Appreciator

Uploading a Drupal module using TortoiseCVS

2010-12-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

I just added the yolink enhanced search module to drupal.org.

The last hurdle in getting this module out in the world was adding it to CVS, which I prefer to do using the Tortoise CVS GUI. Following these directions, everything was going great. And it would have gone great right through to the end, but in the Create New Module step, I missed the part where I changed the path to the module. My module wasn't showing up in the contributions directory, and I kept getting errors that adding a branch wasn't allowed in /module_name.

Lots of Googling and some fail-dread-based procrastination later, I found this video, paused after every sentence, and managed not to skim over the critical module path setting. CVS let me add a branch with no errors in sight (cue angels singing the name of kyl191).

If you're looking to add a module to Drupal.org with TortoiseCVS, both of the linked sets of directions should work -- if you follow them!

Uploading to Freebase, part II: authenticating with OAuth

2010-12-11T18:51:00.001-08:00

I'd hoped to have written the bulk of human knowledge to Freebase by now, but I came to a screeching halt when I found that I'd need cookies and sessions and such.

That is, you have to authenticate to write data in bulk to Freebase. Here's one way to do so using OAuth and PHP.

1. Sign in to Freebase and register an app. Take note of your Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.

2. Get oauth-php and add it to a directory where your code can see it.

3. On the page from which you'd like users to authenticate, include the following code (adapted pretty directly from the Twitter example):


require "oauth-php/library/OAuthStore.php";
require "oauth-php/library/OAuthRequester.php";

/**
 * oauth-php: Example OAuth client
 *
 * Performs simple 2-legged authentication
 *
 * The MIT License
 * 
 * 
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 * of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
 * in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
 * to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 * 
 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 * all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 * 
 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 * AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 * LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
 * OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
 * THE SOFTWARE.
 */

// register at http://www.freebase.com/apps/create and fill these two 
define("FREEBASE_CONSUMER_KEY", "FILL IN");
define("FREEBASE_CONSUMER_SECRET", "FILL IN");

define("FREEBASE_OAUTH_HOST","https://api.freebase.com");
define("FREEBASE_REQUEST_TOKEN_URL", FREEBASE_OAUTH_HOST . "/api/oauth/request_token");
define("FREEBASE_AUTHORIZE_URL", "https://www.freebase.com/signin/authorize_token");
define("FREEBASE_ACCESS_TOKEN_URL", FREEBASE_OAUTH_HOST . "/api/oauth/access_token");

define('OAUTH_TMP_DIR', function_exists('sys_get_temp_dir') ? sys_get_temp_dir() : realpath($_ENV["TMP"])); 

// test
$options = array('consumer_key' => FREEBASE_CONSUMER_KEY, 'consumer_secret' => FREEBASE_CONSUMER_SECRET);
OAuthStore::instance("2Leg", $options);

try
{
        // Obtain a request object for the request we want to make
        $request = new OAuthRequester(FREEBASE_REQUEST_TOKEN_URL, "GET");
        $result = $request->doRequest(0);
        parse_str($result['body'], $params);

  echo $result['body'];
  
}
catch(OAuthException2 $e)
{
        echo "Exception" . $e->getMessage();
}

?>

When you load that code, you should see a token, good for at least one POST to Freebase. (I hope -- I'm writing this up as I go.)

Please stay tuned for the next exciting installment of Uploading to Freebase!

How to upload to Freebase part I: domains and types and properties, oh my!

2010-12-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

I've been admiring the Wikipedia of databases, Freebase, from afar for a long time. I've kept my distance because if you think learning wiki syntax is a challenge, try figuring out where to even put factoids about your favorite books or musicians on Freebase. If you want your data to be useful to more people than just yourself, though, it is critical that you get the organization right. In honor of Open Data Day last weekend, I've decided to finally figure out how to upload data to Freebase (instead of adding three things by hand and giving up when the knowledge that I could add 1000 with a little PHP gets too unbearable).

The first step when you'd like to add data to Freebase is pretty easy: determine if your data would be useful to other people, and if you have a right to upload it. If the answer to both is yes, proceed!

But then we're on to step 2 -- where does your data belong? You need to determine your data's structure. My first through tenth passes at adding to Freebase probably went through the Basic Concepts wiki, which falls prey to the downfall of many a wiki page -- really bad organization. (It looks like someone played a hand of Yahtzee with all the abstract concepts you need to understand to put your data in the right place on Freebase, then wrote it up in wiki form. I'd re-organize, but every attempt to cut down redundant information and leave things in reasonable order on Wikipedia has left me reversed, scolded, and frustrated.)

So let me try to clarify here (feel free, Freebase wiki editors, to grab any content that's useful, but please don't just sprinkle it hither and thither within the page).

My first hope that I might make sense of Freebase yet came from the Freebase Schema Explorer app.

Just the name gave me hope. The schema is the structure of the data, so a schema viewer is just what I was in the market for.

Right away, I saw that Freebase data is organized in domains, like Books (accessed at http://www.freebase.com/view/book).

Domains (like Books) have types, like Poem, Short Story, and Book (accessed at http://www.freebase.com/view/book/book). This could be confusing, because other users, probably baffled by the wiki like me, have added things like ISBN and Book Character as types of books. I know we're in data hippie land and everyone is a special flower, but that's frankly wrong. "Book Character" is not a type of book.

Types (like Poem, Short Story, or Book) can have both instances and properties, accessed at http://www.freebase.com/view/book/book. For the domain Books of type Book, an instance would be something like The Catcher in the Rye. (It seems that Freebase calls instances "topics", but the Schema Viewer nails it better with "instance," I think.) Examples of book properties include Characters and Genre.

For the data I'll probably add to Freebase first -- podcasts -- the domain is Broadcast (/broadcast), with the type Podcast Feed (http://www.freebase.com/view/broadcast/podcast_feed).

As of this writing, there are 2,584 Podcast Feed instances/topics. Their properties include Name (example: Wired's Alt Text), Image, and Average Media Length. Already I see a flaw, which I'll need to correct if I'm going to use this data for my Podcast Finder -- there's no podcast creator (or Podcaster) property listed. And the Freebase wiki noted that one can't edit a schema created by another Freebase user -- I'd have to duplicate all 2,584 instances/topics and set up my own schema.

Will I figure out how to add the Podcaster property? Will I duplicate the Podcast Feed type? Will I lose my Internet connection because I stayed up too late blogging, slept through a WebEx, and lost my job?

Find out in the next installment of this exciting series, wherein I shall explore yet another query language, MQL, and hopefully start adding all information ever to an easily-queried free online database.

(Or I'll take another two years off blogging and come back in 2012 blogging about how excited I am about our new lady President. Or arsenic-based space aliens. Stay tuned!)

Comparing Amarok and Songbird

2009-05-24T23:21:00.001-07:00

I love the tremendously uncool Windows Media Player (WMP), primarily because it has portable smart playlists. A WMP smart playlist can go with you to a new computer and still find music by the artist(s) of your choice, whereas an iTunes Smart Playlist(TM) will be looking for specific file locations. That makes a huge difference in what you can do with your music.

I've hoped for a while that open source music players for Linux like Amarok and Songbird would implement smart, XML based playlists instead of playlists that save file locations. Unfortunately, neither does yet. But while I was checking out their playlists, I decided to compare Songbird and Amarok on a few other criteria.

In addition to XML playlists, both players lacked a couple of other important features. Neither Amarok nor Songbird showed any interest in syncing music to my SD card, and neither deleted a file from my computer when I deleted it from my library.

After an initially more difficult install, Songbird edged out Amarok for usability. Amarok had too many "little" bugs (like not playing mp3s or scrobbling to last.fm). Sure, you can probably fix the problems, but they worked out of the box with Songbird. Amarok wins handily in terms of podcast support, but it wasn't enough to put it over the edge as the media player I'll keep.

Songbird
Pros: Plays mp3s right after install. Scrobbles to last.fm right after install.
Cons: Not easy to install. Podcast support not as strong as Amarok's. Doesn't play wav files.

The installation process was not as easy as Amarok's (in fairness, I didn't have to tweak Songbird afterward to get mp3s and scrobbling to work).

I had a brief flash of hope that I'd get my SD card synced by installing the FolderSync add-on. But after installation, I couldn't find any evidence of FolderSync's existence, and I couldn't understand the directions.

Songbird kind of has podcast integration through subscriptions, but nothing showed up with updated Onion or Buzz Out Loud subscriptions. Apparently not all feed formats work.

There are other cool things I haven't explored about Songbird: web pages as playlists, love and ban for last.fm right in the player, Flickr pics related to music you're listening to, Twitter integration.

Songbird Summary
Plays mp3s after install? Yes
Last.fm scrobble? Yes, by default
Truly smart playlists? No, just iTunes-style dropdown playlists
Sync SD card? Nothing obvious there by default
Integrated podcasts? Kind of
Rip CDs? No
Delete file when removing from library? No
Plays wav files? No
Apt-get install? No

Amarok
Pros: Easy install with package manager. Podcast integration better than Songbird's. Plays wav files.
Cons: Doesn't play mp3s right after install; you have to install an extra package. Last.fm scrobbling requires work.

To get mp3s to play (!), I had to install libxine1-ffmpeg. That's a number 1 after libxine, not a letter l.

Though it is integrated, I never got last.fm scrobbling to work. Apparently on Ubuntu 9.04, you have to upgrade Amarok, but after an hour hacking at it, I gave up.

Amarok added The Onion podcast using its integrated OPML database and Buzz Out Loud via pasting in the RSS feed. Both had updated and showed files within an hour.

Amarok Summary
Plays mp3s after install? No!
Last.fm scrobble? In theory
Truly smart playlists? No, just iTunes-style dropdown playlists
Sync SD card? Nothing obvious there by default
Integrated podcasts? Yes
Rip CDs? No (but maybe with a hack)
Delete file when removing from library? I think no
Plays wav files? Yes
Apt-get install? Yes

Tools of the Twitter famous

2009-05-16T18:02:00.000-07:00

I enjoy Twitter, but I'm looking to improve a few things. The worst flaw I've found is that when people write me directly using my username or a direct message, I don't see it for days. I don't click the individual links to show me those messages. So through sheer bad design, I miss the parts of the Twitter conversation that are most important to me.

Another flaw is keeping track of followers. If someone is hitting me with a lot of sandwich tweets or a wall of twenty automated tweets in a row, I want to weed them out. If they're following me back, though, I'll think twice about unfollowing, as it might insult them and I'd probably lose a follower out of it. Unfortunately, there's no integrated way to see if people follow you back.

And then there's design. I like the simplicity of the Twitter interface, but I'd like to at least try something besides a single, static, tiled image.

Perhaps the many, many Twitter tools available could solve my problems. I decided to look first at tools used by Twitterers I like with more than a thousand follows.

This is unscientific, of course. Lance Armstrong, Rainn Wilson, and Martha Stewart could tweet using stone tablets and they'd get thousands of followers. But tools used by busy people probably at least provide efficiency.

In the end, none of the tools I tried solved the three main problems I set out to correct. But one tool, TweetDeck, at least shows replies and direct messages on a single page by default.

Here is a list of tools used by twitterers I follow who have more than 1000 followers.

TwitterBerry
The most popular Tweeter I follow is Lance Armstrong, with 860,957 followers. As of this writing, he had recently used both TwitterBerry and Tweetie. TwitterBerry, as suggested by the name, is a tool for BlackBerry mobile devices. If you have a BlackBerry, TwitterBerry is good enough for Lance Armstrong, so you should probably check it out. I don't have a BlackBerry and don't want one, so I won't review TwitterBerry. Other tweeters who use TwitterBerry: GarinKilpatrick (18,097 followers), SistersTalk (5,276 followers), and PGHolyfield (1,048 followers).

Tweetie
Tweetie is like TwitterBerry, but for iPhones. Popular users of Tweetie include Lance Armstrong (860,957 followers), Rainn Wilson (665,607 followers), Trent Reznor (515,302 followers), Stephen Fry (500,730 followers), ElijahManor (25,048 followers), GeekyGirlDawn (2,274 followers), Verso (2065 followers), TheSuicideKing(1,480 followers), and EvilSpinmeister (1,400 followers).

As with the BlackBerry, I don't have an iPhone and don't want one, so I didn't check this out, but if you have an iPhone, this app seems to very popular with quality tweeters.

Mobile web
Martha Stewart (620,374 followers) is the third most popular twitterer I follow. She posts frequently using "mobile web", which just increases my fondness for her that much more. She's, what, late sixties? and instead of thinking she needs a separate tool to "do this Twitter whatsit" like most intentionally-obtuse older celebrities, she just fires up IE or Opera on her phone and does it. Bravo! Wildly popular feline twitterer Sockington (506,681 followers) also uses the mobile web interface.

TweetDeck
In addition to Tweetie, Trent Reznor uses TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a tool for any major platform (that is, Windows, Mac, or Linux). Other popular users of TweetDeck are The_GMan (68,246 followers), StyleTime (20,683 followers), DataDirt (10,277 followers), Mur Lafferty (3,290 followers), SawHtoo (3,086 followers), SWhitley (2,292 followers),

The three-column design in TweetDeck solved my number one problem right away. Within five minutes of finishing my install, I got an @reply from an IRL friend I wouldn't have wanted to miss.

You can also create groups, so you see your most important followers (i.e., your real friends) first.

I need to change my profile pic, though. I used a full-size giant creepy photo of my face, to embarrassing effect in TweetDeck. It's amazing I've ever gotten a followback from a TweetDeck user.

TweetDeck Summary
Clicks required to see replies and direct messages: Zero
Easily see if someone you're following follows you back? No
Works on PC? Yes
Works on Linux? Yes
Send to Twitter, Facebook, or both? Yes
Easily add people to groups? Yes
Easily add RSS feeds? No
Have to install Adobe Air? Yes
Easily manage multiple accounts (not necessarily a good thing)?

Web
In addition to using the mobile web, Sockington is my most popular Twitter follow who frequently uses the plain old web to update. Good to know I haven't been hobbling myself by loading up twitter.com in Firefox to tweet. Other folks who hit the web to tweet: GeraldWeber, BreakingNewz (28,689 followers), Garin Kilpatrick (18,097 followers), Paste Magazine (18,039 followers), Timothy Adam (17,489 followers), Dana Willhoit (17,051 followers), and Steph Agrestra (11,294 followers), DataDirt (10,277 followers), Cloaker (10,205 followers), Alexandre Gervais (8348 followers), SistersTalk (5,276 followers), Jesse Thorn (5,270 followers), PlayTwivia (4,647 followers), Bitch Magazine (4,575 followers), GraphicRiver (3,518 followers), John Roderick (3,446 followers), ApeLad (3,221 followers), SawHtoo (3086 followers), TweetDr (2,610 followers), Go_GetIt (2,470 followers>, TechMemeFH (2,087 followers), BikePortland (1,597 followers), WomanistMusings (1,469 followers), Dave Hill (1,243 followers), WebChick (1,102 followers).

Web Summary
Clicks required to see replies and direct messages: Two
Easily see if someone you're following follows you back? No
Works on PC? Yes
Works on Linux? Yes
Send to Twitter, Facebook, or both? Yes, with work
Easily add people to groups? No
Easily add RSS feeds? No
Have to install Adobe Air? No
Easily manage multiple accounts (not necessarily a good thing)? Yes

Seesmic Desktop
The next most popular Twitterer I follow is Ustream (453,327 followers). Ustream uses Seesmic Desktop, which works on Mac and PC, but apparently not Linux, and looks similar to TweetDeck.

Seesmic's most obvious advantage looks like its ability to manage multiple accounts. That seems spammy and yucky to me, but one person's spammy and yucky is another person's livelihood, I guess.

