I’m (soon to be) on a boat

I leave tomorrow for JoCoCruiseCrazy 2 and the anticipation has me both extremely nervous and very excited. So I did what I usually do before these things, I made a mix CD.

Download my mix cd here

Here is the tracklist:

1. The Long Winters (feat. Kathleen Edwards) – Not Moving To Portland (Give Version)
2. Marian Call – Temporal Dominoes
3. The Lonely Island – I’m On A Boat
4. The Thrilling Adventure Hour – #56.2 Another word from our sponsor
5. Paul and Storm – Opening Band
6. Molly Lewis – I Pity The Fool
7. Fountains of Wayne – Valley Winter Song
8. The Long Winters – Pushover
9. They Might Be Giants – Judy Is Your Viet Nam
10. Jonathan Coulton – Dissolve
11. MC Frontalot – A Skit About Vocations
12. MC Frontalot – Critical Hit
13. Marian Call – Ina Flew the Coop
14. Molly Lewis – An Open Letter To Stephen Fry
15. MC Frontalot – Just Once
16. Paul and Storm – I Will Sing a Lullabye
17. John Hodgman – They Never Said It
18. Fountains of Wayne – A Road Song
19. Jonathan Coulton – A Talk with George
20. Jonathan Coulton – Road Movie to Berlin

Some notes:
- Not represented here are Vi Hart, David Rees or Joseph Scrimshaw. Vi is a musician but I am sadly not familiar enough with her work yet, Rees because he is a pencil sharpener and has yet to cut an album, and Joesph because he is also a writer and I could not find something appropriate in time. Also Wil Wheaton only shows up on the one skit with MC Frontalot because again I was trying to put this together quick and it was the only thing that came to mind.

- The last song should probably be The Commander Thinks Aloud but I used that for my last CD for the Hodgman trip and I wanted to avoid repeating myself.

- Instead I used the cover that JoCo and Paul and Storm did of They Might Be Giants’s Road Movie to Berlin as it is my favorite TMBG song and I like their version more than the original too.

- I also wanted to use Hey Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal (as John Flansburgh is DJ-ing on the cruise) but it is a John Linnell song which broke the rules I set for myself.

- I tend to follow a formula when making these, honed back at the beginning of the last decade when I would make CDs with stuff I downloaded from Napster. I doubt it is of interest to anyone else but I might write it up at some point.

- This mix is not even being burned to a CD this time, so I am not sure why I constrained myself to the 74 minute limit.

Resist the Tide

I figured out the chords that John Hodgman uses for the song he has been playing on ukulele and singing at his tour stops, “Resist the Tide” by Cynthia Hopkins. I am still pretty new at tabbing things out by ear, but I think this is correct (and there are only four chords).

Resist the Tide
by Cynthia Hopkins
(as performed on ukulele by John Hodgman)

	    A
Things fall apart
		    E
Everything turns to decay
		  D
And so it takes a lot
			   A
To combine atoms in such a way

	  D
That they resist
		 A
The lure of that darkness
		  E       D    A
That lurks around the edges of everyday
		A
So I'm inviting you
		   E
To join me in this fight
		  D
To go down to the river
		      A
And come up all three times
		  D
Hank Williams was right
		A
No one gets out alive
		    E	       D	   A
All we can do is try to have a really good time

           D
Resist the tide
	     A
Stand in the water
       E       D
That's baptism
              A
That's making life
    D
Electricity
                    A      F#m
Is proof that there can be
                E        D         A
A little bit of light in all this darkness

                      A
So please don't go so gently
               E
Into that good night
          D
Rage rage rage
                         A
Against the dying of the light
                      D
You know you've got a voice
                           A
The dark with you can call your own
              E          D     A
So clear your throat And start singing this song

           D
Resist the tide
             A
Stand in the water
       E       D
That's baptism
              A
That's making life
    D
Electricity
                    A      F#m
Is proof that there can be light
                  E
It takes a lot of work
        D               A
But wow baby it's worth it.

Hodgman plays the A, D and F#m open, the E barred on the fourth fret. You can also play a D barred on the second fret which I find easier sometimes.

