laurel

The Cat Who Wore Headphones, a photo by lakrahn on Flickr.

I didn’t put headphones on my cat, I just noticed Isbjorn had something black around his neck and went to investigate, then just about died laughing. Have no idea how he managed this. They’re wireless headphones and Isbjorn wandered around with them on for a while— I’m not sure how long. Then I followed him around trying to take his picture with my iPod— this was in fairly low light (it was a bit after 3am), but was the best I could manage. Once I took the picture, I did remove the headphones from around his neck. Goofy cat.

Kevin joked that Isbjorn was a DJ. If only we had that cat scratching pad that looks like a turntable for him to use while he had the headphones around his neck . . .

Minicon 47 will be my 24th consecutive Minicon (my first Minicon was Minicon 24 in 1989) and Kevin's 30th consecutive Minicon.

June Tabor and Oysterband

How on Earth did I not know about this? After twenty-one years, there's a sequel (of sorts) to the album Freedom and Rain by June Tabor and the Oyster Band. I'm a fan of both artists, but that collaboration back in 1990 remains one of my all-time favorite albums.

They've done a second album together, which was released in October. I'm thrilled.

Ragged Kingdom by June Tabor & Oysterband (CD at Amazon)
Ragged Kingdom by June Tabor & Oysterband (MP3 at Amazon)

Peter Gabriel

The very first CDs I bought when that became a viable format were by Peter Gabriel. I think I bought the 2-disc Plays Live set first. When I was in college, I think Gabriel was probably my favorite artist and it had nothing to do with the So album and "Sledgehammer" and all the songs most people associated with him at that time. I was all about those eponymous albums of his.

In recent years, I've not paid all that much attention to Peter Gabriel. I've been listening to folkier music overall, I guess, and just forgot about him for a time. I suppose after listening to his albums so often I knew them all by heart, I needed a break.

I'm delighted to see this new album features old songs of his, but with new orchestral accompaniments and the like. Must investigate. And should probably catch up on his various other projects as well.

New Blood (Special Edition) (2CD) by Peter Gabriel

Related:
Peter Gabriel: New Blood - Live in London (DVD)
Peter Gabriel: New Blood - Live in London [Blu-ray]

Kate Bush

I know people who are huge fans of Kate Bush whereas I enjoy some of her music, but don't care all that much overall about it. Strange, I know Maybe a silly reaction to having been exposed to so many die hard fanatics at an impressionable age? I dunno. But I take note when I see new releases from her as I know it doesn't happen all that often. And I'm especially interested when it's winter-themed as I'm winter holiday music obsessed. The MP3 edition at Amazon is just $4.99 right now.

50 Words For Snow by Kate Bush (CD)
50 Words For Snow (MP3)

John Wesley Harding (a.k.a. Wesley Stace)

When I make lists of my favorite songwriters, this guy is always on it. Just one of my favorite artists, period. He has a new album that came out this fall.

The Sound of His Own Voice by John Wesley Harding (CD)
The Sound Of His Own Voice by John Wesley Harding (MP3)
The Sound of His Own Voice by John Wesley Harding (vinyl)

Of course the best place to buy the album if you're a fan is probably from the store on Yep Roc where they have bundles which include mp3, CD, vinyl, poster, t-shirts, and various combinations thereof.

There's a holiday sale in the shop at wesleystace.com where you can buy past albums of JWH for $5-$10, including those not usually found in other stores. And his books (as Wesley Stace) are there as well as other neat stuff. I may own just about everything on that page, but it's accumulated over the years and not always at such good prices.

Winter Holiday Music

OMG! I'm always hoping for more music from Lyle Lovett, so imagine my delight when I stumbled on a three-song holiday MP3 release from him:
Songs For The Season by Lyle Lovett (three-track MP3 single)
I haven't downloaded and listened to it yet, will be doing that as soon as I'm done posting this. Whee!


