So I found probably my most favoritest feed ever, and it’s located at The Hype Machine. THM aggregates tons of music blogs and gives me just the nitty-gritty, tracks and sites. If I like the title, I’ll check out the track, if I like the track, I’ll check out the site. It’s a great way to find lots and lots of new music without having to do much work.

The thing is, you do have to do more work, because the sheer volume of posts are enormous, I usually go through about 300-400 a day. There’s so many great songs going through there, I thought I’d save you some trouble and pick a few and write a little something up. I might do this on Wednesdays, I might not, we’ll see. It’s a pretty daunting task, to narrow it down to seven tracks, but I did it. There’s plenty more where that came from.

1. Tokyo Police Club – Nature of the Experiment, from Good Weather for Airstrikes

   The mix on this is crazy, because everything is so loud yet at the same time really clear. I missed TPC when they played with Ted Leo at the South Street Seaport, and hearing how frenetic and energized this track is, I kind of regret it.

2. Rocky Votolato – Uppers Aren’t Necessary, from i guess i’m floating.

   IGIF did a nice little write up on Seattle, which, of course, I’m highly biased to. The thing I remember most about Rocky Votolato, though, is that he’s from Bothell, like the next guy on this list, and that he not only plays some mean folk guitar, but that he can also shred, judging by the ripping guitar solo he had when I saw him play with the Weakerthans at the venue formerly know as the Graceland. The guitar here doesn’t shred though, it’s just pretty.

3. Rose Melburg – Take Some Time, from The Yellow Stereo.

   This is, for me, one of the most recognizable female voices, like, ever. We saw them at Cake Shop a few weeks back and it was noisy and sleepy. While the company was great, I enjoy this song much better sitting at home, waiting for nothing in particular.

4. Chris Walla (Martin Youth Auxiliary) – Connection C, from Puddlegum.

   These are still some of my favorite Walla recordings, especially since Nathan Goode is featured on the drums here, and no one rolls that snare like he does.

5. The Strokes w/ Regina Spector – Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men, from Country Pinball Machine.

   Something in Regina Spector’s voice makes me think of silent films, maybe because she makes me think of Clara Bow when I see that picture on CPM. And now every time I hear The Strokes, I think of Marie Antoinette. Regardless, the two go together like mashed potatoes and gravy. You decide which is which.

   By and by, CPM’s been putting mad crazy hits up lately. IE – The next track.

6. M. Ward – To Go Home, also from CPM.

   Also missed M. Ward when he came through town, which is a damn shame. This is probably my favorite song of the entire bunch, and that’s not just because the lyrics are great, but because top to bottom, this song is a enthralling.

   If I ever treated you mean / You know that it was only because / I was sorry I couldn’t have you for my own

   Note: I just found out this is a Daniel Johnston song, which is weird, because I’ve read quite a bit about him today. Still, M Ward writes good songs, too, so maybe I can’t attribute these lyrics to his ability, but everything else about this track is good, too.

7. Deltron – Mastermind, from Gorilla vs. Bears.

I don’t know how Del makes his voice sound like that, but I suspect it has something to do with being born like that, or perhaps its a new protools plugin. Or he’s a cyborg from the future. Any way you slice it, he’s long been one of the most underrated and overlooked rappers around. He should have starred in XXX2 instead of his cousin.

Popular Mechanics article on digital preservation hits on a lot of areas that are similar to Brand’s article, The Digital Dark Age that came out in ‘03 in Library Journal, but there’s some good, solid examples on digital preservation. The Internet Archive is doing similar work, but doesn’t have the funding to come up with a whole lot of new solutions, but the article talks about Lockheed and Rand coming up with two different solutions — XML and emulation.

I’d side with the emulation side of things, because the idea the subjectivity involved in converting documents to XML is highly suspect, but in the long run, establishing the standard — well, XML is the standard — but getting people to follow it without the compatibility invites more trouble.

This is what gets me about my Information Technology class: we learn about standards, readability issues; but aren’t given the tools or even the motivation to apply the knowledge. In most cases, we are given a disclaimer and are told to “make your own standards” which is just asinine. But I digress, my Information Technology education is another post completely.

Another side note on the article, I should have known this when I saw OpenOffice and Google docs enjoying .doc readability, buy MS Word is looking to get ISO certified? That in itself probably isn’t a bad thing, but I shudder to think what kinds of garbage is in every .doc every time it’s saved.

I won’t be checking in much over the holiday weekend, as I expect you won’t either. I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving in your respective geographies. Me, well, I’ll be cooking and eating here in Brooklyn as the entire family crowds into Owl and my apartment. I’ll be sure to document the festivities as well as I can.

