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Music: The Wooden Birds - Magnolia

2009-06-07T15:35:00.002+02:00

It's like the American Analog Set playing an analog set (in America)! ;)

Also check out 'Sugar'.

Food, vitamins, nutrients, measurements

2009-06-02T13:11:00.017+02:00

Wow, two months since my last post, huh? What a nice break. Enjoyed the good weather, saw a concert or two, explored my home country, worked in the garden, tried to live a healthier life the geek way :)

When last I mentioned I had quit smoking and tried to get some more exercise, I was using a spreadsheet to record what I stuffed into my mouth and made a stab at guessing how much calories, proteins, carbs, and fats were in there. This went reasonably well, but after I found the USDA food database I became interested in tracking more data, like amount of vitamins/minerals gained from foods vs. the dietary reference intake (DRI). Trying to do this in a spreadsheet by hand would be bothersome.

So I was very happy to find cron-o-matic, a free Java program which uses the USDA food database and which will give you clear feedback on how you are doing nutrient-wise and which allows you to plan ahead as well.

The program is very friendly but takes a bit of fiddling to set up - one of the java methods it uses in setting up the basic dietary requirements is deprecated and replaced, so to get optimal use you'll have to run an older JVM.

Once it is set up it is really easy to use, there are shortcut keys for nearly everything, many measurements (teaspoon, cup, stalk etc) already preprogrammed where appropriate, it is dead easy to combine ingredients and so make custom 'recipes' for items you frequently consume. It will even create nifty little nutrient reports for any given period of time.

Of course, you have to recognise and understand the limits of software like this. For instance, it is known that vitamine D is heavily underreported in the database. In fact, there are a couple of uncertainty factors:
a) database errors (under/overreporting, typos)
b) natural differences in foodstuffs (dependent on growing conditions, available nutrition, genetics, storage time, etc)
d) measuring errors (yours truly)

However, you know you are on the right path when your weight gain/loss corresponds with your self-reported energy intake:
Blue line/left axis is weight in kg, red line/right axis is energy intake in kcal. As you can see a spike in energy leads to a spike in weight one or two days later. The relationship is not 1:1 as other factors (like physical activity, water intake, etc.) weigh in as well. Those huge energy peaks? Social events, BBQs, parties. Even moderation should be done in moderation. If you can't have a little fun once in a while, what's the point?

But waaaaait a minute, I hear you say, weren't you trying to lose weight? I don't really see that in the graph! True, this 2-month graph shows very little weight loss. I want this weight loss to be sustainable. If I starve my body and then start eating normally again I expect a jo-jo effect. And I want to get all the proper vitamins and minerals, without using supplements, so my daily energy intake is very near to 'normal intake'. As I approach my 'ideal weight' I expect it to go even slower. At the same time I am also working out so I am replacing fatty tissue with muscle. But perhaps this chart showing progress since January works better:
Yeah, that is more like it! (the absence of measurements between ~12/2 and 12/3 are due to lots of business travel and very little opportunity to weigh). Also, I can't believe I had let my weight slip to 98 kg or so.

All this data you are gathering in the CRON-o-meter software is saved as XML. You can grab this data and plug it into Excel or other spreadsheet software to see how you are doing in the long-term:
I've used conditional formatting to color it by how close to or over the RDI/target I was - light green is under, dark green is in range, yellow is too much. As you can see I'm hitting most targets most of the time in the vitamins and mineral sector, without any supplements. Since I had this spreadsheet and was tracking daily data anyway, I also started tracking other things, ranging from hours of sleep to subjective mood during a day to far more, um, intimate things. Because as it turns out, tracking stuff is fun! (for geeks like me, I suppose).

For instance, check this chart highlighting the relationship between hours of sleep and subjective mood:
Fun, what? Of course this chart is a little funky in that (a) I tend to sleep in more during weekends and (b) I generally feel happier in weekends as I don't have to contend with all that work malarky. But still there is a clear correlation. More sleep means less murder.

On hold

2009-03-31T10:19:00.001+02:00

It's springtime, dontchaknow?