 A    D    E   F#m   D (alternate)
-0-  -0-  -7-  -0-  -5-
-0-  -2-  -4-  -2-  -2-
-1-  -2-  -4-  -1-  -2-
-2-  -2-  -4-  -2-  -2-

And here’s another video of Hodgman playing it with Ms. Hopkins from last year’s book release party for THAT IS ALL:

February 2012 Amazon $5 album recommendations

A new month is upon us and so once again here are my recommendations from Amazon’s monthly $5 mp3 sale. A lot of classic stuff and was surprised to find at least two different albums I was going to buy today were $5 each.

(As always, I am not putting affiliate tags on any of these links. I do this every month because I like talking about music I like and want to share with you.)

Highly recommended:
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (strong contender for my favorite album of all time)
The Decemberists – Hazards of Love (less strong, but still a contender for my favorite album of all time)
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck (John Darnielle is probably my favorite songwriter working today)
St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
She and Him – Volume One
Gorillaz – Gorillaz

I am buying the following:
Hospitality – Hospitality
Girl in a Coma – Exits & All The Rest (Not actually part of the sale, but also $5 and I just bought it).

I am going to listen to the following on Spotify and pass judgement later:
Fun. – Aim and Ignite
We Were Promised Jetpacks – In the Pit of the Stomach
Boris – New Album

Unrelated to the Amazon sale, I finally got around to listening to the new First Aid Kit album and am deathly in love with this song:

Artificial Heart Instrumentals

The wonderful Level Four package for Jonathan Coulton’s new album Artificial Heart included MP3s of the master tracks broken up into individual files, so I have assembled each of the songs into an instrumental version (minus lead and background vocals) for my own amusement and figured others might be interested as well.

Download Artificial Heart Instrumentals

Please note:

• This album is attributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (except “Still Alive” which belongs to Valve and I guess I am stealing)
• This album does not include “Nobody Loves You Like Me” and “Want You Gone”, as the former is mostly an acapella with a small unrecognizable bass line, and the latter was not included in the files released. You can find fan-made instrumentals of “Want You Gone” online elsewhere
• These tracks are usable for karaoke, but you might want to mix in the background vocals as well for the real effect

Now to pretend to be Girl Talk and mix the acapella vocals into hip-hop.

2011 Favorites List

Since I know in our modern world overrun with twitter and whatever, nobody wants to read essays anymore. We want lists! So here you go, some favorites and some lists. For comparison, here is last year’s.

Favorite Music
Favorite Live Shows

Favorite non-music live show: John Hodgman’s THAT IS ALL Book Tour, Portland and Seattle

Favorite Movie: Bridesmaids
Favorite Movie not released this year: Easy A

Favorite Books:
1. THAT IS ALL by John Hodgman
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and other concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Favorite Book not released this year: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Favorite New TV Show: Game of Thrones
Favorite Continuing TV Show: Parks and Recreation
Favorite TV quote to repeat to myself: “so how is this going?” “not great.” from Archer

Favorite Year End List: BEST OF 2011: Late Night Lists by David Rees

Favorite Video Games:
1. Portal 2
2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
3. Battlefield 3
4. Star Wars: The Old Republic

Favorite Podcasts:
1. Roderick on the Line
2. Judge John Hodgman
3. NPR’s Planet Money

Favorite Restaurant (where I probably ate too often): Iguanas Burritozilla
Favorite Non-Bay Area Restaurant: Skillet Diner, Seattle
Favorite Sandwich: Pork Belly Cubano at Bunk’s Sandwiches, Portland
Favorite Taco Truck: BBQ Kalbi

Favorite online writer person: Sean O’Neal at The AV Club

Most Embarrassing Moment: Being publicly schooled by Questlove on twitter.

Favorite live shows of 2011

I went to a lot of live concerts this year, more than any other year I have been alive, and many of them were mind-blowing (while the rest were just merely awesome). Here are some thoughts on my favorites:

- The Decemberists at The Fox Oakland, February 14th
I wrote about this concert here.

