The past several days have been quite nice. Lisa has returned for good from her triumphant run as head counselor at Camp Bothin. Today we went and saw the new Planet of the Apes movie.Actually, we didn’t. We intended to, but we got distracted by Kevin Smith’s newest one, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It doesn’t have a lot of depth, but it is very funny. I’d recommend seeing at least one or two of his other movies first (I’ve seen Dogma, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy) so you’ll get some of the references and understand who Jay and Silent Bob are, but it probably doesn’t matter that much. It’s fun. View Askew hasn’t posted any FAQs yet for this movie, so I won’t be able to feed my addiction to trivia yet. Kevin Smith did get to write a very cute comic for today’s New York Times (not movie-related), so I’m passing that along. It’s quite cute. If you’re in the mood for a good romp in the movie theater, and can stomach some pretty off-color humor, I recommend this movie.
One of these days I’m going to post a book list so I can keep track of (and recommend) all these great books I’m reading. I read a lot more now that I’m not in school and the pressure’s off. Go figure.
One more thing. I’ve been in touch with the people hosting this site: Hostbaby, trying to work out some stuff, and I’m pretty happy with the way things are turning out. They offer good services for a working musician. You can find hosts for cheaper, but not that will provide you with tools like mailing list management, mp3 and real audio streaming, and more, for $20 a month. They’re also happy to talk you through things if you’re scared of computers. I’m not, but I do believe that what they’re doing is good, and I like supporting them with my money. The mp3 streaming pretty sweet too. Anyway, I think they’re good, and getting better, so encourage your local musicians to check them out.
Maybe one of these days I’ll put up a gigs page to show where I’m playing, but in the meantime I’ve put up a mini-site for my group FourTet. We did a demo CD last May, finished the mix before the end of the month, and soon our bass player was shopping around for some gigs. Lo and behold, we have a few! I never really understood how far in advance you have to work to get things like this together; I’ve gotten sort of used to the last-minute, night-before calls of “Hey man, my drummer bailed on me for this gig tomorrow. Can you make it?” Life does not apparently always work that way.Web geek note: this new mini-site marks the first time I’ve ever touched Apache’s server-side includes. Pagespinner made things pretty easy, as it usually does.Lisa is done with camp on Wednesday. Whoopee! Camp has been a good thing, to be sure, but having her here for more than a day at a time will be a nice treat.
Do you hate the X10 pop-under ads? Click here to make them go away for 1500 days. This is a little trick I posted on the webdesign-l earlier today, and it should probably be seen elsewhere. You need to have cookies enabled for this to work.Update: this trick has been passed around to a few places. The only one I can remember now is this one, which also includes the doubleclick opt-out link.
I got back from NH a couple days ago, and got my photos developed today. A digital camera would be easier I guess, but for my current analog state the scanner does a good job. Check out the pictures of my cute little brother. Lots of photos of him sleeping; when he’s crying it’s not conducive to photography, and he spends a lot more time asleep and happy than awake and happy. Maybe that’s not fair, but it’s probably not a complete lie.I’m certainly glad to be out of the 95 degree weather with a 110 heat index or whatever it was. I hate heat, especially if it’s humid to boot. Yuck.Seeing my family was lovely, despite the heat. I got to hang out with my younger brother, my grandparents from Tennesee, and my parents. I also got to see Krista (who never stops giving me shit about not being on the friends page?she doesn’t have any kind of web presence, but is one of my oldest friends, soon I’ll fix this problem) and talk to Lis on the phone briefly (which I could do anywhere I guess, but hey, she was in Hampton for a short while, so it feels closer). All in all a very good trip. I even got my grandfather hooked up with an Earthlink account so he can start getting email. Exciting!
My dad and I were spending some quality time hanging out at home, watching a basketball game, when a commercial for this fine product came on. Not only can I not believe it’s real, but I can’t believe it has a site. Terrible.
Now available, the Concord Jazz Experience: the words and the music. The music is high-bandwidth mp3, though it should be streamable to everyone. I recommend it; we played very well. The words are low-bandwidth, and I hope you enjoy them. I had a great time, more than my writing will be able to adequately express, but it’s definitely better than nothing. There are a few photos included, with more coming.Lisa’s off from camp for four days (woo hoo!), and her parents are visiting us right now, so we’re getting to do lots of the touristy things we never do: visit Muir Woods (okay, we’ve done that a couple times already, but it’s beautiful), visiting Fisherman’s Wharf a bit, riding the ferry, and exploring Chinatown. Every time I go by the gate of Chinatown, there’s at least three people photographing it. There must be so many families throughout the world with nearly identical photos of that gate. Regardless, we’re enjoying ourselves. Only two days until I go back to NH to see my new brother (and my old one too) …. (and my grandfather) …. (and my parents) …. (and who knows who else) …. (oh boy).