New Music Tuesday: Dylan Earl, New Country to Be

I’ve had a deep and powerful longing for more than two years, but the full-length Dylan Earl record is finally here!

My Congress Person Supports Net Neutrality, Too.

You know that letter I sent to my representative in July, urging her to support net neutrality? I sent one to John Garamendi, too. I heard back from him today in another encouraging canned message.

New Music Tuesday: The Brother Brothers, Tugboats E.P.

It’s been a while, but damn, have you heard these guys!? I couldn’t let this one float past without calling it out.

Never Belittle The Place Someone Is From

Have you ever had someone ask you where you were from, only to have them respond with, “Oh, I’m sorry.” when you told them? I have. It doesn’t feel very good.

My Senator Supports Net Neutrality, Does Yours?

My senator responded to a letter I sent last month urging her to support net neutrality. She responded today with a somewhat canned message, which signals to me that many of my California neighbors also took the time to share their concerns with her. Yay!

Battle for the Net

Net neutrality is good. It means all websites on the internet get the same bandwidth. Netflix.com loads as fast as thebigreason.com. The new FCC Chairman plans to overturn regulations that keep the internet neutral and allow internet providers (telecoms ie. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc.) to charge more money for increased bandwidth. It also has some very ominous implications for free speech.

Stock U-Lock Mounts Can Ride Side Saddle

Frame real estate is very limited. On the surface, it may look like your options for mounting your u-lock with the bracket it came with are too. Here’s a pro-tip for mounting your u-lock you may have missed.

Red Light Runner Pro-Tip

Minutes ago, I nearly bought the farm from a red light runner. I see them frequently, and always keep my eyes open. What didn’t “click” for me until today was that when one vehicle runs a light, the chances of a second coming from the same direction are very high.

Loudness Is Not A Factor For Misophonia Trigger Sounds

The Newcastle Paper is really riding the news cycle. Pretty much every post to /r/misophonia this past week has been an article about the study. That is awesome! However, I feel I need to point out a common misconception I see repeated in many of these articles—especially by those who suffer from Misophonia: that loudness is a factor for trigger sounds. It is not, and I think saying otherwise can cause avoidable hardships down the line.

But… Magnets

My wife spotted this in the window of an antique store in downtown Woodland, CA. 

Mixed Up Track Names for Welcome to My World by Dick Curless

Dick Curless, the “Baron of Country Music,” is a newly-discovered favorite singer of mine. I think he would be bummed that the track names on his release Welcome to My World are mixed up on all the digital music services.

How To Turn Off Rockin’ With The Cross In OnSong

Save yourself the embarrassment of accidentally hitting the Remote button in the song menu and calling up a bunch of contemporary Christian music in front of your band.

My Favorite Albums

Prompted by yet another Reddit hole of favorite album threads, I realized I need to catalog the albums that mean the most to me, or were a huge influence on me at some point in my life. Here they are in no particular order (with affiliate Apple Music/iTunes or Bandcamp links when possible).

Top Music of 2016

As you may already know, I have been scrobbling all of my music plays to Last.fm for the past 10 years. This year, Last.fm has a new report called Last.year that does all my homework for me! I have still recorded the usual stats below for future proofing.

No More Acronyms

I jokingly made a New Years resolution this year to remove acronyms from my vocabulary, but it’s working.

Dot

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

The audio of the original Pale Blue Dot video on YouTube has been muted for copyright violations. There are other versions, but they use additional images of Earth which completely deminishes the message.

Look at this single photograph—the most amazing of our planet ever taken—by Voyager 1 at over 6 billion kilometers away while you play the audio track.

Carl Sagan Day is November 9th.

Lemon

On July 30, 2016, I purchaed a 21.5ʺ iMac for my family on apple.com. Today—nearly three months later—they can finally use it. Every step of the way was a miserable series of unfortunate events.

Curse of the Clicky

I have been on a quest for the perfect double bass preamp for years. There are a lot of options, but almost nothing properly suited for a slap player who wants a clicky but doesn’t want to strap a giant metal box to their tailpiece or their waist. 

New Music Tuesday: VRTRA, My Bones Hold a Stillness

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a review. Honestly, there hasn’t been anything that has stirred me from my new release cave—not until I started my reluctant post Labor Day Tuesday morning off with VRTRA.

Pokémausoleum

Today the cemetery Kristyn and I visit on our power-walks was teaming with Pokémon Go players. We usually see one or two people, or sometimes a car or two—barring the occasional funeral. Today we counted at least 30 people and as many as 15 cars, all with smart phones in hand. It was surreal, not unlike this episode of Star Trek TNG, The Game.