- LCD Soundsystem at Terminal 5, March 31st
This was the last of LCD’s run at Terminal 5 before their final show at Madison Square Garden, and it was my favorite of the three I saw there. I had a much better spot at this show, even though I was near the back of the floor crowd and I thought they really just fucking laid it all out on the table. When they were playing “Yeah” or “Time to Get Away” and the synths were blaring I just could not imagine wanting to be anywhere else at that moment. It also really ignited my interest in making music, I wanted to be up there playing music like this as loud as possible. It was the highlight of a week that had nothing but good shows from one of my favorite bands.

- Robyn at Coachella, April 15th
- The Joy Formidable at Coachella, April 16th
- Mumford and Sons at Coachella, April 16
I wrote about my Coachella experiences here.

- The Mountain Goats at The Fillmore, June 20th
Probably tied with the LCD Terminal 5 show for my favorite of the year (although I think that was a special case, so advantage Mountain Goats). I saw the Mountain Goats in 2009 with Jason but at the time I was not very familiar with their stuff. It was an amazing show and I came home and bought every single album. I studied up and so this time when they played This Year, No Children and The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton I knew all the words. The band, and John Darnielle in particular, seem to love playing SF and always put on an incredible show and this one was no slouch. Just unbelievable. Since the Decemberists have closed up shop for a while, I think The Mountain Goats are definitely my number one recommended band to see live.

- Titus Andronicus at The Fox Oakland, June 22nd
I wrote about my obsession with Titus Andronicus, and this show, here.

- Cibo Matto at Bimbos 365, June 25th
After being obsessed with Cibo Matto ten years ago, it was unreal getting to see them live. It was super fun.

- Arcade Fire at Outside Lands Festival, August 14th
I briefly wrote the following about seeing Arcade Fire at Outside Lands:
Tonight during Arcade Fire’s set I started crying, once at the beginning of the set during Keep the Car Running and again at the end during Wake Up. It was wonderful.

- Supercommuter at The Paramount Theatre, August 28th
Supercommuter played last in a pretty awesome lineup on Saturday at PAX. By the time they got on I was really tired and ready to pack it up, but I wanted to stick around for at least one song. As soon as they started though, I could tell I was in it for the long haul as their music sounded AMAZING as loud as possible at the Paramount (a pretty large venue with huge repeaters). I loved Optimus Rhyme and so it was a very pleasant surprise to find that Wheelie Cyberman had ended up in a new band, and I love both Supercommuter albums to death. I started their set feeing extremely tired and ended it feeling pumped full of energy.

- St. Vincent at Treasure Island Music Festival, October 16th
I had listened to St. Vincent before but this was the first time I saw her live. She just attacks the guitar with an intensity I thought reserved only for Metal and wangy guitar rock, but at the same time writing these absolutely gorgeous songs. A bonus was that same night I ran across town to see Thao and the Get Down Stay Down at the Independent, Thao Ngyuen being another incredibly talented female guitarist. It was a very good day for that

- Paul and Storm at Cafe Du Nord, November 30th
Not many people came to this show, maybe thirty-five total, but I think we tried our best to make it up to Paul & Storm with our enthusiasm. Also the panties I threw on stage got picked for the line in “Opening Band” even if I did go extra creepy with them.

2011

2011 was hands down the best year of my life. Here are some highlights:

EDIT: I forgot something awesome that happened in January that I am including below.

In January I got tickets to The Wright Stuff, a screening of all three Edgar Wright movies (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) which was attended by Wright, Simon Pegg, Lucy Davis, and a number of the Scott Pilgrim cast. Jason and I drove down to Los Angeles on a Saturday afternoon and went to the screening, which was super fun. Being 10 feet away from Edgar and Simon felt unreal.

In March I went to New York for about a week to see the final LCD Soundsystem shows. I had a wonderful time and fell in love with the city. I spent a large portion of the year plotting to move there, which has since cooled but I think about it from time to time.

In April I went to Coachella for the first time. It was an amazing experience and I saw an unbelievable amount of live music in three days. I repeated that experience again in August when I went to Outside Lands Festival here in SF and then Treasure Island Music Festival in October. I still want to do a separate post on shows from this past year so I will leave it at that for now.

California Extreme happened in July and included an awesome chip tunes/video game cover concert. It had been a couple years since I had gone last but I am very happy I went back.