Though it is not the default setting to show replies and DMs, there are two links to show those, and you can probably set it up to show those without clicking. I never figured out how to add a friend to a friend group.

Seesmic Summary
Clicks required to see replies and direct messages: Two
Easily see if someone you're following follows you back? No
Works on PC? Yes
Works on Linux? No?
Send to Twitter, Facebook, or both? Yes
Easily add people to groups? No
Easily add RSS feeds? No
Have to install Adobe Air? Yes
Easily manage multiple accounts (not necessarily a good thing)? Yes

Twitli
In addition to the web interface, GeraldWeber also uses Twitli, a Twitter tool for Android phones. Now, unlike BlackBerry and iPhone, I do want an Android phone, but as I'm stuck with Windows Mobile until I strike oil or find gold, I can't yet review Twitli.

Ping.fm
My next most popular Twitter follow, ChrisPirillo (61,885 followers), updates using Ping.fm. Ping.fm is an awesome tool that links one social network to another, and you should check it out whether you want to use it for Twitter or not. Someone posting to Twitter using Ping.fm may be using his Facebook status or FriendFeed or blog to post to Twitter. Ping.fm is a little dangerous, as you can end up spamming people you like with multiple links to the same thing, so if you use it, try to keep track of what's going where. And of course, if you want to keep parts of your online life separated, be very careful with Ping.fm.

Ping.fm Summary
Clicks required to see replies and direct messages? N/A
Has easy way to see if someone you're following follows you back? N/A
Works on PC? Yes
Works on Linux? Yes
Has way to send to Twitter, Facebook, or both? Yes
Easy to add people to groups? N/A
Easily add RSS feeds? Yes
Have to install Adobe Air? No
Easily manage multiple accounts (not necessarily a good thing)? N/A

Twitter Tools
After ChrisPirillo, the next most popular twitterer in this "study" is SitePoint (32,918 follows). SitePoint uses Twitter Tools, a WordPress plugin to tweet. This may be very useful for folks with WordPress blogs, but it's somewhat specific to those users. BikePortland (1,597 followers) also uses Twitter Tools.

bit.ly
In addition to TweetDeck, Styletime posts using bit.ly's bookmarklet. You put the bookmarklet in your browser toolbar, then click when you find an interesting link you'd like to share on Twitter.

Nambu
In addition to the web, PasteMagazine (18,039 followers) uses Nambu, a desktop Twitter application for Macs. Meh. Rasmus (2345 followers) also uses Nambu.

Twitterfeed
PasteMagazine also uses twitterfeed, which, like Ping.fm, will pipe the RSS feed of your choice to Twitter. Twitterfeed looks more versatile than Ping.fm, in that it seems to take any RSS feed, not just pre-approved ones as on Ping.fm. Such services can be used well with care, but it can also lead to the second most annoying Twitter behavior (after spam follows) -- posting an entire page of tweets at the same time. Like PasteMagazine, Alexandre Gervais (8,322 followers), SistersTalk (5,276 followers), and BitchMagazine (4,575 followers) use twitterfeed so I never noticed until I wrote this blog post. SciSolutions (2,051 followers) uses twitterfeed badly, posting ten updates at a time.

Txt
The most popular twitterer I follow who recently used a text message to update was Cloaker (10,205 followers).

ShareThis.com
In addition to the web and twitterfeed, AlexGervais (8,322 followers) used a ShareThis button at the bottom of a blog post to post to Twitter.

Digg
AlexGervais (8,322 followers) also used the Digg toolbar to post something he saw on Digg to Twitter.

CoTweet
In addition to the web interface, GraphicRiver (3,518 followers) uses CoTweet, a business-oriented tool currently in private beta testing.

Twitterific
In addition to Tweetie, Verso (2,065 followers) uses the iPhone app Twitterific. BikePortland (1,597 followers) also uses Twitterific.

HootSuite
IHeartBrunch (1,586 followers) uses HootSuite.

HootSuite's unique feature seems to be that multiple people with different passwords can post to a single Twitter account.

HootSuite Summary
Clicks required to see replies and direct messages? Two
Has easy way to see if someone you're following follows you back? No
Works on PC? Yes
Works on Linux? Yes
Has way to send to Twitter, Facebook, or both? Yes
Easily add people to groups? No
Easily add RSS feeds? Yes
Have to install Adobe Air? No
Easily manage multiple accounts (not necessarily a good thing)? Yes

Twhirl
Sarah Conner (1,282 followers) uses Twhirl, similar to TweetDeck and Seesmic, but very compact. PGHolyfield (1,048 followers) also uses Twhirl.

Twhirl Summary
Clicks required to see replies and direct messages? Two
Has easy way to see if someone you're following follows you back? No
Works on PC? Yes
Works on Linux?
Has way to send to Twitter, Facebook, or both? No (need Ping.fm)
Easily add people to groups? No
Easily add RSS feeds? No (need Ping.fm)
Have to install Adobe Air? Yes
Easily manage multiple accounts (not necessarily a good thing)? Yes

Twitterfon
TheBuzzByBrian (1,154 followers) uses Twitterfon, an iPhone app.

I'd love to hear about your favorite Twitter tools in the comments.

Blog status update

2009-02-23T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'm deciding how best to separate code posts from music posts from angry political rants. Appreciator will return to its originally-scheduled cultural programming soon. Hope to see any readers who've encountered this tumbleweed of a blog then!

My first Drupal module(s)!

2008-12-27T20:25:00.001-08:00

I'd nearly given up learning the Drupal content management system, after it took me two hours to change a font on a static web page. But I needed to procrastinate something even more difficult than changing fonts in Drupal, so I decided to try, try again.

The first interesting thing I wanted to try in Drupal was feed aggregation. I love the idea of feed aggregators like Tumblr, FriendFeed, and Swurl, but I'm unsatisfied with the limitations on what or how many feeds you can use. The output (from Tumblr in particular) can also be rough-looking. Why oh why can't they handle quotation marks in titles right. I'm no regex champion, but I suspect even I, PHP fledgling, could write the fix to that. Surely they've noticed that posts titled "Barack Obama - "Yes We Can"" aren't very appealing? (I had to go out of my way for Blogger to let me make it that ugly.) Finally, I'd like to enhance the output of at least one feed with additional content from my own database, which is completely impossible with Tumblr, Swurl, or FriendFeed.

So I've been checking out Drupal's feed aggregators. I tried Aggregator and FeedAPI my first day using Drupal, so I doubt I assessed their usability fairly. I'll try them again when (if) I understand CCK and Views. But when I tried the ActivityStream module, my enthusiasm for Drupal was restored! Not only did it do significant portions of what I want done (Flickr, last.fm, and delicious feeds), but it looked dead easy to add new feeds by making new sub-modules.

It was indeed dead easy. To add a Goodreads sub-module, I copied and pasted the delicious sub-module. I opened the two delicious files and replaced the word "delicious" with "goodreads". I opened my module list and saw my new module. I turned it on, entered my Goodreads info, and holy shit it worked! My recent Goodreads activity was interspersed with the Twitter, delicious, last.fm, and Flickr info I'd already added. I decided sleep could wait until I made five modules like my Goodreads modules, for Blogger, StumbleUpon, YouTube videos, YouTube favorites, and Hulu.

My new modules are far from perfect. I have a list a page long of improvements I want to make (like handling quotation marks in titles...). But the beauty of Drupal, and open source in general, is that I have access to the code to make those improvements. All I can do with Tumblr is gripe and hope they fix it.

Thus far, it seems to me that in Drupal, it's much more fun doing hard things like feed aggregation than doing easy things like changing fonts. I think this explains why people hate Drupal, then love it. To beginners doing something "easy" like trying to change fonts and put files where they want them, Drupal seems like a ridiculous thing to be excited about. To people who've just done something "hard" that they've wanted to do for years in the space of ten minutes (that's what she said), Drupal seems pretty awesome.

A very Hulu Christmas

2008-12-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

A white Christmas is very nice, but an extremely snowy week-before-Christmas meant my Christmas plans changed to staying in with the cats. We may order Thai food later to honor my husband's Christmas traditions. To honor mine, there must be cornflake cookies, bean dip, and television. The food is achieved, but the t.v. was harder. For starters, I have no television set. Fortunately, the Internet is almost a satisfactory video-watching alternative. Here's what I've tracked down so far.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas
A classic. I haven't watched it all the way through yet, but it was choppy. I paused it to let the whole thing load in hopes of improvement.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Another classic. Might be choppy.

Bing Crosby - White Christmas
One of my favorite Christmas songs.

John Lennon - Happy Xmas (War is Over)

Trey Parker and Matt Stone - The Spirit Of Christmas
What would Brian Boitano do?

American Dad - Best Christmas Story Never Told
The "War on Christmas" hilariously embodied. On Hulu, so shouldn't be choppy.

American Dad - Most Adequate Christmas Ever
Stan learns a Christmas lesson. On Hulu, so shouldn't be choppy.

santa claus on cribs
Not for children, though they probably won't catch the double entendre.

Elmo & Patsy - Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer
There was nothing funnier than this song to a certain ten-year-old in December 1985.

The Simpsons - Christmas Epidsode

Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Back for Christmas
Christmas is about giving.

The Madagascar Penguins - A Christmas Caper

Santa Beats Up Guy In Mall

Tom And Jerry - The Night Before Christmas
I was never that enthusiastic about the super-violent Itchy and Scratchy style Warner Brothers cartoons, but I think this one's okay.

NewsRadio - X-Mas Story
On Hulu, so shouldn't be choppy. I haven't watched it yet, but I'd bet money this is at least 4 out of 5 stars, as all NewsRadios are.

NewsRadio - Stupid Holiday Charity Talent Show
On Hulu, so shouldn't be choppy. I haven't watched it yet, but I'd bet money this is at least 4 out of 5 stars, as all NewsRadios are.

Saturday Night Live - Two A-holes Buying a Christmas Tree

Saturday Night Live - Christmas For The Jews Song

Saturday Night Live - Hanukkah Harry

Saturday Night Live- Two A-holes In A Live Nativity Scene

The Twilight Zone - The Night Of The Meek

Alfred Hitchcock Presents - The Festive Season
Bleak, quality entertainment. On Hulu, so shouldn't be choppy.

Jay Leno - Bizarre Christmas Musicians

The Colbert Report - December 11, 2008

Bones - The Santa In The Slush
I haven't checked out this show yet. Perhaps I'll start with this one. On Hulu, so it shouldn't be choppy.

The Office - Moroccan Christmas
Haven't watched yet. On Hulu, so shouldn't be choppy.

30 Rock - Christmas Special

MadTV- Best of Christmas Sketches
Hit and miss, but worth it just for The Reinfather.

Do They Know It's Christmas?

Full Metal Christmas

Sketchy's Super-Happy Christmas Film
I haven't watched it yet, but stop-motion and Christmas do go together.

Three's Company Christmas

Space Ghost Christmas

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Part I
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Part II
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Part III
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Part IV
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Part V

The A-Team - Holiday In The Hills

Nestor The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey

William S. Burroughs - The Junky's Christmas

I've only included videos that interest me, but here are links to searches so you can see what I've left out:
Hulu
GUBA
StumbleVideo
YouTube
Dailymotion
FunnyorDie
CBS

How to write a playlist maker script

2008-12-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

I got an email asking for tips on writing a playlist maker script.

Using PHP, my process was this:
1. Choose a playlist format. My favorite playlists are Windows Media Player WPL files, which use the SMIL subtype of XML. There are tons of other types of playlists. Songbird and Winamp both use M3U, for example. Unfortunately, most playlist file types, including M3U, are not as "smart" as WPL files, in that they want the exact path to a single song on a user's computer, rather than just an artist name or song title. WPL files will take an artist or song name and give you a playlist of everything in your library that matches. I don't understand why Songbird and Winamp don't handle WPL or SMIL files (yet?). After I figured out which playlist format I wanted, I right-clicked a WPL file I'd made, opened it in Notepad, and used it to cut and paste the top, bottom, and repeating bits of the playlist code where needed in the following steps.

2. Find a source of artists or song names you want in your playlist. The best way was to use an RSS feed, but for my iLike and last.fm tag playlist makers, I scraped the source code of some web pages, which is messy, but it works. You can also offer a way to paste in or upload a list of artists.

3. Write an HTML form (called, for example, input.html) that takes user input (like a last.fm username) to get the source you want. The "Submit" button on the form will take you to your playlist making code (playlistmaker.php, for example).

4. Write code to convert your input (such as a last.fm username) into a URL to an XML or HTML file and get that file ready to be used. For example:
$handle = fopen("http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/".$username."/topartists.txt?type=overall", "r");

5. Write code to make an array of only artists or song names using your source. The exact code will vary depending on the source of artists or song names. This is the trickiest part, and I'd give examples of how I've done it, but it's different nearly every time, and I'm sure my ways are not especially elegant. One thing I'd like to do better is parsing the actual XML instead of finding where the artists turn up in the array and using numeric indices to grab the artists or song names.

6. Create a variable that will contain the entire text you want in the playlist file ($wpl, for example). Paste in the top bit of the playlist text. For a WPL file:
$wpl = "<?wpl version=\"1.0\"?>
<smil>
<head>
<meta name="\" content="\">
<title>".$username."</title>
</head>
<body>
<seq>
<smartplaylist version="\">";

7. Write a loop that adds the section of the playlist that repeats for each artist or song name to your playlist variable ($wpl., for example). Concatenate in the artist or song name variable. Make sure you convert HTML characters, as ampersands will render your playlist utterly worthless. For example, where the artist names are in $data[2]:
while ($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) {
$wpl.="<querySet>
<sourceFilter id=\"{4202947A-A563-4B05-A754-A1B4B5989849}\" name=\"Music in my library\">
<fragment name=\"Album Artist\">
<argument name=\"condition\"<Contains>/argument>
<argument name=\"value\">" . htmlspecialchars($data[2]) . "</argument>
</fragment>
</sourceFilter>
</querySet>";
}

8. Finish off your playlist text variable by pasting in the end text of the playlist variable (again, $wpl.). For a WPL file:
$wpl.="
</smartPlaylist>
</seq>
</body>
</smil>";

9. Create a new file containing your playlist variable text as follows:
$handle = fopen("filename.wpl","w");

10. Offer a link to download the new file.

11. Try it out!

Optional tweaks:
12. WPL playlist files offer you the option of finding an artist name that "Contains" the word "Bell" (for example), or finding an artist that "Is" the word "Bell." After the band "Bell" made Belle and Sebastian turn up in a festival playlist I made (oh, the brief crushing excitement), I added a conditional so that if the artist name is 5 characters or shorter, I use "Is", and if it's longer, I use "Contains". It's still inexact, and it's an area I'd like to improve. Handling "The" (Pixies, Beatles, Raveonettes) is another thing I'd like to work out at some point. Here's an example of one of my conditionals where the artist names are in $data[2]:
while ($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) {
$limit=6;
$num=count($data[2]);
for ($i=0;$i<$num;$i++) {
$len[$i]=strlen($data[2]);
if ($len[$i]<$limit) {
$wpl.="<querySet>
<sourceFilter id=\"{4202947A-A563-4B05-A754-A1B4B5989849}\" name=\"Music in my library\">
<fragment name=\"Album Artist\">
<argument name=\"condition\">Is</argument>
<argument name=\"value\">" . htmlspecialchars($data[2]) . "</argument>
</fragment>
</sourceFilter>
</querySet>";
}
else {
$wpl.="<querySet>
<sourceFilter id=\"{4202947A-A563-4B05-A754-A1B4B5989849}\" name=\"Music in my library\">
<fragment name=\"Album Artist\">
<argument name=\"condition\"<Contains>/argument>
<argument name=\"value\">" . htmlspecialchars($data[2]) . "</argument>
</fragment>
</sourceFilter>
</querySet>";
}
}
}

13. Greasemonkey! Using a tiny bit of Javascript, you can put a link to your playlist making code on relevant source pages. Clicking this link will give you the option to look at one of my Greasemonkey scripts. You'll especially want to change:

@include to reference the page you'd like to put a link on.
The link to the script that makes your playlist.
@name
@namespace
Colors (I'm using last.fm grey. Meh.)