Further evidence this t-shirt fetish is getting slightly out of hand

2009-03-24T20:43:00.007+01:00

I can stop whenever I want to, dammit! I scored a couple of sweet shirts from the Diesel Sweeties store, including these terrific ones: electric sheep, monkeys are good people, and 'cherry pi'. Yay, globalization! Had I lived in the USA I would have totally bought this "we prefer to be called 'buccaneer-Americans'" shirt too. That is just great.
Yeah, that wasn't so bad in and of itself, but then I also ordered these from threadless:

"A simple plan", "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", and "you say tomato, I say Lycopersicon esculentum". I had to. The shirts commanded me!

Health(ier) Life: Wii Fit, Stopped Smoking, Weight Watching

2009-03-22T10:26:00.010+01:00

In January I bought a Wii Fit board. I haven't written about it earlier because I wanted to give it a good 6 months before a review, however, some other developments cause me to mention it now. When I first turned on the Wii Fit it told me quite bluntly that for my age and height I was a little into overweight territory. How annoying. But true - I never was much into physical activity and my sedentary lifestyle coupled with the frequent travel and accompanying "travel junk food" has taken its toll over the years. To get back into the upper range of "ideal weight" I only needed to lose a little weight, to hit the middle of the ideal range I needed to lose an additional 10 Kg. So I set a short-term target to get away from the "overweight" moniker, and a 6 month long-term target to get back to the middle of the "ideal" zone.

Hitting the Nintendo gym

Wii Fit is divided into 4 areas: aerobics, strength, yoga, and balance with a set of games for each, some of which are locked. As you progress, more and more games get unlocked (the unlocking goes rather quickly). Most of these games are very low-impact meaning you won't break a sweat. But I suspect this is not the goal of Wii Fit anyway. The aerobics games are good for a warm-up. Some of the strength games are good for building muscle (like the push-ups and the jackknifes). The balance games are for the most part good fun and when played with multiple people can lead to fierce competition. But for me the yoga part was the biggest discovery; I never imagined that stretching could be so good for you.

When I say "yoga" I really mean the poses; because Wii Fit strips yoga of any fluffy new agey connotation and simply offers some of the simpler poses and in some cases parts of poses. Which suits me fine because people blathering on about chakras and other new age nonsense annoy me. Stretching muscles is just that: stretching muscles. Good for you. Very good, even - my back hasn't felt this good in years. I hit my short-term target without much issues and am now working towards my long-term target and making good progress.

The end of smoking

Exactly one week ago I quit smoking cold turkey after 19 years of smoking rolling tobacco like a chimney. This in itself is only partly related to the Wii Fit - I mainly quit for health reasons, but costs and convenience also played a part. Being treated like a second-class citizen and herded into remote corners to get your fill of gray air isn't fun. The quitting itself was less hard than I thought - I haven't had a moment of weakness since my initial decision, my resolve is strong, and the benefits are immediate and obvious: my sense of smell and taste have improved, I get winded less easily, I feel more energetic, and I am saving massive amounts of time and money.

Now people who quit smoking often gain some weight, perhaps due to sped-up metabolism and/or extra snacking. I wanted to avoid this since I was already a little over my 'optimal' weight, so we move on to...

Calorie counting

So how do you know when you are snacking too much? Well, you'll have to start tracking what you eat, when you eat it, and how many calories it has. Surprisingly, this can be rather fun (for statistics geeks) and makes a good substitute activity for the smoking itself. The USDA has a huge searchable database - it is even available for download. The Dutch government is less advanced in this matter, you can request their database on paper (!) or they can send you a CD but you have to qualify for that in some way. That said, there are two excellent Dutch sites where you can do online lookups: here and here.

So grab an spreadsheet program and record what you stuff in your mouth, then in the evening quickly work out how much calories each item is (ballpark figure). The results may surprise you, I know they surprised me. The biggest surprise was how easy it is to ingest way too many calories. All these supposedly healthy foods and snacks - many of them are like calorie-bombs.
So I made some adjustments - crossed some items of my shopping lists, substituted other items with lighter products. With just a few changes and no sacrifice at all I've improved my diet and this in turn will hopefully lead to me hitting my Wii Fit targets.

