Archives for June 2003

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hotel cafe last night

It feels like every time I post, there's a mention of Hotel Cafe. Really, this only makes six times, but it still feels that way. I like the place, though, so I can't complain. They book good music, and last night's fare proved to be no exception.


First up was a girl the HC website lists as Anna Nalick. I say it like that because google turns up 0 results for that name, and that strikes me as odd. She didn't seem to have played many shows, though, so it's possible she has somehow escaped mention. That's not at all to be derogatory, though; her lack of experience only evidenced itself a couple times when she would laugh at wrongly played chords. I couldn't get over how much her voice sounded like early Jewel. I think she could have played a drop-dead cover of any of the songs off Pieces of You. A few songs showed she possessed a much bigger voice than she often used. What possibly impressed me most, though, was her song-writing. Her lyrics were very natural and smart, always getting the rhyme without sacrificing anything of what she wanted to say.


Next up was Shawn Amos. His music was often bluegrass-twinged, with the banjo making an appearance on multiple songs. He started his set off singing the theme to The Jeffersons a capella. I enjoyed that.


Third was Penny. My interest in Penny was sort of a hunch. Earlier this spring I was headed to HC to see Steve Reynolds, and Penny was on as we walked in the door. I heard maybe two minutes, and I don't even think I heard any vocals. If I recall correctly it was just guitars jamming their way out of a song. But in those two minutes I got a hunch that I would really like them. I checked out the website, listened to the songs there, listened to the songs on their demo cd, thought they were good, if not great, but still came away with a hunch that there was something there I wasn't getting. Those two minutes of guitar seemed richer than any of the recorded songs I heard. So last night I finally got to see them live, and the experience vindicated my unfounded beliefs. I don't know what exactly what the difference is, but if Penny's recorded stuff is good, Penny live is great.

live music tonight

I know, I'm a little on the short side with the ahead of time notification, but oh well. Tonight Kathy and I are headed out to see live music, which I'm excited for. This is definitely my favorite thing about LA. Tonight, as usual, the destination is Hotel Cafe, and the band I'm going to see is Penny. I'm planning to check out all the bands, and I'll be sure to post a full report after.

Daunish Day: Dorm Linebacker

I just got pointed to the Dorm Linebacker site and watched their video. It's funny. Two of the actors are friends of mine, so that makes it all the more enjoyable.

Saucy Monky - Disco Ball

I've been debating between a couple songs from Saucy Monky's cd Celebrity Trash, trying to figure out what one I wanted to headline here. I ended up choosing this one just because I love how the chorus sounds. The interplay between the two vocals really appeals to me. For some reason I always find my music collection lacking in happy music, and this is a nice cd to fill that void.

mmm... wider is better...

Today I bought a used 17" monitor to bring home and set up a dual-screen setup. I'm now running at 2560x1024, which makes my life quite a bit better. First thing I had to do was find some new wallpaper. This guy has a page with some good ones, mostly space related, but that's fine since I do work for NASA and all. Now the interesting part is figuring out how to position my stuff on a double-wide layout. I think I pretty much know how it'll work, but it'll take some time to get a feel for whether it'll really involve changing how I use my desktops. Fitting my propensity for old things, the monitor is from 1994, and cost a pretty $950 new. The manual includes information on how to hook the monitor up to an Apple Mac II, and also says that it is compatible with the "newly proposed VESA ergonomic standards." Exceptional.

United States v. American Library Association

Yesterday the US Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision upholding CIPA, a law that requires libraries to install filtering software on their Internet terminals or lose federal funding. I've put up brief analysis of the case I wrote several months back. The court opinions are available here. There are two things that most bother me about this law, and the resultant court cases.

  • Coverage of CIPA and the resultant cases has continually misrepresented the law to only apply to filtering for children. This is simply not the case. The law also includes requirements that filtering be in place for adults. The only difference for children is the added requirement to filter material harmful to minors.
  • Fundamentally, Congress and the Court are making a requirement that libraries implement technical solutions that simply do not exist. Despite what Congress, the Court, or the filtering companies might want to say, there is not a filtering solution that can possibly comply simply with the requirements of the law (without additional gross overblocking). The law requires that the filter be disabled for adults who legitimately request it, but this isn't the simple matter people would like to make it out to be. A significant burden will be imposed on adult users, and there's no way around this with current solutions.
Now attention must shift to finding ways to illustrate practical issues with the law. The Supreme Court has given their approval to the law, now efforts must be focused on getting the law changed.

they don't make 'em like they used to

Just to settle a personal question, I brought a scale down here to weigh the old SGI Personal IRIS 4D/25 I have. The box with monitor totaled in at a hefty 122 pounds. The box itself was 66 of that, the monitor clocking in the remaining 56.

Gus Black

Morning Becomes Eclectic has their set with Gus Black up now. Check it out. I saw Gus back in the fall, and had pretty much forgotten about him until I saw his name come back up a couple places. I'm hoping to get out and see him in a lineup with Steve Reynolds at Hotel Cafe on July 3.

a couple fixes

I just fixed the archive and comment functionality. Oops. Didn't realize those two were broken. They aren't now.

upgrade time

I just upgraded this eThreads installation to the devel code I've been banging on for a while now. It's not perfect, there are still a couple little things that won't work right (I need to go through and change the syntax for a couple things), but I decided that the new code with flaws was better than the old code, so it became time to flip the switch. Little fixes will come over the next couple days, but feel free to let me know if you find something going wacky.

back at home...

I'm back at home for a few weeks, enjoying not cooking for myself. I made it over to Grand Rapids on Saturday to check out shmuel's show. Cool stuff. I'm excited to hear his cd when it's done. Alan wrote a post about the show and geourl that both includes a picture from the set, and quotes me, so I'll just link over there instead of writing more.

geourl

The other day shmuel mentioned geourl to me, so I went ahead and put the tag on my site. You can see registered sites that are in a 10 mile radius of me. Somewhat interesting stuff. The first two are USC people. In fact, the guy who does the closest one actually came and commented here.