Archive for February, 2009

Getting Work Done From Home

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

New Office Set-Up

Took me well over a year to finally buy a notebook stand but my neck and back are glad that I did. The stand is Targus AWE26US Ergonomic M-stand which amazon sells for just under $28 USD and it is well worth the money as it is sturdy and holds the notebook at an angle that approximates a stand alone monitor. Tossing in a cheap keyboard and mouse set from Logitech kept the whole bill under $50 USD. Not too shabby.

Up on the walls are my basses, a Washburn XB-600 fretless and an AB-20 fretless/acoustic, and out of the picture is my Seagull S6 acoustic guitar.  This past summer I hung them up in the hopes that I might start playing them a little more and while I’m not writing any opuses I have found myself pulling them down and letting muscle memory run through some scales and modes while I think about scaling websites.

Slowly it is coming together and maybe when it warms up a little more I’ll seal the floor and paint it which would pretty much finish the yearlong project of renovating this room as an office.  Provided I can stay on task and keep motivated.

Knowledge and Art

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Education in Photography

Orkut User Creeps Me Out So I’m Redacting All Photos of Gabi

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

This evening I received a PM in Flickr that left me cold.

:: Hello

allows me to use the photos of Gabriella in orkut? please,
it is very vtor. I hope your answer, thanks!

The individual does not have any photos posted of their own and has been adding other users with pictures of their children as a contact. Not very social and extra creepy.

Now, I suppose I have been naive and pretty cavalier with posting pictures of my family figuring that the low amount of traffic on this site and my Flickr account would pretty much leave me feeling secure through relative obscurity.  That blanket of blissful ignorance has been pulled away.  Maybe it is a knee-jerk response but I am marking all my photos of Gabi, nieces, and nephew as only viewable by friends and family.  This means that any of my prior posts that link to Flickr, like the previous two, will likely show nothing.

I am very disturbed by what parents have been talking about on Flickr how they have found their photos used by members of the Orkut community and while I’m not one to get riled up about pedophiles lurking around every street corner the thought of some Brazilian pleasuring himself to pictures of my daughter playing shirtless on a hot summer’s day has lodged itself into my brain and I cannot shake it.

If you read this site and in the short-run would like to keep seeing pictures of Gabi then feel free to friend me on Flickr. Longer term I’ll be exploring options to host the pictures I’d like to post so I can keep tighter control on their usage.  Many apologies to anyone who has been enjoying the photos.

//edit
So I think that the tack I am going to take is self hosting low resolution images for the photos I’d like to share and linking them to the high quality ones on Flickr. If those pictures are of my family then they will be marked as Friends & Family so if you have a Flickr account and we are not already contacts just add me. :-D

Little Feet

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Frog Galoshes

Pink Socks

Trois Visages de Gabriella

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Year Three: Week Six
Bird is my friend.
She will look through you.

Top Albums of 2008: Battle Royale! (Alternative)

Friday, February 6th, 2009

The lines are drawn and the contestants are steeling themselves for auditory combat!

Seriously, 120 albums is a hell of an amount of albums to listen through and judge against those before and after.  So rather than make this an exercise in memory, or one with standards for that matter, I’m going to run this like an underground cock fight.  While it has all the appearances of being a free-for-all I’ll set up some basic boundaries, albums will compete intra-genre first then the victors will emerge to struggle against their peers.  What this is not is serious.  Like couples figure skating judgment will be capricious and on personal whim, whatever moves me at that moment will get the nod–come to think of it, this sounds like a Pitchfork review except without the literary torment and the rattling of Ivy League diplomas.

As my math skills are suspect, some of these brackets will have an album or two that do not fit nicely into a three-some (yes, I went there); those albums will wait on the sideline and get tossed into a sudden death with the finalist or be used to punt a pair into play.

Without further ad I bring you the first round of contestants: Genre Alternative!

Round One

  1. Calexico    Carried To Dust
    Cordero    De Donde Eres
    J*Davey    The Beauty In Distortion / The Land Of The Lost WINNER
  2. Dengue Fever    Venus on Earth
    Thao    We Brave Bee Stings and All
    Scott Reynolds    Adventure Boy WINNER
  3. The Gaslight Anthem    The ‘59 Sound
    Hauschka    Ferndorf WINNER
    Hot Chip    Made In The Dark
  4. Grouper    Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
    BLK JKS    Mystery EP
    Santogold    Santogold WINNER
  5. Basia Bulat    Oh, My Darling*** WINNER
    Minus The Bear    Acoustics
    Lau Nau    Nukkuu
  6. Firewater    The Golden Hour WINNER
    The Hold Steady    Stay Positive
    Gang Gang Dance    Saint Dymphna
  7. Portishead    Third WINNER
    The Postmarks    By The Numbers
    Black Taj    Beyonder
  8. Faraquet    Anthology 1997-98
    Fall Out Boy    Folie à Deux
    Elbow    The Seldom Seen Kid WINNER
  9. Vampire Weekend    Vampire Weekend
    Plants and Animals    Parc Avenue
    WINNER
    Jack Peñate    Matinée

Round Two

  1. J*Davey    The Beauty In Distortion / The Land Of The Lost WINNER
    Basia Bulat    Oh, My Darling
    Hauschka    Ferndorf
  2. Santogold    Santogold
    Scott Reynolds    Adventure Boy
    WINNER
    Firewater    The Golden Hour
  3. Portishead    Third
    Elbow    The Seldom Seen Kid
    Plants and Animals    Parc Avenue WINNER

Round Three

  1. J*Davey    The Beauty In Distortion / The Land Of The Lost
  2. Scott Reynolds    Adventure Boy
  3. Plants and Animals    Parc Avenue

Read the other posts

Work In Progress: Top Albums From 2008

*** Wildcard initiated as eMusic had the wrong release date for Coptic Light encoded, and if I were a 1/3 as organized as Qyuen I wouldn’t be editing the fight list on the fly…