QR codes revisited

2009-03-13T01:40:00.010+01:00

I had a brief flirtation with QR codes (what?) in 2004, but it petered out somewhere along the way. I stumbled across QR codes again recently and thought I'd see what the current state of things was. After all, we now all have smartphones with significant processing power, a permanent net connection, and crappy little cameras.

Google quickly lead me to ZXing (pronounced "zebra crossing"), and I quote:

open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java. Our focus is on using the built-in camera on mobile phones to photograph and decode barcodes on the device, without communicating with a server. We currently have production-quality support for:
UPC-A and UPC-E
EAN-8 and EAN-13
Code 39
Code 128
QR Code
ITF

That sounds pretty good. And the supported device list is even better: JavaME, Android, RIM/Blackberry, iPhone, BUG, and a Symbian port (just getting started).

I have a Blackberry 8310. So I go to the download page, no binaries or OTA installers, just a 32 Mb archive. Mmmh. Okay, no problem, I compile from source all the time. Grab the archive, open the README.

"you will need to have Apache's Ant tool installed to run this"

Okay, no problem. I have a linux dev box with that installed. From the command line given I also glean I will need a JDK which I don't have installed, so I grab and install that. Read on, and saw I needed Sun's Java Wireless Toolkit. Okay, installed that too. Hey, I need some files from the Blackberry JDK. Okay, grabbed that... eventually (way to make downloads not easy and not cross-platform, RIM) and extracted the .jar files I needed. Tried to compile, it says I need something called "proguard". Googled it, grabbed and installed. Compiled again. Warnings, no errors. Ended up with a .jar file, which I had to convert to a .cod file using arcane instructions, but to no avail. I think this is because I compiled on a linux box and the blackberry JDK is a windows box.

At this point I said "sod it". I hope the iPhone version is easier to install, but from the getting started guide I get a definite "fiddle with it" feeling. Which is okay, I'll try compiling it from scratch tomorrow but since I wanted to play with QR codes (as in RIGHT NOW) I grabbed a copy of BeeTagg - another free app which can read QR codes (and maybe others? I'm not sure) and which has binaries for a ton of phones and mobile operating systems, most supplied via OTA install. Like it should be. And it works, it feels a little slow (but that might be the blackberry) but snap a picture of a QR code and it offers basic decoding and actions - output the decoded text, open the URL, initiate a phone call.

You can encode to QR using online tools like this one which nice because you can fiddle with the ECC settings or this one from ZXing, great because you can encode contact cards, email, geolocation, URL, and more. I'm sure there are offline encoding tools as well, haven't really looked yet. This would be pretty sweet for asset management - with a couple of hundred workstations and massive amounts of servers and assorted other hardware this could help you quickly pull up relevant data on your mobile.

Also amusing: an entire novel rendered only in QR, spread out across a city, with text instructions on how to find the next snippet encoded in QR stickers.

UPDATE: one of the ZXings devs commented (aren't the intarwebs awesome?) and added links for J2ME and BB OTA downloads. He also mentioned (as I feared) that Blackberry is a poor barcode-reading platform, and I am inclined to agree as only the latest models/JDK have direct application access to the camera, the older versions must all invoke the camera application and look for a saved image file. That is pretty weak. Oh well. The BeeTagg app does OK for now, and I'm sure we'll eventually upgrade to newer BBs - I think I'll skip the Storm but the new Curve looks nice.

Upgrades and on-the-fly network audio redirection using PulseAudio

2009-03-08T22:29:00.011+01:00

It's been a productive bout of geekery (thus the silence). As part of a project I needed to upgrade all the boxes in the home to Fedora 10, that is 5 boxes running various incarnations of Core from version 6 to 9 on both mundane and fairly exotic hardware and with complex and often custom installations. Instead of grabbing the latest DVD as torrent I tried the preupgrade package on all the version 7 and ups with mixed but generally good results. The idea behind preupgrade is pretty cool, you run it, it grabs and does everything it needs to upgrade your system in the background while you carry on using the system, then asks for a reboot and finishes up. This worked pretty well on the version 9 boxes, beyond expectation even. The v7 and v8 had some quirks and I ended up formatting them and starting from scratch. All in all it was fun to do, something I don't usually associate with OS upgrades.