Have fun!

I started writing about an great article on Jay-Z in the Times as a Recent Link, but I thought it warranted more of a post, because it brings up some interesting points about Jay-Z and hip-hop in general. Jay-Z’s new album, “Kingdom Come” is out today. This made me think of several things, one of which is back when Jay-Z lamented in the “Black Album” that he couldn’t rhyme like Common — He simply made too much money.

From an interview with Common:

Speculation suggests one thing led him to this evolution: his romance with Erykah Badu. Hadn’t she done the same thing to Outkast’s Andre 3000? Was Common her second pet project? Whatever was at work, Jay-Z was already etching Common’s epitaph on The Black Album when he said, “Truthfully I want to rhyme like Common Sense [the rapper's old name], but I did five-mill, I ain’t been rhyming like Common since.”

As that statement rippled through the hip-hop community, Kanye West, himself a Jay-Z prodigy, was about to unearth The College Dropout. That album would propel consciousness hip-hop back to the mainstream. And since both MCs lived in Chicago at some point in their lives, it was only right that the man who resurrected Christ (“Jesus Walks”) should do the same for Common. [from popmatters.com – Common interview

The reason I’m thinking this stuff is interesting is because we would rarely ever have this kind of conversation about rock music, especially lyrically — There’s so much more wordplay and potential to show off good writing in rap.

With the return of Jay-Z, I think we can expect a more conscientious and new hip-hop, the kind Kanye West ushered in (with Jay-Z’s help), but maybe this will be the truer turning point with Jay-Z, since he’s not only a better rapper, but a better writer as well. The real question is if it will be construed as a flop or not in the hip-hop scene. If he commands as much respect as the Times article insists he does, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Imagine hearing this at a baseball game, pre-warm up to the players coming out to the field. It’d never happen.

But that is how my first hockey experience started. The lights go out, and it’s dark save for the lights of the Jumbotron. The guitar just creeps in and people start cheering. By the time Win Butler gets to screaming — “I guess we’ll just have to adjuuuuuust,” I was convinced half the audience was singing along (but certainly not in my section). Could it be the Canadian connection? Hockey and the great Quebecian band?

Walking into Madison Square Garden alone is a crazy experience, not like walking into Safeco, because the entrance to MSG is confined, and people start moving in waves. And it’s a sea of Ranger blue.

The New York Rangers vs. the New Jersey Devils. With minimal understanding of the game, I still lost my voice cheering. Within the first three minutes of the game, there was about a two minute long fist fight that everyone just cheered at and the referees just watched. Another later in the game as well. During the third period, with the Rangers down by two goals, Jaromir Jager and Shanahan combined for three goals and the lead. By the time last goal was scored, the crowd was insane, people hi-fiving, screaming until hoarse, and someone behind us just lost control and threw his beer in the air.

It was great.

The intensity during the last minute of play was unmatched, too, when the goalie for the Devils just took off so an extra offensive man could go into play and put pressure on the Rangers. They lasted it out and when the game was over, I thought it odd and satisfying how the team just gathered in the middle of the rink and raised their sticks high to the fans.

But the hilarity of seriousness and faux- (real?) hatred between the fans was entertaining, too: A guy in a Devils jersey came through our aisle and we stood up. The guy me and Lxe stood up as well, and then when the guy was gone, looked at us and said, “Douche!” and we all burst into some of the loudest laughter of the night. A second later, he says, “I assume you guys are Ranger fans….”

We also made it on the Jumbotron, but I don’t remember if we made funny faces at all. Overall, hockey gets two thumbs up from someone who knows next to nothing about it. So send me those tickets, all right?

An article in the Times, Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense suggests that many companies are working on building an infrastructure around the web in order to classify information in a way that a user can ask a simple, textual and verbose question of the internet and have if return a valid and usable answer. This, instead of users having to learn the intricacies of boolean search or sifting through results, even in reference and directed databases — not just a Google search.

What I find interesting is the attempt to basically try and take the reference aspect out of information-finding and instead of people becoming more versed in the use of technology, the technology is trying become more versed in understanding humans. I guess that’s a simple concept and is essentially what usability is attempting to solve, but the hype-machine is killing Web 2.0 now, and we can’t still be talking about Web 2.0 next year. Every other article in my Reader has been inundated with Web 2.0 articles now for about a month, and I was already getting repetitive information a month ago. There are less and less new ideas about how to use the technology, it’s been around for a long time already; the people at the bleeding edge have already moved on.