You can grab the username for the last.fm URL they came from by putting this at the top of your playlist maker script (playlistmaker.php, for example):
$url = getenv("HTTP_REFERER");
$elements=explode("/", $url);
unset($url);
$username=$elements[4];
unset($elements);

Here's a zip folder with code for the input form and playlist maker, as well as a Greasemonkey playlist maker for a last.fm listener's most-played artists. This was one of the first things I did when I was learning PHP, so it's far, far, far from perfect. But feel free to use any bits of it you like. I'm not litigious.

I am crawling up a learning curve (Drupal) myself right now, but if you have questions or suggestions, comments are open.

For anyone more interested in making playlists than playlist-maker scripts, my playlist makers are here.

Love is All and the Vivian Girls

2008-11-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

This year, the Raveonettes have awakened a serious interest in what I think of as tambourine-core. Love Is All and the Vivian Girls are finishing up a tour that offers up a couple good variations on the retro girl group with dirty guitar model.

Love Is All's 2006 album Nine Times The Same Song caught my attention with bouts of Arcade Fire's BRING IT all at once intensity in songs like "Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up." Bricolage Fantasy aptly decribed Love Is All as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs from Sweden. I hear Karen O most in "Talk Talk Talk", which also features doses of acid jazz screech just brief enough to be enjoyable. "Motorboat" has a strong tambourine-laced beat, with guitar that does indeed invoke a motor. One weak point is "Busy Doing Nothing At All", where the loud seems to be for loud's sake.

On Love Is All's new album A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night, the Karen O vocals seems to have given way to a softer, sweeter Cyndi Lauper/El Perro del Mar meets the Mighty Mighty Bosstones/Morphine. The high point is the slow but intense duet "A More Uncertain Future." On "Sea Sick", they somewhat overload xtra-funky bass with Morphine-style acid-jazz sax ("hard listening" music).

Love Is All - A More Uncertain Future (A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night, 2008)
Love Is All - Talk Talk Talk Talk (Nine Times The Same Song, 2006)
Love Is All - Ageing Had Never Been His Friend (Nine Times The Same Song, 2006)

Love is All - Make out, Fall Out, Make Up (Nine Times The Same Song, 2006)

Love Is All - Motorboat (Nine Times The Same Song, 2006)

Like Love Is All, the Vivian Girl bring retro girl-group big sound to their eponymous 2008 album. On "Tell The World", the basic solid drumline and harmonized vocals evoke the Raveonettes sound that's driving me wild lately. The strong bass opening on "Such A Joke" draws you and keeps you there. "No" is solid wall-of-sound rock. Weak spots: "Wild Eyes" (dull oldies sound) and "All The Time" (just a lotta noise).

Vivian Girls - Tell the World (Vivian Girls, 2008)
Vivian Girls - Where Do You Run To (Vivian Girls, 2008)
Vivian Girls - No (Vivian Girls, 2008)
Vivian Girls - Such A Joke (Vivian Girls, 2008)

Fantasy Cabinet tool

2008-11-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

The Onion recently suggested that people who'd been obsessed with the election were now going to realize our lives are devoid of any meaning.

Well, perhaps, but that doesn't mean we've stopped caring about politics.

For example, I'm working on a Fantasy Cabinet tool. Right now, it's ugly, but it works. Enjoy, America nerds.

Election Day resources online

2008-11-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

NPR Election Map
Jumping the gun like ABC, but not quite as much.

ABC Election Map
First place I saw the number of counted votes for Obama and McCain, when it was down around 13,000. Cool.

MSNBC Decision '08 Dashboard
NBC has said they'll only call the race when the chance of getting it wrong is less than 1 in 200 according to statisticians. Their maps also show key Congressional races. You can tweak the page so it shows the information you want and leaves off the junk about what Cindy McCain wore to the polls. I had a link to their video stream, but I clicked it and it was goddamn Pat Buchanan. So that's out.

Twitter Vote Report Map
Maps of people's voting experiences as reported to Twitter.

Twitter Election
A lot of nonsense, but really the absolutest fastest way to get interesting new information when it isn't nonsense.

Video the Vote
Shows real people voting, or rather, waiting in ridiculous seven hour lines to vote. With two kids. On the one hand, those people are awesome. On the other hand, I hope more states switch to voting by mail like we do in Oregon.

Huffington Post Roundup
A collection of widgets and geegaws I've not yet mined, but am looking forward to investigating.

Is Obama President?
Simple.

CNN Live Stream
Watch CNN online.

TwitVote
Completely unscientific, but if you like Obama, totally gratifying.

CNN Election Tracker
A summary of polls. I'm not sure if they'll update it with exit polls when those come in after 5 p.m., but I'll be checking this to see if they do.

American Bubbly for Election Night

2008-11-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Here are just a few suggestions for American sparkling wines to celebrate (or drown your sorrows) on Election Night.

1998 Argyle Brut Extended Tirage, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 95, $25, $59

1997 Argyle Extended Tirage, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 94, $24, $37, $40, CellarTracker, COLA

2000 Blanc de Blancs, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 92, $40

2001 Schramsberg Vineyards Reserve, Schramsberg Vineyards, California, WS 91, 90, $76, $85, $100, COLA

2000 Knudsen Vineyard Brut, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 91, $30, $40

Roederer Estate Brut, California, WS 90, $22

2002 Argyle Brut Sparkling Wine, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 90, 91.5, 87, $24

2006 Argyle Brut Rosé, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 90, $45

1996 Argyle Extended Tirage Brut, Argyle Winery, Oregon, United States, WS 90, $34, $37, $40, The Wine Camp Blog, COLA

Chateau Frank Celebre, Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars, New York, WS 82, $19, 85, $20, COLA

Schramsberg Mirabelle Brut, Schramsberg Vineyards, California, 92, Good Wine Under $20, $18, $20, COLA

1998 Schramsberg Cremant, Schramsberg Vineyards, California, 92, $45, COLA

2001 Schramsberg Brut Rosé, Schramsberg Vineyards, California, A-, $23, $27, COLA

Glenora Peach Spumante, New York, 85, $9, $10, $11, Dowd's Tasting Notes, COLA

Glenora Raspberry Spumante, New York, 85, $9, $10, $11, COLA

Sofia Blanc de Blancs, Niebaum-Coppola Winery, California, $4, $13, $16, msnbc, winewaves, Tastes Of Life, yumsugar

Schulze Cuvee Rose, New York, $14, COLA

Domaine Ste. Michelle Cuvee Brut, Chateau Ste Michelle, Washington, $14, COLA

Schulze Blanc de Blanc Sec, Schulze Vineyards & Winery, New York, $16, COLA

Schulze Blanc de Blanc Brut, Schulze Vineyards & Winery, New York, $16, COLA

2005 McWilliam's Mount Pleasant Sparkling Pinot Noir, Mount Pleasant, Missouri, $18

2006 Cuvee Brut, Atwater Estate Vineyards, New York, $25, COLA

1998 Schramsberg Brut Rose, Schramsberg Vineyards, California, $30, $97, $120, COLA

1996 Schramberg J. Schram, Schramsberg Vineyards, California, $52, COLA

Yes We Can (Hold Babies)

2008-10-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

I just heard about the adorable Yes We Can (Hold Babies) web site. You should check it out, and remember to vote, vote, vote! Find out where and what ID to bring.

25 Wedding songs

2008-10-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

Avett Brothers - Matrimony

Blitzen Trapper - Crazy On You [Buy mp3!!!]

Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain [ Buy mp3!!!]

The Boy Least Likely To - Rock Upon A Porch With You
Nada Surf - Always Love [Buy mp3!!!]

Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
The Brunettes - If You Were Alien [Buy mp3!!!]

Death Cab For Cutie - All Is Full Of Love

The Brunettes - Mars Loves Venus

Sufjan Stevens - To Be Alone With You

Feist - I Feel It All
Feist - It's Cool To Love Your Family [last.fm]

The Bees - I Love You [last.fm]

Wendy O. Williams and Lemmy Kilmister - Stand By Your Man

Matt Costa - Sunshine
Matt Costa - Sweet Rose [Lyrics]

Foo Fighters - Everlong

Of Montreal - Spoonful Of Sugar

The Pipettes - I Love You [Live][Live][Buy]

Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane [Live][Buy Album]

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Teach Your Children

The Velvet Underground - I'm Sticking With You

Gothic Archies - Shipwrecked

Holly Golightly - Your Love Is Mine

The Cure - Love Song

Google Chrome: I'll pass

2008-10-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

My Firefox browser crept up to using 200 megs of system resources today, so I decided to try out the new Google Chrome browser, which treats every window and tab as a different process. Close one tab, use fewer system resources. Awesome!

While Chrome installed (it took a long time!), I started looking for del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and download manager tools for Chrome. I found del.icio.us and StumbleUpon bookmarklets, hooray! But while I was deciding if no wonderful DownThemAll download manager would be a dealbreaker (I use DownThemAll in conjunction with my blog reader to feed my podcast addiction), I noticed the blog post "Why I Uninstalled Google Chrome." It's about Google's weird privacy situation. It's bad enough that every time any one of the kajillion random people we let use our wifi does a search, that gets logged in Google's database under our IP address. Google anonymizes that, but not really.

With Chrome, Google would keep a database of not just my searches, but absolutely everything I do online. Though I am not a terrorist or a pornographer or a promising young politician susceptible to Roveian use of spying agencies, having everything I do online in someone else's database is still creepy to me, and I don't think Firefox does that (it seems like phoning home to Google every time you load a web page would slow you down a bit).

Additionally, it occurs to me that Chrome would probably not allow anything like the NoScript and AdBlockPlus Firefox extensions that currently make my web browsing experience so downright pleasant. Nearly every page you visit wants you to be running some google-analytics script, presumably to harvest information about you and show you ads. NoScript means I don't have to have my information collected and used against me in annoying video ad form, so only under the severest page malfunction circumstances do I even temporarily allow google-analytics. And AdBlockPlus means I'm puzzled when I end up on a web page where people are complaining about the annoying video ad. What annoying video ad?

I think I'll just hope that Firefox's next version incorporates the cool individual-process feature* instead of switching to Chrome and hoping that Google will suddenly care more about my privacy than its ad revenue.

*Firefox has shown a weird combination of hard work and denial on the memory problem. It's clear they're trying to fix it. But they also suggest you're a weirdo for having the problem and you really ought to use fewer windows and restart Firefox more often.

Update: Google plans to open Chrome up for extensions.

Republicans: Waaa-tastic

2008-09-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Top Republicans in the House of Representatives say Republicans decided not to try to shore up the U.S. economy because Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House."

House minority leader John Boehner (R) said Pelosi's speech, which criticized the last eight years of deregulation that got us into this mess, "poisoned our conference (and) caused a number of members that we thought we could get to go south."

Pathetic.

Speaking of going south, the Dow is down almost 7% on the news that Republican feelings are so delicate.

VIVA OBAMA 2008 video

2008-09-22T12:11:00.001-07:00

My mom sent me this video of a demographic I hadn't previously been aware of: Mariachis for Obama. Smiled the whole way through.

I shoulda learned Java

2008-09-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Alas, my bank account has little more than tumbleweeds in it, so my year or so of un-/self-employment is coming to an end. I must job search in earnest and stop turning up my liberal elite nose at corporations looking for automated pollutant emitters and chicken torturers.

The question now is what programming skills such corporations want me to use to design their new improved Humvee fan sites, and since I've sent out my quota of three resumes today, I get to blog those skills.

As I've opened various job postings, hoping the single handful of programming languages I'm truly comfortable with are just what they're looking for (FORTRAN anyone? Anyone?), I've been keeping track of what they are, in fact, looking for. This is completely non-scientific, of course. One glaring flaw, for example: every third company wants a straight-up Java programmer. I want to know Java (that's how the awesome, awesome, awesome Legend of Zelda for your phone! was written), but I don't honestly know Java, so I don't open those ones.

Here are the programming languages/skills companies are looking for in order of popularity in my unscientific survey:

Javascript - 8 companies
Green Ventures, Inc.
Mystery Company
Auction company
Smarsh
Mystery Company
Dealerpeak
Inspiration
ConceroTechnology

HTML - 6 companies
Sharepoint
Smarsh
Intersoft
Mystery Company
Auction company
ConceroTechnology

Java - 6 companies
Amazon
Sharepoint
Axiom
Mystery Company
Dealerpeak
DB Professionals

Linux - 4 companies
Amazon
Mystery Company
Intersoft
VxWorks

PHP - 3 companies
Green Ventures, Inc.
Mystery Company
Intersoft

MySQL - 3 companies
Green Ventures, Inc.
Mystery Company
Auction company

Visual Basic - 3 companies
Smarsh
Axiom
Selectron

Visual Basic.NET - 3 companies
Lifeport
Sharepoint
ConceroTechnology

XML - 2 companies
Intersoft
Dealerpeak

Perl - 2 companies
Amazon
Intersoft

C++ - 2 companies
Amazon
Axiom

C# - 2 companies
Selectron
ConceroTechnology

C - 2 companies
VxWorks
Mystery Company

Coldfusion - 2 companies
Mystery Company
Dealerpeak

.NET - 2 companies
Sharepoint
Intersoft

CGI - 1 company
Intersoft

CSS - 2 companies
Smarsh
Mystery Company

ASP - 2 companies
Sharepoint
Smarsh

Flash - 2 companies
Auction company
Inspiration

SQL - 1 company
Dealerpeak

AJAX - 1 company
Green Ventures, Inc.

Joomla - 1 company
Green Ventures, Inc.

Drupal - 1 company
Inspiration

SQL Server - 1 company
Smarsh

ActiveX - 1 company
Smarsh

Barack Obama - "Yes We Can" audio mp3

2008-07-27T21:35:00.001-07:00

I was adding new podcasts to my Podcast Finder, and I saw that Barack Obama's most-listened-to track is his "Yes We Can" speech from New Hampshire. There's video of that all over the place, but I couldn't find an mp3 of the speech. So I made one using the Free Video to MP3 Converter.

Here you go:
Barack Obama - Yes We Can

And here's the original video, which only took a couple months to post to my blog from YouTube.

You'd think I'd know by now that the Internet doesn't work better if you keep clicking until it does what you want. Sorry if I Obama-spammed your feed reader.

1999 Eaton Hill Cabernet Sauvignon - 100

2008-06-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

I wished I could buy all of it. Complex, smoky, but delicious and not harsh. I'd never liked a Cabernet Sauvignon before this one.

Konnowac Vineyards, Silver Foil
$42 a bottle, drank at Eaton Hill winery

2006 Marshal's Barbera Port - 95

2008-06-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

Sweet!! The vintner said he'd have dialed it back to 11% sugar rather than 13%, but another gal who'd flown in from Iowa to taste wine (with her dude, who seemed like the more expert of the two) and I loved it.

$20 per bottle, drunk 10/4/07 at Marshal's Winery tasting room.