In August I went to PAX for the second time. I finally got to meet Eden and Zannah for the first time! I also met a bunch of Seamonkeys who I got to know on Twitter after signing up to go on JoCoCruiseCrazy this coming February which was awesome.

October saw the release of books by my two favorite authors, Haruki Murakami and John Hodgman, within a week of each other which seemed like a cosmic gift of some kind. Both books were amazing.

In addition Hodgman went on tour in November but was not coming to the Bay Area (but he is very soon!) so I took it upon myself to go to see him in both Portland and Seattle because I am crazy obsessed. While in Portland I got to hang out with Maria and Taylor and then in Seattle I spent an evening with Sara, all of whom I met at PAX for the first time as well.

I would be remiss to not mention that Vic moved here over the summer with her husband, and has led to much hanging out with them and Mattie. And most importantly I have wrangled them into a band with me, which is crazy awesome.

This year I was able to get back into reading. I read 19 books, not a lot but certainly more than I was reading in past years. Part of this was fueled by buying a Kindle in February before I went to New York, as the convenience of having it lead to a lot more reading while out of town all year. At the same time I just devoted more time to books instead of manga or video games.

When I think about my life as it was a year ago, and I can very clearly remember how I felt about things then, it amazes me that things have come so far so quickly. I can only hope that things will continue to improve or even just maintain my current level of satisfaction with my life.

I think I am on the right track though, I have a lot of plans for this year already which should help. In January there are a number of awesome shows part of SF Sketchfest, then in February is JoCoCruiseCrazy which I am unreasonably excited for. After that is PAX East in April and Coachella the very next two weeks, and finally MaxFunCon in June. So I am going to be very busy.

December 2011 Amazon $5 album recommendations

(Note: I am not being paid to write this and these are not Amazon referral links, I just want to share music I like with people.)

I can recommend the following:

A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio (aka the only Christmas album you need to own)
I Will Be by Dum Dum Girls
Lungs by Florence + The Machine
Civilian by Wye Oak
How I Got Over by The Roots
Volume Two by She & Him
Artificial Heart by Jonathan Coulton
I Told You I Was Freaky by Flight of the Conchords
The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths
Odelay by Beck
Room for Squares by John Mayer (Note: I know he is a complete juicebox and the two radio singles from this album were overplayed, but there are a ton of songs on here that I listened to non-stop in college so I would feel remiss to leave it off.)
Kid A – Radiohead
Of the Blue Color of the Sky by OK Go
Feels Like Home by Norah Jones
The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails
Green by R.E.M.

I am going to listen to the following on Spotify and possibly buy:
Little Voice by Sara Bareilles
The Book of Mormon by the Original Broadway Cast

Favorite music of 2011

Since it is that time of year, I might as well put up a list. Let it be known I feel browbeaten into it. If you do not feel like reading my dumb list, I also made a Spotify playlist you can get here.

Favorite Albums of 2011 (in no particular order):
The Decemberists – The King is Dead
Florence + The Machine – Ceremonials
Dum Dum Girls – He Gets Me High/Only In Dreams
Cults – Cults
The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar
The Mountain Goats – All Eternal’s Deck
Vivian Girls – Share The Joy
Awkward Terrible – I Feel Asleep
Jonathan Coulton – Artificial Heart
MC Frontalot – Solved
Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
Supercommuter – Products of Science

These three albums I loved, but only about half of the album for each:
St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
Beirut – The Rip Tide
Wild Flag – Wild Flag

My favorite individual songs of the year (again in no particular order) were:
St. Vincent – Surgeon
The Decemberists – Calamity Song
Vivian Girls – Take It As It Comes
Cults – Go Outside
Jonathan Coulton – Nemeses
Dum Dum Girls – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
The Joy Formidible – Cradle
Beirut – Sante Fe
Supercommuter – It is Splendid!

I also spent a large portion of the year listening to albums that did not come out this year, the main ones were:
Titus Andronicus – The Monitor (shocking, I know)
Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
The Like – Release Me

According to my Last.fm profile, the three artists I listened to the most this year were:
1. The Mountain Goats
2. Titus Andronicus
3. Robyn

I am gonna try to write a separate posts about live shows I saw this year as there were so many.

Kindle Fire review

I bought a Kindle Fire at launch, not really sure why, so I figured I should write up a review.

