February 2009 Archives

Issac Asimov's (very) short stories "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer" popped into my consciousness today. I remember reading these a long, long time ago -- certainly when I was a young teenager.

For this final installment, the albums aren't so much influential  as they simply are great albums.

1. Matthew Sweet - 100% Fun (1995) - Bought this on a whim, and boy am I glad I did. All the songs are good, but Smog Moon and We're the Same are the standouts for me.
2. Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen (1997) - It's interesting the Brick, their biggest radio hit, sounds very little like their typical songs. There are so many great songs on this album: Fair, Kate, Selfless, Cold and Composed, Missing the War, and Evaporated.
   
3. Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind (1997) - The radio play stuff at the front of the album is pretty good. But the last few songs of this album are truly memorable: Background, Motorcycle Drive By, God of Wine.
   
4. Guster - Lost and Gone Forever (1999) - I love the background vocal harmonies these guys use throughout their songs. What You Wish For, Either Way, Happier are notable, but all songs on this album are great.
   
5. Vertical Horizon - Everything You Want (1999) - I'm torn between this album and Go as the better one. But this one came first, and has my favorite of their songs on it, Best I Ever Had. And of course there are the radio songs, which are solid: You're a God and Everything You Want.
   
6. Foo Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose (1999) - Won the 2000 Grammy for best rock album, and for good reason. Generator is my favorite song here, but Next Year, Aurora, Ain't it the Life, and MIA are all great.
7. Jason Falkner - Presents Author Unknown (1996) - I Go Astray is outstanding, but all of Jason's song are at their worst, merely good. He's not afraid to veer outside the standard chord progressions, which keeps things interesting.
8. Fountains of Wayne - Fountains of Wayne (1996) - A great debut of a consistently solid band, Leave the Biker is the standout for me here, but the whole album's good.
   
9. McFly - Motion in the Ocean (2006) - Transylvania channels Queen, and they tip their hat to them with a cover of Don't Stop Me Now at the end of the album. They're technically a "boy band", but they've got songwriting chops, that's for sure. They nail the pop hooks in practically every song they write.
10. Fall Out Boy - Infinity on High (2007) - This is about as hard as I like, but boy is it good. Thriller and Ringing in My Ears are the songs I always come back to.
    
11. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs (2008) - I already wrote about this one before. Grapevine Fires and Twin-Sized Bed are the best songs here.
    

1. Les Miserables Broadway Cast Recording (1987) - I missed this one on the first list. I was into musicals in high school, and this is, IMHO, the best musical ever written. I was in love with Frances Ruffelle just based on her amazing performance of On My Own.
2. Chess Original Soundtrack (1993) - Written by the guys from Abba, this applies their songwriting skills without the fluffy pop vibe. One Night In Bankok is outstanding, but Mountain Duet is the one I played over and over: "Nevermind him; I haven't missed him so far!"
   
3. ELO - Afterglow (1990) - Bought at the Ann Arbor street fair when Schoolkids Records sold all albums for $10 each. I bought it for the songs I knew (Living Thing, Mr Blue Sky, Turn to Stone), but fell in love with the stuff I didn't (Telephone Line, Twilight)
4. Sting - The Soul Cages (1991) - Mixed with Q sound. I remember playing the Mad About You bass slide over and over, amazed at the audio effect. But the song grew on me too. All This Time is great, but Why Should I Cry For You? is the stand-out: one of my all time favorites. Fantastic.
   
5. Pet Shop Boys - Discography (1991) - Erasure, Yaz, and Dead or Alive were my introduction to synth pop, but PSB were a level above with great songwriting: Jealousy, Suburbia, It's a Sin, Opportunites.
   
6. REM - Out of Time (1991) - I played this album so much, I thought I might wear it out. Losing My Religion is such a simple song, but really grabs me. But the whole album is simply solid jangle rock.
   
7. Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear (1991) - Scott Sbhili turned me onto these guys, and I thank him for it. They are my favorite band of all time. All I Want got me to buy the album, but Is It For Me turned out to be my favorite song. After this one, I bought every other album they made the day it came out.
   
8. Counting Crows - August and Everything After (1993) - Got this one for free from my half-brother, who was a DJ. Amazing songwriting. Anna Begins, Murder of One, Omaha... really they are all solid songs. Even the one that didn't make the album, Einstein on the Beach, is great.
   
9. Barenaked Ladies - Gordon (1992) - I saw these guys on a special about Brian Wilson where they talked about song craft. I bought their first 3 albums all together right then. All were great, but this was their most solid work. Box Set is just a fantastic song.
   
10. Live - Throwing Copper (1994) - I remember listening to this over and over in my car back when I worked at Claris in 96-97. I loved the build to climax in Pillar Of Davidson: "The shepard won't leave you alone, he's in my face, and I..."
    

