About a decade ago, a colleague of mine introduced me to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, for which I was forever grateful. Although it was already nearly 20 years old at time I was turned on to it, the album was in many respects ahead of its time, and I mean that in the best possible sense. Now, nearly 30 years later, Byrne and Eno have released a new album, Everything that Happens Will Happen Today , available exclusively from their website, http://everythingthathappens.com.
The talented folks over Topspin (a Foundry Group investment) provided the software back-end that enables Byrne and Eno (and many other great artists) to engage directly with their fans and make their music available for streaming and purchase, in mp3 and audiophile FLAC format, as well as in CD format, as soon as those atoms are assembled in their appropriate configuration. Kudos to Topspin for being associated with such an important and long-awaited album release, and thanks to Byrne and Eno for taking a leap (of faith) into the future on Topspin's platform. For more background on this release, read Topspin's blog post announcing the album, and also take a gander at CEO Ian Rogers's blog as well.
Came across this on Gizmodo and had to share it. I've never been much of a gamer, but my Excite co-founders were all into gaming and were fanatic about the Super Mario games, particularly Super Mario Kart. Add to that the fact that I've always been intrigued with the Theremin, ever since figuring out it was the instrument responsible for the famous flat-7 interval in the first two notes of the Star Trek theme song, and you have a YouTube video that appealed to me on multiple levels, including the cool free-space hand control scheme that the Theremin employs.
Back in May, I spent a long weekend in Belgium with my friends Jason and Martin. The mission: drink beer, eat fine food and acquire fine chocolate. I am pleased to report that the mission was a success, and I posted photographic evidence of all the beers were able to sample as we skipped from Antwerp to Brugge to Brussels. At some point I plan to post a more detailed recap of the trip, but I felt compelled to write a quick post because I just finished savoring three of the finest dark-chocolate bars I've had in a long time. All three were single-origin bars from Pierre Marcolini, and each was delicious and possessed its own distinctive flavor. I really enjoy the fact that single-origin bars have brought the discussion of terroir to the world of chocolate. I also had some truly excellent chocolate at Neuhaus and Wittamer, but Pierre Marcolini's pure dark chocolate gets my nod on the basis of just plain unadulterated chocolate. Wittamer probably wins the day if you are interested in truffles and being distracted by other ingredients in your chocolate, which I certainly enjoy as well, but I lean more often towards the purism of a simple bar of dark chocolate.
In the "you learn something new every day" category, I was at the hardware store (McGuckin's, of course) and came across cow magnets . At first I thought this product name was some sort of hardware joke, sort of like Duck Tape brand duct tape, which really isn't used for (or on) ducks at all.
Of course, this exposes the fact that I've never lived or worked in a heavily agricultural region, because I'm sure anyone who has even basic first-hand knowledge of cows probably knows that cow magnets are, in fact, a very real and very useful product. Apparently, you feed your calf the magnet at branding time, which then remains in the cow's rumen for the rest of its life, and protects the cow from hardware disease , which is inflammation of the digestive tract caused when the cow inevitably consumes tramp iron (bailing, barbed wire, staple, nails, etc.) while grazing.
I just looked back on my calendar for the past two weeks and realized that July 2008 has been a good one for me in the live music department. It started on July 7th with a great solo performance by Shawn Colvin at Chautauqua, followed a few days later with a Friday evening show with the Charlie Hunter Trio at the Boulder Theater, then came Steely Dan last Thursday at Red Rocks (my favorite venue of all time) and, finally, the grand finale, The Police at Red Rocks. And all of this within a 30 mile radius. While I've seen every one of these musicians play live before, each of these shows was perhaps the best performance I've seen from each of them. Score one for the Colorado summer concert season.
My friend Carl pointed out a cool site to me called wordle. It makes very pretty word/tag clouds. The one here is a rendering of my del.icio.us tags. Captures my interests pretty well, I'd say. Another fun word geek site with a name with only one character's difference is called wordie, and it is sort of like flickr or del.icio.us for word nerds. The list of my favorite words can be found here.
Carl's always got fun stuff going on -- go check out his APAD photoblog, which he just completed. Carl wanted to improve his photography chops, so he decided to take an "audience worthy" picture every day and post the results on flickr. Go check out all 366 photos (it was a leap year), they are great.
Warning: long rant ahead, but I just concluded the worst and most protracted customer-service nightmare of my life and feel compelled to share it, since my experience was just preposterous. The subtitle of this post should be why you shouldn't buy a big-screen TV online, even though it is so much cheaper than at your favorite big-box electronics retailer. Over the past several years, I've attended CES on a regular basis and have always been impressed by Sharp's Aquos LCD TVs on display. I am already a satisfied owner of a 42" 1080p Sony Bravia XBR Series LCD TV, but when it came time to buy a new TV for the guest room, I thought of all those beautiful Sharp Aquos TVs arranged on the conference hall floor in a big pyramid at CES and decided to give Sharp a try. Plus, they had just come out with screens with a 120Hz refresh rate, and they were a bit cheaper than the equivalent Sony models. After shopping in-person at a few bricks-and-mortar retailers, I determined online prices were nearly one thousand dollars less for the same TV. So I took the plunge and bought a 52" Sharp Aquos LC-52D92U via Amazon. Little did I know, it would take more than four months of phone calls and repair service visits to my house after I received the TV I ordered before it would be functional. Here's the timeline:
February 9th, 2008. Order TV on Amazon, but using one of their affiliate merchants, Butterfly Photo. TV arrives the following week.
