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So it’s been a Pixies sort of week or so.  I find I always wind up back at my musical roots at some point and I’m deeply rooted with the Pixies.  I recall driving around in my wood paneled Jeep Grand Wagoneer listening to Gouge Away, Head On, Velouria, and Crackity Jones.  Back then there was no one cooler than Frank Black, but it’s only now that I recognize that it was Geek Cool.  I don’t know how I missed that.  They’re blatantly socially awkward and yet somewhere in it all exists the rock god factor, and they truly are rock gods.  They’ve influenced two or three generations of music easily, and they even have a track on Rock Band.  In a Rolling Stone interview, Kurt Cobain is quoted as saying that Smells Like Teen Spirit was a conscious attempt to co-opt the Pixies style. After stumbling across two films of theirs in the past two weeks, I feel I have a stronger grasp on the band as a whole and can appreciate them even more, although there was a sort of Oz falls from grace aspect to one of the films.

I’ve seen their appearance on Austin City Limits which is supremely phenomenal, but on Saturday I stumbled upon a documentary titled “Live Quiet Loud” on the Sundance Channel, which documented the 2004 reunion tour and then tonight I came across a recording of “The 2006 Newport Folk Music Festival” with an acoustic set by the Pixies.  Both were equally impressive, but I’m glad I discovered them in the order that I did because I felt that the timeline kept within the continuity.

Loud Quiet Loud was aproposly named.  They are completely bi-polar in their music, and in their band relationships.  The documentary portrayed them as fragile musicians that were charged with a responsibility that it seemed they didn’t feel they could bear the weight of.  After ten or so years apart they decided to come back together and go on tour.  Frank Black is drastically overweight, Kim Deal has just gotten out of rehab, and has been sober for a year, David Lovering is a magician, and Joey Santiago is still a timid back staged lead guitarist behind Frank Black.  You sit watching the story unfold and realize you share the same anxieties and that the tragedy is that sometimes your heroes set aside their super powers and join mankind.

I think we have the sweeter end of the deal.  I know that I have appreciated their talents, and music and I think they’ve worked really hard and sacrificed a lot to provide us with that.

Nothing educates like psychedelic Technicolor imagery set to funky 70’s grooves with an urban backdrop, and PBS is has finally decided to bring back the electric company. My only regret is that my son is too old to really appreciate it. I feel like the Electric Company defines a long lost innocence that I had when I was a child, back when my mom had big oversized necklaces, earrings, and yes, an afro. I used to love sifting through my parents records, and listen to music using huge headphones with the spiral cable.

Music for the series will come from three people involved in the Broadway rap-salsa-pop musical “In the Heights”: the director Thomas Kail, the co-arranger and orchestrator Bill Sherman and the actor Christopher Jackson.

In a category by himself is the beat-box artist Shockwave (Chris Sullivan). Besides slinging hash at the Electric Diner, he speaks in one-word bursts only — no sentences — and appears in guises like the much missed gorilla and a butcher who cleaves words. But it is his D.J. routine that may be mimicked on playgrounds next year. He appears to be scratching syllables from dueling turntables to form words. It all emanates from his “bruh-bruh-AIN, bruh-bruh-AIN, brain.”

I still have my copy of the Electric Company on vinyl as well as all of their old LPs. The Electric Company combined great animation with pop music, and it rocked! I can’t wait to see the revamp!

Via: New York Times

So I’m an avid beer brewer, and I’ve made about a dozen or so batches in the past few years. I picked up this habit in the Navy when a Marine Corporal in my Avionics class and I started making batches in the barracks. Since then I’ve been hooked, and I’ve made some really good beers, and some really great friends in brew. I love to share the love, and have brewed with numerous of my friends, or at least let them taste my beers. So about two weeks back my brother came into town for my birthday, and we brewed an IPA together, which was fitting because we had never really brewed together. I’m not sure if he shared the love, but I think he felt, “Okay, now I can say I’ve brewed it too”. For me, the most interesting part of brewing is the hops. I really get a kick out of how if you hop a beer earlier in the boil, you get the bitterness, if you hop it late, you get the taste, and if you hop it late you get the aroma. You can also dry hop which is when you toss a muzlin sack of hops into the fermentor. This really gives you that heady floral aroma of the hops. I’m a huge fan of IPA’s. The local brewery near me makes a kick-butt Double IPA, and if you get it straight from the brewery, it’s super fresh.
Anyhow back to my brew. It’s downstairs, and Jake and I transferred it to the secondary fermentor tonight. I’ll probably keg it on Friday. So far it’s at 5.1% alc, but I think it should end up higher. The potential was 7.2, but I still have a higher sugar count than I expected.

Does anyone else have any experience brewing beer?