Fedora 10 is pretty sweet overall even though I immediately turn off everything that I think wastes CPU cycles and run fluxbox instead of KDE. One of the reasons for this upgrade-fest (besides 5 boxes running different versions being a pain in the ass) was the latest incarnation of pulseaudio, a very clever network/zeroconf-capable audioserver. It's been officially adopted by Fedora and Ubuntu so it makes sense to learn a little more about it, and it does have a lot of nifty features. Once you've set it up correctly the servers use zeroconf/avahi to learn about other sound servers on remote machines and with the correct configuration (the howto and faq help) make them available as local sound cards. Applications output streams, you can redirect these streams on the fly (or output to multiple targets). Two mouse clicks, or some trivial scripting. That is simply awesome.

I've talked about making your machines aware of what room you are in using bluetooth proximity before, and now I could move on to phase two - redirecting audio streams to whatever room you happen to be in. The computers which didn't have bluetooth built in already were outfitted with a 10$ bluetooth USB stick, blueproximity was modified to report to a central location, and I wrote a little script to look at all these bluetooth signal strength readings, decide which room I was in and redirect the audio stream to the relevant sound card.

This works surprisingly well. I'm wondering if using a bluetooth bracelet such as this one would also work for presence detection. I'm also going to seriously look into X10 or similar to extend this budding system to light switching, room heating and so on. It would also require a more advanced scripting/recipe/agent kind of thing to control it all, something like Narval although I haven't seen a lot of movement in that project lately.

For now, I have the music played from my main Amarok installation follow me around the house, and that is freaking sweet.

Update: I've found a script which adds resume play capability to mplayer. Pretty damn cool, and just what I needed both to make mplayer's behavior fit better with mythtv and for my redirection scripts, which I adjusted to check whether mplayer or amarok is running on the machine I am moving away from and suspend play there. If it then detects me near a different machine it will resume play. Note to self: add fix to fade out volume on suspend and fade in on resume.

Threads

2009-03-04T10:44:00.003+01:00

with Pi day fast approaching I needed something to mark the occasion. ThinkGeek to the rescue! A couple of clicks and three days later DHL is standing in front of my door to deliver. Internet clothes shopping is awesome.

It was surprisingly hard to restrain myself to just a couple of shirts - so many toys and other fun (but useless) stuff! The Inigo Montoya one is probably my favorite right now (I've stopped talking to anyone who doesn't get the reference) closely followed by STFU.

Global financial crisis? What?

Unscheduled Extra Music Post Due to Extreme Brilliance

2009-03-02T11:18:00.008+01:00

Holy shit, check out these clips of Sin Fang Bous (another project from Sindri Sigfússon of Seabear fame) and then go buy the record! Found it last night when preparing the previous post, on Morr of course.

ps. from that Seabear site I linked to you can grab a free Seabear EP in MP3 format - go to the 'sound' section.

Sin Fang Bous - Advent in Ives Garden

Sin Fan Bous - Clangour and Flutes

Sin Fan Bous - Catch the Light (not an official video)

I dare you to not tap along and get progressively more of a silly grin on your face while listening.

Random Weekend Music Post

2009-03-01T18:49:00.004+01:00

Borko - Continental Love

I enjoyed doing the "month of music" stint, so much so that I might make something of a regular feature. Or irregular feature, given prior performance indicators as found on this blog.

Check out the last.fm artist page for a couple of free mp3s. From that same page: Björn Kristiansson alias Borko is an icelandic musician that combines sweet pop-melodies with clever and sometimes bulky electronic sounds. On the awesome Morr Music label.

On that note, also check out "Butcher the Bar"on Morr, a couple of free downloads available too. Great Sunday listening.

Use last.fm? Statistics geek? Use ExtraStats to visualize your music habits

2009-02-26T15:19:00.006+01:00

Once you've started using last.fm (a free music service which will collect music play statistics from your computer and then recommend other music you might like, among other things) you start collecting play statistics. I've been on last.fm for four years or so, I have a metric crapload of statistics.