Why no Sasquatch next year*

2008-05-31T12:17:00.001-07:00

I went to the Sasquatch music festival this weekend. As usual, the location is beautiful and the music ranged from good to mind-blowing (another post on the music later). But unless the organizers manage to resurrect John Lennon, I don't plan to go next year. At one point, waiting in some annoying line or other, I said, "I can't wait until next year, when we're NOT going to Sasquatch."

First of all, the price is too high. Usually for festivals, I do a little calculation of how much I'd pay to see each band individually and that decides whether I go. This year, I was so excited about The Cure that I'd bought two (non-refundable Ticketbastard) tickets for all three days before I did the calculation and realized that I wouldn't have paid $75 for any of the days. So again Sasquatch, next year it'd better be zombie Lennon. And if you're messing with necromancy, why not Cobain, too.

The ongoing frat-guy-ization of Sasquatch reached fever pitch this year with some annoying morning-zoo types blaring music and trying to get people to humiliate themselves for free ad t-shirts next to a pitching cage, a corporate SUV (hott!), and a semi truck parked on the lawn where only two years ago, a guy dressed as a banana had done quiet interpretive dance. I missed Banana Man.

And holy shit is the alcohol situation bad. Of course you can't bring your own, and they charge through the nose. PBR was $11. For those prices, I decided to keep my self-respect and stay sober. But having been wildly envious of people who stayed dry in the bar during the hailstorm a few years back, I decided to go into the bar as soon as the crowd started cheering on the rain.

Sure enough, rain started to fall, the crowd started to cheer, and we rushed over to the bar. I was surprised by how short the line to get in was. And yet, we were in line for ten minutes while one gal looked at every ID as though it were an Israeli checkpoint. Then she spent two minutes each putting on a wristband just so.

When I got inside, the gal at the bar carded me again for my $9 mini-Sutter Home. So the hard-won wristband was useless. At that point, I was okay with it. She was nice, and it's a little flattering to be carded when you're 33 years old**. That is, it's flattering every now and then.

We left the tent ASAP (they had the concert showing on little tiny TVs, but no sound on), wherein I got yelled at for carrying out my empty mini-wine for later label use in my wine journal. The Fiance said he understood -- I might get wild and start smashing people over the head with my empty plastic miniature wine bottle.

We came back to the bar when the skies got threatening again. Longer line, even with two additional people on ID duty. One guy waved his bracelet and zipped through. I waved my bracelet at ID Dude #1, he spied my myriad gray hairs, and waved me through. But as I tried to move forward, ID Dude #2 said, in full authoritarian mode, "Your ID! Where's your ID!"

Now, nothing pulls my trigger faster than a mean person.

"This is ridiculous!" I said. "I've been checked!" I said, waving my wristband. "YOU checked me!" I said to the gal who was studiously ignoring the scene I was making. By this time, I'd pulled out my ID (after 12 years, I've no doubt I can do this in my sleep) and been waved through by ID Dude #2. "I'm 33!" I said as I stalked into the bar. "Then act like it," I heard the sheepy obviously-old fattened multitudes who haven't been carded since they were 15 behind me think. Still, I swear to God my tantrum (or probably dozens like it) had an effect. The next day, ID Dudes were circulating in the crowd, giving out wristbands at people's leisure. That'd be fantastic, if the wristbands weren't utterly useless to anyone under forty and 200 pounds.

I decided it'd take a Biblical flood to get me back in the bar, so we just stuck out the brief little rain showers for the rest of the festival. Much more pleasant than the Kafka-esque bar. But more beverage-related hassle awaited! In addition to either cheap or high-quality beer, I enjoy a good cup of coffee. That is, an afternoon without any coffee is an afternoon with a bad headache. On Sunday, they were out of coffee. On Monday, they were out of coffee cups. How do they not want the all-profit $4 they were charging badly enough to ensure they have coffee and cups to serve it in? Market forces. Pfff.

How the Gorge management treats its guests was embodied perfectly in signs on various beverage vendors. "As requested by the artists, all bottle caps must be removed and confiscated upon purchase." Now, people who throw bottle caps should be banned from attending any concert ever, but I am fucking certain Chris Walla did not request that all of his fans be treated like criminal infants (with giant trust funds). But that's exactly the way the Gorge did treat us, every step of the way.

Though nothing, not even the jaw-dropping Battles, was "too loud," I guess this all amounts to: I'm too old to be treated this way (though apparently I don't look it).

*Barring zombie Lennon.

**Thanks for the youthfulness, fat Irish cheeks! I've seen what gravity will do to you come age 50 though. Must mentally prepare.

Server problems, episode III

2008-05-31T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you've tried to use my playlist makers in the last week, I apologize that they didn't work. I went over my server quota and, as I was mostly way off-grid last week, I didn't realize things weren't working until yesterday. The problem should have been fixed yesterday, but it just got worse and worse. I deleted everything I could to free up space. But it still wouldn't let me create new files. Worse, trying to save changes to existing files resulted in those files getting emptied of all code.

Ultimately, my desperate attempts to regain control of my files resulted in my entire web folder turning inaccessible to me. Grr.

So once again I'm trying to move everything (oh yes I have backups) to a more reliable server (Freehostia doesn't pull this baffling crap) and I'm dreaming of turning my elderly Toshiba into my very own Linux server. And again, I'll get two things moved, the crappy server will start working again, and I'll want to write new code instead of tweaking old code for a new server or figuring out how to get Linux to authenticate to a shared wireless router...

The Brunettes at Crystal Ballroom 5/25

2008-05-18T22:44:00.001-07:00

the brunettes
Originally uploaded by mr. mammoth

The Brunettes will play at the Crystal Ballroom May 25. I'll be at Sasquatch, but if you like a sweet bubblegum duet, check 'em out!

The Brunettes - If You Were Alien [Buy mp3!!!]
The Brunettes - Loopy Loopy Love
The Brunettes - Small Town Crew
The Brunettes - These Things Take Time
The Brunettes - Cotton Candy

The Blow at the Aladdin Theater 6/14

2008-05-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

photo by nikki birdflu

The Blow will play at the Aladdin Theater Saturday, June 14 (tickets). It could be interesting to watch a dance-centric band in a chair-centric venue...

Here are links to some mp3s to check 'em out.
The Blow - Pile of Gold [Buy mp3!!!
The Blow - Hock It (YACHT Remix) [Buy mp3!!!]

The Blow - True Affection [Buy mp3!!!]

Saturday June 14th at Aladdin Theater (3017 SE Milwaukie), 8pm, $13, All Ages.

Native Oregon purple flowers, August blooms

2008-05-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

In my on-going quest to make my wedding as complicated as possible (and my blog as random), I'm looking into potted plants native to Oregon for centerpieces. Here's my attempt to track down purple flowers native to Oregon that bloom in August. They don't have these at Freddy's or Walgreen's, and at the nurseries I've visited, you're not gonna find someone who knows what's native, when something blooms, and what color it is. So again I turn to The Internet for my over-specific, long-tail demands.

It's possible some of these are not Oregon natives -- I haven't systematically double-checked my assumptions.

Downingia elegans
Elegant calicoflower
[Oregon Plant Atlas]
[USDA]
[Paul Slichter]
[Flickr]

Gentiana sceptrum
King's scepter gentian

photo by foliosus
[USDA]
[Flickr]

Pedicularis attolens
Elephant Heads

photo by molas
[Native Plant Society]
[Flickr]

Gentianopsis simplex
[Native Plant Society]
[Flickr]
[Flickr]
[Flickr]

Penstemon davidsonii var. menziesii

photo by msanseve
[Buy plant!]
[Portland Nursery]
[Washington Native Plant Society]
[Flickr]
[Flickr]
[Flickr]

Calochortus macrocarpus
Sagebrush mariposa lily

[photo by brewbooks]
[USDA]
[Flickr]
[Flickr]
[Flickr]

Lupinus macrophyllum
Lupine

photo by dleroy
[Portland Nursery]
[Wikipedia]
[Native Plant Society]
[Flickr]

Penstemon richardsonii
[USDA]
[Native Plant Society]
[Flickr]

Hoary aster

photo by delayedneutron
[Paul Slichter]

Rosy owl clover
[USDA]
[Paul Slichter]
[Flickr]

Larger Western Mountain Aster
[Paul Slichter]
[Flickr]

Collomia larsenii
Talus Collomia

photo by brewbooks
[USDA]
[Paul Slichter]

Eurybia radulina
Rough-leaf aster
[USDA]
[Wikipedia]
[Paul Slichter]
[Flickr]

Useful last.fm tools

2008-05-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Last.fm is doing right what Facebook did right -- letting developers use its data to make new applications as they see fit.

I've blogged, ad nauseam, my last.fm Podcast Finder and last.fm Windows Media Player playlist makers (by most-played artists, calendar, and tag).

In the last few days, I've come across a couple cool last.fm tools made by other folks (each causing me brief bouts of crushing envy and despair). One tool improves the mp3 recommendation process, allowing you to subscribe to last.fm mp3 recommendations like they were a blog. And now there's lasttube, which finds videos from artists you play most on last.fm.

These new tools have me curious what other useful gems are hidden in the graphs-and-pretty-pictures mess at build.last.fm.

I'll let you know what I find.

Taverns shown thus

2008-05-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm working in a coffee shop, and I just noticed a cycling map of Portland from 1896 on the wall.

First thing I noticed was an ad for a fabulous olde timey women's cycling sweater. Do want!

Then I noticed that practically everything was marked orange, like it was a great road for cycling (like, say, Foster). So I checked the map key to make sure I was reading it right.

The map key said:
Good roads shown thus. ===
Fair roads shown thus. - -
Rail roads shown thus. ---
Taverns shown thus. []

Portland cycling culture is much older than I thought.

Last.fm Podcast Finder

2008-05-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

I wrote some code I'm pretty excited about yesterday.

I've already blogged about my Podcast Finder, for podcast listeners in the market for recommendations.

This new bit of code makes podcast finding easier for last.fm users. Just put your last.fm username in here, and you'll get some podcast recommendations based on what you've "scrobbled" the most.

If you're a podcast listener who uses last.fm and Firefox with Greasemonkey installed (anyone left?), there's a Greasemonkey script that puts a link at the top of last.fm most-played artists pages, so you can just click to get podcast recommendations.

photo by Beard Papa

John McCain thinks women deserve lower pay

2008-04-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

Republicans, including John McCain, came right out and called women stupid and incapable last week, blocking a bill to allow women to sue employers for sex-based pay discrimination. Congress had to write this seemingly-obvious law because the Republican Supreme Court put an arbitrary 6-month time limit on such lawsuits.

Now, I love it when the Republicans' true colors shine on through. Like when one of them spoke at a Hitler birthday party recently. Just as they believe whites are a superior race (listen to them talk about immigrants and foreign middle names and black people), Republicans really do believe women are less-than creatures only capable of looking pretty and wiping shit off baby-ass.

And they, John McCain in particular, came right out and said so last week.

While skipping the vote allowing women to get justice, John McCain said women deserve lower pay because women who got and performed the same jobs as their male colleagues are just too stupid to (wait for it) get and perform the same jobs as their male colleagues. "They need the education and training," McCain said, explaining why he opposes equal pay for women who get and perform the same jobs as their male colleagues.

Got that? If you're being underpaid for a job you earned and perform by a boss who disrespects women, you deserve that. Because you're stupid, according to John McCain and the Republican party.

If you see how that's wrong, lady, you're not the stupid one. Republicans are. Let's use our votes against them, shall we?

My obsession with WMP playlists

2008-04-19T23:37:00.001-07:00

For programming practice, I've been writing PHP scripts that will turn various lists of musicians into playlists for Windows Media Player.* Basically, you find a list of musicians that you'd like to listen to as a set, put that list in the appropriate script (see below), and out comes a playlist you can open with Windows Media Player to listen to your list of artists. For long lists of artists, this saves a lot of time over the usual method of putting them in one at a time.

The musician lists you can use for this purpose so far with my little tools are:

Last.fm Tagged Artists
*Playlist maker
*Example data source
*Example playlist (rock.wpl)
*Greasemonkey script (for users of Firefox with Greasemonkey installed)

Last.fm Calendar
*Playlist maker
*Example data source
*Example playlist (portland408to808.wpl)
*Greasemonkey script (for users of Firefox with Greasemonkey installed)

Last.fm User's Most-Listened Artists
*Playlist maker
*Example data source
*Example playlist (jamidwyer.wpl)
*Greasemonkey script (for users of Firefox with Greasemonkey installed)

iLike User Most-Played Artists
*Playlist maker
*Example data source
*Example playlist (jami.wpl)
*Greasemonkey script (for users of Firefox with Greasemonkey installed)

Eventful Calendar
*Playlist maker
*Example data source

Comma-Separated Values File
*Playlist maker
*Data source is a list of artists only saved as a CSV in Excel or OpenOffice Calc.
*Example playlist (sasquatch.wpl)

*I know Windows Media Player is not hip. But unbeknownst to even the tech-savviest, music-lovingest people I talk to, Windows Media Player's playlists will dynamically add and sort music by criteria you set. Instant mix tape! This was far more powerful than the playlists iTunes had back in 2004, when I took my first faltering steps to quit stealing the mp3 files I wanted, I discovered that iTunes had indeed sold me intentionally-crippled aac files that indeed wouldn't play on my phone's mp3 player, and I quit using iTunes in fury.

So no, I will not be writing anything, ever, for intentionally over-priced, intentionally under-compatible Mac software. I would, however, like to write playlist makers for Songbird or Amarok, when I feel a little more bored of learning more PHP and MySQL and want to learn whatever it is I need to learn to write real programs.

(Updated to fix links. Check for new playlist makers and updates on my code page.)

Good political songs

2008-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this cry for help, here are some political songs I've been enjoying lately.

Apples in Stereo - Stephen, Stephen [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
Don't tell me you've forgotten how brave Stephen Colbert is already.

Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
Cursory Googling didn't yield a clear answer on whether this song means to Elvis Perkins what it does to me. The song I hear when I listen to this is indeed partly about Perkins' mother's death on 9/11. It's also about the sleeping country awakened that day. Sad, but hopeful, I think.

But what do I know. It could be about his girlfriend taking a long nap.

Winterpills - Broken Arm [Buy mp3!!!]
The lyrics are all over the map, but there's politics in 'em.

The Chemical Brothers - The Salmon Dance [Buy mp3!!!]
This is just a fun song about salmon, but up here in the PNW, that's political, innit?

Nellie McKay - Mother of Pearl [Buy mp3!!!]
According to Ms. McKay, I'm doubly blessed with no sense of humor, as both a feminist and a vegetarian. Heh heh heh heh heh heh.

Cocorosie - Rainbowarriors [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
This makes me hippy-dippy freak-folk happy.

Smog - I Feel Like the Mother of the World [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
This song always reminds me of how my mom used to make us warring sisters sit in the same chair and hold hands as punishment. I think Bush could benefit from closer exposure to Middle Eastern people who are not outlandishly rich sheiks.

The Thermals - Here's Your Future [Buy mp3!!!]
More about religion than politics, but then in the "God Bless America (or else)" Bush years, they're not so different.

Ted Leo - Loyal to My Sorrowful Country [Buy mp3!!!]
No explanation needed.

Tokyo Police Club - Your English is Good [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!][Lyrics]
One this is clear: this song pertains to the future. Because the shocking youthfulness of Tokyo Police Club freaked me the hell out when I first discovered it a couple years ago, I always thought this song was about young people taking over with their kinder, gentler values. Reading the lyrics, it seems like it's more of an indictment of the current people in power.

Photo strip made by Bordr.