A few of my favorite holiday albums are back in print after being unavailable (or harder to find) for a while (some for quite a while):

We Three Kings by the Roches (CD)
This album includes a zillion carols or so it seems. Great gift for holiday traditionalists or if you want a lot of Christmas bang for your buck. Or short tracks to fill out holiday mix tapes or CDs, not that I know anything about that.

He is Christmas by Take 6 (CD)
This is gospel and lovely if you like that sort of thing. And not an album everyone will know unless they follow the band or followed gospel music at the time it came out.

My Gift To You by Alexander O'Neal (CD)
This was my favorite holiday album for a time-- a time when I liked to dance. Some tracks by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis with that old danceable "Minneapolis sound" are fun if you like that kind of thing. Great for parties of a certain type. O'Neal has an excellent voice for ballads too, of course. This album was truly hard to find for a decade or so and I originally only had it on a well-worn cassette.

Christmas Caravan by Squirrel Nut Zippers (CD)
Quirky swingy fun. I was surprised when I learned it'd been so hard to find and out-of-print as it's one I listen to each winter.


[The amazon links are affiliate links as per usual. Thanks in advance if you shop/order via those.]

You've probably already heard about this deal, but in case you haven't (deal began early Wednesday)-- Amazon has slashed the prices on the Kindle DX from close to $400 to $259 through November 28th, while supplies last. There's speculation that Amazon is discontinuing the DX model and it could very well be as it hasn't been updated in quite a while and if you go to the main Kindle page now it's not even listed among their offerings.

Sure, it still costs $60 more than the Fire (which has a color screen, smaller screen, is WiFi only not 3G) and more than the other black & white Kindles, but it's got the biggest screen of any Kindle. And it has 3G (no WiFi) and no ads and the 3G is included with no purchase necessary for the life of the gadget. Which you use to grab your books from Amazon and shop at Amazon, but you can also use the "experimental" web browser on it. My Kindle 2 is 3G only and I use the web browser on it fairly often, with a big screen I'd likely do so even more. Of course having a big screen is a plus if you use a larger font than normal or you view a lot of PDFs (as you can read them full screen on it).

Are there any other e-readers out there with this large of screen? I suspect most people would just go ahead and use a tablet if they want things that big, but there are advantages to the black & white e-ink display.

Here's a link (using my affiliate code, of course): Kindle DX, Free 3G, 9.7" E Ink Display, 3G Works Globally

Right now there are some great deals on TV DVD sets at Amazon. My focus these days is on complete series sets, but there are also deals on single seasons of shows. Here's a list of some of the better deals on complete series sets (thanks in advance if you buy via my links):

The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series for $36. (That's the cheapest it's ever been at Amazon and the cheapest I've ever seen it.)

Daria: The Complete Animated Series for just $22. Awesome. Wow. Yay!

Hogan's Heroes: The Komplete Series, Kommandant's Kollection for $36. I hope the episodes are in HD as they are on HDNet because it looks incredible that way. I think this is the cheapest I've ever seen it.

Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series for $21.

Crusade: The Complete Series for $15. Really good price on this short-lived Babylon 5 spin-off.

Barney Miller: The Complete Series for $80. More extras here than they were doing in the previously released single season sets. I want this.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Complete Series for $70. I want this very badly.

Kung Fu: The Complete Series Collection for $36.

Charmed: The Complete Series for $72.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Complete Series for $50.

Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre: The Complete Collection for $25.

Freaks and Geeks: The Complete Series for $33. I paid three or four times that for my set and it was well worth it (well, and it was the special fancy limited edition yearbook version but hey-- the discs are the same).

Six Feet Under: The Complete Series for $61.

Get Smart - The Complete Series Gift Set for $67.

The Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection for $121. This is an amazing set because it's an older show and yet there are a ton of extras. I love that.

There are a lot more deals on complete series sets and on single season sets. Worth poking around if there's a particular set you've been waiting to get when the price drops for yourself or others.