Now if you'll look at the pretty graph at the top of the post, maybe even click the picture so you can see it in all its full-size glory, you will see at the bottom a timeline running from January 2008 to Januari 2009, with above it artist/band names in pretty colored ribbons. The wider a ribbon is, the more I listened to that artist at that point in time. Isn't that neat? You can clearly see where I fell in love with the Mountain Goats (the first time I listened), where I found Say Hi To Your Mom, and that I rediscovered my love of classical music somewhere in October.

Compare to this shot from 2007:

OK, if you are at all geeky and into music, statistics, and/or pretty graphs, you'll want to grab this software. It is free, it is (unfortunately) windows-only although it uses .NET so I guess you have a shot at getting it to work under Mono if you happen to have a different OS.

Grab the software here, ignore the big fat warning about it not working right now (it does), make sure .NET 2.0 framework is installed, and rock out. It can do much more than just these wave graphs, but I happen to like them. There are lots of settings to fiddle with and color schemes to try, so enjoy.

The Future Is Now

2009-02-25T23:23:00.002+01:00

Ha ha ha I don't know where it came from but it is fantastic.

Via del.icio.us/popular

Hardware: x-mini

2009-02-23T09:09:00.006+01:00

I admit, I am a sucker for airport-store gadgetry. Most of them disappear in a drawer never to be taken out again soon after they were bought, but some have actual value and stay in use. Like the x-mini speaker, winner of a Red Dot design award.

A tiny capsule speaker which expands like an accordion when opened to create a little vacuum chamber for extra bass. And surprisingly, it works really well. Gone is the tinny sound associated with this size and instead you get a very respectable sound. Add a 4-8 hour battery (depending on volume used) charged by USB and you have a worthy travel companion which doesn't take up much size. I've been using it on my recent travels to liven up hotel rooms by plugging in my iPod, enhancing on-the-road movie watching by plugging it into my notebook, and add to the fun of gaming by plugging it into the Nintendo DS. Everyone who sees and hears it is surprised by the volume and depth of sound it produces versus the size of the thing. I could even see this technology making its way into notebooks with two "pop-out" speakers integrated in the sides.

The official website is an atrocious flash affair, but it will tell you about the specs and various models available. Highly recommended for today's road warrior and pretty much everyone who enjoys listening to tunes on the road.

A month of music - day 31

2009-02-22T17:52:00.006+01:00

Stephen Malkmus - Freeze the Saints (live, acoustic)

A full 31 days of tracks I enjoy - take that, universe. I hope you enjoyed it too. I couldn't find any decent videos for this one at first but then I found a KCRW morning becomes eclectic session. Check out "No More Shoes" and "It Kills" from the same session. Also see: "Baby C'mon". I never cared much for Pavement but "Face the Truth" is an excellent album.

We meet again
Riding our divisible bodies
Feel no shame
Luck is love is on

If you need the pain
Well you are, yes you are so much like me
Seasons change--nothing lasts for long
Except the earth and the mountains
So learn to sing along and languish here
Help me languish here

It was long ago
That all of your willing dimensions
Lost the flow
And vanished in vaneer

But iI want to know
If you are, yes you are so much like me
Steel restraints
Zodiac ballet, everybody play
There's no more counting days, you languish here
Help me languish here

You said, "done is good,"
But done well is so much fucking better
Share the wealth
And cauterize the tears

If you want to know
Well you are, yes you are so much like me
Freeze the saints
Such a subtle read, exquisite pedigree
Just let yourself be and languish here
Help me languish here

A month of music - day 30

2009-02-21T18:53:00.003+01:00

Parov Stelar (feat Billy Kern) - Nowhere

Downtempo and chill electronica from Austria. Also check out "Faith".

[mostly instrumental version]

A month of music - day 29

2009-02-20T10:58:00.005+01:00

Soul Coughing - Soft Serve

Another oddball band. I can't say I like all their work but their album "Irresistible Bliss" is awesome. Also check out "Circles", "Super Bon Bon" and "How Many Cans?" and the amazing "disseminated".

The body like soft serve, dripping down in the June sun,
I tried to shoot a thought, but the thought sunk.
Nothing to do but scratch words in the dirt and
Watch the water roll down.