My understanding is that the tagging and folksonomy of Web 2.0, coupled with the infrastructure used to understand the vernacular and navigate through information on the internet is where we’re heading. The artificial intelligence that the Times talks about seems like it would be something similar to Devonthink, except instead of your database being your excerpts, it would be the entire Web. Stumbleupon seems like a simplistic and early-stage type of infrastructure for the Web, using both tagging and folksonomy to create an Internet guide. I don’t think it’s very reliable yet, primarily because it’s got a relatively small (compared to the size of the Internet) number of users and possibly because the technology isn’t advanced enough.

Cyc, a program the article talks about has developed the same type of infrastructure. As the work on this progresses and reference questions can be asked and answered in natural language, what will happen to the reference librarian? I know there’s always the argument that there is no substitute for human interaction, but when was the last time you chose to go through u-scan instead of going to a real-live checker at the grocery store (or Ikea, or Home Depot)? People choose their interactions, and the service that a good reference librarian provides can’t be replaced, so I hope that this will up the ante for reference librarians to be great ones and those that can’t be bothered to answer a question will get the boot.

I don’t see any other alternative than to embrace this type of technology if you’re going into the information profession. Even if I wasn’t interested in going into the private sector, public and academic libraries may someday need people to fine-tune and maintain their information reference engines.

NBC announced last Friday that they made a full order for ‘Studio 60′ — Showing Kevin Reilly, NBC’s network president, thinks he’s Jordan McDeere.

Well, there you go, the series was renewed, under an agreement to reduce costs, which mostly means licensing fees, I think. anyways, this give Sorkin a chance to develop his characters more, which is what essentially drives all his vehicles (pun!). Certainly, no one here is strong enough to carry the all-star cast yet, including Josh Lyman, who isn’t playing a terribly different character than his, uh, Josh Lyman. The working relationship between Matt and Danny is one of the stronger parts of the show, but it’s so unfocused right now that we barely ever get to enjoy it.

That said, i think one of the best characters is Nathan Corddry’s, Tom Jeter, who is getting a good amount of airtime between last week’s episode and what looks like this coming week’s. He reminds me a little bit of Jeremy Goodwin from ‘Sports Night’ — meek, never-listened-to, and sharp as Sorkin’s best writing. I think there’s plenty of potential to grow this character, because as of right now, everyone on the show is a gentle rehashing of Sorkin’s old characters.

I have to say much of the comedy falls flat, which isn’t such a great thing when you have to portray a sketch-comedy renewing audience interest with golden telecasts — though I will admit, I had a few good chuckles at the Jesus Christ as head of S&P on last week’s episode.

Regardless, I’m happy the show was given a full season and hopeful that what Sorkin’s got up his sleeve will eventually wow us. Oh, please.

Aside: I’ve been getting pretty pissed off at ‘Heroes’ the last two weeks, whose episodes have been flat, meaningless and boring. The Cheerleader still isn’t interesting, the Mirror Woman even less so. Kring’s writing comic-book style writing is cloyingly simple and the plot is slow, slow, slow. That’s the limitation when you introduce the story arc so early and are trying to reveal just a little at a time — Also the reason I stopped watching ‘Lost.’

It’s Friday again, and luckily, I think most my readers are on the West Coast and will still be able to catch these items I found earlier in the week. In celebration of the New Blue in Congress and Senate, here are a couple of Youtubes I found:

First, Architecture in Helsinki’s video for “It’5″ which is great, if not a bit dizzying. I think I’ve missed just about every chance I’ve gotten, around 5 or so, to catch them live, but this video is just as entertaining and no one will be jumping up and down in front of me or smashing up against my back to dance to this.

This is video is of The Vells, which includes the inimitable Jeremiah Green on drums. This song is great and his skills on the drums are of the mad variety. That’s right, mad skills. Check out those stick twirls! To top it off, it’s from their performance at my old neighborhood stomping grounds in Ballard — The Sunset Tavern.

Enjoy the vids and have a good weekend. I’m off to Cooperstown tomorrow and will be back with reports and maybe even a (gasp!) podcast interview of one of the librarians there, if the interview goes well. At the very least, I’ll have tons of pictures.

I didn’t get any very good pictures of my burger, although I posted them into flickr anyways. Last Friday I was supposed to go visit the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library but arrived late and missed my chance to catch up with the tour group. Defeated, I wandered around the Midtown East for a while taking pictures and generally lamenting my loss. I chanced upon Goodburger, which I’d heard about a few times and thought it’d be a perfectly unhealthy way to make myself feel better.

