Monday, November 15, 2010

Decided to move everything over to Wordpress.  So all none of you who read me regularly, go here:

Plato's Earwax Wordpress Blog

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Meta...

It's weird, writing anything here.  I write in several other places and am active on Facebook.  Of course I get lots of people to interact with there.  Here, I am largely talking to myself.  Having an audience isn't the point, really, but you start to wonder why post anything if no one is going to read it.  Or, it is rather like the chicken and egg.  You need interesting posts to get some readers but you are less inclined to post stuff if no one is reading it.

So far, most of the hits I get here are searches for the bands I have posted here.  Which is why I am thinking of making this more of a place to post some obscure music or stuff I am listening.  A music blog I guess.

We'll see.  Anyway, I love this song by Wire.  "One of us will live to rue the day we met each other."

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Freur - Doot Doot

Retro video of the day...

This one is by Freur. They weren't much back in the 80's but this song is just sublime. Who would have guessed that they would go on the be Underworld, a world class techno act. This is like 80's to the max!

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Random 10.  I should set up a day each week to do this, whenever I have time.  Today is the day this week.  This is 10 random songs from my Cowon A3 which has about 6,000 songs on it.

1. Ultravox - When The Scream Subsides
2. Stan Ridgway - Going Southbound
3. SA42 - Submarine Dance
4. Oingo Boingo - Reptiles and Samurai
5. Portion Control - Refugee
6. Roxy Music - Street Life
7. The Decembrists - Odalisque
8. Orchestral Manoeuveres in the Dark - Messages
9. Gang of Four - At Home He's a Tourist
10. Placebo - Black Eyed

Ok, that was like an almost all retro 10, which fits the mood lately as I have reconnected with an old music friend.  Have a nice weekend all zero of you who are reading this!

Monday, October 04, 2010

Ubuntu

I have a multitude of computer choices in this house.  I have a laptop that runs Vista, as does my wife.  My desktop, which is approaching five years old now is running Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.   I originally installed Linux on this machine just for fun, to try something new.  Now, as this computer has aged, it makes sense to run a system that isn't as much of a resource hog as Vista can be (though, my cheap ass laptop, running on an Intel Celeron, runs smooth as silk, after optimizing it).

I really enjoy Ubuntu, and after a year of using openSUSE with KDE I much prefer Ubuntu and the GNOME desktop.  Not as fancy perhaps but it gets the job done easier and smoother than KDE does, at least on my system (I particularly have problems with Dolphin, mounting of external drives to the same mount point and graphics (older Nvidia) on KDE.  All of these things just work with no fuss on GNOME). 

Two things I can't get used.  One is a CD/DVD burner.  I have tried Gnomebaker and Brasero and several other, smaller, programs for GNOME and I still go back to running K3B, a KDE app.  It does what I want with the options I want and intuitively.  So I run it under GNOME, which is fine but still, minor graphics glitches and no sound (I could probably figure that out but just haven't prioritized it). 

The other is more difficult.  On Windows I always used Mediamonkey, which is for my money the finest audio player and organizer ever.  Now on Ubuntu I use Exaile, which is a nice small player than does what I want for playing audio.  Most other apps want to act like iTunes which I HATE (HATE HATE HATE!).  The only problem on pretty much all of Linux is finding an mp3 tagger with the ease of Mediamonkey.  MM can find tags from Amazon, download AND attach the album art (Linux seems to be averse to this as I can't find a single program that will automatically attach album art.  They either save it as a file with a link to it or you have to download manually and attach).  And then, you can even organize your files by tags automatically.   I realize it is arcane to think in filenames but I guess I am old (and my Cowon A3, my Precioussssss, does not organize by tags either).  The only program I can find to use in Linux that does something similar is mp3tag....a Windows program run with WINE. 

Sadly, Mediamonkey itself won't run very well under WINE.  It's really the only thing I miss from Windows.  I wish they would either port the mighty Mediamokey to Linux or someone would come up with a quality tagger.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Android


Now that I have an android phone I will hopefully post more often.  Or not.  I'm mostly talking to myself anyway.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

The Sound - Sense Of Purpose



An oldie....I always wondered why The Sound never made it as big as Echo & The Bunnymen and other likeminded bands because they were every bit as dynamic as anyone doing this kind of thing in the 80's. But then I realized...sadly it might be because they weren't pretty boys. Too bad, but I guess I can count them among my personal favorites that I don't have to share with too many.

The singer Adrian Borland, by the way, committed suicide by train in 1999 after years of suffering with depression. RIP.

Friday, August 13, 2010

The greatest concert film ever...

is Stop Making Sense.  Been listening to this in the car today on the commute.  I only wish I could have seen them live when I had the chance.

Sigh.


Monday, August 02, 2010

Common sense...

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner had this to say:

The Washington Monthly

Host Chris Wallace noted that "a number of top economists" believe that the nation, right now, needs "more economic stimulus." Boehner replied, "Well, I don't need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists; all I need to do is listen to the American people."
This is of a piece with a conversation I have been having online with a couple of really far-right conservatives.  That conversation was about the gulf oil spill and how they thought that the things that, in their opinion, Obama had failed to do were just common sense.  They actually used the phrase, "it doesn't take a rocket scientist..."

Well, sometimes it does in fact take a rocket scientist.  They derided me for "hating" common sense, which couldn't be further from the truth.  I love common sense!  Mine has served me well.  Notice those pronouns.  I have no problem with people making personal decisions based on their own common sense.  Hell, make your own personal business decisions that way.

We aren't talking about personal decisions here.  These are decisions that impact millions of people.  While common sense might serve you well personally, basing large scale policy decisions on your gut rather than facts and the truth is crazy.  I am pretty sure that Obama has received more information about oil spills and cleanup than these two I was talking to have.  And I am positive, based on his past statements, that John Boehner ought to listen to an economist or two instead of basing his decisions, which could have dire consequences for millions of people, on his own gut and the American people which, quite frankly, very often don't know enough about macroeconomics to make these decisions.  I sure don't, which is why I defer to those who do.

Everyone's common sense is different.  Mine is probably different from yours and we can all figure out that George Bush's gut is telling him different things than Barack Obama's.  Why is it better to follow your gut than to find out the facts and base decisions on reason?  It's an odd thing that liberals have always been accused of making decisions based on emotion when very often it seems the opposite is true.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

I knew it:

Stare at boobs for longer life: Study | TheMedGuru

Frankfurt, Germany, December 6 -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy.
According to Dr. Karen Weatherby, a gerontologist and author of the study, gawking at women’s breasts is a healthy practice, almost at par with an intense exercise regime, that prolongs the lifespan of a man by five years.
She added, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female, is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out."
...
In addition, she also recommended that men over 40 should gaze at larger breasts daily for 10 minutes.
Duly noted!  Excuse me while I follow doctor's orders...
It's almost difficult to believe that this thing is still here. Time to reactivate.

I have a personal diary that I have kept on a diary site under an anonymous name and have met some people and stuff from there. But I don't necessarily want that to be the public face of myself, since that is really the place where I share some more personal things, without linking to the public me.

I also want to have a place to post some political stuff and music stuff, much in the same vein as someone who I have seen for years online on political blogs and who I read and comment on. That would be cleek, whose blog I really like and would try to emulate or whatnot, with my own thing of course.

So this will be a place where I want to talk about politics, music and being an ex-pat in Norway or living in the States, or just living. Or basically, this will be about me and what I think, which I am sure will develop a large international following of perhaps a couple of people.

And to kick it off, here is possibly my favorite single song of all time.