mathcaddy mix: June

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I was about to put together a mathcaddy radio session, but I decided instead to kindly give you a gift: 10 wonderful songs. If this irritates you, please let me know. [a@mathcaddy.com]

How did I come up with this list? I listened to and bought a whole lot of music this month and these were among the top 25 songs I played in the month of June on my iPod and in iTunes. They got played a lot for a reason.

math|mix: June 22

  • Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day

    • Sufjan Stevens is probably at this point my favorite artist. Ever. (Really! I mean it.) I was anxiously awaiting his forthcoming album, Illinois and happened to visit the amazon.com page for the album, which had two advance mp3s for download. This is an exceptionally incredible song, um, like most of his songs.

  • Mountain Goats – Palmcorder Yajna

    • I first discovered both this band and this song on The Big Ticket’s 2004 Mix, The Big Ticket is a wonderful little mp3blog I enjoy. The Mountain Goats kick folk into a kind of twitchy ADD overdrive. Thankfully, it’s good stuff. (And it is.)

  • Simon & Garfunkel – The Only Living Boy in New York

    • I have had this song sitting in my record collection for nearly three years and I never listened to it until I heard Steven Garrity introduce it on his latest session of Acts of Volition Radio.

  • Ray LaMontagne – Trouble

    • “TwoEyes” Tony recommended this album and it definitely is a great pick! My friend Evan had good things to say about Ray after catching him in concert the Sasquatch Festival at the Gorge a couple of weeks ago.

  • Coldplay – Fix You

    • Yeah, you’ve probably heard this album everywhere. And some of it is formulaic Coldplay. But who cares if the album includes a song like this? I first heard this track in Seattle’s EasyStreet Records on Queen Anne. I was soaring by the time it finished.

  • Luke Temple – Make Right With You

    • Speaking of EasyStreet Records, I spent some serious cash when I was there. I got some birthday money and I used all of it on new music. It was very fun. (Thanks, mom! Thanks, grandma and grandpa!) Luke Temple’s album was one of the ones I picked up.

  • British Sea Power – Please Stand Up

    • I first heard this in the listening booth at EasyStreet Records and decided to buy it after hearing only this track.

  • Over the Rhine – Born

    • A funny thing happened on the way to the checkout stand: I stumbled upon this album and added one more to the stack.

  • Spoon – Everything Hits at Once

    • This song’s from a cd that I bought and then forgot that I owned until recently when I was digging through a box and realized I had never opened it, which says something about how much money I used to spend on music: I bought stuff I didn’t even know I bought! Crank this track while driving at night.

  • Eels – Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)

    • Best album of the year thus far in my opinion is Blinking Lights and Other Revelations Just go buy it already!

    I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do!

    Gadget Addiction and Subtraction

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    I’m ready to admit that I have a problem.

    I have GAS.

    I suffer from Gadget Addiction and Subtraction.

    Gadget Addiction and Subtraction:
    The endless circular process of the acquisition and disposal of electronic devices, typically involving the following pattern:

    1. initial awareness of device x
    2. extensive research of device x
    3. purchase anticipation of device x
    4. purchase of device x
    5. deployment of device x
    6. enjoyment of device x
    7. hacking of device x
    8. over-hacking of device x
    9. dissatisfaction with device x (probably from over-hacking)
    10. continuous whining about device x
    11. the grass is greener on the other side of device y
    11. sale or discard of device x
    12. extensive research of device y
    and so on…

    As you might imagine, this is a vicious cycle. If you’ve experienced it, you certainly know it to be just that. Take my own pattern for example, demonstrated below [fig. 1]

    A few questions emerge as I consider how increasingly common GAS seems to be:

    1. How many iPods, PDAs or high-end cell phones purchased today will be discarded within three years? (Maybe we should be consoled that Bill Gates believes all three will be bound together in one device within a few years.)
    2. How many     other $300+ items do we willingly expect to get rid of after only three years?
    3. Why do people seem satisfied with this? Is this just part of living in an age dominated by rapidly advancing technology?
    4. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop? Seriously. Think about it.

