Muse Flash: Where Do You Find New Music?

Posted on Jan 30, 2009 in Writing | 5 comments

Where Do You Find New Music? Apart from my teen and preteen I don’t know anyone who listens to the radio. With all the different forms of satellite radio, internet radio, file-sharing, online music and etc. it’s a wonder anyone puts up with the commercials anymore. So how do you find out about new bands and new songs or do you just keep reliving the old days?

Answer this question on your own blog, then leave a comment with your answer and a link to your post.

I find new music primarily through two sources. The first, Pandora, is a little more traditional—in the sense that it is musical in nature. It’s a web service that is designed to recommend music based on other music that you like. Some of their recommendations you’ll like and some you won’t, but you can make the suggestions more tailored to you. Over the past three years I’ve had moderate success with Pandora, though it’s been better as a background soundtrack than for real discovery.

The second source is ESPN Radio. I listen to it on Sirius Radio and online and they sometimes fill in the spaces for regular commercials with lead in music. In the last two years I’ve been introduced to The Lift, Carolina Liar and Thriving Ivory, all from the filler music on ESPN Radio.

Now it’s your turn. Answer this question on your own blog, then leave a comment with your answer and a link to your post.

Muse Flash is a new feature, where I’ll give you a topic for your own blog. I’m going to try it for a few posts and see if it has legs.

Insanity or Bluetooth?

Posted on Jan 29, 2009 in Society, Tech | 4 comments

I wonder what someone unfamiliar with modern technology would think when looking at us. I’m not talking about cavemen—maybe just someone from the 80s.

Hey! Stop rolling your eyes. This isn’t one of those look at how far we’ve come articles.

But sometimes it just hits you in the face that we’re so hooked on the latest and greatest technology, that we don’t stop to consider how it will affect us. And by us I mean either our society, or just us lowly peons.

Specifically I’m wondering if the helpful souls that invented the Bluetooth headset, ever stopped to think about what a bunch of idiots we look like when we’re walking around yelling to ourselves.

I have a Bluetooth. I use it while driving, and at the office so I can keep working when I take a call. I remove it during lunch, meetings, personal conversations, and even during long stretches at my desk. But like most people I often forget to remove it, and as soon as I see the eyes of someone I’m talking to darting back and forth from my eyes to the blinking blue light by my right ear, I take it off.

But many—MANY—Bluetooth users never take them off. Frankly, I wonder if they sleep with it on. And most people just haven’t developed the body language to convey that they are talking on the cell phone.

Here’s a tip. If you’re talking to someone on the phone, and not to me, don’t make eye contact with me.

My favorite thing about the headsets is that they make us look like a bunch of nutcases wandering the streets. Most people make a point not to talk to themselves around other people—lest we look insane. But that little earpiece really gets rid of a lot of social awkwardness. The hallway outside my department is routinely littered with people having arguments, personal conversations, and business meetings with…the wall, the door to the breakroom, a person facing them who happens to be in a completely different conversation.

But by far the oddest thing—in fact, what inspired me to write this post—were the two people in the lobby having a meeting over their headsets who didn’t even realize they were in the same room.

We really are a bunch of loonies.

Writing v. Technology

Posted on Jan 27, 2009 in Tech, Writing | 2 comments

Generally when you hear about writing and technology you hear how they can compliment each other. But today’s tale involves how they can sometimes be at cross purposes. Today because of the fact that I am a writer I have hit a tech wall.

You all know people like this. People who swear it’s easier to spend seven hours typing and retyping a letter on an electric typewriter because they refuse to learn how to use email. Or who refuse to get a cell phone even thought they desperately need one. You can find them easily enough by seeing who’s explaining to younger generations about how tough they had it.

Well today I have had to admit one of my technical limitations. I will never be good at texting.

In recent months I’ve been texting a lot more. Not “a lot” by the standards of anyone under the age of 30, but it’s more than I’ve done in the past. I have a moderately good phone for it. It’s a Palm with a full, if cramped, keyboard. And for someone who generally uses two fingers to type, being limited to one isn’t much of a handicap.

No, what is stopping me is my inability to use TXT Shorthand. Yes, I’m referring to the LOLs of the modern world.

I’m never ROFL. I will never BRB. I don’t VEG, but smile. And I couldn’t care less about your A/S/L. Y2K was a hysteria, not an “Aw, shucks.” And even if I do KWYM, I won’t admit it.

It’s not just an unfamiliarity with this terms that get’s in the way. Like anything else, I know I could learn it. It’s just that taking the time to learn them seems about as much fun as learning to play fingernails on a chalkboard and calling it music.

In fact when I text I seem to purposely distance myself from these abominations by testing in complete sentences and proper punctuation. I’ve even been teased for sending texts with compound sentences complete with semi-colons.

Maybe this all is the technological equivalent of complaining about walking 10 miles through the snow to school, through the snow, uphill, both ways. But if hating TXT is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

A Small Dose of Political Reality

Posted on Jan 20, 2009 in Politics | 1 comment

I rarely talk politics. Anywhere. Not on this blog, not at work, and generally not even with friends. The reason is that most people don’t want to discuss politics, they want to lecture, and then get angry that you don’t agree with them. And I learned a long time ago, that I don’t agree with anyone on politics even half of the time. I’m not a liberal, I’m not a conservative. I used to be a Libertarian, but it didn’t take.

Politically, I consider myself a patriot. And I doubt that means the same thing to me as it does the majority of the population. I have voted in every national or state level election I have been eligible for and have never voted for the winning candidate for President, Governor, Senator, Representative or Mayor.

I relate all this as prologue, so you can take what follows with the appropriate grain of salt.

Can we all please calm down about Obama?

I’m not for one second suggesting that his election is anything but historic. And although his election may signal a change in the ugly racial history of our country, I can also accept that it may be an aberration.

But I also understand that Obama has more weight on his shoulders than any other president in recent memory. And not just the political and economic tumult he must wade into, but he also carries 400 years of racial turbulence along for the ride.

I heard a poll a few days ago that said that an international poll found Obama to be the most respected president in over 50 years. Until earlier today he wasn’t even president, and upon the writing of this post the only decisions he has made as president are how many appetizers are too many at your own inauguration ball. How can he possibly be the most respected president when he’s done nothing?

Please don’t get me wrong. I hope Obama is the best president we’ve ever had. No, I didn’t vote for him, but wishing him ill is tantamount wishing further hardships on our country. I didn’t vote for Bush either, but he was my president, and I would have felt a traitor to not support him.

Barack Obama has a hard road ahead of him, and he’s saddled with some staggering baggage. Historically, a executive and legislative branch of the same party is not a blessing—there’s something to be said for the benefit of a Devil’s Advocate. He’s also got frightening expectations to live up to.

Additionally, I’m terrified what would happen to this country if some racist nut-job happens to get off a lucky shot.

I hope he’s a great president. I hope we have turned a page in our racial history. I hope in four years that I’m ashamed that I didn’t vote for him. I hope he can repair our image and relations with our overseas allies.

And I don’t fault others for their hope.

But the history of the office is that few men can live up to their own hype. And it’s Obama’s job to earn his place in history, not for anyone to anoint him.

He should have our support, but not our blind obedience.