Programming server problems

2008-04-15T20:16:00.001-07:00

The web server I'm using to do programming practice is giving me server errors when I load my PHP pages. This is the second time my site has been obliterated for at least a day by the server with no warning, and with lots of lecturing instead of trying to get my page running again. I don't write the tightest code yet, and I'm grateful for advice, but when three months' work is gone without warning, with no hint at when it will return, it might not be the best time for a lesson.

Basically, nothing I've written for the past three months works right now. It will -- I'm moving everything to a new server (and trying to install my own Linux server at home). But if you're having trouble using any of my playlist makers or Podcast Finder, it's because I'm moving everything to a place where it'll work. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Dr. L Riesling - 91

2008-04-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

Mm. This is what oak is supposed to be. Cold. Always disconcerting and reminiscent of soda pop. Really interesting almost all wood taste.

Harshens up with warmth.

$40 a bottle, Wine Down on 28th, drank June 6, 2003.

Podcast Finder

2008-03-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

I've been making decent progress learning PHP and MySQL since I finally got started last month. My proudest achievement thus far is a podcast finder, called "Podcast Finder", that recommends podcasts based on a couple of podcasts you know you like.

I'm a total podcast junkie (try doing PCR in a dead-silent lab for two years, then winning an iPod shuffle, and see if you don't turn addict). But finding new podcasts when you've exhausted an archive or ten is not as simple as giving your favorites five stars on Amazon or Netflix and seeing what they recommend. My old "system" to find new podcasts basically added up to Googling combinations of my favorites to see what else came up (zip), combing through all the most-dugg podcasts on Digg, and scouring the last.fm artists of other big NPR listeners.

The last.fm method gives pretty good recommendations, but it's slow. Podcast Finder speeds it up by using a database (fairly small right now) of last.fm favorites. As with all my little projects, there's room for improvement, but if you're a podcast fan, I'd love for you to give it a try. If I'm missing your favorite (or you have any other feedback), feel free to leave me a comment here.

It's Sasquatch!

2008-02-26T04:09:00.000-08:00

The Sasquatch 2008 line-up looks pretty darn good to me. But then it always does. Of course, I immediately used my little playlist-maker tool to make a Sasquatch Playlist for Windows Media Player.

I gotta get some sleep in prep for possible wisdom-tooth-outage tomorrow, but here are links to a few of the songs whose first notes will give me that little thrill at Sasquatch this year. I'll try to add more links when I'm all doped up tomorrow afternoon.

Saturday
The Shaky Hands - Soul
The Shaky Hands - Summer's Life
The Shaky Hands - Why & How Come

Okkervil River - The President's Dead
Okkervil River - For Real
Okkervil River - Oh Precious

The New Pornographers - When I Was A Baby
The New Pornographers - My Rights Versus Yours
The New Pornographers - The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism

Modest Mouse - 3rd Planet
Modest Mouse - Bukowski

Throw Me The Statue - Yucatan Gold
Throw Me The Statue - Conquering Kids
Throw Me The Statue - About To Walk

Destroyer - The Sublimation Hour
Destroyer - No Cease Fires
Destroyer - The Very Modern Dance

The National - Black Slate
The National - Slow Show
The National - Fake Empire

M.I.A. - Paper Planes
M.I.A. - Amazon

Dengue Fever - Seeing Hands

The Breeders - Do You Love Me Now?
The Breeders - Happiness Is A Warm Gun

R.E.M. - Losing My Religion

Beirut - Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)
Beirut - Elephant Gun
Beirut - Postcards from Italy

Monday
Rodrigo y Gabriela have come through Portland twice recently. I've gritted my teeth and saved my $15, but having been completely blown away by their performance on Letterman, I'm really excited to see them at a bang-for-the-buck festival like Sasquatch. Despite Gabriela's sweet face, I was not totally surprised to learn that they have metal roots.
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Diablo Rojo

Yeasayer - Sunrise [Buy mp3!!!]
Yeasayer - Wait for the Summer [Buy mp3!!!]
Yeasayer - Germs [Buy mp3!!!]

Matt Costa - Sunshine
Matt Costa - Sweet Rose [Lyrics]
Matt Costa - Acting Like A Fool

The Little Ones - Lovers Who Uncover [Buy mp3!!!]

Say Hi - Let's Talk About Spaceships
Say Hi - The Forest Scares The Hell Out Of Me
Say Hi - Laundry

The Cave Singers - Seeds of Night

Battles - Atlas
Battles - Ddiamondd
Battles - Race:In

Ghostland Observatory - Sad Sad City
Ghostland Observatory - Piano Man
Ghostland Observatory - Stranger Lover

Flight Of The Conchords - Robots (Live)
Flight Of The Conchords - If You're Into It
Flight Of The Conchords - Croissants

Pela - Waiting On The Stairs
Pela - Lost To The Lonesome

Built to Spill - Twin Falls
Built to Spill - Still Flat
Built to Spill - The Plan
Built to Spill - Big Dipper
Built to Spill - Carry The Zero

Jamie Lidell - Multiply

Sunday
Death Cab for Cutie put on a great show at a past Sasquatch. I remember the tall skinny one (not-Gibbard, not-Gibbard... Walla!) putting on a bunny suit to cavort with the Flaming Lips. There was a Yoshimi singalong. It was wonderful.
Death Cab For Cutie - All is Full of Love
Death Cab For Cutie - Photobooth
Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into The Dark

The Presidents Of The United States Of America - Kitty [Buy mp3!!!]
The Presidents Of The United States Of America - Peaches

The Blakes - Two Times [Buy mp3!!!]
The Blakes - Pistol Grip [Buy mp3!!!]
The Blakes - Don't Bother Me

I've loved The Cure since high school. I can't miss this chance to finally see them.
The Cure - Lovesong
The Cure - Close to Me

The Cops - Living With A Ghost
The Cops - Controller
The Cops - Call Me Anytime

The Morning Benders - Crosseyed
The Morning Benders - Crying

65daysofstatic - Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here

The Kooks - Ooh La
The Kooks - Crazy
The Kooks - Naive

Cold War Kids - We Used To Vacation
Cold War Kids - Fast As You Can
Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up To Dry

White Rabbits - Kid On My Shoulders

Rogue Wave - Eyes
Rogue Wave - Manna
Rogue Wave - 10:1

Mates Of State - Fraud in the 80's
Mates Of State - Ha Ha
Mates Of State - Running Out

Is StumbleUpon censoring me?

2008-02-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

I use StumbleUpon. A llllllot. Sometimes the mood strikes and I leave a comment about a site on the StumbleUpon page for it. Usually, forgetting the Thumper rule* as one does on the Internet, I only comment if the site makes me a little mad. Sometimes I use the "s" word. Once, I used the "f" word. Horrors!

Now, none of my comments show up on StumbleUpon. Even to me, even though I'm allowed to see "R rated" content. I have apparently been rated X by StumbleUpon. Don't get excited -- there are no naked pictures of me at my lumpiest on the Internet. On StumbleUpon, I'm rated X for swearing.

I suspect I was actually flagged for my rather unpopular (and frequently expressed) view that women are more than sex things. Someone reported me as X-rated to StumbleUpon, and StumbleUpon agreed to block my opinion from everyone, including adults cool with seeing R-rated content, including me. Just like that. They didn't check to see if I actually post nudie pictures or even lurid descriptions of sex acts. They just flipped a switch and one feminist shut the fuck up. Congratulations, Republicans.

I've written to StumbleUpon to ask what actually happened and how to remedy it, but really -- what a bad system! Only the blandest comments will escape the notice of mob censure, and given the nature of StumbleUpon comments I'm seeing now ("very useful", "Awww!", "awesome"), it may already be having a dulling effect. People shouldn't have to prove they're not pornographers. Complainants should really have to prove they are. It's guilty until proven innocent, and unless StumbleUpon fixes it, I'm uninstalling that addictive little button.

*If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all.

Update (2/19/08): Still no word from StumbleUpon, but I was listening to the TWiT podcast, and they were complaining about eBay. Apparently eBay bought StumbleUpon a while back, not long before they implemented a new policy of going after "abusive" users (which I am not). It makes sense to me that a Republican-run company like eBay would want to bland down its properties so as not to offend anyone with differing opinions, and the first folks to get the old ideological heave-, um, "ho" would be the feminists.

CSV to WPL

2008-02-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

Here's my first PHP and SQL program, called CSV to WPL. It creates Windows Media Player playlists from comma-separated lists of bands.

It's a niche program that has football stadiums worth of room for improvement (it's not a beta -- it's an alpha), but I know I'll use it a lot just as it is.

Update: I did use it a lot, but I've written various improved playlist maker scripts, including a version that allows you to cut and paste a list of artists instead of making a spreadsheet of them.

SXSW 2008

2008-02-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

I've been writing a program to take a list of artists and generate a playlist for Windows Media Player that will search your library for songs by those artists.

My little program works pretty well for me, since I know all its little bugaboos, but it's not ready to share yet. So for now, I can only share the playlists.

Here's my 2008 South by Southwest playlist (right-click and Save As... to download to "My Documents/My Music/My Playlists", then open with Windows Media Player). Because there are so many artists, if you have a massive library full of mp3s from good blogs like I do, it'll take a while to load. Watch out, though: Windows Media Player sees that, for example, Bell is playing and thinks Belle & Sebastian are playing. Sadly, they're not.

If your library doesn't include many of the bands playing this year, here's where you can find some mp3s from my favorite bands playing this year. I'll add more when I get time, but I really need to get to work to finish up that playlist program. I have playlists for each day of Coachella, too, but again. Time.

photo by john vanderslice.

Blitzen Trapper - Crazy On You [Buy mp3!!!]
Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation [Buy mp3!!!]
Blitzen Trapper - 40 Stripes [Buy mp3!!!]

Jens Lekman - Washing Machine
Jens Lekman - Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death
Jens Lekman - Black Cab [Buy mp3!!!]

photo by chromewaves.

Nada Surf - Always Love [Buy mp3!!!]
Nada Surf - Where Is My Mind? [Buy mp3!!!]
Nada Surf - Popular [Buy mp3!!!]

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma [Buy mp3!!!]
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

Menomena - Cough Coughing [Buy mp3!!!]
Menomena - Wet and Rusting [Buy mp3!!!]
Menomena - Rotten Hell

photo by Pupkin.

Yeasayer - Sunrise [Buy mp3!!!]
Yeasayer - Wait for the Summer [Buy mp3!!!]
Yeasayer - Germs [Buy mp3!!!]

Tokyo Police Club - Citizens of Tomorrow (Space Ballad Version)
Tokyo Police Club - Nature of the Experiment [Buy mp3!!!]
Tokyo Police Club - Your English is Good [Buy mp3!!!]

photo by chona kasinger.

The Blakes - Two Times [Buy mp3!!!]
The Blakes - Pistol Grip [Buy mp3!!!]
The Blakes - Don't Bother Me [Buy mp3!!!]

White Denim - ShakeShakeShake

The Presidents of the United States of America - Kitty [Buy mp3!!!]
The Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches

photo by imjustincognito.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder [Buy mp3!!!]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Underwater (You and Me) [Buy mp3!!!]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Love Song No. 7 [Buy mp3!!!]

Yo La Tengo - Nuclear War

The Clutters - Oh [Buy mp3!!!]

Basia Bulat - I Was a Daughter [Buy mp3!!!]
Basia Bulat - Snakes and Ladders [Buy mp3!!!]

Diplo - Work Is Never Over

photo by johnnyalive.

The Black Lips - Not A Problem [Buy mp3!!!]
The Black Lips - Buried Alive
The Black Lips - Dirty Hands [Buy mp3!!!]

Laura Gibson - Hands in Pockets [Buy mp3!!!]
Laura Gibson - Come by Storm

photo by jessicalea.

Greg Laswell - Girls Just Want To Have Fun [Buy mp3!!!]
Greg Laswell - Sing, Theresa Says [Buy mp3!!!]
Greg Laswell - Days Go On

The Kills - Love Is A Deserter (Simian Mobile Disco Mix)
The Kills - Fuck The People
The Kills - No Wow

photo by 'Lil.

Mark Kozelek - What's Next To The Moon [Buy mp3!!!]

The Raveonettes - Love in a Trashcan [Buy mp3!!!]
The Raveonettes - The Christmas Song
The Raveonettes - Here Comes Mary

White Williams - New Violence

photo by savemejebus.

The Little Ones - Lovers Who Uncover [Buy mp3!!!]

Capgun Coup - My Tears Cure Cancer [Buy mp3!!!]
Capgun Coup - Bobby Chops and the Do-Gooders

photo by vern.

The Cribs - Men's Needs [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
The Cribs - Hey Scenesters! [Buy mp3!!!]
The Cribs - Another Number [Buy mp3!!!]

Division Day - Enjoy the Silence
Division Day - Every Shining Time You Arrive

photo by mediaeater.

British Sea Power - Tugboat

Asylum Street Spankers - You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch [Buy mp3!!!]
Asylum Street Spanker - Beer

Bodies of Water - These Are The Eyes [Buy mp3!!!]

photo by akmal-naim.

Foreign Born - Union Hall [Buy mp3!!!]
Foreign Born - The Nights Tall
Foreign Born - Don't Take Back Your Time

Cloud Cult - Alien Christ
Cloud Cult - Car Crash
Cloud Cult - Living On The Outside Of Your Skin

Zookeeper - Tax Collector
Zookeeper - I Live In The Mess You Are

Richard Thompson - Dad's Gonna Kill Me

photo by bumpershine.

The Weakerthans - Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure [Buy mp3!!!]
The Weakerthans - Plea From A Cat Named Virtute [Buy mp3!!!]
The Weakerthans - Night Windows [Buy mp3!!!]

Simian Mobile Disco - It's the Beat

Black Mountain - Tyrants [Buy mp3!!!]

Handsome Furs - What We Had
Handsome Furs - Dead + Rural
Handsome Furs - Snakes on the Ladder

The Low Budgets - Caveman

The Album Leaf - Always for You
The Album Leaf - Writings on the Wall
The Album Leaf - On Your Way

An Albatross - The Revolutionary Politics of Dance

The Cave Singers - Seeds of Night

The Two Man Gentlemen Band - William Howard Taft

The Stills - Still In Love Song
The Stills - In The Beginning

Throw Me The Statue - Yucatan Gold
Throw Me The Statue - Conquering Kids
Throw Me The Statue - About to Walk

Passengers - Miss Sarajevo

Man Man - Black Mission Goggles
Man Man - Van Helsing Boombox

The Minutemen - History Lesson - part II

The Swell Season - Cactus

The Strugglers - The Cascade Range

Holy Fuck - Lovely Allen

Sean Hayes - Same God

Born Ruffians - Knife
Born Ruffians - I'm One of Those Girls

Jenny Owen Youngs - Fuck Was I

The Black Lips at Dante's

2008-02-05T16:25:00.001-08:00

The Black Lips will play tonight at 9 p.m. at Dante's, $12 at the door. Here are links to find a few of my favorite Black Lips songs.

photo by johnnyalive.

The Black Lips - Dirty Hands [Buy mp3!!!]
The Black Lips - O Katrina! [Buy mp3!!!]
The Black Lips - Not A Problem [Buy mp3!!!]

The Decemberists at the Crystal Ballroom

2008-01-20T15:04:00.000-08:00

The Decemberists will play at the Crystal Ballroom Wednesday, January 23 at 9 p.m.

Here's where you can get some of my favorite Decemberists songs:
The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives
The Decemberists - Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect [Buy mp3!!!]
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3 [Buy mp3!!!]
The Decemberists - Apology Song [Buy mp3!!!]
The Decemberists - Los Angeles, I'm Yours [Buy mp3!!!]

