Big updates coming for the New Year

So I have some big updates coming up at the turn over for the new year.
School is just about out and I should hopefully have some more time to work on some of my personal projects because I do not have a full time job yet. I was unable to schedule any live shows for this past fall because having class that goes until 9:00pm three nights a week and then work and commute the last two nights go until about 7:30pm does not lend itself to very much practice time. Especially when that 7:30 ends up falling on a Friday night.

I have been working on developing a new website for my music and projects, which is for the most part finally complete. I have been slowly developing this website since June, but I just get so lazy with it sometimes that the development grinds to a halt. The main development of the site has actually been done since about August, but I have been since designing and editing little annoying things on the site like spelling, links, and minor formatting such as shadows and such. This is extremely boring work and I hate doing it so the development of these tiny little pieces has taken more then three months, when in actuality it would only take about two hours to do if I just sat down and did it. I also put off the website's deployment for financial reasons, not because I didn't have the money for a domain name, but rather I just was too much of a miser to spend the lousy twenty-something dollars to set the whole thing up. It is getting there though and the new year seems like a perfect time for a new site launch.

I am putting up a proper website because I think it will help people better be able to navigate to my music for listening as well as download some of my net albums. As you probably notice from this Blog it is not exactly easy to find where my music is or where you can download it. I am using iWeb for the design of the new website and it is looking really nice. iWeb has a lot of great features in it that make it want to be used. Some of those features include blogging, photo albums, and podcasting. At present I am probably going to stick with this Blogger Blog for my blogging (wow that was a lot of b's) simply because I think Blogger is a little more flexible at the moment, but I anticipate that to change as iWeb goes to a release version 2.0 within the next six months. You can be sure I will add some pages in the future for photo albums as well as for downloads of some of my music tutorials.

As part of the new website launch I am playing with the idea of implementing a Podcast. I think since I am a musician the Podcast seems like it might be a natural progression for people to listen to my music and hear my thoughts. iWeb has some really slick podcasting integration in it that I do not think any other web development tools have, but I still have to explore the flexibility of it. If it is anything like the blogging software in iWeb it may be to inflexible for me to use. We will just have to wait and see, but I am very excited of perhaps implementing a Podcast feature to my site to make it more interactive.

If people have some feedback that they would like to give me on the idea of podcasting I would be more then happy to hear it. As much as I love listening to Podcasts myself, I really have no idea as to what goes into making an interesting Podcast. At present I am thinking of perhaps keeping them relatively short, between 20-30 minutes, and have about 10-15 minutes of me talking about a subject and then the last half of the Podcast feature some of the music I am working on. That shouldn't be too boring right?

Also for those who do not know, I run another Blog all about livePA, or live electronic music over at http://www.livepa.blogspot.com. Please go over there and check it out if you are interested. I am also looking to redesign that site slightly, or at the very least develop a new banner for it. If you have any suggestions or would like to do it, shoot me an email.


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New Song: Journey to the Edge of the Earth

Hey remember how I created this blog to showcase my music? Well I finally had time to sit down today and do some recording and I have a new song to share with everyone

The song is a rough recording since it is still a work in progress. It is a moderate dream trance song that I think has an adventurous sort of feel. Something you would hear in a fantasy or scifi scene. Feel free to listen to it via the hi-fi or lo-fi streaming links.

LoFi

HiFi

Soundclick Link

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OMG The Headphones!!!!

So I am totally digging my new iPod, but OMG those earbud headphones that come with it have got to be the most uncomfortable things ever to touch my ear. They are seriously almost unbearable.

I don't think I have weird shaped ears, but I do not see how people can wear these things. They just hurt right on my inner ear.

I am going to have to find some alternative headphones.

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The Big 24 and an iPod

Well today is my birthday. Here it is, The day was generally a decent day. I had to work all day and no one at work knew it was my birthday. All the better I suppose since there is nothing more uncomfortable then the awkwardness of a work party. Really there isn't.

My present this year from my parents was at 2GB iPod Nano.

Would you actually believe that I have never owned an iPod before? No, really I haven't. As big of a gadget freak as I am I just never had one.

I finally have one though and it is really small. Pretty sweet too. It will be nice for the train rides into work and so forth. I am not the sort of person who is going to load all my CD's onto my laptop. I am a big podcast fan so I am loading all sorts of podcasts on there. Music ones, talk, editorial stuff.

I am sort of excited about the iPod. Since I started jogging again I might pick up the Nike running thing at a later point. I guess my Mac transformation is finally complete. I am a die hard addict now.

Anyways, here is off to another year older.


Ohh gosh I almost forgot. My girlfriend was really sweet this morning and surprised me with a small present and some chocolate at the train station. Apparently she was waiting since 6:05 and I don't get there for the train until about 6:35.

She got me the Fray CD, some awesome Russian dark chocolate and a real cool little card. I am not a card person so the fact that I like this card is sort of a big deal, at least to me.

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Tomorrow is My Birthday

So Halloween came and went. Tomorrow is my birthday. I am turning twenty four. I can't believe I am that old. I really don't feel like I am twenty four, but I guess I am. The funny thing is that I am in that sort of "OMG am I getting old now?" sort of mentality.

You know you look forward to every birthday and the big ones are eighteen and twenty one. After twenty one though what are the highlight birthdays? None that I can really think of. I suppose I am not so much feeling old as I am feel as if people think I should be grown up now.

