincinnati Bengals…

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Where can you get just plain mint ice cream? Just smooth mint with no chocolate, no peppermint sticks, no nothing… just mint. This drives me crazy. I do like mint chocolate chip. It’s my favorite flavor of ice cream. But I’d really just prefer plain mint. UDF is my favorite, but I’m not that picky. I like Breyer’s interpretation, too. But please, just mint.

Peppermint ice cream tastes wonderful, but I won’t touch it because of the crunchy peppermint sticks that stick to the teeth. Just give me the peppermint flavor please. NO STICKS!

Mint.

I guess I could try to make it myself. Every time I’ve tried to make homemade ice cream, it turns into a huge mess that tastes questionable, at best. I don’t really consider this a valid option.

Maybe somebody out on the net makes a smooth mint. I was looking right before I typed this post. And then I realized that I’m going to have to do some big Google investigation to find a smooth mint. “smooth mint” (in quotes) brought up “Smooth mint ice cream speckled with rich chocolate pieces”, “smooth mint ice cream, swirled with dark chocolate sauce and dark chocolate shavings”, “smooth mint ice cream loaded with Andes Candies and thin mint cookies”, and other similar crapola. Now it’s gonna be work, and that pisses me off, so here I am.

By the way, I feel the same way about banana cake and banana ice cream. Always the need for chocolate, as though the banana flavor doesn’t hold up on its own. Always with the ruining of the banana with the chocolate…

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“Contact” has always been one of my three favorite movies, and now I’m finally getting around to reading the book. I just ran across this paragraph…

“Beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, on the other side of the sky, is a universe teeming with radio emission. By studying radio waves you can learn about planets and stars and galaxies, about the composition of great clouds of organic molecules that drift between the stars, about the origin and evolution and fate of the universe. But all these radio emissions are natural-caused by physical processes, electrons spiraling in the galactic magnetic field, or interstellar molecules colliding with one another, or the remote echoes of the Big Bang red-shifted from gamma rays at the origin of the universe to the tame and chill radio waves that fill all of space in our epoch.” - (Carl Sagan, “Contact,” [1985], Pocket Books: New York NY, 1986, reprint, p.41)

While this is just one paragraph that leads to a larger idea within the context of the story, I think it stands on its own as pure poetry.

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The company I work for recently discovered a product called BaseCamp, and the company that built it, called 37signals. We were simply in search of a project management solution and ended up finding somewhat of a philosophy (as well as a project management solution). This philosophy is outlined in the book Getting Real.

Now, I’m skeptical about almost everything. I don’t generally buy into anything without considerable time and thought. But by the time I’d read through the free sample chapters, I realized that they were saying many things I’d been thinking for years. Things I’d already learned from experience on my own. Things I thought were just me being lazy. Many things that our company already does inherently, but often fights against because they seem to go against conventional wisdom. This ended up being true all the way through the book.

Admittedly, so far, this kinda sounds like the rebellious outcast kid who finds comfort and refuge in a cult leader who finally identifies with him, who “speaks her language”, who “knows exactly what he’s thinking”. That’s okay; I’m wearing the black Nikes and purple shroud for now.

I’m certain their philosophy doesn’t apply directly to every situation, but their business is close enough in concept to our’s that I think it’s just about dead on. The only glaring difference I see is that 37signals often has a lot of public attitude about knowing what’s best for the customer, and not letting a product stray from it in anyway. While I do believe in that idea, the owner of our company has had a lot of business success with a more cordial approach to customers. I’m betting the same steadfast ideas can be done without being thrown so directly in customers’ faces.

By sheer coincidence, I’d recently been looking into some kind of new programming framework to standardize our tools on. Ruby on Rails has been making a lot of noise, but I had seen recent articles comparing Ruby to perl, and bought into the idea that Ruby is becoming popular simply because it has better-than-average marketing for an open source product. Since perl has been our environment of choice for 10 years, my first reaction was to try one of several perl frameworks that seem to be popular at the moment. After a couple hours wrestling with a large number of perl module installations and still not having anything to show for it, I decided to move on.

Ruby on Rails was the next test. Several tutorials on Ruby made it seem like a good enough language. Strong regular expression support? Check. Object oriented approach? Check. Easy code to read and learn? Check. Then I ran across a video demo of a “15 minute blog” done in Rails. Very impressive. Even without understanding every little detail, it was clear why the approach was fast and good. I figured installing Ruby and Rails would probably be a bear, but it went surprisingly smoothly and quickly. Not long after, I had the RadRails IDE installed and was working through the “Ruby on Rails: Up and Running” book. I simply didn’t encounter any of the usual “stoppers” that one runs into during this sort of thing.

It was about this time that I discovered Rails was created by 37signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson, and that it’s the framework for all their products. Wow, this just all seems to be coming together at the same time.

Certainly the verdict is still out on whether it will eventually become practical to make a full switch to Ruby on Rails for our products, but I’m very encouraged by what I’ve experienced so far.

I only hope that there’s not an alien ruler named Xenu at the end of this philosophy…

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Wow, I don’t have enough good things to say about the new Porcupine Tree DVD, Arriving Somewhere. From the tight musicianship to the crisp cinematography, this is just a well done concert DVD. I ordered a limited edition numbered advance copy of this DVD a few months ago from Burning Shed, and then promptly forgot about it. A week ago from today, it showed up in the mail. For the next two hours I was totally mesmerized.

