all the news that isn't

Check out the recent before and after blog posts for updated photos (if you’re really that curious!)

Highs in the mid-50s today, time to wash the car! Perhaps Spring has sprung!

I’ve long known about SimplifyMedia, but haven’t gotten around to using it until now. It was actually what motivated me to finally upgrade my media server from Win2000 to XP. But now I can say I’m fairly impressed. It’s about the easiest way to get access to your music wherever you are.

Well, we now know one of our fire alarms works… Adrienne decided to make a fire tonight. I’m in the kitchen, whipping up a batch of ricotta fritters (more on that later) and the alarm starts going off, not only with the normal beep beep beep, but also a recorded announcement exclaiming “fire, fire!” Hey honey, you need to open the damper…

Just when I was starting to understand the Facebook interface, they go and change it. I must be getting old…

Yesterday and the day before: biked to work. Today: an inch or more of snow. Tomorrow: won’t hit freezing and very windy!

Quick review of Inglorious Basterds: pretty good, good acting all around, maybe a bit long.

I’m noticing lately I seem to have a strong preference for non-fiction books. Is this because I’m getting older?

Back in my days of driving home late at night from gigs, I always tried to stay away from listening to the Public Radio program Echoes – if there’s something to put you asleep, that’s it! So the other night I get home late from work (pledge drive, uck), and Adrienne’s in bed, with the squeezebox tuned in to none other than Echoes (“with John DiLiberto”). See, she’s trying to drown out the street noise/bands/stupid people and get to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, they start doing an interview, so instead of the spacey quiet music, it’s talky-talk. Not too conducive to sleep. So I go to the extras section of the squeezebox, and pull up, in the ‘natural sounds’ category, some ocean waves. The last couple of nights we put the squeezebox on sleep mode (just like your clock radio), playing ocean waves or thunderstorm. It’s quite relaxing. Hmm, I think I need to budget for a squeezbox in the bedroom…

Today at 12-noon EDT WBGO will do a live video broadcast of pianist Barry Harris playing in our studios. The one cool thing is we’re doing a multi-camera shot, so it will be more like real TV. Should be good music and hopefully an interesting interview. Tune in here: http://www.livestream.com/wbgo