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Sunday Morning

My roommate is out of town for the week, so naturally, I broke out the video camera.

Not Quite Twee

I started out making a twee sampler so I could stop explaining what it is to people, but a disc of just that type of music got boring, so I mixed it up.

1. Lovers Who Uncover - The Little Ones
2. Rocketship - 63 Crayons
3. Emma’s House - The Field Mice
4. Trouble - Voxtrot
5. Caravanna - The Lucksmiths
6. In The Morning - The Little Children
7. Battle Brigades - The Foundry Field Recordings
8. Words And Smiles - Tiger Trap
9. Carry-On - Dressy Bessy
10. Darling, Please Come Home - Math and Physics Club
11. Miss Douglas County - Genoe
12. Old Century - The Twin Atlas

Here is a zip file of the whole playlist.
If you like any of the songs, buy the album.

Let Advogato Die

I wasn’t sorry to hear that Advogato was going offline. Everytime I’ve looked at it, it’s been mostly paranoia and flamewars. It was a neat experiment, but is it really worth the effort to keep it around? On the other hand, it gives the insane people a place to hangout and leave the rest of us alone.

nerds

This sounds exactly what you’d expect from a band that named themselves Warhammer 48k. A pun, no doubt, of 48k, the sampling rate of much electronic music, and Warhammer 40k, The Game of Futuristic Battles.

GSoC 2006 writeup

The conference went great. It was an “unconference” were people reserve rooms to talk about whatever they want. If other people are interested, they’ll show up. I gave a talk called Rewarding Contributors that was about the various project management tricks I’ve done to pay back people who volunteer on Ardour. Sixteen people showed up and the following discussion, mostly with the Drupal team was very rewarding. There was applause afterwards. It was great.

Google’s campus was large and showed signs of rapid growth. They had over 40 buildings, I think. Their security guys were just dudes who sat under umbrellas in lawnchairs at the entrance to the driveway.

I had a good conversation with a couple of the Subversion developers, who work at Google. Their Poisoness People talk was particularly entertaining.

The whole thing really got me excited to work on Ardour again.

Also, the hotel was pretty nice. It had this late 50s intellectual motif. Lots of Jackson Pollock style paintings and such.

Google Summer of Code conference!

I’m going to the Google Summer of Code conference this Saturday. I’m flying out to San Jose tomorrow morning.

I’m pretty excited. I’ll be leading a discussion of cheap, homegrown ways to reward contributors to open source projects.

Then, I’ll fly to LA to visit some friends. And since I’ve never been to California before, this is all new to me. Too bad I won’t have time to check out San Francisco. Oh well.

Tears of Joy

I finally edited my footage of the 30th anniversary party me and my sisters threw for our parents.

Kurt Halsey and Barcelona/Sprites

Kurt Halsey makes me feel kinda emo.

Also, I was disappointed to hear that the Jason, from what used to be my favorite band for a couple years, Barcelona, is now just putting out novelty songs with his new band, The Sprites.

Compare: Have You Forgotten The Bomb -=- I Started A Blog Nobody Read. It’s so bad it’s making me reconsider my taste in the Barcelona songs too.

(I still love you, Barcelona. Plz come home. All is forgiven)

manic manic

Okay, so. Awesome weekend. Went to the Catskills with Paul, who was competing in a triathlon. He basically biked, ran, and swam to the top of a mountain in New Paltz.

Even got some sun from being at the top of the mountain for so long. Apparently you can see six states from the top.

I spent all day at work listening to The Besties and some twee band from Iceland. I remember this guy in college who’s personal mission it seemed was to spread the word of ska. Well, that’s what twee is for me. No one seems to listen to it in NYC. Maybe it’s not all cocaine’d rockstar enough for this city, I dunno. But I think it’s making in-roads.

Anyways, it inspired me to start recording a new song: Tree Fort. This is only the first 30 seconds or so and it’s still very much in progress. But still, fun!

I’m very much considering going to the New England Popfest 2006. It’d be nice if I could find someone else who’d want to go, but every person I show it to says “I haven’t ever heard of any of these bands, ever.” I’m not bragging, I wish I had more people to talk about this music with.

summer->fall 2006

I’ve made a mixlist to celebrate the season change. We’ve had nothing but gray skies and rain this week. It’s been great. Time to pull out the blankets, close the windows, and make soup. As always, enjoy, and if you like the song, buy the album already!

1. Prison Song - The Besties
2. Le Weekend - Saloon
3. This Heart’s On Fire - Wolf Parade
4. Seven Days - Azure Ray
5. Skyway - The Replacements
6. Don’t Be Mean - The Raincoats
7. Parade - Derby
8. Meteor - Masters of the Hemisphere
9. Why I Didn’t Like August 93 - The Constantines
10. ¡Que Llueva! - Juana Molina
11. S/T - Everybody Uh Oh
12. Boatfriend - Black Moth Super Rainbow
13. 96 Tears - ? and the Mysterians
14. Who took the rebels - Benji Cossa
15. Foreign Words - Boy Crazy
16. pif - The Octopus Project
17. On To September - Dear Nora

Here’s the whole thing in a zip file.