    Sesame Street Martians: Yip-yip! Uh-huh!

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    A few days ago, Mike shared his Sesame Street Memories.

    You know how lakes “turn over”? (If you don’t, read here or just fake it.) That’s what Mike’s fun little article did to my brain. Suddenly things that were sitting at the bottom of my brain rose to the surface and I suddenly forgot about my taxes, which sunk from the top to the bottom of my brain.

    One of the curious things that surfaced was the crazy Sesame Street Martians. If you don’t recall, or haven’t read Mike’s great post, the Martians were little blue and red guys who always said, “yip, yip, yip, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh”. Mike shared this audio clip of the Martians meeting a phone and I was instantly transported back to the days of yesteryear.

    Pretty soon I was asking everyone I talked to who was within the age range that grew up with Sesame Street, “Do you remember the Sesame Street Martians?” Most people’s eyes lit up and they would just start laughing.

    When I told my brother, Justin, about remembering them, he had a different reaction. “Oh! Man!” he said, rolling his eyes. Then he suddenly started chanting:

    Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip,
    Uh-huh, uh-huh!
    Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip
    Uh-huh, uh-huh!
    Yip, yip, you,
    Yip, yip, me!
    Yip, yip, baby!
    Yip, yip, family!
    Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip,
    Uh-huh, uh-huh!
    Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip,
    Uh-huh, uh-huh!

    Immediately recalling the sketch he was referring to, I laughed heartily and said, “Now you’ve gone and gotten that crazy song stuck in my head!”

    A long and bitterly held rage flashed in his eyes as he snapped back, “That song’s been stuck in my head since I was nine years old!“

    And now it can be stuck in yours, thanks to the miracle of the Intarweb:

    Sesame Street Martians Family Song

    Enjoy!

    mySpace: the Final Frontier

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    Several months ago, Steve ventured into myspace.

    Well, not myspace, but rather myspace.

    After determining that he was alive some time later, I figured I’d try it out. Why? Uh, I have no idea. To be honest, more than anything I joined because I found out my little sister actually had a myspace, um, space.

    And what is my overall opinion after spending a little time using the site’s services? Well, let’s just say I am supremely disappointed that I cannot be my own best friend, as demonstrated by this screenshot.

    mathcaddy radio: Session 15

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    15? That’s probably what you’re thinking. Yes, 15. You read that right. It’s not that we’re bad at math (even though we are) – it’s that there is a “missing” session out there floating around on various storage devices.

    Steve and I had some guests on mathcaddy radio session 14. A lot of fun was had by all, but we ended up with a two and a half hour radio session. If and when I have time, I might chop it up and Steve and I will do a highlights show… because it was supremely longer than our usual 30-45 minute podcast.

    In this session of mathcaddy radio, Steve talks about his Spring Break Pillow Street Fight Tournament, his unique and tasty Sandwichy Fajita creation, and his sleepytime note-taking. Adam shares a Wet Detectives song to the horror of all.

    Once again, “Interviews With Furniture” is back by popular demand because no one has told us to shut up yet…

    We’ll see you inside…

    mathcaddy radio: Session 15

  • Ben Folds – Trusted
  • Beck – Crap Hands
  • Crystal Skulls – Airport Motels
  • The Lashes – Sometimes the Sun
  • Wet Detectives – Circus Slavery

    • [40 MB MP3 :: 45 Minutes]

    Linkage & Namedrops

  • a Softer World web comic
  • The musical stylings of Evan Gross
  • The Wet Detectives’ music

    • Vote for this show!
    Subscribe to mathcaddy radio

    Unbelievable Seagull Picture

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    My friends, Brian and Beth, jetted back from their two week vacation in Japan on Monday. Kristi and I looked through dozens of pictures with them today. Being great camera folks, there were some fun and neat pictures, mostly impressive shrines, beautiful gardens, and hilarious Engrish sightings, as well as a few good samples of Japanese food, culture, and animal life.