I have a lot of eBooks. And a continually growing collection of fanfic in various formats.

I use my second generation Kindle (a.k.a. Kindle 2) for most of my reading, but sometimes I use my first gen iPad, my 4th gen iPod Touch, a laptop, or some other gadget. Depends on circumstance and what I'm reading. (iPad is better for full color magazines or comic books or catalogs, Kindle is usually better for novels and fanfic. iPod is good in a pinch when I'm not carrying other larger gadgets.)

I use Calibre for conversion and for organizing multiple libraries. Right now I have one library for books and one for fanfic though I've considered splitting that stuff up even further as each one grows, but I try to resist as the various ways of organizing and searching a Calibre library are quite good.

I've messed around with using the Calibre server to serve books, but if I want access to my books over the net outside the house I'd have to monkey with port forwarding and other nonsense and ultimately it's less secure and a hassle. Plus it means leaving Calibre running all the time. Since I've recently begun messing around with Dropbox to use it for easy file-sharing among family members, I was intrigued when I discovered this piece about using a combination of Calibre, Dropbox, and Calibre2OPDS. Ah-hah! Now I can have my Libraries or a library or subset of it online using my Dropbox account and not mess with all the hassles and overheard that goes along with Calibre server. Sweet!

[I could publish to my own web server, of course. I may switch to that, but dropbox integration is very handy and that's the route I've taken thus far.]sof

It also makes it easier for me to access my content not just from my Kindle, but also from my iPad, iPod, web browsers, whatever. Can access from Android or iOS or web browser or Kindle. Using the handy iOS app eBook Search (mentioned in this related piece), I can opt to open files on the iOS Kindle App or in iBooks or another reader on iPod or iPad. Nifty. (Depends on which formats I have available in my library, of course, but I'm trying to usually at least have both .mobi and .epub formats and that covers a lot of ground.)

I've only just begun truly exploring what the Kindle Collections plug-in for Calibre can do. Though honestly, if I can just download whatever I want from the cloud whenever I want, that means carrying less content on my various gadgets which means they don't have to be all that organized. (That's a strategy I started using on iPods some time ago-- I realized I didn't really need to carry my entire library of music with me . . . it wasn't practical or possible. Carrying a subset is fine, carrying just what one will actually use is fine. Even better as it's easier and easier to grab what you want from that wacky cloud or internet or whatever you want to call it.)

Calibre is a free cross-platform bit of software. Hooray! That's the kind of software I prefer to use whenever possible. Even though I primarily use Macs nowadays, I like to use cross-platform stuff whenever possible as Kevin primarily uses UNIX and our families mostly use Windows systems and I like to easily move between them as needed. I suppose it's one reason Firefox remains my primary web browser.

Calibre2OPDS is also free and cross-platform.

Free Dropbox accounts give you 2 gig of space. Sign up using my referrer link and I get 250 MB more space (as do you). There are other easy ways to earn more free space. And affordable plans to buy more space, of course.

There are downsides to having a ton of interests, being a perfectionist, suffering from debilitating chronic severe depression, probably having ADD, and a touch of OCD. I'm just saying, is all. Plus the whole tendency toward retail therapy.

I swear I spend more time trying to organize the stuff I own or content I have than actually using/consuming it. Oy. At least I do enjoy some of the process, but too often I decide "hey, this would be a new/better way, I guess I'll start over with my iTunes Library from scratch!" or eBook catalog or whatever. This wouldn't necessarily be madness, but when you have thousands of albums and books and videos and pretty much everything . . . yeah, it is. More and more we're all librarians for our own stuff, I guess. And lots of people have collections big enough to qualify as libraries.

I have a similar problem with blogging. I'd like to post more stuff. Get back into that whole thing. Posting links, pictures, commentary, etc. In the old days, I'd spent a ton of time trying to come up with a decent color-scheme for my weblog and picking a font to use for the pretty header graphic (since the extent of my graphic skills seems to be picking fonts and colors and using them).