Dan Deacon at Holocene

2008-01-19T10:14:00.001-08:00

Dan Deacon plays tonight at Holocene, 9 p.m., tickets $10 at Jackpot Records.

Dan Deacon - Snake Mistakes [Buy mp3!!!]
Dan Deacon - When I Was Taller
Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
Dan Deacon - Lion With A Sharks Head
Dan Deacon - Pink Batman [Buy mp3!!!]

Buy Spiderman of the Rings.

Collective punishment versus justice

2008-01-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

A small news story yesterday was the United Nations condemning Israel's use of "collective punishment."

It is extremely important that more people understand the destructive meaning of the phrase "collective punishment." I first learned it when Bush decided to collectively punish the entire country of Afghanistan in retribution for 9/11. Great, I thought. Bush looked at the never-ending war in collective-punishment-loving Israel and decided he wanted a piece of that good stuff for the U.S. of A.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Collective punishment is severe injustice. Remember Qana, when Israel killed dozens of children to "punish" some kidnappers? If not, graphic image, graphic image, graphic image, graphic image, graphic image, graphic image. Why do they hate us, in-fucking-deed. The Qana massacre was the first time since 9/11 that the news made me cry. No, scrub that, there was Bush's re-"election", which drove me into a depression from which I haven't yet recovered.

The American sense of justice has been badly perverted by the Republicans leading our country since 9/11. Just as in Martin Luther King's day, racism, pure and simple, drives our foreign policy, propped up by television shows like "24", which assumes brown people are guilty until "proven" guilty by confessions delivered under torture.

That's not justice, and it's not the innocent-until-proven-guilty, Bill of Rights America I loved before Bush got his idiot hands on it. I hope the America that believes in justice, not the racist mob vengeance of "collective punishment," returns by January 21, 2009. That America is that only one strong and intelligent enough to capture and punish Osama bin Laden, instead of innocent brown children who possibly live on the same continent.

In search of perfect cupcake recipes

2007-12-30T12:35:00.001-08:00

I'm considering a cupcake tower for my wedding this summer. I know -- it's so 2005, but I still like the idea. No one has to cut the cake, and you can theoretically have as many different flavors as guests. I'm thinking about making the up to 200 cupcakes (and the stand) myself. You say crazy cheapskate; I say DIY bride. Tomayto, tomahto. Let's call the whole thing off. Please.

Just kidding. The prospect of cheating the Marital Industrial Complex while learning to make new things (paper, cupcakes, lanterns) is what finally made me enjoy this wedding planning dealie.

I'm especially enjoying trying out sometimes two new cupcake recipes a week. (Did I mention I wouldn't mind losing fifty pounds before the wedding?) The main drawback is that I don't want to waste them, so a batch of cupcakes may be all I eat for two days. I wish there were at least more nutritional value in the yummiest-looking recipes. The groom-to-be, usually delighted by the prospect of any food at all, already seems to inwardly groan at the mention of cupcakes.

Nonetheless, I soldiered on, discovering three absolutely foolproof recipes for delicious, beautiful cupcakes: Bubbly Pear Cupcakes, Filled Rich Chocolate Cupcakes, and Red Velvet Cupcakes.

Three Perfect (And Foolproof) Cupcake Recipes
Bubbly Pear Cupcakes

I love that the ingredients in these cupcakes are all simple. No cake flour. No prune mush. Nothing you have to go to a specialty store to acquire, like amaretto.

As I mixed the various ingredients, I thought to myself that at least if I managed to screw up the baking, the batter had tasted good at every stage.

And I didn't screw up the baking, despite the wonderful smell luring an otherwise-mum housemate into a long conversation right as I needed to check them every thirty seconds.

These cupcakes were perfect: they look great, the buttery taste is oh-so-subtly complemented by both pear and champagne, and the texture is moist but not gooey. Everyone who ate one ate at least two. The only flaw was lumps in the frosting, which are a result of the fact that I'm too cheap to buy a $15 hand-mixer.

Filled Rich Chocolate Cupcakes

These cupcakes taste delicious, the filling is just right, they look great, and you don't have to hassle with frosting. They held up well overnight. The only flaw is a little stickiness wrapper-wise.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I love the shocking red color, and the chocolate flavor added a much-needed extra something to usually plain velvet cupcakes.

Non-Perfect (Or Non-Foolproof) Cupcake Recipes
The other cupcake recipes I tried probably would be fine under exactly the right conditions. But the way I cook (hellooo substitutions), the other recipes were all edible, but nothing to impress guests who've traveled hundreds of miles to eat them. Here are those recipes, in the order I'd try making them again.

Velvet Cupcakes

My grandma contributed this recipe to a book compiled from families in the Okanogan Highlands, where my mom grew up with her fifteen brothers and sisters. I'd made these as a kid and messed them up -- despite my mother's warnings, I occasionally still confused baking soda and baking powder. And my, what a lot of baking powder! Making these as an adult, I noticed the 3 Tablespoons of baking powder, and I realized why I'd grown up thinking hamburger patties should have oatmeal in them. Sixteen is a lot of kids to feed!

This time around, grandma's giant velvet cupcake recipe turned out moist and delicious, for what they are. But what velvet cupcakes are is a little plain, and green food coloring gave me a psychosomatic sense that I was eating something mint-flavored that wasn't doing a very good job being mint-flavored. My mom volunteered to contribute some of these to the cupcake tower, which was great, except that some catastrophe or other (I was too pre-wedding frazzled to absorb the details) led to the arrival of a bowl o' cupcake crumbs. This is not a foolproof recipe by any means, but it's really quite good if you want something simple and you get it right.

Purple Hazelnut Cupcakes With Coconut

These cupcakes are fun-looking and got lots of compliments from everyone who tried them. My housemate even suggested after this batch that I should sell cupcakes. I don't think I'm ready to take on Saint Cupcake any time soon. After the cupcakes sat overnight (an absolute requirement for this project), the coconut was crusty and it had a sort of cardboard flavor. Probably completely my fault and completely solvable, but by the time I tried these, I was running out of troubleshooting time.

Blueberry Hill Cupcakes

I'd been hoping for a recipe with at least marginally healthy ingredients, the Groom likes fruity more than chocolate-y desserts (apostasy, I know), and I ended up with blueberries. These blueberry cupcakes were delicious... muffins, and they looked lovely. But it just didn't feel right to frost a muffin. (That's what she said.)

Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes
These cupcakes tasted great. In fact, this photo is so bad because I had to snap it fast before the last cupcake vanished off the plate within hours of their availability. But the cupcakes were sort of stubby and had a sort of crispy taste (I used regular flour instead of cake flour). They don't really look right for a fancy-ish festive occasion, but if I wanted pineapple-upside down cake again, I'd look for a recipe similar to this one (hopefully with regular flour).

Chocolate Cupcakes with Cheese Frosting

These cupcakes were good, but nothing thrilling. My fiance didn't like the frosting, which, of course, I loved. The tartness of the cream cheese surprised him, he said. They held up well overnight. They look acceptable, but I'm gonna keep looking for a simple frosted cupcake.

Black-Bottomed Cupcakes
In the online photo, these look very similar to the best recipe, but in my hands, they didn't look pretty, and the filling stuck to they cupcake wrapper quite a bit when you opened them up.

Fudge Filled Cupcakes

These cupcakes were very similar to the Filled Rich Cupcakes, with only a few variations. The main difference, I think, is using a whole egg rather than egg whites in the filling. This gave the filling a less appealing orange-y color.

Carrot Cake
I was excited to make cupcakes with so many healthy ingredients in them: carrots, pineapple, walnuts and coconuts -- at least there's more nutritional value than flour and sugar. The fiance also likes carrot cake quite a bit.

Unfortunately, the cake had a wrong taste to it, though my housemate says he and his sister both liked it. The possible culprit was the walnuts, which I'd had in the freezer for at least a year. But the wrong taste was cake-wide, not just in walnut-containing bites. Another possibility is that using a cake pan instead of cupcake liners (I was out) made a difference. Seems unlikely. I also thought the frosting was boring, but the Groom liked the frosting the best.

Update: I made two five-tier cupcake towers for about 100 cupcakes, using these directions. We had a party to decorate cupcakes and hang out with our guests the night before the wedding.

Here are the finished cupcake towers:

Stylewest Photography

In the end, a DIY cupcake tower was tons of work, but I enjoyed doing it, and people really loved the Bubbly Pear and Filled Rich cupcakes here, as well as the carrot cake cupcakes my mom contributed.

My favorite ten albums of 2007

2007-12-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

First non-jet-lagged day back from Puerto Rico, I recalled that 'tis the season to make best-of lists. Here are my favorite ten CDs of the year.

1. Bridging the Distance, Various Artists
[Buy Album]
Blitzen Trapper - Crazy On You
Viva Voce - Eye in the Sky [Buy mp3!!!]
Britt Daniel - Bring It On Home To Me [Buy mp3!!!]

2. Neon Bible, Arcade Fire [Buy Album]
Arcade Fire - Black Mirror
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible [last.fm]
Arcade Fire - Intervention 9 [last.fm]
Arcade Fire - Keep the Car Running [last.fm]
Arcade Fire - The Well And The Lighthouse [Lyrics]

3. The Light Divides, Winterpills [Buy Album]
Winterpills - Broken Arm [last.fm]
Winterpills - Handkerchiefs [last.fm]

4. Friend and Foe, Menomena [Buy Album]
Menomena - Wet And Rusting [YouTube]
Menomena - Rotten Hell [last.fm]
Menomena - Air Aid [last.fm]

5. Hair Guitar, Copy [Buy Album]
Copy - Zipper Problems [Buy mp3!!!]
Copy - Closet Face [Buy mp3!!!]

6. Spiderman Of The Rings, Dan Deacon [Buy Album]
Dan Deacon - Snake Mistakes
Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat
Dan Deacon - Pink Batman

7. These Friends Of Mine, Rosie Thomas [Buy Album]
Rosie Thomas - Say Hello
Rosie Thomas - The One I Love
Rosie Thomas - If This City Never Sleeps [last.fm]

8. In Our Bedroom After The War, Stars [Buy Album]
Stars - Today Will Be Better, I Swear!
Stars The Night Starts Here
Stars - Take Me To The Riot [last.fm]

9. Whats The Time Mr Wolf, Noisettes [Buy Album]
Noisettes - Don't Give Up

10. Ash Wednesday, Elvis Perkins
Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping
Elvis Perkins - All The Night Without Love
Elvis Perkins - May Day

Why I hate Republicans, part two

2007-12-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

If you follow the bouncing ball, the insane anti-Clinton jihad by Republicans led directly to the rape and murder of two women.

That is: Republicans, including Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, were so filled with their insane hatred of Bill Clinton that they became rabid supporters of Wayne DuMond, convicted of raping Clinton's distant cousin. Arkansas Republicans decided that DuMond was railroaded by the eeeevil Clintons. Huckabee pressured a parole board to release convicted rapist DuMond, DuMond was released, and DuMond raped and murdered two more women.

Before I got to the Clinton angle, I wondered why Huckabee pushed so hard for DuMond's release. Then I saw the Clinton angle and it all made sense.

Republicans hated Bill Clinton so much that two women died.

Hat tips: HuffPo, Digby, Atrios.

(Here was Part One of what looks to be a long and ugly series.)

Portland pubs

2007-11-21T18:30:00.003-08:00

Lucky Lab

photo by vj_pdx

The Lucky Lab is my favorite restaurant in Portland. Their three-cheese meltdown is the thing in Portland that has consistently made me hungry for the near-decade I've known about it. It's basically a cheese sandwich, but it has mushrooms, great salsa and pepperoncini, which remind me of the much-missed sandwich shop I worked at in college. Another thing that has more to do with ambience than food is super-relaxed outdoor seating that almost always has enough space, even on the nicest day in Portland. And it's almost never too crowded indoors, either, making it comfortable to have a table all to yourself, or to invite your eight closest friends. I attended a gathering there of the Lewis and Clark Law School Democrats with my fiance, and we were joined semi-accidentally by some gals who'd come for Drinking Liberally at the overcrowded next table. Finally, Lucky Lab hosts the yearly Worst Day Of The Year bike ride, often the first time my bike spends much time on the pavement after a rainy winter has successfully crushed my spirit and put me on the bus.

Lucky Lab's beer suffers slightly by comparison to the Deschutes and Bridgeport that flow like rivers through the streets of Portland. But it's not too far behind in sheer delectability. Their dark beers are suitably thick and tasty, and their pear cider is absolutely dreamy.

The theme is Labrador dogs (not a fortunate science lab), so dogs are encouraged on the back patio. Sometimes the back patio smells like dogs and/or cigarettes (ew), but that's easily escaped inside.

BridgePort Brewing
I haven't gone out looking for new microbrews for five years or so, but I still suspect BridgePort has the best beer in Portland. The Black Strap Stout puts Guinness to shame. Their IPA rakes in awards.

As for the food and ambience, there are two locations, not at all alike. The downtown(ish) location is roomy and comfy, but the food is stale slices of pizza that probably wasn't great to begin with. The Hawthorne location, on the other hand, offers plate-licking-good ravioli and salmon prepared in many to-die-for configurations. But it's a little fancy-schmancy. You couldn't bring kids here, and I always feel a little frousy among the recently-dyed black-clad yuppie-to-the-max patrons.

The Hedge House [Yelp]
The Hedge House has a frequently-changed menu of delicious beer. A good bet is always the Proletariat Red, but their special selections have never let me down. The food is also fantastic. They have Reuben sandwiches that are repeat orders in both their Gardenburger and corned beef forms. Their pulled pork and portobello burger are also popular with the fiance and me.

Horse Brass [Yelp]

photo by devlyn

This photo almost perfectly captures the essence of Horse Brass. Dark dark dark with disgusting English food. If there were three shiny darts and the beer was glowing deliciously, it would be nailed. I recommend it because I enjoy darts and great beer and this place has both. Meat eaters also seem impressed by the Scotch egg, which is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep-fried, I think. Gah.

Barley Mill
The Barley Mill is a really comfy place to hang out. It's never crowded, so you can hang out as long as you like, playing some Scrabble or cards. It's strange that this is my favorite of the McMenamin's restaurants, given that it is Grateful Dead-themed and two consecutive jobs spent working with people who only listened to Jerry Garcia killed the Dead for me forever. The food is slightly above average, unlike at other McMenami, where it's slightly below. McMenamin's beer is better than 99% of what you can buy in the rest of the country, but in Portland it almost doesn't measure up. Like the food, it seems a bit watered-down. The beer has devoted fans, though, and if you ever work in Portland, you will go to McMenami for work functions at some point.

Shanghai Tunnel
The Shanghai tunnels were used to kidnap drunk or drugged people to work on ships. Apparently, this restaurant has one such tunnel. I wouldn't know, as I missed the point by staying outside the whole time the only time I went to this pub. And then I got so drunk that I left my bike overnight. And it got stolen. So I haven't been back. But I guess I was made a victim of my own vice at the Shanghai Tunnel, so perhaps I didn't miss the experience entirely. (I've also taken the Shanghai tunnel tour on another occasion, which is interesting, but mostly consists of wandering around in dark, dirty underground rooms.)

Holman's Restaurant [Yelp]
Holman's has a great garden Reuben and a good jukebox. Well drinks are cheap, and the french fries are popular. That said, it's grimy enough that I feel a little funny recommending it.

Portland hotels

2007-11-19T23:56:00.001-08:00

Here are some hotel recommendations for Portland visitors.