The main point of comparison for me is the iPad 2 (32gb, wifi) that I have had since July. I also have a Kindle 3rd Gen (what they call a Kindle Keyboard now) which conveniently died on me shortly after I got the Fire, but Amazon is sending me a replacement as I write this. This has also been my first experience using an Android device, albeit a well-veiled one.

My first impression is that the device is the perfect form factor for reading at night in bed. Previously I was using the iPad for this, due to the backlit screen, but I never really enjoyed it. I think the e-ink Kindle is still the best reading experience over all but I will use (and have been using) the Fire at night.

They appear to basically be using the same app that is on the iPad for reading Kindle books. This annoys me for a few reasons:

1. The app does not display page numbers for books. On the e-ink Kindle this seems to either work or not on a per-book basis, but they never work on the iPad or Fire app, even for books that I know had page numbers on e-ink.

2. The app does not have an easy way to jump chapters. The Kindle Keyboard lets you jump to the beginning/end of the chapter (and from there the beginning of the next/previous chapter), but this does not seem to be a feature. Instead you need to go to the table of contents and hope you know which is the next chapter.

3. The e-ink Kindles allow you to categorize your books into folders but the Fire and iPad apps do not. You just get one big list of your books, which I can only imagine will be harder to manage if you have a big collection.

The main UI for the Fire is okay, though I do have an issue picking an item from the main carousel as it seems very precise how much you need to scroll to bring something to the forefront. The way they split off different types of media into categories makes sense and the cloud portion mostly works.

One thing that immediately annoyed me is that they include a bunch of pre-installed “apps”, many of which are just shortcuts to mobile web versions of popular sites. Facebook is included in these and for some inexplicable reason you cannot delete it. I do not use Facebook so deletion was my first instinct and I quickly discovered you cannot hide or get rid of it at all which I find very frustrating.

It seems like there is a limited selection of apps as you are stuck with only Amazon’s store by default. This means if I want something that Amazon does not list (example: Spotify), I have to circumvent their rules and side-load. This is basically the last thing I want to do and a large reason why I like iOS: (Apple only lets you do what they want, but what they want for a phone/tablet generally is inline with what I want [not so much with an OS but that is another post]). So no Spotify or other apps that I cannot easily download.

That said, they do include integration with their own cloud for music and video. I have been buying music from Amazon MP3 for a while now, though I had to re-upload most of it to the Amazon Cloud myself, so I have a pretty large selection.

When I first selected Cloud music there were a multitude of icons and everything seemed fine. I did notice that one album (Strange Mercy by St. Vincent) was missing, though it came up after I did a search and then later did appear when I sorted the cloud collection by Artist again. So I am not sure if it was a “catalog download in progress” issue or if more albums are not going to appear until I notice they are missing.

Having access to the Amazon prime video collection is nice (since the iPad will probably never get this), and there is also access to Netflix as well, though I have yet to find something that Amazon Prime has and Netflix does not. Maybe something will come up.

So far I am not crazy about the on-screen keyboard. I seem to be mistyping a lot, though I may still be in the adjustment period which I believe I had with the iPad as well.

The Silk browser does not really impress me at all. It seems slower than the iPad or iPhone and often times pages will not render beyond the first screen. Meaning I can see that there is more page that normally I could scroll down to see, but the browser will not let me scroll vertically.

This is also an issue inside the Amazon app on the device (not sure if this is well-veiled mobile web or what). They let you filter by categories on Amazon, but often times the category pages just do not load beyond a list of question marks. I tried to find a Fire case using the app and gave up in frustration.

I have not tried the reading experience for magazines as the free trials provided are auto-renew and I do not want to accidentally get stuck with a subscription. I did download Comixology and comics look pretty great. There is a definite contrast difference between the Fire and the iPad and I am not sure if I necessarily preferred one over the other.

In general though, I am a bit disappointed in the Fire. It is pretty decent at being a back-lit Kindle but not quite there as a fully featured tablet.

Maybe I have been spoiled by the iPad, but I think if this was your first tablet experience you might not see what the big deal is. It does reading as well as I would hope, with the caveats listed above, but everything else is okay at best (music, video) and dreadful (web browsing) at worst.