Yes, I know this whole "viral notes" phenomenon is supposed to happen on Facebook, but what with their new terms of service fiasco, I prefer to keep my content out of their grubby little hands, thankyouverymuch.

These aren't 100% in chronological order, since some of the albums I discovered years after they were originally released.

1. Pink Floyd - The Wall (1979) - A perfect companion for my teen angst. Nobody Home was the first "pop" song I learned by heart on the piano, and I played it in my high school's talent show.
   
2. Def Leppard - Pyromania (1983) - This is about as hard as I like my rock, but the backing vocal harmonies really grabbed me.
   
3. Joe Jackson - Night & Day (1982) - My first exposure to piano pop. Real Men is a fantastic song, with a great message, and a great chorus.
   
4. Sting - Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985) - All the songs on this album are great, but Russians is the one I played over and over, with the theme borrowed from Prokofiev.
   
5. Bruce Hornsby - The Way It Is (1986) - More piano pop. I spent many hours with a calculator and sheet music programming Mandolin Rain into a really poorly designed sequencer on my Amiga. But River Runs Low Tonight is still my favorite off this album.
   
6. Little Shop of Horrors Original Soundtrack (1986) - My first introduction to Ashman/Menken, which led me to Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. But none topped their original. Suddenly Seymour is the gem here.
   
7. James Taylor - Greatest Hits (1976) - I remember blasting Carolina in My Mind from my new CD player to my new JBL studio monitors in my dorm room freshman year. Good times.
   
8. Elton John - Greatest Hits (1974) - A roommate introduced me to Elton. I promptly bought the sheet music where he was thrilled to discover the real lyrics to Rocket Man, which he thought were "burning all the trees out on the lawn".
   
9. Billy Joel - Greatest Hits Vol 1 & 2 (1985) - The same roommate introduced me to older Billy Joel (The Entertainer, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant) before he got all melodramatic and cheesy (Tell Her About It, Uptown Girl)
   
10. Todd Rundgren - A Cappella (1985) - Guys in the Michigan Men's Glee Club turned me onto Todd and a cappella music in general. Pretending to Care is one of those songs I never get tired of. And the bridge of Johnee Jingo still gives me chills.

This is getting a bit long, so I'm going to break it up into 3 posts.

I just spent 4 days in Michigan cleaning out my mom's house, getting it ready to sell. In the process, I realized there is one really basic service that should exist for people doing these things: Recycling and disposal.

We had a ton of old papers and magazines and ended up tossing them all in the trash because there was no clear way to recycle them (at least in Michigan). Same for cans and bottles.

But even worse, there were a bunch of household cleaners and other assorted liquids and spray cans (Draino, vinegar, Raid, furniture polish, and of course the obligatory cans of paint that exist in any garage) that we ended up junking or pouring down the drain. You'd think the city or water dept would want to help keep people from doing this.

Thankfully, there is one organization that helped us out a lot: The Salvation Army. They came out to the house with a 24 foot moving truck and carted away a garage-full of boxes and about half of the furniture in the house. We had plenty more they could have taken, but the truck was full. We're definitely going to call them to come back out and get the rest of the stuff.

I wish there was a web site out there where someone who needed a household's worth of stuff could post a request. It'd be more efficient than the Salvation Army, and I'd feel better about choosing a particular person/family and helping them out directly.

This is not what you think:

I recently upgraded my iPhoto to the latest release, motivated mostly by the new "Faces" feature. Here's the short summary so that you can get on with your day: meh.

In my experience, when faced with a simple binary decision of A or B, there are three possible scenarios:

1. One of the options is clearly better than then other. The decision is easy. Choose the better one.
   
2. Both options seem about the same. There is no clear winner. In this case, the decision is also easy. Choose either one; it doesn't matter which. Since they are both about the same, you'll have reasonably good results either way you go.
3. You don't have enough information to properly evaluate which one is better. This is the tricky scenario, since it requires that you go out and do research to figure out which one is better. And the worst thing you can do is mistake this for scenario 2 and choose the option that only in hindsight is clearly inferior.
   

I got a letter in the mail from Dollar rent-a-car a last week. It claimed damage on a car I rented when I was in Michigan for the new year and demanded nearly $700 for damages. It was crazy, because I didn't hit anything with the car, and nothing hit me.

Looking through my paperwork from the trip, I realize that I don't have anything from the car return stating the condition of the car, just the final receipt. I just presumed that was a part of the check in process: If there's a problem with the car, they tell you right then and there. Nope. Apparently it's my responsibility to get someone to check the car out and give me that paperwork.

