new music

RPM '09 has come and gone, and I managed, between classes, family stuff, and work, to scrape together ten little songs and send them off to the rpmchallenge headquarters.

It's been a while since I posted anything at all here, but I'm hoping to keep up with it a bit better this year. Anyway, here's the list of songs:



I think that alonetone is my new home, so I'll try to post everything there now.

...did I know them in high school?

Popcuts

Kid birthday parties, babies, family vacations and work catch-up in sufficient quantities will crush creative time, so it's been a long time since I've written any music, and even longer since I've written about writing music.

Today on a work break, I read a CNN article about a new online music retailer that rewards its members by giving them a cut of future sales of a song they initially buy. The earlier a song is purchased, the more the person gets paid when it is subsequently purchased. The company is called Popcuts. Although even the CNN article expresses doubt over the longterm efficacy of the business model, I think it's an interesting idea. The founders are trying to strike at a market that doesn't really exist, namely one that ideally appeals both to artists and labels who want to sell music, and to fans, who want music for free, or to be somehow invested in the distribution of it.

So, sound business practices aside, my interest was piqued, so I uploaded my latest mostly-finished, semi-polished (i.e. probably not going to have too much time to revise, so consider it done for now) song to the service to check it out. For those interested in a service's design and user experience, the artist editor is nice and clean, easy to use, and beats the pants off of some other social networking sites I could mention.

The end result? Who knows? Here's the song though, which right now is not available anywhere else, unless you've broken into my backup server at home. It was instantly available in the new items list on the home page as well, but I'm sure it's long since been replaced by newer songs. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this service.

a new face

I've moved the blog over to a blogger account and so all previous posts are migrated from the old u-bend blog. I haven't copied over the user comments, and haven't yet uploaded the images, but will get around to them eventually.

to the couple walking their dog off-leash at the park today

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
my words
that I spoke
at the park

and which
you probably heard
as our
dogs sniffed noses.

Forgive me:
my dogs pulled,
my baby cried,
in the heat.

A Confluence of Carbon

A handy convergence of environmental guilt, fed up-edness with procrastination, current gas prices, and some inspiration from some stuff others are doing, has led me to become interested and infused, or re-infused at least, with steely resolve to pursue some of my little green impulses.

The Storm Last Night

We recently got our roof replaced, and last night was the first big storm since that expensive but happy event. I no longer feel a sense of irrational domestic shame when I pull up to my house, confronted with the ghastly sight of the apocalyptic shingle carnage, relentlessly dragging down my property value, and that of my neighbors. The number of missing shingles was becoming so noticeable that it felt like at least once or twice a week for a while we were receiving visits from eager roofing contractors, hoping to secure our contractual employment. Business cards were frequently found attached to our mailbox, respectfully offering services. Shingles littered the yard after storms, causing aforementioned shame.

But no more! We now have a new roof. But the storm the other night got me thinking, wondering about all the rainwater, and reminded me of a not even half-finished project I have going in the back yard. A buried drain pipe leading from one of the gutter downspouts on the back of the house down to the street in front had become infiltrated and completely blocked by the thirsty root system of a nearby bush. So I dug up the pipe. And never repaired it, because I thought that this was a good opportunity for one of my little planned projects:

The Rain Barrel.

This should be said, as should any like event which causes domestic dissent, with some measure of emphasis and gravity.

So I dug it up and didn’t repair it. That was last fall, I think. Since that time, all liquid precipitation has gushed out of the drain into a bucket, onto the grass, or, more often than not, into the muddy hole from which the drain pipe was dug, which of course means that rainwater is probably rotting my foundation.

So, storms serve to remind me of, and become impotently furious about, my procrastination. This weekend I hope to put an end to this particular instance thereof. I’m going to get a rain barrel, and install it, having negotiated a location with my significant other (see domestic dissent, above). This will vastly help the environment, because of course, I’d never think of putting off watering the lawn from a rain barrel, the way I do with a hose connected to the outside spigot. So, a small little tiny thing that will have an impact on the environment so minuscule that it would be absolutely impossible to detect. But a thing nonetheless.

Driving

I was reading a Slashdot journal entry by one Shakrai, who has had the good grace to allow me to adorn his ‘friends’ list. His entry talked about a device that allows you to monitor various internal functions in your car, provided your car possesses an OBDII port. Then he talked about Hypermiling, a term that I, who apparently live under a rock, had never heard. The concept is, however, a familiar one: through vigilance and self-monitoring, change your driving habits to increase your gas mileage, benefit the environment, save money, end world hunger, foster world peace, and invent a savory dish that’s nutritious, helps you lose weight, and tastes like a bacon cheeseburger.

While I can definitely appreciate Shakrai’s interest in the device, his discussion of hypermiling, and how it has helped him, was what really got my attention. I have, through negligence, ignorance, or what have you, kind of ignored the effects of my driving style. I keep track of my mileage at least, but I haven’t really done much to change it. And my driving is not what you’d call, er, calm. A CNN article from a couple of years ago (also referenced at the hypermiling site above) outlines some of the basics, and seems like a pretty good place to start.

See, I don’t really want to be even later arriving everywhere than I usually do. Nor do I want to look like a colossal dork, plodding down the road like a worried tree-hugging octogenarian. But, if I feel like I could do something to help a world problem, and this world problem is one about which I expend energy worrying no less, it would be silly and prideful not to give the thing a go, even if my help is relatively insignificant. Add to all that the fact that this, if it proves effective, will save me a lot of money, and it starts to make some practical sense on a personal level too.

Or maybe I’m just getting old: I was recently excited to hear from one of my neighbors that he was putting together a neighborhood petition to put speed bumps on our street, which is used as a sort of unsafe shortcut by lots of traffic.

So I won’t be able to run those damn kids off my lawn by driving quickly, but at least I can spray them down with my stored rainwater while heckling them for taking the Internet for granted, and reminding them that the M in MTV used to mean something.

the uncertain friendship of adol77dai51

Well, it’s happened. I now have the dubious distinction of having the user ‘adol77dai51‘ register for my blog. Before I let this get to my head, I searched Google, and came up with several thousand hits. Others have reported this mysterious visitor, who is very likely a bot, and quite possibly connected with spammers. The user often apparently shows up on WordPress blogs such as this one, although others have reported that it has appeared on other types of blogs too. Many have written about it, and some of these discussions can be found here, here, and here. Most of the bloggers whose posts contained discussions of adol77dai51 concluded that the user should be deleted, but many were bemused at the apparently innocuous registration, which did not seem to accompany a huge upswing in spam. So, just who, or what this identity is, and whether or not it is the same as the WordPress user profile by the same name, with links to a strange conservative news site (follow the link provided in the WordPress profile page if you like), I do not know. I get the feeling though that adol77dai51 isn’t here just to listen to my music.