Phantom kisses buzzing like the insects.
Beads of sweat dripping down on the rent check.
My Candyland melted down to syrup while I
Watched the water roll down.

And here comes the lust in phaze,
but you're down in Marietta.
So sweet my mouth was seared,
But the words you mouthed were sweeter.

My Sister,
Your words can be held against you in a court of law.

My Sister, You owe no allegiance to the facts.

And you're talking like the saint on the site of the accident.
Talking like the clause in the lease about the late rent.
Ringing like the random call patched to the payphone.
Talking like the water rolls down.

Talking like the saint on the site of the accident.
Talking like the botched shot, attempt on the President.
Ringing like the change in the legless man's Dixie Cup.
Talking like the water rolls down.

Day Undone,
Day Undone,
Day Undone,
Watch the water roll down.

A month of music - day 28

2009-02-19T14:26:00.003+01:00

Califone - The Eye You Lost In The Crusades

A toss-up between this song and "A Chinese Actor" but this one it is. Weird band, weird songs, fun.

emptying yourself for sleep
soft bones a skeletal stretch of drive
skinny arms your white dress
comes cigarette teeth by now
the eye you lost in the crusades
is planted in the sand
kneeling by wait to reap another sight
this where you leave behind
your brush fires and wedding day
our ethiopian bones
the pictures and the pills
remember when this was the ocean
tiny rivers bleed the map
the eye you lost in the crusades
is planted in the sand

A month of music - day 27

2009-02-18T12:25:00.002+01:00

Smog - Say Valley Maker

I swear the universe is conspiring against me ever finishing this month. Well, the universe is going to lose. Here's Smog. You have to love a song where the first line starts on "with the grace of a corpse". The rest of the song is amazing too.

With the grace of a corpse
In a riptide
I let go
And I slide slide slide
Downriver
With an empty case by my side
An empty case
That's my crime

And I sing (Say Valley Maker)
To keep from cursing
Yes I sing (Say Valley Maker)
To keep from cursing

River Oh
River End
River Oh
River End
River Go
River Bend

Take me through the sweet valley
Where your heart blooms
Take me through the sweet valley
Where your heart is covered in dew

And when the river dries
Will you bury me in wood
Where the river dries
Will you bury me in stone

Oh I never really realized
Death is what it meant
To make it on my own

Because there is no love
Where there is no obstacle
And there is no love
Where there is no bramble
There is no love
On the hacked away plateau
And there is no love
In the unerring
And there is no love
On the one true path

Oh I cantered out here
Now I'm galloping back

So bury me in wood
And I will splinter
Bury me in stone
And I will quake
Bury me in water
And I will geyser
Bury me in fire
And I'm gonna phoenix

I'm gonna phoenix

A month of music - day 26

2009-02-16T13:38:00.004+01:00

Ally Kerr - The Sore Feet Song

I missed yesterday didn't I? I needed some sleep. Here's the Sore Feet Song which I discovered by watching the anime adaptation of the excellent manga "Mushishi". If you get a chance to grab either the anime or the manga I highly recommend both.

I walked ten thousand miles, ten thousand miles to see you,
And every gasp of breath i grabbed at just to find you,
I climbed up every hill to get - to you,
I wondered ancient lands to hold - just you.

And every single step of the way, of pain,
Every single night and day,
I searched for you.
Through sandstorms and hazy dawns i reached for you.

I stole ten thousand pounds, ten thousand pounds to see you,
I robbed convenient stores coz i thought they'd make it easier.
I lived off rats and toads, and i starved for you.
I fought off giants bears and i killed them too.

And every single step of the way, of pain,
Every single night and day,
I searched for you.
Through sandstorms and hazy dawns i reached for you.
I'm tired and i'm weak, but i'm strong for you.
I wanna go home, but my love gets me through.

Lalala....

A month of music - day 25

2009-02-14T15:43:00.004+01:00

Teitur - Sleeping With The Lights On

Wow, long month, eh? I'm still a little phased from the whole work and travel thing so no blurb today. Enjoy.