Where I'd like to stay if I were visiting
Bluebird Guesthouse, $55-$85, 5/5 stars
This is in walking distance to my house, which is in a great neighborhood. The rooms look great, and they're inexpensive.
3517 SE Division St.
Portland, OR 97202
866-717-4333
12 people

McMenamin's Edgefield, $55, 4/5 stars

photo by dvanhorn

I stayed in a different McMenamin's hotel about an hour west of Portland once and really enjoyed it. The bathrooms were shared, and the wall above the bed was painted with a dark mural of an old Mason lady reminiscent of something a grade-schooler would paint. But the old converted buildings of the McMenami have lots of charm, as well as plenty of activities on the premises. The Edgefield has a theater pub, a regular pub, and a wine tasting room, among other things.
2126 SW Halsey
Troutdale, OR 97060
503-669-8610

Jupiter Hotel (link plays an annoying "Groove"), $104, 3/5 stars

photo by kandyjaxx

I'm intrigued by this place in spite of reviews suggesting they're charging double what they should for IKEA furniture, bad service, and lots of noise (it's on the premises of one of the cool music venues in Portland, the Doug Fir). I like the location and the style from the outside. But a lot of online reviewers hate it. Not recommended for guests over forty or under sixteen.
800 E. Burnside
Portland, OR 97214
877-800-0004

McMenamin's Kennedy School, $114, 4.5/5 stars

photo by KeelyE

I stayed in a different McMenamin's hotel about an hour west of Portland once and really enjoyed it. The bathrooms were shared, and the wall above the bed was painted with a dark mural of an old Mason lady reminiscent of something a grade-schooler would paint. But the old converted buildings of the McMenami have lots of charm, as well as plenty of activities on the premises. The Kennedy School has a lovely theater pub, a lot of other pubs, and a soaking pool (the highlight of the McMenamin's I stayed at).
5736 NE 33rd Avenue
Portland, OR 97211
503-249-3983

Portland's White House B&B, $125-$225, 4.5/5 stars
1914 NE 22nd Avenue
Portland, OR 97212
503-287-7131

Lion and the Rose Victorian B&B, $134-$224

photo by misternaxal

1810 NE 15th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97212
800-955-1647

The Heathman Hotel, $135-$469, 4.5/5 stars
1001 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97205
800-551-0011

Benson Hotel, $204, 3.5/5 stars

photo by rainboweyes

309 Southwest Broadway
Portland Oregon 97205
503-228-2000

Hotel Monaco, $219-$375, 4.5/5 stars
506 S.W. Washington
Portland, Oregon 97204
888-207-2201

Hotel deLuxe, If you have to ask, you can't afford it? 4.5/5 stars

photo by jeffyoungstrom

729 SW 15th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97205
866-895-2094

Other options close-in
Banfield Value Inn, $65
1525 NE 37th Avenue
Portland, OR 97232
503-280-1400

Motel 6, $66
3104 SE Powell Blvd
Portland, OR 97202
503-238-0600

Thriftlodge, $73, 4/5 stars
949 E Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97214
503-234-8411

Red Lion Hotel - Convention Center, $130, 3/5 stars

photo by ahockley

1021 NE Grand Ave
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 235-2100

Doubletree Hotel, $144-$590, 3/5
1000 NE Multnomah St
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 281-6111

Residence Inn - Downtown/Lloyd Center, $169, 4/5 stars
I've been in the room of someone who's been a repeat customer here, and it looks comfortable.
1710 NE Multnomah Street
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 288-1400

Inexpensive options further away
Econo Lodge Expo Center, $45-$48
405 NE Columbia Blvd.
Portland, OR, 97211-1421

Quality Inn Portland Airport, $55-$70
8247 N.E. Sandy Blvd.
Portland, OR, US, 97220

Econo Lodge, $55-$85
18323 SE Stark St
Portland, OR, US, 97233

Stars of Track and Field at Doug Fir

2007-11-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

Stars of Track and Field will play tonight at 9:30 at Doug Fir, 830 East Burnside. Tickets are $13. Doug Fir describes Stars of Track and Field as "epic dreamcore." Me, I call them hot guys singing love songs that also rock. Perhaps that's why Doug Fir makes the big bucks loving music, and I lose money that way.

photo by hummanna

Here are links to get some mp3's:
Stars of Track and Field - With You [YouTube]
Stars of Track and Field - Fantastic

And here's an interview with lead singer Kevin Calaba.

Jeff Klein will open the show. I'm a sucker for a Guns of Brixton cover, and his is a good one.
Jeff Klein - Guns of Brixton

Jens Lekman and Throw Me The Statue

2007-11-06T00:26:00.001-08:00

Jens Lekman and Throw Me the Statue will play Wednesday, November 7 at Portland's Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Avenue.

by elchicodelaleche

by chona kasinger

Throw Me The Statue - Lolita
Throw Me the Statue - Yucatan Gold
Throw Me the Statue - Young Sensualists
Throw Me the Statue - Conquering Kids
Throw Me the Statue - About To Walk

Southern Mexico needs help

2007-11-01T20:57:00.001-07:00

Compras de Panico,
originally uploaded by 8zil.

A city in southern Mexico called Villahermosa has suffered flooding that looks possibly worse than that suffered by New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Possibly much, much worse. Tens of thousands of people are stranded on rooftops amid rushing flood waters, and grocery stores are empty. They need help. I don't know what one can do, but I'll update this post as I get more information.

For now, all I can think to do is contact your Senators, Representative, and Governor and ask them to send help to Villahermosa.

Update: According to this article, the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) is providing food aid. It appears that you can donate only through the mail or by wire.

Update: There's no drinking water. People in Mexico City can bring bottled water and other non-perishables to:
Casa de la Cultura del Gobierno de Tabasco
Berlin 33, esquina Marsella
Colonia Juarez, Mexico City

Update: Lady K has information about other donation sites in Mexico City.

Update: This has finally reached the front page of Google News.

Sending donations is a real pain, but for those concerned enough, who have Bank of America accounts, you go to a branch and sign up for "Safe Send." Then you can send money for free to several accounts set up for disaster victims.

Update: A mere four days after the flooding started, the American Red Cross sent some chump change and is "evaluating" sending relief workers. But they'll sure take your money! It's online and convenient!

Whatever. I'm so disappointed in my country. When New Orleans flooded, Mexico sent aid workers, and a lot of water, food, and money, possibly before Bush even stopped clowning around with country music singers. Bush has not said a word about the flooding in Tabasco. Maybe he needs a few more days to veto bills to (drum roll) prevent flooding in the United States.

Update: Ireland has offered a million euros (like a kajillion dollars).

Update: Food and water is running out. Officials estimate 80,000 people are still in the flooded areas.

The U.S. silence is deafening. The best news story, not very good, is an article in the New York Times with some personal stories of the disaster. Where is George W. Bush? Is this how Texans treat their neighbors?

Update: Finally, the Washington Post has captured the utter urgency of the situation.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T16:46:00.000-07:00

Here are links to some scary songs I've been listening to lately.
Jens Lekman - Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death
Jens Lekman - Black Cab [Buy mp3!!!]
Gothic Archies - Scream And Run Away
You Say Party! We Say Die! - Monster [Buy mp3!!!]
The Trucks - Zombie

by revjim5000

Roky Erickson - I Walked With A Zombie
Neko Case - Things That Scare Me [Buy mp3!!!]
Neko Case - Dirty Knife [Buy mp3!!!]
Tom Waits - Dead and Lovely
Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear The Reaper [Cover][Cover][Cover][Buy mp3!!!]
Final Fantasy - The CN Tower Belongs To The Dead [Buy mp3!!!]
Man Man - Van Helsing Boombox [Buy mp3!!!]

The Polar Fleece Hat Killer

2007-10-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

I cringed when I saw the description of my favorite podcast Jordan, Jesse Go! this week. Discussing "what changes they could make to" Portland? "Changes"? To Portland??? I was not worried about our shallow Portland peccadilloes being found out quite as much as them missing terribly in trying to find something to dislike about our fine city. Oh no, I thought, they're going to say there are too many bikes.

Nope. They hit Portland with valid critiques that indeed, if addressed, could make Portland at least a better-dressed city.

Prolonged adolescence is indeed a thing that happens here. I live in a gorgeous giant house in the heart of the city. With housemates. At 32. I visited my (younger) sister with four kids recently and I could not handle all the self-sacrifice. In Portland, the View-Master is mine. All mine (well okay, and Vladmaster's). There will be no poking out each picture in the reel and then tearing it in half.

You must be mentally This Tall in Portland. But not much more.

Much as I am a little too indulgent to my inner child, I do not dress in sports clothes to go to a restaurant, like the "slovenly" Portlanders noted by Jesse. In their defense, a lot of us engage in outdoor sports (riding bikes) a lot of the time. Also in their defense, when I looked for photos of egregious restaurant sportswear, some bloggers in indie darling Austin, Texas were by far the worst. But I'd still love it if Jordan, Jesse acquired and sent a Polar Fleece Hat Murderer to Portland. I'd only lose one dear old college friend. It's worth it.

The famous doughnut place is here, not in Seattle. So maybe next time on the bacon maple bar. For now, you'll just have to go to one of the eight Ethiopian restaurants in just the Fairfax neighborhood of L.A. to drown your culinary sorrows.

Planning trips online: Yahoo! Travel FTW

2007-10-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Last year Continental over-booked the flight my sister and I were taking to Cancun. They offered $300 and a first-class seat to anyone who'd wait for the next flight. We bargained for $400 (and first class) and took the deal. So now I get to take two really fun trips this December, to Mexico City and surrounding areas, and to Puerto Rico.

by azure elixir.

My sister and I spent the better part of 48 sleepless hours in Houston Bush (retch) International Airport. We earned $800 of travel.

When I travel, I'm a huge fan of itineraries. I can stray from the plan without any foot-stomping or hair-pulling, but I like to think carefully about my options ahead of time. I don't want to miss anything. My nightmare scenario would be something like going to Peru, getting back, and being dumbfounded when someone asks, "So... what'd you think of Machu Picchu?" (Actually, my nightmare scenario is my baby sister getting her leg eaten by a shark, but the location of Puerto Rican hospitals is not very blog-worthy, is it?)

For trip planning, Lonely Planet's Facebook app had long intrigued me, so right after I booked the trip to Puerto Rico, I loaded the Lonely Planet app up with Puerto Rican destinations, on the assumption that I'd just rearrange it all into a reasonable schedule later. Not so. It rearranges, all right -- at its own leisure and using its own impenetrable logic. For all I know, it's still deciding I should surf in Rincon twenty minutes after I hit the bioluminescent bay in Vieques -- no wait! -- make that an hour after El Morro -- no wait...

In short, Lonely Planet's trip planner isn't good enough (yet?). I decided to see how it compares to some other online trip-planning programs. In addition to planning Puerto Rico, I also drive through prime Northwest wine country several times a year, so I checked how the programs fared in planning a wine tasting tour. As when I tested online calendars and Eventful destroyed the competition the instant I tried it, Yahoo! Travel has taken the trip planning prize with no real competitors.

Yahoo! Travel Trip Planner
Easily re-arranged? Yes!!!
Dates? Yes
Friends can edit? Yes
Share on Facebook? No
Makes KML file? No
Bloggable? No
Embeddable? No
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 88 in San Juan alone
Finds wineries? No
Can add destinations that aren't there? Yes
Directions between points? Yes
Open to development? Maybe, through Pipes
Notes: If I could share it on Facebook and make a KML, it'd be perfect. And I suspect that once I learn Yahoo! Pipes, I may be able to do those things.

Google My Maps
Easily re-arranged? No
Dates? No
Share on Facebook? No
Makes KML file (for Google Earth)? Yes
Bloggable? No
Embeddable: Yes:

View Larger Map
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 411
Finds wineries? Yes
Can add destinations that aren't there? Yes
Directions between points? Yes
Open to development? No
Notes: Google Maps was good for putting all my destinations on one map, but there's no temporal aspect, so it isn't really a trip planner so much as a spatial list of everything ever. You can plan your route pretty neatly with the draggable driving directions, but it's just not the same as an itinerary. Also, integrating My Maps and Driving Directions sure would be nice. As it is, my driving directions have no names on any of the destinations.

eTripBuilder
Easily re-arranged? Yes
Dates? Yes
Share on Facebook? No
Makes KML file? No
Easily add destinations it doesn't have? No
Bloggable? No
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 46
Finds wineries? No
Can add destinations that aren't there? Supposedly
Notes: Looked really promising, but gave me a whole string of error messages when I moused over my departure date at one point. And then I tried to add a really basic attraction in Puerto Rico (El Morro), and it just didn't take.

Journey Miles
Easily re-arranged? No
Dates? Yes
Share on Facebook? Yes
Makes KML file? No
Bloggable? No
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 0
Finds wineries? No
Open to development? No
Notes: You have to build the whole trip at once. Better not make a mistake!

Lonely Planet
Easily re-arranged? No
Dates? Yes, but they change at random
Friends can edit? No
Share on Facebook? Yes
Makes KML file? No
Bloggable? No
Embeddable? Yes
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 0
Finds wineries? No
Open to development? Yes
Notes: Spent two days dragging, dropping and correcting dates after Lonely Planet rearranged my trips with no discernible rhyme or reason before this blog post was born of frustration.

Trip Advisor Cities I've Visited
Makes KML file? No
Share on Facebook? Yes
How many hotels found in San Juan, Puerto Rico? 0
Directions between points? No
Open to development? No
Notes: Not for trip planning; just for bragging.

Where I've Been
Makes KML file? No
Easily rearranged? No
Dates? No
Share on Facebook? Yes
Bloggable? No
How many hotels found in San Juan, Puerto Rico? 0
Directions between points? No
Open to development? No
Notes: Not for trip planning, and not as specific as Cities I've Visited.

Trips
Makes KML file? No
Easily rearranged? No
Dates? Yes
Friends can edit?
Share on Facebook? Yes
Bloggable? No
How many hotels found in San Juan, Puerto Rico?
Directions between points? No
Open to development? No
Notes: Destinations don't resolve beyond city level.

TripWiser Trip Match
Friends can edit? Yes
Share on Facebook? Yes
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 0
Notes: Puerto Rico is not an option.

TripCart
How many hotels found in Puerto Rico? 0
Notes: Puerto Rico is not an option.

Aesop Rock at Wonder Ballroom 10/25

2007-10-18T02:28:00.001-07:00

Aesop Rock,
originally uploaded by Alex Rando.

Aesop Rock sounds sinister. I think his voice reminds me of Dr. Dre, but do I want to download "Bitches Ain't Shit" to check? I sure don't. I know Aesop Rock reminds me of the mix-tape gem "Sky is Falling" by Blackalicious, who I otherwise don't like as much as my liberally-educated indie-loving demographic should indicate. I enjoy most of Aesop Rock's produced songs, and I'd like to be super-excited about his show next week at the Wonder Ballroom. But I listened to some crappy crowd-screamy recordings of his live stuff, and the music was not interesting enough to make me endure the screamers. The mashup (shudder) "We Share Our Mother's Jumper Cables" is illustrative. Normally I loathe mashups, but this one's great. Aesop Rock's voice is fantastic, and pairing it with better music shows how much the boring, flat beats in some of his own songs weigh him down. The music is still great, but the potential is even greater.

Aesop Rock - We Share Our Mother's Jumper Cables
Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]
Aesop Rock - Basic Cable [Buy mp3!!!]
Aesop Rock - Coffee (feat. John Darnielle) [Buy mp3!!!]
Prefuse 73 - Black List (feat. MF Doom and Aesop Rock)
Aesop Rock - No City
Evil Nine - Crooked (feat. Aesop Rock) [YouTube]

The Pipettes at Wonder Ballroom 10/31

2007-10-15T22:15:00.001-07:00

mediaeater

Don a polka-dot dress and practice some fifties dance moves -- The Pipettes will play at Portland's Wonder Ballroom on Halloween.

The Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me [YouTube][Live][Live][Buy]
The Pipettes - I Love You [Live][Live][Buy]
The Pipettes - I Think We're Alone Now
The Pipettes - Dirty Mind [Live][Buy]

The Pipettes - Because It's Not Love (But It's Still A Feeling) [Live][Live][Buy]
The Pipettes - Why Did You Stay? [Live][Buy]
The Pipettes - In The Bleak Midwinter
The Pipettes - ABC [Live][YouTube][Buy]
The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes [Live][Buy]
The Pipettes - Tell Me What You Want [Live][Live][Buy]
The Pipettes - Just Be Yourself, Baby
The Pipettes - Pull Shapes [YouTube][Live][Buy]

Great cover songs

2007-10-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

Surpass the originals.

John Cale - Hallelujah [Buy Album]
Leonard Cohen's original sounds overwrought. This cover does not. I can't pinpoint the difference.

Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane [Live][Buy Album]
While there are some Velvet Underground songs I love as they are, a couple songs are meh until people who value tuneful singing make them amazing.

Cat Power - I Found A Reason [Buy mp3!!!]
I put this on the jukebox in a trendy bar downtown on a date several years ago. A, mmm, socially-unrestricted homeless guy had wandered into the bar, and Cat Power's mellow style made him wander from table to table, ranting insistently that the music be changed.

My party-all-the-time skateboarder date tended to agree with the, mmm, less-than-socially-graceful homeless man, I think. Ahh well.

Jose Gonzales - Heartbeats [Buy Album]
Sorry no accents on the name. Since I've started blogging about music, bands with weird accents and punctuation marks are a bete noir (sic(k)). I have no idea how to spell -- let alone type -- oomlaut. If you insist on having one in your band name, I can't find you.

Death Cab For Cutie - All Is Full Of Love
This is blasphemy, but I'm only mildly pleased by Bjork (and again with the oomlauts!), so when I heard her sing "All is Full of Love" at Sasquatch, I thought she was covering Death Cab. Not vice versa.

Bjork's performance was still strong, of course. "Strong," like "talented", being compliments I pay when I know intellectually there's merit, but I'm still not very excited about it.

Fountains of Wayne - ...Baby One More Time [Buy mp3!!!]
I've been spending time in the part of the country where we're all really supposed to care a lot about who has custody of what celebrity's kids, and I'm genuinely a little physically sick of it.

So I love hearing this song's very low-key, take-it-or-leave-it mockery of a gal who ruled the fashion and music industries with a trashy, corporate fist for a few years of my young adult life that I don't get back.

Nirvana - Plateau [YouTube][Buy mp3!!!]

Rosie Thomas - The One I Love
If the way Republican politicians love their neighbors, do unto others, and turn the other cheeks has left you with some unfortunate anti-Christian sentiment and you want to hear Sufjan Stevens without that baggage, don't read the text of the Rosie Thomas link.

Rock Plaza Central - Sexyback
My feelings on Justin Timberlake aren't that different from my feelings on Britney Spears. I wish they would run away together. Far away.

As awesome as the originals.
Le Tigre - I'm So Excited [Buy mp3!!!]

Nick Cave - Black Betty [Buy mp3!!!]

Mercury Rev - I Only Have Eyes For You

Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights [Buy Album]

Vanessa Paradis - Waiting For The Man

Elliott Smith Jealous Guy
Singing this indicator-of-tumult beautifully is a recipe for a too-early end. Singing too beautifully probably won't ever be a problem for me, but I hope my favorite singers stay far, far away from "Jealous Guy".

Nouvelle Vague - Guns of Brixton

Wendy O. Williams and Lemmy Kilmister - Stand By Your Man

Nirvana - Molly's Lips

Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night [YouTube]

Cake Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

Neko Case - Wayfaring Stranger

Frente - Bizarre Love Triangle [YouTube]

Blitzen Trapper - Crazy On You

The Bees - A Minha Menina

The Bosshoss - Hey Ya

Viva Voce - Eye In The Sky

Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha - Love Will Tear Us Apart

Dr. Dog - Heart It Races

Joan Jett - Let's Do It

Not quite as good as the amazing originals, but still five stars out of five.
Britt Daniel - Bring It On Home To Me

Last Town Chorus - Modern Love

Cake - I Will Survive

Jonathan Coulton - Baby Got Back [YouTube]

Greg Laswell - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Nada Surf - Where Is My Mind

Death Cab For Cutie - Little Boxes

Yelp and GarageBand should fail

2007-10-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

I've been amazed, in Web 2.0, that some sites assume their users will provide extremely top-notch reviews on their obscure little sites for free. I enjoy most Web 2.0 sites anyway, as they allow me to rate and track and list things and ohhh, do I love that. But a couple of sites have such a horrible give:take ratio that it bears mentioning. The absolute worst I've found is GarageBand, which provides some of the music-you've-never-heard-of to iLike. One day when I had extra free time, I signed up with GarageBand to see if I could discover some good new music. I couldn't. I listened to clips of 20 songs (you have almost no control over what songs you hear), and nearly all of them were truly awful. Approximately two were a solid 4 stars out of 5, which is still not enough stars to make me a fan of something new.

GarageBand then wanted me to not only write them a quality review (with footnotes and citations) of all twenty of these mediocre songs, but it also kept reminding me that the most likely audience for my review would be the fledgling artists themselves. For me, there's no contest -- between "flattering" and "soul-destroyingly honest", flattering wins. I recall with horror comparing some terrible thing or other to Elliott Smith. I'm going to hell for sure. After you've struggled for (nice) words, some mysterious exalted category of music insiders reads and rates your reviews. So for the honor of giving GarageBand free content, you get picked apart by sad music snobs who have nothing better to do than shit on free Internet reviews. I bet you're Googling furiously to find out more about this wonderful GarageBand service!

Only slightly less annoying than GarageBand is Citysearch-wannabe Yelp. Yelp also expects extremely high-quality free content, such that after I spent most of a night giving star ratings to dozens of my favorite places in Portland, Yelp sent me a scolding email to inform me they'd deleted all my ratings (without warning!) because I hadn't written text reviews. I was stunned, and I immediately closed my account.

Sure, there are some good, free reviews on Yelp and GarageBand. But most quality writing about culture is still done for money or personal blogs. It's like on Flickr. I have some okay pictures there. I pointed my camera at something interesting to me, and I pushed the button. You can have my pictures for free, but some of them aren't very good. Photographers who really know what they're doing can, do, and should charge for their skills. Analogously, on review sites, if you want a free opinion, it's going to be the time-investment equivalent of pointing and shooting: a star rating. If I'm writing complete sentences involving cross-references and use of the "Shift" key, Yelp and GarageBand, I shall quote "Goodfellas" via Jay Z: Fuck you. Pay me.

Update: Restaurants are priming Yelpers with free food and drink. Weird.

Why I hate Republicans

2007-10-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

"If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democratic president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, a personal fantasy of mine." -- Republican spokesmodel Ann Coulter

"Hate" is not a word I toss around lightly. But I fucking hate Republicans. I don't hate you personally, individual Republican. You're just a little stupid or selfish or both. I can forgive you personally, just like your main man Jesus said I should. But I hate the "Grand" Old Party and what it has done to our country since Bill Clinton got that extremely ill-advised blow job and Republicans used their, ahem, superior moral values to take over our country.

Let's take it back, ladies and gentlemen. Please.

Portland Essentials

2007-10-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

I'm dragging hopefully lots of wedding guests to Portland next summer. Here's the first of several planned why-I-love-Portland lists, suitable for Portland visitors then and now.
1. Powell's Books
2. Rose Garden [My thoughts...]
3. Laurelhurst Theater
4. Bridgeport Brewing Company
5. Stumptown Coffee
6. Voodoo Doughnut

International Rose Test Garden

2007-09-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

Songs for three-year-olds

2007-09-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

In preparation for an extended babysitting gig, I'm scanning my computer for good music that might entertain both me and little kids (and not infuriate their parents). It's not that easy. The Chemical Brothers' "Salmon Dance" is perfect except for one teenytiny little f-bomb. The Bosshoss randomly threw two f's into their awesome cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya" (which I just couldn't find an mp3 for). Devendra Banhart's "Little Yellow Spider" is adorable, except for the verse that produces "hooves instead of hands". I could go on.

Still, looking for links to these songs, I found tons of other great stuff (and couldn't find links for some great stuff). Maybe I'll add more when it's properly curated. For now, I'm gonna see what the youngsters think of these songs:
Gothic Archies - Scream And Run Away
Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain [ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - Chiron Beta Prime [YouTube][ Buy]
Cocorosie - Rainbowarriors
Y.A.C.H.T. - See A Penny (Pick It Up)
Andrews Sisters - Tico Tico
Dixie Cups - Iko Iko
Boney M. - Rasputin
Tom Lehrer - The Elements
The Beatles - Drive My Car
The Chordettes - Mr. Sandman
The Chordettes - Lollipop [YouTube]
White Denim - shakeshakeshake
Judy Garland - Somewhere Over The Rainbow
Sesame Street - Mah Na Mah Na [YouTube]
The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian
Peter Bjorn and John - Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Central Services Board of Education - The Lonely Tomato
They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
They Might Be Giants - Why Does the Sun Shine?
They Might Be Giants - Particle Man
Black Moth Super Rainbow - I Think It Is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too
Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
The Monkees - Daydream Believer
New York Dolls - Dance Like A Monkey
Paul Simon - Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
The Muppets - Mah Na Mah Na [YouTube]

Books for three-year-olds

2007-09-21T18:51:00.001-07:00

I'm about to go help my sister with her twin three-year-olds while she figures out the routine of having twin three-year-olds and brand new twin infants. Children under the age of twelve want all your attention all the time, so I hope to go prepared with quality books, movies with actual plots, and music that doesn't make me want to rip my ears off. First, the books.

Nutcracker
I'd never heard of it before, but it's well-regarded on GoodReads.
$1.62+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$21.60 through Powell's
Portlander price: $5.61

A Very Special House
I just discovered Ruth Krauss as the author of the Sendak-illustrated Bears. A lot of her books look great!$5.45+$3.99 at Amazon
$16.95 Powell's Burnside and Hawthorne
Portlander price: $9.44

I Can Fly
Another intriguing Krauss book.
$0.16+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$1.95 at Powell's Hawthorne
Portlander price: $1.95

The Carrot Seed
Another intriguing Ruth Krauss book. It sounds like it might be more satisfying to patient adult readers than to squirmy toddlers, but I'll see how the kids like it.
$0.95+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$6.99 at Powell's Burnside
Portlander price: $4.94

Where The Wild Things Are
I don't remember reading this as a child, and the vague recollection I have of reading it to my baby sister has us stopping early on because she was bored. Maybe, like me, she couldn't relate to being a the kind of brat the kid in the book is. But man oh man do people love this book! I'll give it one more chance.
$0.01+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$12.50 at Powell's Beaverton
Portlander price: $4

Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus
This sounds, and looks, based on the pages Amazon would let me see, really fun. Yeah, encouraging kids to say "No" might not be a brilliant move. But I only have to deal with the consequences for a month...
$4.55+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
Not at Powell's
Portlander price: $8.54

Hippos Go Berserk
Looks fun, and two of Boynton's other books have been popular with some kid or another I've babysat (I can't remember which).
$0.47+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$7.99 at Powell's Burnside and Hawthorne
Portlander price: $4.46

But Not the Hippopotamus
Another well-regarded Boynton hippo book.
$0.01+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$3.95 at Powell's Burnside
Portlander price: $3.95

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
My niece and nephew have had this for a couple years, and it's on the heavy-rotation shelf, so they must like it.
$0.01+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$16.95 at Powell's Hawthorne
Portlander price: $4

Corduroy
I remember reading this when I was 8 or 10 for some reason and hating it, but I think it was intended for my little sisters, not me. I'll see how some younger kids like it.
$1.49+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$3.95 at Powell's Beaverton
Portlander price: $3.95

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
An incredibly gorgeous book. This was one of my sisters' favorite books when she was about five, and younger kids enjoy turning the pages and poking their fingers in the holes.
$2.50+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$19 + shipping from Powell's
Portlander price: $6.49

One, Two, Three
An educational Boynton book that sounds fun.
$0.01+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$4.95 at Powell's Beaverton
Portlander price: $4

The Going-To-Bed Book
This is one of the Boynton books one of my babysitting charges really enjoys. If I recall correctly, it even helped get the kid to sleep!
$0.01+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$5.99 at Powell's Beaverton
Portlander price: $4

Snuggle Puppy
Oof. This book. It's great, it's sweet, and at least one kid I know loves it, but it requires singing. Don't read it in front of other people if you're self-conscious.
$0.01+$3.99 at Amazon
$3.95 at Powell's Beaverton
Portlander price: $3.95

Moo, Baa, La La La!
Boynton rules the pre-school set. This book sounds fun.
$0.01+$3.99 at Amazon
$3.50 at Powell's Burnside
Portlander price: $3.50

Barnyard Dance!
I'm betting my farm-kid niece and nephew have this one -- it rings a bell -- but if so, perhaps I'll have an extra copy on hand for the myriad other children people my age are producing.
$0.01+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$9.95+shipping from Powell's
Portlander price: $4

Pat The Bunny
In the heavy-rotation of one of my babysitting charges.
$0.50+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$9.99 at Powell's Burnside and Hawthorne
Portlander price: $4.49

The Very Lonely Firefly
Another gorgeous Eric Carle book, well-regarded on GoodReads.
$3.41+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$9.50 at Powell's Hawthorne
Portlander price: $7.40

Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy!
A tactile Boynton book that sounds fun for kids.
$1.81+3.99 shipping at Amazon
$6.95 at Powell's Hawthorne
Portlander price: $5.80

Bears
I found this book recommended by the New York Times when I went looking, fruitlessly, for a comment Naomi Wolf supposedly made about "Where The Wild Things Are." Learning about the existence of Ruth Krauss was more valuable by far than finding a more erudite feminist to do my talkin' for me.
$0.42+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$6.50 at Powell's Burnside
Portlander price: $4.41

Your Personal Penguin
Played out as they are, I still love penguins.
$0.99+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$6.95 at Powell's Burnside and Hawthorne
Portlander price: $4.98

Goodnight Goodnight Sleepyhead
A sweet-looking Krauss book. Amazon recommends it for 4-8 year olds, but given the simple subject, I just can't believe that's right.
$3.20+$3.99 at Amazon
$6.99 at Powell's Burnside
Portlander price: $6.99

ABC: A Child's First Alphabet Book
Auntie Jami loves her an educational book, potential boringness be darned!
$4.49+$3.99 shipping at Amazon
$8.99 at Powell's Burnside and Hawthorne
Portlander price: $8.48

Jonathan Coulton at the Mission Theater

2007-09-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

juco

Jonathan Coulton is playing at the Mission Theater tonight! Coulton troubadored for John Hodgman's book tour, wearing a 'coon-skin cap and playing the hobo-themed "Big Rock Candy Mountain." All very amusing, but when he then sang the very sad song of an evil genius living on another mountain, this one named Skullcrusher, my boyfriend was hooked.

Skullcrusher Mountain is now "our song," such that I've commissioned a half-pony, half-monkey monster drawing for possible use in wedding-related program activities. I just hope Ape Lad doesn't use too many monkeys.

Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain [ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - I Feel Fantastic [YouTube]
Jonathan Coulton - Baby Got Back [YouTube][ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - Chiron Beta Prime [YouTube][ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - Kenesaw Mountain Landis[ Buy]