Well, it was actually a little disappointing. The place looks a little bit like an updated ice cream parlor and was filled with suits on a Friday afternoon. I didn’t order anything except for a cheeseburger, and sans the onions — other than that, the works.

The burger arrived in a wax paper pocket, a lot like Shack Shack, and every other review I read says the buns are similar as well, but that’s as far as I can go with the comparison. I ordered my burger medium-rare, as per usual, and it came pretty close to that. The whole reason for ordering it cooked that way is to be able to taste the meat, but the meat here was a little bit flavorless and had a little bit of grit to it, but on the nice and thick side. I hadn’t ever thought too much about the condiments making a burger until brl mentioned how great the tomatoes were at Shake Shack. Here though, the tomato was under-ripe — making it too firm and less than flavorful.

It’s rare that I find a place that is a destination spot for a burger — Shake Shack is just that, but Goodburger, for the burgers alone, is not worth the trip for me from Brooklyn. Perhaps the black & white shakes and fries would have upped the quality of the meal, but at $6 bucks for the burger alone, I could probably do without ever going there again. But maybe if I’m walking by, after a trip to the UN.

Goodburger
2nd Ave at 43rd Street
Directions: 4, 5, 6; 7; S at Grand Central

other reviews:
Photo Gallery: Goodburger Scouting Run
Maniacal Fries and Good Burgers

Ad Age just released its 2006 Fact Pack [.pdf] and there’s a ton of interesting statistics on internet usage listed on there:

• myspace was the number 1 search for four weeks in September. Though the time span is small, it seems like this is probably a pretty common thing, because I don’t remember any news spikes about myspace during the time. This is interesting mostly because of the lack of technicality: Why would you “search” for myspace when you know the url — “myspace.com”? This is only reiterated by the #2 search: “myspace.com”.
• An “eye-scan” study was conducted to see where most users look on search pages — It’s not surprising that Google is considered to be the search site with the “most-relevant results.” They’re calling the area where people’s eyes gravitate to “The Golden Triangle.”
• If ever you had any doubt that our society is attracted to the morbid, just check out the top user videos searched for on YouTube. I don’t know why, but this reminds me of seeing the little person dressed up and dancing a Michael Jackson routine in the subway yesterday. Remember when all the media called him “Jacko?” I can’t think of any other reason they would dub him that other than that it rhymes with “whacko.”

There’s lots more interesting information on there, including the top search engine agencies as rated by revenue. This is where the MLS’s that make mad money work, I bet.

The weather here wavers between cold and crisp and cold and rainy, and then the occasional surprising Indian Summer day (Halloween). The leaves are turning now, but I’m told by resident plant expert, Ma Owl (I’m tempted to grant her the blog nick, Mao, but that’s a little… I dunno, communist?), that leaves turning is a symptom of environmental stress, and the harder it is, the more vibrant the color. I’m not sure if I got that right, it was a long time ago I was told that.

I do know, from last weekend’s visit (pictures will be up as soon as either brl send me my cord, or I get to the store for a card reader, I like the latter option better, because it’s a good excuse to get one), that the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is beautiful in the Fall. I’m not quite sure why it’s not called the “Botanical” Garden instead of just plain “Botanic,” but that’s beside the point.

I also know now — more knowledge garnered from the Owl Family, that most cities have male trees, so as not to have to deal with fruit. The BBG did not have this luxury, however, and had female gingko trees, whose fruit smells like dog poop. Wikipedia has another description:

…but the seed coat contains butanoic acid and smells like rancid butter (which contains the same chemical) when fallen on the ground.

Regardless, it was a great time, and I saw at the very least, five children dressed up as Tigger.

Lastly, brl sent me this earlier this week, and damn if it isn’t a great song. But then I started thinking, where have I heard this song before? I kept looking trying to find it, and finally today I put it together. A little searching (google’s blog search tool is essential), and I found this version, which is the one I heard first. The original is great, too, but you know what I’m a sucker for.

Again, credit to brl: in the meantime we’ve got it hard / second floor living without a yard.

Have a good weekend, and say hi sometime, will you?

But good luck with people. For the most part, anyway.

We had to drive to Queens last night to pick up a package my mom had sent via UPS. The UPS drivers tend not to leave packages on our doorstep, which is probably a good thing, seeing as people can probably grab whatever it is on our porch then head downstairs into the subway. The drive was long and uneventful — battling 295 traffic is no cakewalk but we were in a time crunch and low on gas, meaning having the anxiety of the gas light come on mid-way on our journey.

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