I have this strong desire to explore shanty towns, vacant buildings, and ghost towns. Occasionally, I’ll come across an article, or a blog post showing such explorations. I have wanted to create an entire vacation based around exploring these kinds of towns, but the inspiration for this post came from this link. I found in the woods near my house an old abandoned race track from the 20’s. You can see the faint ring of the track in Google Maps. There are these huge stone stuctures still standing, fountains, marble steps, and what we think could possibly be the stables, and the ticket booth. The track itself has some amazing feeling to it. It’s super self descriptive, and the railing is still standing, although where the rail has gotten to close to the growing trees, the trunks have swallowed up portions of the rail. If you stand quietly on the track you can almost hear the the faint rustling of leaves, followed by the pounding of the hooves. You almost seem to wait a moment in expectaion of some sort of movement on the track, but then you realize that you’re 90 years too late for this race. Can I still get the same odds you think?

I always enjoy reading the blogs of the movers and shakers of web design, and CSS, and Molly Holzschlag definitely provides top notch information that’s always apropos to my current situation. Her latest article over at CIO.com not only helps client to find great web design, and cut through all the muck and mire, but it’s a handy guide for designers as well. I have had dozens of meetings with prospective clients who have obviously not done much research at all to what owning a website means let alone how much it can cost. I recently saw a client who has this amazing idea for a website, but when I asked her if she visited a specific well known site that would be considered a competitor, she replied that she hadn’t. It’s crucial to do some research whether you’re a CIO, or an entrepreneur who has a need for a presence on the web.

please spend the consultancy fee for a few days and hire someone with a known ability to evaluate and measure the choices you’ve made.

The bottom line is you either need to do the leg work to make sure you’re getting quality work, or bring someone on board even if just on a consulting basis who you can trust to help you interview prospective developers, evaluate RFP’s, and make sure that you’re getting development that is based on current design, and technology standards such.

Via CIO.Com | Molly.Com

• How do you make a meme? http://tinyurl.com/5qoy4k//www.divinecaroline.com/article/33710/48706-love-octodog- #
• Reduce paper consumption. Opt out of catalogs here. https://www.catalogchoice.org/dashboard #
• And while you’re at it reduce net trash, and instead of deleting those unwanted emails from macy etc, unsuscribe #

• Is the All-in-One Personal Website Headed for Extinction? http://tinyurl.com/5otxf7 #
• I’m worried that the batch of beer I brewed is spoiled :( #
• More proof of the demise of the personal website… and I just setup a blog! http://twistedintellect.com/ #
• Anyone have any ideas for a CMS that’s so easy a caveman can use it. Joomla/Drupal won’t cut the mustard for my client #

A fantastic collection of defaced paper currencies. It’s wonderful how simple they are in concept, but abundantly complex in humor, and effectuality. They remind me of the old timey movie mustache disguises. Below are my favorites including the John Water’s bill which if you don’t view full size you’re missing out. I think the world need Chuck Norris on a bill.

Similar in genre, but opposite end of the spectrum is Where’s George, which Ethan had introduced to my son. Where’s George is a web based paper currency tracking website. You stamp your bills to with a red Where’s George stamp that directs people to go to the website and enter the bills serial number. My son’s bills have popped up all over the US. When you spend a Where’s George bill, people either love it or they hate it. I’ve been snidely told that I could go to jail for defacing currency, which is actually a fallacy. The law specifically Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code, defines ‘illegal’ defacement as defacement that renders bills unfit to be re-issued. For the legal details from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The provision does not seem to include giving dead presidents, a make-over.

via flickr

• @zefrank I have a collection of airline seat ashtrays from when I was a kid. They pulled out fairly easily. Welcome back! #

Yesterday marked a major milestone in Japanese culture, as it was the 50th anniversary of “Kaiten-Sushi”, aka, Conveyor Belt Sushi, aka “The Sushi Train”, as it’s fondly known as in Australia. Another great oddity from the same culture that brought us the “Oshiya” or Rail Pusher, and Tentacle Porn (link thankfully omited.)

Originally conceived by Yoshiaki Shiraishi (1914-2001), the first conveyor belt sushi restaraunt, Mawaru Genroku Sushi opened in Osaka in 1958, and quickly grew to become a chain of over 240 restaurants all over Japan, however the number of restaurants was down to 11 in 2001.

The ideal speed of the belt is considered to be 8 cm per second, slow enough to ensure a safe transport, but fast enough to bring enough volume to the customers. Using a conveyor belt also reduces the number of waiters needed. A fast belt also causes the sushi to dry faster. The belt usually runs clockwise to make it easier to lift the plates off the belt with the left hand while the right hand holds the chopsticks.

Incidentally, Shiraishi San also was the inventor of the less popular, but equally Japanese, “Robotic Sushi” which much to my chagrin never really caught on.

Wikipedia entry on Conveyor Belt Sushi | via Neatorama | image: Monstro via flickr