The main things that draw me to PT are drummer Gavin Harrison, and the heavier, more progressive parts of the music. Before now, I’d never really given the older or mellower material much of a chance. I really only listen to four songs on In Absentia, and most of Deadwing. Thanks to this DVD, I’m finding some older songs I enjoy, like “Even Less”, “Hatesong”, “Don’t Hate Me”, and the ultra-mellow “Heartattack in Lay By” - I would never have discovered the cool vocal arrangement at the end of that song otherwise. “Trains” is another song that somehow eluded me before.

My wife has always liked “The Sound of Muzak” and “Blackest Eyes”, but she never really cared to explore PT beyond that. She’s now discovering the songs I knew she’d like if only she would give them a chance, mostly from Deadwing. She loves “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here”, “Lazarus”, “Heartattack in a Lay By”, “The Start of Something Beautiful”, and “Halo”. The only other time we’ve bonded on any progressive music was Rush’s Counterparts. She was a big fan of the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd in high school, so I had a feeling she’d like Steven Wilson’s vocal sensibilities. British. Very British. In layers and layers.

Some notable things:

• Compared to the rest of the package, the DVD menus seem really cheap, like something you’d make with an off-the-shelf DVD authoring program. This isn’t a bad thing, though. One of my main complaints with DVDs is the silly menus you’re forced to wade through and wait on.
• Colin Edwin (bass) always looks like he just heard a good dirty joke, as though he’s just on the verge of busting out laughing. Or maybe he has a secret that he’s not going to tell you. The wife says he looks like he just “eeked one out.” Oh yeah, he’s also a kick-ass musician.
• The background vocals seem like they’re mixed a little too loudly on “The Sound of Muzak”. And Wilson’s lead vocals sound like maybe they’re a little low in many spots on the DVD. But if this is my only complaint, who cares.
• I could write many paragraphs on why I think Gavin Harrison transcends even the best prog and jazz drummers that I admire, but I’ll hold off.

The Porcupine Tree Official Website is at http://www.porcupinetree.com.

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Just posting this here so that maybe somebody else searching for this problem might find a quicker answer. I couldn’t find anything via Google. Anyway…

I’m using the Mailman mailing list package in Debian Sarge (now at version 2.1.5-8sarge2). When trying to solve the problem of Mailman attaching the mailing list standard footer to HTML formatted messages, rather than putting it inline with the message, the Mailman FAQ led me to a handy MIME/HTML patch by Adrian Bye. Very cool.

When trying to apply the patch to the Debian Mailman package, the Decorate.py changes failed. The only way I could get it to patch was to replace Decorate.py with the version from the Mailman 2.1.5 source code, and then to apply the patch.

I suppose undoing a Debian update isn’t the best thing one could do, but it didn’t break anything, and having the standard footer placed inline for HTML messages, rather than in an attachment, is pretty important IMO.

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Can somebody please “de-growl” Opeth?

I’m tempted to de-growl the Ghost Reveries album. Granted, I love this album more than any other in many years, but that infernal Cookie Monster Death Metal growl is spotted all over it. Somebody should pop open a copy of Soundforge and delete the growly stuff. Honestly, I’d do it, but I don’t care enough at this point. The killer progressive parts and its wide dynamic range in general more than make up for it. I’ve become accustomed to it enough that I just growl along with it now. Still, I’d be curious to hear it without the growling.

For instance, let’s take “Beneath the Mire”, one of my favorites. The very beginning feels an awful lot like something off of Dream Theater’s Awake album, and we’re okay up to around 1:40. Then the growling begins, and the music becomes mindless and boringly brutish. So we take out from 1:40 to 2:20. Not bad, only 40 seconds.

Along about 3:24 we start into what I consider to be one of the most beautiful passages of prog I’ve ever heard. The groovy bell of the ride cymbal on the offbeat. The haunting vocals. The cool phrasing of the lead when it kicks in. All fairly subtle in prog terms, but it really hits me. Oy … 5:00 brings the growl. Actually, it’s just a brief gutteral thing, no words, and it kinda works. It can stay. I guess 6:06 to 6:20 is the only other part that really needs to be cut. Only 54 seconds of the song actually need to go. That hardly seems worth the effort, but it could be enough to draw in listeners who might not otherwise put up with it at all.

I’m sure Mikael Åkerfeldt would hate this idea given the way he mentions that they’ll never do anything like the shockingly mellow Damnation album again. (a pretty great album in its own right) He seems pretty steadfast about retaining his Death Metal roots. Such a shame. C’mon, how about a nice compromise? … Ghost Reveries minus the growl!

Anyway, I wonder how badly Martin Lopez’s recent departure will affect their next album. His drums are a big part of what draws me to Opeth. It’s an awful tall order to replace a prog drummer and retain the feel that makes the music great.

Speaking of which, I wonder if the new project with Åkerfeldt, Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater) will be a worthy supergroup project. Most of the prog supergroups I’ve heard over the last 10 years don’t do much for me. Seems hard to go wrong with those three, though. We shall see.

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