Graduation is coming up in a few months and the whole "real world" thing keeps getting told to me by countless people. I hate when people say that stuff, as if I am living in some delusional juvenile world now. It is like I am expected to cross some magical bridge and take on "adult responsibilities". I think there are several issues that are probably compounding this problem that I sort of have with it. One of least which being graduation approaching, but the others are probably the marriages and children that my friends and people I knew in high school are having. My good friend J has a daughter that is going to turn 2 on November 7th. He has had a daughter for two years!!!!!

I log on to the obligatory Facebook pages these days (because apparently it is the cool thing to do) and see people who were younger then me from high school getting married. I have to say it just sort of feels a little weird.

At any rate I am trying to stave off growing up as long as I can. I have sort of developed into a videogame nerd over the past two years and I am getting myself all revved up for the release of the Nintendo Wii. I am planning on actually getting up early that day (November 19th) to sit out in front of the store to make sure I get one. I have never, ever done anything like that before, but I think it will be sort of fun. Maybe I am doing that because I really want one, but maybe I am doing it because I still get to act like I am 16.

I'll be sure to blog about that experience as too.


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Halloween and Pumpkin Carving

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year. The whole concept of people running around outside going trick or treating an so forth is just great. No other holiday is as communal.

This year as always I carved pumpkins and I did it with Meg. I posted the picture above. Can you guess which one was done by an art student? Yeah........

This is one of the first years that I did not have the opportunity to go to a Halloween party or get dressed up. I have just been too busy and unfortunately I have class on Tuesday from 6pm-9pm. The coming of Halloween signals two things in my life. First it means that the holiday season is beginning, and second it means that my birthday is coming up (November 2nd). This year I am a little apprehensive about my birthday, but I will save that information for another blog in a few days.

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Found Pictures From Political Trip to Wisconsin

Googling myself this evening I stumbled upon an old link to pictures that were taken from my Political Science 499 trip up to Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Trip

This class was one of the coolest I have ever taken in college. It was all about elections and it just so happened to be the presidential election of 2004 when I took the class. I had the opportunity to meet all sorts of people such as Jim Ryan, Judy Bar Topinka (umm, yeah), and many, many more.

Around the last week of October we all headed up to Wisconsin (yes the entire class) as part of a project to campaign for our candidate of choice. At the time Wisconsin was a battle ground state so our professor thought we should expirience the full swing of the election.

That was really a great time. I wish more college classes were as immersive as this one was.

P.S. I still have the John Kerry pin that I carry in the upper left pocket of my jean jacket. For whatever reason I just cannot get rid of it.

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Moving on to a New Job

I normally don't post about job related activities on this blog, but I am going to make a slight exception this time.

Today was my last day at my current job. I was an intern at a municipal government near Chicago. I am moving onto a new part-time job working for a non-profit organization starting this Tuesday, that with any luck will become full time once I graduate this December.

As with all new chapters in your life I of course have the sort of mixed feelings. On the one had I am glad to move on, but there are inevitably some moments where you like the consistency. Overall this whole transition period right now in my life is one from a college student to that of a professional. Three weeks ago I handed in my thesis paper. Tomorrow I have my comprehensive Exams for graduate school. They are basically pass or fail exams that rest on the whole two years that I have been here.

I am sort of nervous about them, but hopefully, if I have been awake for the past two years I have learned something and should be ok. I'll let you know tomorrow how they went.

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The Battle Over Electronics

I am a big gadget freak and in many respects, a hardcore computer nerd. I know quite a bit about computers and customize Windows pretty easily. Since my switch over to Mac this past summer I have become increasingly interested in different sorts of technology articles talking about stuff for the Mac. Essentially I am trying to become as geeky on it as I am on Windows. During this process I have noticed that there appears to be a very high level of divide over the PC vs. Mac world.

In almost every single discussion I have looked at online that discusses the merits of either system, there are inevitably users from the other camp who seem to feel the need to overzealously hype their system of choice. You get you obvious claims of "Man Windows sucks, M$ is just trying to take your money", and on the other side "Apple computers are over priced and no one uses them".

This sort of divide does not just exist in the computer world, but I think spreads to the electronics world in general. You see these same tensions in the Video Game market where people devotedly tout the PLAYSTATION 3 (yes, it is supposed to be all capital letters) over the Nintendo Wii or the Xbox 360, or the iPod over the Creative Zen and Microsoft Zune. If you think about it, you don''t see this problem on other markets of the economy. I have never seen a Nissan owner get onto a message board online yelling at people about how stupid their Ford is. I have never seen a guy at Burger King shout at a McDonaldÂ's customer that they are an idiot noob who has no sense in taste. Have you seen a person in Best Buy making fun of someone because they bought the Kenmore refrigerator instead of the Whirlpool? So what is the deal with these people and the need to claim superiority in the electronics market? What makes people so zealous over electronics and not other products?

Since my switch to Macintosh, I will honestly say I love it and I do think it is better then Windows. That all being said, I am not going to go out and bash Windows or claim it has no place or value in the market. I use Windows at work and the integration that it has with Microsoft Exchange servers, FTP, and other office platforms is very impressive. I previously used Windows for my music creation and there are a lot of independent developers that are making great software for the platform. Why can'?t then multiple competitors exist in electronics?

I suppose the point I am trying to get at here is that there does not need to be this battle between factions in the electronics world for products. The competition between people forces the market leader to try to improve them self. Could we say that the video game market would be better if Microsoft didn't enter the fray with the Xbox and Xbox Live, or if Nintendo suddenly disappeared? Would the computer world be suddenly better if Mac OSX didn'?t force Microsoft to improve upon Windows or of Linux didn't force competition in the business and server markets?

I suppose my point here is that McDonalds is McDonalds, and Burger King is Burger King, but in the end they are both still hamburgers. Let people use what they want to use because everything has its own merits.

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