    This one floored me:

    (See full-size 1600 x 1200 original)

    Seriously. Can you believe this picture? I still can’t.

    If you’re skeptical it might have been doctored, look closely and note the shadow on Beth’s face. Wow.

    I wish I had a pet seagull. I really do.

    I would name him “Buckets”.

    Practice Makes Perfect… I guess

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    I have a theory and it’s probably wrong. Or boring.

    But I’m already writing about it, so what the heck…

    My theory is this: People who do specific things very well are either normal, stable people who work very hard and practice a great deal or they are rabid, mildly insane and extremely eccentric people who are also phenomenally gifted.

    See the diagram below:

    This is certainly a very limited diagram. There are, of course, more than four quadrants of people. It’s totally silly to limit the vast number of people out there to just four categories. There’s like five!

    I fall into that small, unnamed category of those who are rabid, mildly insane, extremely eccentric people who are not phenomenally gifted, but don’t practice either. Thankfully, I have taken care of the rabies issue. For now.

    But seriously, here’s the problem: I am a dabbling jackass of all trades. (All trades except blacksmithery, that is. Bloody anvils!) As soon as something I’m working in or on gets too difficult, I find a new hobby or skill to take up.

    There are several things that have haunted me for many years. One is this creepy ghost named Mr. Charlesworth Richenbacher. But he and I have been getting along for some time, so that’s really not a problem. But the other thing that has haunted me for so long has been my inability to practice things once reaching an operating level of proficiency.

    For example, after playing guitar long enough, I could play most of the basic chords and all of the uncomplicated barre chords quite easily. At that point, my development as a guitar player choked, wheezed, and sputtered to a stop. When I could hack together a web page designed entirely in notepad without it looking horrible, I stopped working on my html and css skills. Same goes for Photoshop, Premiere, and a huge number of software titles, as well as the Linux and Mac operating systems.

    More important to me than any other skill is writing, but I plateaued there as well and stopped practicing.

    once I reached the point in college where I could crank out in 24 straight hours a high quality full term paper with research, full citations and multiple revisions, I stopped working on my writing. After I finished college, I didn’t write anything.

    Unfortunately, when I was in second grade, after reading Alexander Key’s Sprockets, I determined that I would practice writing every single day of my life. Shortly thereafter, I signed my name in blood on the back inside cover of Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw. And the blood’s now about as crusty as my un-practiced writing has gotten.

    Today, however, I have decided to make good on the committment I put myself to so many years ago. I am going to write something every day. To keep myself accountable, I am going to post something every day. I won’t necessarily post what I write, as a lot of it will probably suck ass. But I will do my best to post something just so I can keep track of my progress.

    Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the next Steve Geluso!

    Killing Telemarketers with Kindness and Songs About Colonial Hats

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    I believe each individual should do as much as they can to be a part of solving the world’s problems. Some people are gifted with tremendous resources and talents that can be applied to overcoming a diversity of problems. Others can only make a minor contribution.

    I’m ready to make mine. And here it is:

    I have solved the telemarketer quandry.

    You’ve experienced it. The phone rings. You answer it… and before there is a word from the other end of the line, you already know it’s some telemarketer. Assuming you’re like me and you don’t feel right about being rude to some poor working guy or gal, you try to think of what you’re going to say in order to quickly get off the phone without feeling like a jerk. Perhaps you even have a standard line: “I’m sorry, I’m not interested right now.” Or something like that.

    What is my solution?

    I break into song! A particular song, to be exact:

    My hat, it has three corners!
    (Three corners has my hat.)
    And had it not three corners,
    it would not be my hat!

    I have been doing this for about four years now and I’ve been able to witness some tremendous results.

    First, the telemarketer always laughs..As I begin to sing, it’s regular that I hear them calling over a co-worker or two to hear my poor serenade.

    Second, some telemarketers really do sing along! My personal goal is to get these folks to sing with me. Usually I tell them that the song means a lot to me personally and that it has helped me through some tough times in my life.