February 26, 2008. Finally set up the TV, only to discover that the lower-right quadrant of the screen is non-functional. (See my picture at the head of this post.)
February 27, 2008. Contact Amazon. Amazon sends me to their affiliate, Butterfly Photo. Butterfly advises I must deal directly with Sharp for warranty service.
February 28, 2008. Call Sharp Aquos Advantage Support. They ask for pictures of the problem. I send pictures, and ask for a replacement unit. Turns out warranty is for repair only, not a replacement unit. They put me in touch with the only Sharp-authorized service center in the greater Denver area, Downtown Radio/DTR.
February 29, 2008. Call DTR to arrange in-home repair. They only visit Boulder once or twice a week, with the typical customer-hostile four-hour arrival window. Given my travel schedule, the first appointment I can schedule is for April 11th.
April 11th, 2008. DTR technician arrives, and brings along a new motherboard for the TV. Finally, the whole screen works, and the dead lower-right-quadrant is now functional. Repairman leaves. I fire up a Blu-ray, Galapagos. Now that the screen works, I notice a new problem. The display quality is terrible, with massive solarization of colors and pixels that change color even on a still image.
April 11th, 2008. Call DTR to report the new problem. They send me back to Sharp support. Call Sharp. They ask me to send more pictures. But the problem only happens now with moving images, so I have to arrange alternate means (yousendit.com) to send them a large video file so they can diagnose the problem. They confirm there is an issue (duh) and tell me to schedule an appointment with DTR. I call DTR. Next appointment I can make isn't until May 13th. Same convenient four-hour arrival window.
May 13th, 2008. DTR technician arrives, with yet another motherboard in hand. Replaces motherboard. Now my TV won't even turn on. Technician tells me that at least a third of the motherboards he gets from Sharp to use for repairs fail. Technician orders a third replacement motherboard for my TV. Must wait 10 days for it to arrive before new appointment can be scheduled.
May 23rd, 2008. DTR calls me to tell me new motherboard has arrived and to schedule a new appointment. I get one for May 30th.
May 30th, 2008. DTR technician arrives. Replaces motherboard. Now TV turns on, but video problem persists. This technician seems to have more of clue and looks at the video and determines that the new problem is, in fact, not with the motherboard at all, but rather with the LCD controller board. He calls Sharp to order a new motherboard and a new LCD board. Now I have to wait another 10 days.
June 10th, 2008. DTR calls to confirm new parts are in, schedules repair for June 20th.
June 20th, 2008. DTR technician arrives, replaces motherboard and LCD controller. TV (effin' finally) works. Video quality problem appears to be solved, or at least drastically improved. I'm still not convinced that the display quality on my TV (now a frankenstein full of refurbished parts) matches the Sharp TVs I saw at CES, but I've wasted many hours and over four months have elapsed since I made the purchase, so I am going to declare it good enough and move on with my life.
Whew. Tired yet? Clearly, had I known in advance the bad luck I was going to have with this TV, I would have just bought it at a local retailer, who would have happily taken the defective unit back and replaced it with a new one. I admit I thought twice about ordering it online when I read the retailer's policy that they won't exchange or replace TVs over 20" (who buys a TV smaller than 20" these days anyway?), but the price difference was too large not to buy it online. Besides, I had never had a problem with an online purchase before.
I will say, to Sharp's credit, that every time I dealt with Sharp support and DTR, the people I interacted with were unfailingly professional and friendly, so I can't fault the quality of the people performing the service, though the end result of their network of third party vendors is a bad customer experience. The warranty repair system that Sharp has set up forces already unhappy customers who have the misfortune of receiving a defective item to endure a time-consuming and painful process to restore their item to working order.
It also seems apparent that Sharp supplies their warranty service partners with B-grade or refurbished parts to repair their TVs. The fact that my TV's original motherboard and two of the replacement motherboards were defective and a second LCD controller had to be installed points to some serious quality problems with the parts they use to "repair" malfunctioning equipment. I don't really feel like I have a new or A-grade TV anymore. By the time my TV was working, I had lost hours of my own time that was way more valuable than the money I saved looking for a bargain. And given it took four truck-rolls to my home and four orders of replacement parts to get the unit working, I have to think that Sharp also lost money on my TV and would have been better served just sending me a new unit after the first (or even second) repair attempt failed. Sharp, are you listening? Needless to say, I will buy my next big-screen TV at a local retailer.
I'm a big fan of the site Culturegraph. Basically, readers submit pop-culture influenced gags that take graphic form -- usually charts and graphs of some description. I'm also a fan because they've accepted a couple of my submissions (one Sting-related and one Michael McDonald related). The one that wasn't accepted is probably only funny to die-hard Steely Dan fans, but given I'm going to see them at Red Rocks this Thursday, I thought I'd post it here, and offer a link to my flickr set, where you can see all three.
There's nothing like watching a musician's face when they are deeply engaged playing their music. When Ian Rogers saw Soul Patch play a few weeks ago, he mentioned that I had a lot of good GuitarFace™ moments, which inspired me to look through the photos from that gig and previous gigs, which indeed confirmed that I give good GuitarFace™. I've put a set up on Flickr that include some of my best.
