After nearly a week of my work computer being in the shop, it finally returned to me today… in a completly newborn state. It doesn’t have any of my old applications, documents, drivers, settings, bookmarks, or cookies. Bleck. I’ll be busy for a few days getting this thing back to a state of usefulness. Merely locating some of the files will be a challenge…
I’ve been exploring the capabilities of a different content management / blogging system called “Drupal”. It’s actually a lot more fully featured and powerful than WordPress, but takes longer to get configured properly. This week was spent trying to fix a persistent problem with the image uploading, and once I finally had a few hours to dedicate to this, I discovered it’s actually a bug in the current image uploading mechanism. With the help of a Drupal guru (and a whole lot of Googling) I figured out the nature of the bug, discovered the recently created patch, and figured out how to apply it to the source file.
At this point I’m not sure I’m going to switch this blog site over to Drupal, since it’s probably overkill for my own needs. But I am planning to set up a Drupal site for family use. I look forward to getting it ready for launch.
Cachao left us today, and while I’m sad at his passing, I am very happy that he was among us for eight decades of seriously heavy groove. He was the master (some say the inventor) of the mambo, the recipient of numerous Grammy awards, and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. More recently, he was featured on the cover of Bass Player magazine, which was a touching recognition of his towering importance in music. Many current bass players are rediscovering the classical rhythmic function of our instrument, and his playing style represents a tremendous compendium of style.
I sometimes think of all the great Cuban jazz that we never get to hear. Cuba is off limits to US citizens. No travel. No trade. We’re lucky that some of this wonderful music makes it way to us, but I do hope that someday soon we’ll be able to legally travel to Cuba to hear the next Cachao in action.
I was a late discoverer of Cachao, and can thank my bass teacher for turning me on to his music as part of transcription assignment. Get out there and dig that groovy, baby.
Back in high school (1977) I was enamored of anything that was loud and scary. Bonus points if it freaked out my parents (sorry mom…). I had already discovered KISS, Stravinsky, and Led Zeppelin. Then one night I was at a party and someone put on Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols, and I was instantly hooked. This was the album that set me on the path to discover the Dead Kennedys, TSOL, and a bunch of skate punk.
I recently purchased this release on CD, and it holds up incredibly well after thirty years. There is something timeless and essential here. The Sex Pistols were loud, fast and pissed off. That’s not always a formula for awesomeness, but it sure worked for them. I wish I had managed to see them during their ill-fated US tour. I drove around with the CD in my car this week, rocking out and hollering along. God save the Queen.
Last Saturday I took my dad to his first ice hockey game. He’s never really understood American sports, and he is frequently subjected to watching baseball and football when he visits me. He asks a lot of questions, especially during baseball. None of it makes much sense to him, but he’s usually willing to watch when I’ve got it on TV. I happened to acquire three tickets for the Seattle Thunderbirds game through a friend, and thought it would be fun to take dad along.
It was a great game. We clobbered the Portland Winterhawks 8-2 and RW Bud Holloway scored a hat trick. Dad asked “why is everyone throwing their hats onto the floor?”Overall, a very fun evening. Hopefully dad won’t wait 84 years to catch his next hockey game.
Last Friday night the Preons played at the Mars Bar in Seattle. It went really well, and I think we’re getting better with every show. Josh and Janie seem more confident, and the newer material really sounds good. This was one of those shows where we had some legitimate fans at the gig who knew our material and were excited about our show. We pulled one out of the archive called 48 Express which we’ve been playing at practice. It was our first performance of the show with the current lineup, and it went really well. I do my best Phil Lesh impersonation on the bass part.
Overall, a good gig. The rig sounds good. The band feels great. Looking forward to the next one.
I’m considering moving my site to another host. It’ll take some effort to round up all the content from my various domains, but I’ve found a host that appears to offer more for less… and who can argue with that? More to come…
My first job as a developer / PM was with a company called Bulldog Beach Interactive which was located in West Seattle. It was an amazing opportunity to learn about technology and business. For those of us who worked there it was an adventure and always a lot of fun. Four of us moved into a shared office together and worked as an interactive team (and improv comedy troupe). It began a close friendship among us and we have remained close to this day.
We all work for other companies now. But we are still great friends and enjoy getting together to continue the adventure of being creative geeks. Yesterday we had the crew over for a reunion / snack-a-thon, with spouses and children in attendance. I even dug out an old company t-shirt for the occasion. Here’s to the crew!