Later on, one didn't just hand code the HTML, one had to decide which software to use. And then what plug-ins and layouts and widgets and . . . it goes ever on. Using Wordpress or something does make some things like archives and permanent links happen automagically, but then you also have oh-so-many decisions to make. It's madness, I tell you! I guess one reason I like Tumblr is because it's back to blogging roots in a way, and from the "keep it simple" school. But even then, there are a lot of choices and one can always work to add more stuff. Oy!

Even simply reading Livejournal or Facebook can require a ton of tweaking. As with friend and reading groups. Privacy levels. Then Facebook added the whole bit where you select which updates you read from the people you follow which is a nice bit of granularity to have, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to say "read all from everybody" or whatever.

And there are so many places one can post status updates . . . twitter, chat software/clients/systems, Facebook, LJ, and so on. So many places to post online profiles and bios. It never ends, does it? The features keep being added, new systems crop up all the time.

I noted on Google+ that life was much simpler when one just had a .plan file to update. Back in the day, you might have one account you used to access the internet on some UNIX system or another and you could update a simple text file called a ".plan" file (and/or a .project file) that was meant to use to indicate who you are and what you were up to. And if people wanted to find out more about user whomever, they could read your .plan file using the "finger" UNIX tool. Ah, those were the days. Eventually bored academics and college students might add favorite quotes to their files or things much like status updates are used on twitter. Just as with any sort of internet profile, more stuff would get added. Some folks would rotate their quotes or whatever regularly so you'd make a point of seeing what they said. Honestly, in some ways it was very much an early type of twitter or online journaling or blogging. At least the way some folks used them. At least back then you only had one or maybe two places to update such a thing. And you didn't have to update it regularly, of course.

I very much believe in using the right tool for the right job and in good usability and good design. Sometimes it seems like I'm on an endless quest for such things and in perfecting my use of these things. I guess one reason I have liked blathering about this sort of stuff is to make it easier for others who care about this stuff so they can skip a few steps or trying a few things. I suppose it's why I enjoy sites like Lifehacker.

Still, it can be tiring. And I can quit futzing any time now. Sure, I can. Uh-huh.

There's a moment in Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec which scared me upon first viewing. I thought for sure the movie, which so far had been bizarre and French, was going to become truly horrible and I'd have to turn it off and hate it. At that point, I was uncertain of the movie as it's . . . uneven and odd and I wanted to like it more than I did at that point.

The moment? (Yes, this is a spoiler, albeit a mild one in a way, and I think most people would rather know than not know heading into it. Plus I probably already gave it away in a previous post.) It's a moment when the big pterodactyl swoops down toward the barking Scottish Terrier.

If the pterodactyl mauled the Scottie or otherwise harmed him? I'd hate the movie-- it's that simple. Never mind if it made sense, it'd just be awful. Perhaps if it happened completely offscreen and was mentioned in a throwaway comment I'd be able to forgive it (maybe, maybe not), but definitely not if I saw it happen or saw it about to happen.

I was upset and looked away and may have almost screamed or made some other "eek" like noise. Kevin wondered what the heck was going on with me and I flailed and pointed at the screen.

But instead of being a horrible scary bad thing that ruined the movie, the movie became awesome. Why? Because, illogical though it might be, the pterodactyl merely picked up the Scottie somehow and carried him back to his, for lack of a better word, nest. And they became the best of pals. I smile just thinking of the bizarreness and awesomeness of that. It doesn't make sense, but who cares? Why can't a pterodactyl and a Scottie be friends? It's a fantasy movie after all, so why the heck not?

I think of the movie fondly and bought the DVD because there's an awesome spunky Scottie dog in it who becomes friends with a pterodactyl. The rest of the movie has good moments and eh moments, but overall it's the pterodactyl and Scottie dog friendship for the win.