    Finally, I now look forward to telemarketing calls. There was a time when it was frustrating and distracting to get interrupted by a phone call from someone i didn’t know or care about selling me something I don’t want. Now whenever the phone rings on our land line, I rush to answer it in hopes that I will once again be afforded the opportunity to brighten some poor sap’s day either by singing to them, singing with them, or buying a brand new set of knives that will cut through a shoe!

    musikCube: “iTunes without the suck”

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    I dove into iTunes as soon as it was available for Windows. It’s really a great program. Nevertheless, it has some limitations:

  • Purveyor of DRM [see rant]
  • System Resources hog extraordinaire
  • Brainless library system

    • iTunes’ integrated library and playlist tools contributed the most to my original move from Winamp to iTunes as my default music player, but the limitations of the app’s database started to drive me crazy. Any iTunes user with a large music library has probably experienced frustrations with the way iTunes manages files. You can choose to either let iTunes index the locations of files and their filenames or you can give iTunes complete management of your files, in which case it copies each file into its own massive system of folders. Either way, adding music to your iTunes library can become a painful process.

    As someone who is constantly tweaking his computer as well as its contents, iTunes’ forced structure was painful for me. It wasn’t rare for me to shout out loud at Apple’s music player. I desperately wished for an integrated player and library that would do everything iTunes did when it comes to the library but would be smart enough to notice changes I made to my own files, among other things.

    A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an open source project called musikCube, an offshoot of wxMusik. (From what I understand, wxMusik is no longer under development by its core creator, Casey Langen, who moved on to create musikCube.)

    What makes musikCube so great?

    It really is “iTunes without the suck” as one musikCube user put it.

    Like iTunes, musikCube incorporates integrated static and dynamic playlists, drag-and-drop file management, and an indexed database allowing users to search their music on the fly. But musikCube accomplishes all this with a memory footprint easily one quarter that of iTunes’. musikCube, which relies on an embedded SQL database, further adds folder “synchronization”. Just tell it where you put your music and it will track any changes you make to your music’s filenames, tags, or locations. This feature of course overcomes iTunes’ database limitations. But more than that it’s great for folks like me who just have unending “junk drawers” of music stashed here and there on about four different hard drives.

    Because musikCube uses SQL, the queries for dynamic playlists are very customizable. Want a playlist of just songs you’ve never played? Or double files? Or songs most skipped? No problem for musikCube. The included “example” dynamic playlists are pretty cool. More than identifying your most played tracks, musikCube “learns” your favorite artists and albums over time using advanced SQL queries.

    Of course, musikCube is not complete. There are a few key items missing from musikCube, including:

  • No plugin for Audioscrobbler… yet! (It’s coming soon.)
  • No iTunes-like support for iPods. (You can map your iPod or any other player as a “device” instead)
  • No skinning functions or eyecandy UI (It won’t ever feature this and that’s fine with me – musikCube is the self-described “vanilla” music player)
  • No integrated CD burning tool, which is irrelevant for me since I always drag my music to Nero to burn it anyway.

    • Regardless of these shortcomings, I am greatly enjoying this wonderful new app!

    Any more degrees?

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    How many book-based Master’s/Bachelor’s degrees could the blogosphere come up with?

    This idea all started when Seth Godin suggested that the vast majority of the education of an MBA degree could be had by simply reading 30-40 books. Josh Kaufman followed up with 82 books/resources doing just that. Then OverMatter compiled a 30-Book MBA in Entrepreneurship.

    This is an incredible idea.

    I firmly believe something that a college professor of mine once said: “People go to college to learn how to read and write. People go to graduate school to read and write.” I don’t think he’s too far off. That being said, most people capable of independent study should be able to gain a great portion of the education of one degree by .

    What if we compiled a wiki-based “master list” of Master’s degrees? (Or even Bachelor’s degrees?) Anyone up to the task?

    If you aren’t one who can provide such a list, at least mention which degrees you’d like to see.

    My list would include:

  • Philosophy
  • Journalism
  • English
  • Political Science

    • What about you?