Luckily I rented it with a Visa card that has rental car insurance. I've kicked off the process for them to pay the claim for me. No doubt they will only pay part of it. I'm sure I'll be responsible for things like the "administration fee" and "lost use" fee.

But I suppose the silver lining is that this is a lesson learned. I will always be sure to get an employee to check out the car and give me paperwork stating there is no damage to it. And barring that, I will take a bunch of pictures of the car with the day's newspaper in it to prove it was returned with no damage. Renter beware.

On a tip from Pete in the comments of my previous post on credit card logos, I headed over to Brands of the World. I found vector versions of 3 of the 4 credit card company logos.For completeness, I created the AmEx one myself in Illustrator (so it may be a bit off from the real logo). You can download the set of all 4 vector credit card logos in this ZIP file. Enjoy!

Do you live in San Francisco and have ever wondered where you can leave your car for more than two hours during the day without a residential parking permit sticker?

Here is a map of all the resident street parking zones in the City.  Avoiding those zones lets you keep your car parked all day and night without getting a ticket.

This is useful if, say, your wife is about to giving birth and you will be spending a few days at San Francisco Kaiser Hospital on Geary Boulevard, and you want to avoid the expensive daily parking lot fees.  For example.

You can find this little-known map at the SFMTA site (not the sfgov.org or SF DPT), or just download the parking map here.

After checking out the Pitchfork site earlier today, I was curious about what their distribution of ratings looked like. So I decided to chart it.



It's actually not too bad of a distribution given the human bias in assigning ratings. You can clearly see a bias for round numbers (those ending in 0 or 5). It's also clear that Pitchfork reviewers prefer lower to average reviews ending in 8 and above average reviews ending in 3.

I'm not a statistician, so I'll leave the deeper analysis for someone else in the comments. But the most glaring take-away is the median of 7.4. This is higher that I would have guessed.

I'm always on the lookout for new music recommendations. But I've found that the best ones come from those who already know the kind of music you like. Occasionally I've suckered into things like Pitchfork or MetaCritic only to find that they come up short the vast majority of the time. In fact, one of my top favorite bands of all time ranked #49 on Blender's list of 50 worst artists.

Still, it is a form of entertainment itself to read some of these reviews and see how they attempt to justify their subjective opinion as if it were cold, hard fact. For example, this review of Pet Sounds, one of the greatest albums of all time, which garnered a mere 7.5, or any of these 0.0 ratings (type in different values for even more review fun like 10.0). After reading this stuff, it makes this Onion parody all the more hilarious:

Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website.

 

According to the review, authored by Pitchfork editor in chief Ryan Schreiber, the popular medium that predates the written word shows promise but nonetheless "leaves the listener wanting more."

I can't say it's all bad. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is a pretty good shoegazer/noise-pop album that is on Pitchfork's Best New Music page. But the hit rate is pretty low. I've reliably found great new artists from trusted sources such as Pandora (Jason Falkner and McFly) or even the tried and true method: friends with similar tastes (Faber Drive and Binocular).

I understand how Yahoo wants to make Mail more relevant in this era of the social network. But I don't think jamming social network-esque features into Mail is the way to solve the problem.

The latest version of Yahoo Mail adds yet another bar to the top of the UI, which they call the Filter Bar in the HTML, but I'm calling the Connections bar. It allows you to see only mail from your "connections" in your Inbox. This might be valuable if I had any connections. But I don't. No one does to start off. You have to invite people to connect and they have to accept.



So why would I want to have people as a connection? According to Yahoo:

Connecting with friends and family allows you to:

• Give their messages higher priority in your Inbox
• Automatically keep up with photos they share online
• Much more coming soon!

This is a pretty weak value proposition in my mind. I have to ask people yet again to connect with me. And for expending this social capital with them, I gain two modestly useful features, and a vague promise of more "soon".

The really frustrating thing is that these features can and should be provided to me regardless of whether or not I am "connected" with the other person. Doesn't the fact that I have them in my address book or in my Sent Items folder mean this is a trusted person I am intersted in?

And why add yet another bar to the UI, which reduces the number of messages I can see in my Inbox? Couldn't this filter be integrated more seamlessly into the UI? I suspect this is a case where the UI is in fact there more for marketing reasons than for usefulness or usability.

Thankfully with UI on the web, there are workarounds. I created this GreaseMonkey script to remove this bar and give me back the full view of my Inbox. Maybe you'll find it useful too.

function addGlobalStyle(css) {
    var head, style;
    head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
    if (!head) { return; }
    style = document.createElement('style');
    style.type = 'text/css';
    style.innerHTML = css;
    head.appendChild(style);
}

addGlobalStyle('#filterbar { display:none; }');
  

I put this up on Userscripts.org. Get it here.