[embedding disabled, how lame, click here to watch/listen]

I've been haunted by this old ghost before
I want to hear your voice you know it's been so long
Like a dancing wave you balance on the shore
It would feel so good to see your face again

I still sleep with the lights on
I still stay up late alone
I still love another one
I still sleep with the lights on

We both understand we got no way back
Our love was strange in a strange land
We got broken wings we were bound to fall
Until the sun comes up you can hold my hand

I still sleep with the lights on
I still stay up late alone
I still love another one
I still sleep with the lights on

Take it easy, take it slow
Let's just watch the tides they grow
The wind is coming from the side
We are sleeping in the light

Feel like waking up in your house some day
Or eating off your hand like a bird astray
But nothing's gonna change, we'll still be the same
We've said what's to say, nothing's buried nowhere

I still sleep with the lights on
I still stay up late alone
I still love another one
I still sleep with the lights on

Intermission, part deux

2009-02-10T12:18:00.002+01:00

As I feared, the task list in Poland is HUGE. Ginormous, even. So we'll wrap this music thing up in a week.

A month of music - day 24

2009-02-09T11:10:00.003+01:00

Laura Veirs - Galaxies

I loved Laura's album "Carbon Glacier" but can't find any YouTube videos. This song is from her next album "Year of Meteors" which is also pretty good.

When you sing, when you sing
The stars fill up my eyes
Galaxies pour down my cheeks
Galaxies... they flood the street
Galaxies

When we dance, when we dance
Eels and sea grass float on by
I’m 10,000 leagues beneath the sea
10,000 leagues... beneath the green
10,000 leagues

When we kiss, when we kiss
Bears and boulders vibrate through the air
Gravity is dead you see
No gravity... all I need is beating red
No gravity...

A month of music - day 23

2009-02-08T18:16:00.005+01:00

The American Analog Set - Born on the Cusp

I can't believe I haven't posted an AmAnSet video yet. If you liked the Album Leaf you'll love this as well. Also check out "Hard to Find" (almost picked this one for today's post), "Magnificent Seventies", "Weather Report", and "Come Home Baby Julie, Come Home". At least three or four great songs on every album, if I had to pick I'd say grab "From our living room to yours" and "Know by heart".

So you're born on the cusp
Or it's a run of bad luck
But it's bigger than us
It's bigger than love

And the time your head cleared
You never feel it
You never look back
You never look back
You never look back...

You never look back

What's in the car
A CD-R
You never look back
You never look back
And it's bigger than us
It's bigger than love
Oh it must be I know
Cause it always wins
And it always wins
It always wins
It always wins
It always wins...

A month of music - day 22

2009-02-07T17:19:00.003+01:00

Death Cab for Cutie - A Lack of Color

Oh how I love this song. Also check out "I will follow you into the dark", "Brothers on a Hotel Bed", and "Death of an Interior Decorator"

And when I see you
I really see you upside down
But my brain knows better
It picks you up and turns you around
Turns you around, turns you around

If you feel discouraged
That there's a lack of color here
Please don't worry lover
It's really bursting at the seems
Absorbing everything
The spectrum's a to z

This fact not fiction
For the first time in years
And all the girls in every girlie magazine
Can't make me feel any less alone
I'm reaching for the phone

To call at 7:03 and on your machine I slur a plea for you to come home
But i know it's too late
I should have given you a reason to stay
Given you a reason to stay [x3]

This is fact not fiction
For the first time in years

A month of music - day 21

2009-02-06T09:40:00.007+01:00

Aphex Twin - To Cure a Weakling Child

And so Friday is upon us again. Next week I'll be in Poland which will probably wreak havok with the posting schedule. But we'll see. Now, a weekend post. I've opted for Aphex Twin. A part of my dissociative years more than anything else, I still have a fondness for the complex rhythms and utter weirdness coupled with the undeniable brilliance of Richard D. James.

My Feet, my arms and my ears, and you feet
My Feet, my arms and my ears, and you feet
My Feet, my arms and my ears, and you feet
My Feet, my arms and my ears, and you feet
My Feet, my arms and my ears, and you feet
My Feet, my arms and my ears, and you feet