weekends are for leisure

When you camp during the week you avoid all those people that can’t help but bring their obnoxious modern life to the wilderness.

We went to Oscar Scherer State Park last Wednesday for 3 days, 2 nights, just before a different crowd flooded in for the weekend. It’s a good thing, too, because our last trip to Wekiva Springs overlapped a Friday night, where we noticed a big change in the campers. The main point of contention is the need some mid-30s people have to play their radios at their campsites. You know, the type that opens up their car doors to do so. I don’t want to hear your bad radio rock, nor your good indie post-folk alt-country. I’m here to get away from it all, especially you talking on your cell phone.

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Nothing monumental happened when I posted my previous entry, but I was amazed at how many people seem to have Google Blog Search alerts set up for “josh groban”.

On March 31, I had 20 visitors that came from their web-based email boxes (15 yahoo, 3 live.com, 2 aol). I’m assuming they were alerted by Google, but I don’t really know. 46 total visitors. 27 people apparently clicked through to the Adult Swim video clip. On April 1, I had 6 visitors from web-based email (3 yahoo, 3 live.com). 18 total views on that entry. 10 clicked through to the clip. April 2 had a similar breakdown, albeit slightly fewer views.

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Josh Groban has finally come of age as a musician. The quality folks at Cinco Musical Tapes have taken special notice of Josh and have given him the noble opportunity to apply his sweetly-maturing voice to such tunes as “Cops and Robbers”, “Time Travel”, and “Horse and Buggy Ride”. Join me in congratulating Josh Groban as he advances from singing cover songs to singing truly inspirational, kick-ass cover songs.

For a limited time you can see clips of Groban singing for the Cinco Musical Tapes collection, Groban Sings Casey. Even in the short amount of video footage available, you’re sure to be moved. Enjoy.

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I’m happy to see things like the Better Place company. Using electricity to power our cars is like using XML for a data interchange format: it’s just a damn good idea. Electricity is the easiest format for energy storage, transfer, and use. It may not be the best, but I’m pretty sure it’s the best we have right now. Battery technology seems to be advancing faster than other forms, so it just makes sense.

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Started using it 5 months ago for reading RSS feeds. Before Google Reader, I used various tools. I attempted snownews in the past (see item 3 below), and zort which worked pretty well most of the time. Yet, Google Reader’s UI is just better.

• You can easily add and discover feeds, often by simply typing in the website name
• You can more efficiently read items by clicking the Next and Previous buttons … no more brrrp-brrrp-brrrp mouse-wheeling around
• It really makes sense to have an RSS reader that’s capable of full browser-like functionality because so many posts contain images and video. Readers that don’t render each post as a web page are backwards.
• Since it’s a web app, you can catch up on your backlog anywhere
• It remembers old news items, so you can travel back in time.
• You can “star” items that you like

I realized there’s no way I can become familiar with good blogs if I don’t get repeated exposure to the quality ones. Waiting for a good article to show on Hacker News isn’t doing me enough good when I want more articles of a certain type. Seems more efficient to just follow the originators of good articles an information.

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I should let the world in on this musical secret. Cursive is offering their new album, Mama, I’m Swollen, to you early as an mp3 download. The price is $5.00 today, and increases by a dollar each day until March 10th. I’ve already purchased my zipped collection of bits. I know, I should have told you sooner.

Happy Hollow was an amazing album. Though, some might consider it blasphemic. I certainly don’t mind. It’s an impressive exploration into the “darker aspects" of life in a way that’s not cliche – in a way that’s NOT like pussified “I’m always angsty” mainstream rock.

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The PBS Nature episode Superfish was enlightening on how much overfishing of billfish has occurred. We’ve mapped out the points in the ocean where currents converge. These places are normally feeding and breeding grounds, but they’re also the perfect places to fish and haul in the biggest possible catch. Problem is, this makes it so much easier to overfish. When hundreds of boats haul up tons of fish every day, it’s easy to see this heading in a bad direction.

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I enjoy watching CBS Sunday Morning. It’s on from 9am to 10:30am, so if you extrapolate you can see that it’s not for church-going types. In one episode Bill Geist did a story about the adult entertainment awards … so you can see what I mean. It’s a perfect replacement for the hectic time that normally consists of trying to round up your kids and get them willing or, god-willing, excited to go to church.

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The creativity, lyrical quality and instrumental experiments of Bright Eyes.

Programmers that find my projects and consider them highly overlooked.

The way Grandaddy surprises you with their use of synthesizers; such depth. They’ve taken a cue from the jazz mantra that what matters most are the notes you don’t play.

The way it’s somehow still exciting to meet someone new.

The way the grass is always greener across state lines.

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I remember when I was a kid and someone once said that many collapsed societies did so after they no longer had a problem with public nudity. Of course this was coming from a religious person. Man I wish kids could slap adults for being stupid.

It’s official: Hair stylists put “product” in before you leave to hide the mess-ups. Beware.

Speculation about a profitable side effect: There’s never enough jelly in the Smucker’s packs at restaurants to cover your toast or even your English muffin so you end up using twice the number you would normally. They may have started with bigger packs and then sought a way to cut costs, which happens all the time (Cadbury creme eggs really are smaller). The size reduction surely cut costs, and also probably doubled their orders.

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