Monday, July 25, 2005

Dear Summer

My two favorite songs this week are Dear Summer (Jay-Z on Memphis Bleek's album) and Nas's Just a Moment, both downloaded from iTunes (one is a Slurpee free song, the 40 oz Slurpee with a song is such a better deal than a 99 cent small Slurpee!). I finally heard the Edan album, and it's ok. Not amazing. The Common album is going on 3 weeks, I think, in the shrink wrap. I should really open it and listen to it at some point, but I can't be convinced yet that it's worth struggling with the plastic wrap and stickers. This is why iTunes is genius. Besides the fact that I just get the specific song that I want, you click and then get a song. No icky stickers to remove, no trying to start a big enough tear in the plastic wrap, no almost snipping off your fingers when you stab at the plastic with an open pair of scissors. Anyway, the Nas song is also genius. I'm not the biggest Nas fan, but this is a sweet hook.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

New York's City Island

Another item to add to my August trip to do list, visit City Island. I'd never heard of it until a few weeks ago, but it sounds incredibly interesting. Directions to New York's City Island: "If you're coming from New Jersey:Take the George Washington Bridge towards Manhattan...."

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

bunny

Happy KateThat's Kate with her new bunny rabbit toy, her birthday present from me. She has such a cute smile... and I love how she mugs for the camera. I need to bring a second camera to see her some time, and take a picture of her playing with my SLR. She puts it up to her face and tries to look through it, and turns all the knobs. She managed to get it into 'multiple' mode on me once, and it took a couple minutes of playing with settings that I never touch to reset it. Sneaky kid!

I'm going home and to PVD soon, and I've made a list of things that I want to do during that week:

  1. Eat a bagel from Adam's
  2. go to the Matisse exhibit at the Met
  3. swim with Kate
  4. lots of sailing
  5. hang up a hammock over the brook in the backyard

Saturday, July 09, 2005

sleepy

I'm in Boston with my just-turned-2-years-old neice this weekend. I've been taking care of her while her parents attend a wedding and see some friends who they haven't visited since Kate was born. So this evening, I put Kate into her stroller, stopped off to buy us both vanilla milkshakes, and walked all the way down Commonwealth from the Public Garden to Mass Ave. It was a beautiful evening- we went out just as the rain cleared, and the light was amazing. The trees were still dripping a little, and it was a wonderful, quiet walk. Then we looped back up Newbury St, and... KATE FELL ASLEEP! I've never, in the last 2 years, been able to get her to go to sleep. She needs her mom for that. I felt so happy and so proud, walking down the steet with her snoozing in her stroller. She's now snuggled up in her crib, still sleeping. Awww.

Friday, July 01, 2005

mix v3

The end of the mix CD project is at hand, for the moment at least. I ended up with a 2 CD set (tracklisting below, and I'm in LOVE with O.P.P again- what a genius song). I pulled a couple of the old songs off compilation CDs, which reminds me of something that I spent a lot of time dealing with this week:
??????

If you can read kanji, that should (I say should because I know fewer than 10 kanji characters myself, and when this post comes off my webserver, it's turned into ???s, looks like somewhere along the way I'm sending pages as ascii) say 'Various Artists'. I spent much time this week transforming a bit of code that recognizes when an album or book or movie is by Various Artists or Unknown Artist or Not Available or No Data into localized code. Hey, now I somewhat know the kanji for Various.


1979 - 1989
Rapper's Delight - The Sugarhill Gang - 1979
The Breaks - Kurtis Blow - 1980
That's the Joint - Funky Four Plus One - 1981
Making Cash Money - Busy Bee - 1982
The Message - Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel & The Furious Five - 1982
Sucker M.C.'s (Krush-Groove 1) - Run-DMC - 1983
Boogie Down Bronx - Man Parrish - 1984
Roxanne, Roxanne - UTFO - 1984
Rock the Bells - LL Cool J - 1985
Slow and Low - Beastie Boys - 1986
Rebel Without a Pause - Public Enemy - 1987
Dedication to all the B-Boys - Schoolly D - 1987
Microphone Fiend - Eric B. & Rakim - 1988
Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun - Beastie Boys - 1989
75 minutes

1990 - 1999
100 Miles and Runnin' - N.W.A. - 1990
O.P.P. - Naughty By Nature - 1991
It Was a Good Day - Ice Cube - 1992
C.R.E.A.M. - Wu-Tang Clan - 1993
Who Am I? (Whats My Name) - Snoop Dogg - 1993
Fantastic Voyage - Coolio - 1994
NY State of Mind - Nas -1994
Protect Ya Neck - Wu-Tang Clan - 1994
Survival of the Fittest - Mobb Deep - 1995
Real Hip-Hop - Das Efx - 1995
California Love - TuPac & Dr. Dre - 1996
Pony - Ginuwine - 1996
Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See - Busta Rhymes - 1997
Los Angeles Times - Endo, Xzibit - 1997
Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator 99) - Jay-Z - 1998
Still D.R.E. - Dr. Dre - 1999
68 minutes

The second CD was the hard one, in particular 1993-1994. Such a great period, and incidentally, the year I really started listening to rap music. 36 Chambers is tossed around a lot as an album that changed everything, and with hindsight, I can hear that now. So much was left out of this set, though- and in particular, the lack of any Eminem stands out to me. This ended up the way that it did by my just tossing in songs, sorting by the Year in iTunes, and copying to my ipod. Then it went on a week's worth of bus rides, evening walks, morning walks, afternoon bug closing sessions, whatever, then pulling tracks off it a few at a time. So no "G" Thang, which is sad, but it didn't fit. No Summertime, but it couldn't hold up its place against O.P.P.

Ajax Mistakes

Ajax Mistakes - link from SvN.