Musictrotting
So, in a fit of excessive boredom with my existing collection of music, I decided to start expanding my musical horizons. Fortunately, the wonders of the Internet make it incredibly easy to explore and discover new music and musical artists. Particularly, the Rolling Stone List 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and Wikipedia, combined with some filesharing software, has given me the opportunity to listen to a whole bunch of new stuff.
See, it all started with the Nirvana, MTV Unplugged album. In it, Kurt Cobain makes reference to a man by the name of Leadbelly. Curious, as I’d never heard of this fellow, I decided to look into it, discovering that he was a proto-Blues musician born just before the turn of the century (the 20th, that is). Surprised that Mr. Cobain would be familiar with such an artist, I simply had to find some samples of his music, and managed to track down a “Best Of” album. It’s very cool stuff, and his work has influenced (and been covered by) many people.
So that’s how it all started. My next step, I figured, was to track down a list of influential albums, and so I came across the Rolling Stone list. Obviously, it’s a list of their own opinions, but it did provide some good suggestions for stuff to check out, so I started with the weirdest thing I could find: Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica.
Now, before anyone considers exploring Beefheart, I gotta tell ya… this is, hands down, one of the weirdest albums I have ever encountered. Filled with a bizarre fusion of free jazz, blues, and other styles, it initially comes off as sounding like so much noise played on raw guitars, drums, and other jazz instruments, combined with non-sensical lyrics voiced by a very strange “singer”. The result is something that is, frankly, way way out there, and I haven’t yet decided what I think of it… but it is interesting.
Next, I decided to give Bob Dylan a shot. I’ve derided the guy for his “singing” voice on more than one occasion (and I stand by my derision!), but I figured there must be something that causes people to identify with him. So I decided to grab one of his most heralded albums, Highway 61 Revisited. The first track opens up with an interesting mix of rock, country, and folk, with some very beautiful arrangements, but as I expected, it isn’t until you listen to the lyrics that you realize why Dylan is considered so brilliant. But he really can’t sing.
After that, I thought, a little Tom Waits would fit the bill. After all, I was already exploring blues, folk, and jazz, and the bizarreness of Tom Waits sort of appealed to me. So I decided to check out Swordfishtrombones, which represents his first exploration into more experimental blues. Is it kinda strange? Absolutely. Anywhere near as weird as Captain Beefheart? Absolutely not. And, again, brilliant songwriting, combined with a deep, gravelly voice and some haunting music. I like it!
Lastly, I found myself on Wikipedia, following this path:
Captain Beefheart -> Free Jazz -> Jazz -> Polyrhythm -> Babatunde Olatunji
Olatunji is considered the progenitor of “World Music” as a genre, having recorded the smash hit “Drums of Passion”, a collection of African percussive music. Ultimately, he released a few other albums, and I decided to sample one in particular: “Drums of Passion: The Invocation”. This is a collection of Yoruban spiritual music, comprised of chanting and fantastic drumming involving complex polyrhythms. Really wonderful stuff.
Globetrotting
Okay, not really globetrotting, but recently Lenore and I decided to take advantage of a deal that Air Canada has going on right now. The gist? For the months of January and February, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, we have unlimited flights to select Canadian and US cities! And the cost? A mere $800 per person. Virtual peanuts! And as a bonus, we’ve talked to our manager, and he okayed us to bank time so that we can take Mondays off without burning holidays, which means we can take some little weekend trips (or the odd big one)!
Of course, you may be asking yourself, where on earth will we go? Well, as it turns out, we have a couple of plans. The first trip we came up with will commence on the 13th of February, and will have us flying to Orlando, Florida, with the goal of spending three days at Walt Disney World! Should be good fun. The second leg of the trip will take us to Atlanta for another three days, where we’ll be visiting one of Lenore’s Intarweb friends. Of course, to get there, we have to fly from Orlando to Toronto, then from Toronto to Atlanta. You can probably guess why: Air Canada doesn’t fly between US cities. But, so it goes… at least I’ll have plenty of time to read, knit, etc, etc.
Anyway, that trip alone makes the passes worth it. But today Lenore suggested another trip for the weekend of January 13th (I think): We’re gonna go back to NYC! Now, granted, we’ve already been there a few times, but there’s always a ton of things to see and do there. And we can set up the flights such that we arrive early Saturday morning, and come back Tuesday afternoon, which makes for a nice little trip with nearly three full days in the city. As for things to do, we’ve already bought tickets to the Museum of Natural History, which we’ve never been to, and should be absolutely fantastic, and there’s always Broadways shows, the library, and I’m sure many many other things.
As for other trips, who knows. Lenore has been talking about heading back to Regina to visit her mom. And there’s always Ottawa, Vancouver, Las Vegas, and who knows what else. ‘course, there’s only so many weekends left, so it’ll be tough prioritizing, but I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something.
Yet More Palmy Fun
Well, I gotta say, I’ve been having great fun with my snazzy new wireless keyboard. In fact, I’m on the bus right now, hacking up this blog entry, keyboard in my lap, TX battery slowly bleeding away. Pretty darn cool, I think.
But the real bonus is the new capabilities this keyboard affords. One of the things I’ve always been curious to try is Palm development. However, the barrier to entry is pretty darn high… getting a devkit working on Linux is a non-trivial procedure, to say the least, which is saying a lot, given I hand-rolled my first GBA development kit.
The other option had always been an onboard environment of some description. And there are a few that are workable. There’s HotPaw Basic, which provides a fairly complete Basic environment right on the Palm. ‘course, it is Basic… shudder. Then there’s LispMe, which is a reasonably full-featured Scheme implementation. Unfortunately, it has stabilities issues on the TX which ruled it out. Additionally, I came across OnBoard C, which is actually a C development environment which runs right on the Palm, and generates standalone applications. ‘course, it’s C… which provides me with a little more hanging rope than I would like.
And then I discovered PP Compiler. Like OnBoard C, this is a full development environment for the Palm which generates 68k or ARM applications. However, this is a Pascal compiler. IOW, I get a reasonably powerful, and safe programming environment that allows me to write, well, essentially anything I want! It also appears to have a fairly lively user community and developers who are actively maintaining the project.
‘course, the next question is, now what? Honestly, I have no idea. But it is pretty cool. :) And at least it gives me another justification for purchasing this keyboad…
Boxing Day Amusements
So, after what I consider to be a reasonably successful Christmas (particularly the turkey, which Lenore executed perfectly… if you’ve ever considered brining a turkey, do it), we decided it would be amusing to go out and brave the boxing day crowds and do a little shopping… and after many hours, we didn’t really come out with much, truth be told.
However, I did decide to splurge a little and bought myself one of Palm’s fancy universal wireless keyboards. It’s really pretty impressive: it comes as a small rectangular device that’s slightly bigger than my TX. However, unfolded, it presents a very compact, but quite functional keyboard. The keys are full-sized (very similar to what you’d find on a laptop keyboard), and the action is very nice… they have a nice click without too much or too little resistance. Pretty snazzy, I gotta say.
Of course, I had no choice but to write up a little blog entry on the thing, hence what you are (presumably) reading right now. That’s right, this entire thing was hacked up in pedit on my snazzy keyboard. Even cooler, I hacked up an email gateway for my wiki, so it was simply a matter of emailing this entry to myself and voila! it’s posted to my blog! Nifty, eh?