So I frequent the website Engadget, all about the latest nerdy tech stuff, and they have an article on the site today about this rediculous new weight loss device which uses a vacuum pump to do something or other. The greatest part about this article?
“…Or you could walk outside in this thing and get punched in the gut a few times for looking like a dork. Either way the point is to get your blood moving, so go for the pressure chamber gut hickey if you must.”
I’ve gotta start this post out by saying that my buddy Patrick generally makes excellent music recommendations. He’s helped me enjoy hip-hop, and introduced me to Sufjan Stevens.
But yesterday, one of his recommendations went awry. And that would be The David Crowder Band’s “A Collision.”
I popped this CD into my car’s player yesterday after lunch, and immediately started vascilating between bored and dissappointed. Don’t get me wrong – this guy isn’t horrible. It’s just that he’s merely passable. The music is that sort of generic, over-produced sounding “Praise Music” format that I think has helped terminally injure the Christian music scene. You know (or perhaps you don’t) – airy and warbly vocals, lots of filler sound to make the track sound full and almost intricate, masking the simple and trite chord progression designed to allow countless youth and college groups play the song before their next meeting.
I suppose therein lies the tiny merit of such music, but I think I’d prefer to hear these songs in that context – raw, acoustic, and accompanied by a chorus of young adult voices that are singing to glorify God. I don’t presuppose that Crowder isn’t singing to glorify God, but the music just doesn’t seem to stand out more than the pop dross that so assaults our ears on a top 40 station, so it’s difficult for me to get into it.
There is, interestingly enough (and Patrick didn’t know about this until yesterday), a cover of a Sufjan Stevens song on this album – Oh God, Where are You Now? from his Michigan CD. It’s alright, but is shorter and more mellodramatic than the original – and no, it’s not simply because I’m a rabid Sufjan fan – I just don’t like Crowder’s style on the cover.
Well that’s really all I have to say on the subject, though perhaps in the near future I’ll write a long entry (or better yet, a series!) on my feelings about musical worship and the deficiencies of the Christian music industry.
I’m pretty jazzed, in an extraordinarily nerdy fashion…
See, this week I’ve been in UNIX training, paid for by work. The guy who teaches the class is everything I’d expect from somebody who spends all his time in this world…and I like that. Today, he asked us (the three of us in the class) if anyone had a spare box (computer) lying around. I said I did, and so he suggested that I bring it into the classroom tomorrow. Basically, he’s going to install the latest version of Redhat Fedora Core 4 on my machine.
Why am I jazzed about this?
Because this guy’s a freakin’ professional, and he’s certainly going to do a far better job configuring my machine for Linux than my sorry arse did. This means I’ll finally have a stable, powerful development environment for learning some of the stuff I’ve been meaning to.
Woot. Hooray for nerds!
So last night I was sitting on my sofa, alone in my apartment, when it finally struck me. I figured out the redesign for this website, and in my excitement began drawing it out on a piece of plain printer paper.
Whether or not you’ve been in my apartment, I’ll explain the concept: Valerie and I have this really cool sculpture/relief thingy that her grandfather gave us. It’s a scene of Salerno, Italy, right on the docks, and is made entirely from pieces of cut sheet brass and heavy brass wire. Absolutely awesome, and I hope to do it justice with my site redesign, however long it takes (yeah, maybe even a year…I’m that amature).
I hope to start hammering out the structural design first over the next few weeks as I dig through my books on PHP and a borrowed book called Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. After that’s straight, I’ll start hashing out the appearance using the magic of CSS (that’s to make it look pretty!).
Anyway, now that the creative block is out of my head, I can finally say with confidence that the redesign is officially underway!
Yesterday was a great day for football! Quick Recap (in order of I-care-ness):
1. The Miami Dolphins trounced the Denver Broncos 34-10, making new coach Nick Saban look pretty good at the start of the season!
2. The New York Giants ran over the Arizona Cardinals 42-19 proving that Eli Manning isn’t just the lackluster novelty lil’ bro of Payton…
3. The Pittsburg Steelers handed Tennessee their collective behind at 34-7 to show us that Rothlesburger still has what it takes (even without Plex), and
4. Peyton Manning and his Colts nearly took Baltimore with a shutout at 24-7 (the Ravens scored with 13 seconds left), with Indianapolis’ defense surprising NFL fans everywhere.
Sixteen weeks left in the season, and I still have to watch tonight’s game since McNabb is the lead QB on my fantasy team, the Jersey Trash.
FOOTBALL! American style…
Yesterday was a glorious day, because the 2005 NFL Football season “kicked off” (pun terrifyingly intended) with the New England Patriots dismantling the Oakland Raiders, 30-20.
My fantasy team is ready to roll, my wife is prepared for Sunday afternoon boredom, and I’m bracing myslef for yet another crappy season for my Miami Dolphins.
Woot!
If you live in the R-I-C and haven’t been to the Canal Walk recently, you ought to go. Besides the unexpectedly temperate weather of late, there is a new feature worth checking out: A large, working, interactive model of a canal’s lock system. Said model is constructed of large slabs of cut stone and bronze. There are two locks – each with their own pair of doors. A subterranean pump keeps the water flowing, and simple, out-of-sight mechanical systems adjust the water levels depending on which way the switches are thrown.
Sadly, the upper lock is already broken, but the model seems otherwise rugged. I hope somebody fixes it soon!
I just picked up three books recently at B&N, and I felt like sharing with the world what I got so as to give a bit of insight into how I think and what I think about. So here goes:
1. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky
2. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History by Norman Finkelstein
3. And the book I’m actually reading at the moment: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.
I’ll let you draw your own conclusions 
Have you been to the gas station lately? What do you drive?
I drive an ‘04 Jetta, and it has the basic 2.0 litre, 4 cylinder engine. I have a stick-shift. I once drove 406 miles with the AC blasting on one 12.5 gallon tank of gas before the gas light came on (and that would’ve let me drive another 60 miles, according to the owner’s manual).
But do you know how much it would cost me to fill my gas tank now?
Try about 40 bucks, roughly – that depends on where I fill up.
Gas prices went up TWENTY CENTS this afternoon alone here in the R-I-C, and even us folks with efficient engines are feelin’ it. I genuinely feel bad for peeps I know sportin’ 8 cylinders…My parents, my lil’ bro, my older bro…sheesh. This is going to put a little financial hurting on everyone who drives.
I know this is all because of the Gulf situation, and I know people have it worse than I do. I know that it would cost me twice as much to fill up in the UK. I’m just venting. The US seriously needs to get off of this petroleum fix.