new page goin' up

consisting of info on worthy tunes that have moved the air here at inf's place. sometimes i'm in a totally different room than my speakers, doing chores or whatever, and something just speaks to me, "come and check this out...." these are those tunes. oft times they're by someone i've never heard of, and that's all the better. someone once told me, and i kinda subscribe to this philosophy: the best part of music isn't writing it, or playing or singing it, it's discovering it. not all the tunes that make my "random tunes" page are new to me, but a lot will be, and if they're new to you too, it might be worth givin' a band or two from the list a listen- ya just might expand your musical horizons and find a new favorite; i've certainly found a few by listening to stuff outside of what i normally hear. the page will carry a slightly different theme than the ones i actually author the code for; i'm not interested in spending a ton of time on that page; it's more like a scratchpad and i'll let Excel kick out the HTML for it as best it can (which isn't great). the link will remain in the left sidebar. enjoy :)

small addendum to last post:

i was under the impression John Madden wasn't joining Al Michaels on NBC for Sunday Night Football this season, but i was wrong :) totally khoul that Madden's there too. guess Sunday's the new Monday for me. Monday night is still Monday night, but nothing compares to those two.

back to whipping the house into shape.

cloudy Sunday

stayed up pretty late conventionalizing MP3 filenames and re-loading archived files. slept in through the 1st quarter of the Seahawks / Cardinals game, but the last 3 quarters were great. talked to Loren for a while on the phone. still looks good for him to come back Monday, still tells me he's happy, and his mom isn't, with the situation as is. tells me she's of the opinion that he should have 1 primary home, but he just doesn't understand what her problem is. told me she told him "she might have to force me to take her court" over this....as if it's not a decision that Loren made! maybe she should take him to court. whatever....one step at a time. personally, i couldn't care less if she's upset with the situation, though i'd certainly rather she was happy with it, but after 6 years of dealing with whatever visitation bone she felt like throwing me, and constantly meeting a brick wall trying to work something more equitable out, and ultimately bitching incessantly about the unfair arrangments, her lack of compliance with anything resembling either the court-mandated schedule or our supposedly-mutually-agreed-upon alternative, and what can only be called her blatant manipulation of the circumstances, but (fearing even worse consequences for Loren and myself) stopping short of going to court to attempt to remedy the situation, i can only conclude that karma finally came back around and bit her. it's not like i haven't bent completely over backwards trying to work something out.

but that wasn't the point of this post, and casting justifications of my mindset into The Void is only minimally cathartic, and less productive....

the remainder of the day holds chores and more football for me, and some time letting some Rhapsody radio instrumental grooves sink in to my subconscious. looking forward to checking out Al Michaels on ESPN's Sunday night NFL coverage for the first time- he's my favorite football announcer, for sure.

won't be long before it's NBA season again- hoping to do better than a 2nd place finish in the fantasy finals this year.

now to make some coffee and knock out some of those chores....

soundclick stats

briefly:

7,202 TTL page hits; 3,187 in 2006
638 TTL downloads (all tunes combined)
2,401 TTL plays (streams, all tunes combined)

that's something, at least....and not too bad considering i haven't updated the tunes there in like...forever.

my unsignedbandweb.com stats

i basically put four songs up on a page on their site, and let it go do whatever it would do. i used to spend some more time listening to stuff there than i have for a while now- really should do that more, there are a ton of good unsigned artists.

as for my stuff posted there, newest stats:

Liquid Motion Experiment #2 [demo]
TTL plays: 137; TTL streams: 51; TTL downloads: 86

Unspoken
TTL plays: 120; TTL streams: 45; TTL downloads: 75

Distractions [live]
TTL plays: 118; TTL streams: 43; TTL downloads: 75

A Little Bubbly [demo]
TTL plays: 123; TTL streams: 43; TTL downloads: 80

another September sunset in the bag

[subject leans back in chair, lights a smoke. the soft crunching sounds of kibble float in from the next room.]

one more week in the can. worked fairly long hours this week. today our CNC torch took a crap while i was cutting. the tip and tip cover are held in place by a specialized retaining nut, and the male-threads it screws in to are stripped. scratch head. think for a moment. wish for aluminum foil. look around briefly for something that will serve....find energy bar wrapper from co-worker. what the hell- tear thinly-metal-coated-mostly-plastic energy bar wrapper into strip and wrap around threads like pipe tape. screw on retaining nut, light torch. leaks flaming propane/oxygen mix still. strip it down, try again with thicker layer of energy bar wrapper. light torch. success! cut 20 link sliders. energy bar wrapper go snafu. wish for aluminum foil. co-worker go on aluminum foil run, return somewhat belatedly after brief sidetrack mission. receive foil. strip torch head. replace energy bar wrapper with foil, reassemble torch head. success! lasts for a couple hours before slightly-loose torch head moves when removing slag BBs. disassemble, clean tip and tip holder, replace foil, reassemble, light torch- success! lasts the remainder of day. despite the stripped head problems, i managed to cut some of the finest link sliders i've seen. getting the torch business down to a science.

tomorrow's my short week, and hopefully Loren will be coming back Monday after school. nothing's ever set in stone where his mom's concerned. always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

watched The Scarlet Letter last night. alright movie. nothing special. Demi got naked briefly. Gary Oldman didn't disappoint. always like period pieces. much more Native American storyline than i anticipated- nice surprise. Robert Duvall was a nice surprise, too, but i couldn't help feeling the movie was missing something. Hester is a nice name. i used to know a girl named Aggie, another name you might associate with old folks, but she was quite young (and pretty). a new face definitely brightens up an old name.

so, a weekend to myself this weekend. chores, i suppose. work on the back yard? heater core for my truck? football on Sunday- Seahawks home opener vs. the Arizona Cardinals. Kurt Warner at QB over there, plus Deon (sp?) Branch in the lineup for the 'hawks. 1-0 on the year so far, and 22-3 at Qwest Field since 2002. bring on the 12th man! have fun Jas, if you're not still outta town on HL business.

s'pose i should git to watching The Thin Red Line this weekend too. dig into my book, Shadow of the Giant, or my other book, ...Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

neighbor's car stereo got stolen the night before last, and i had some camping gear and a boom box in my truck (among a whole pile of other less-likely-to-be-ripped-off things) but they didn't get taken, even though the one neighbor who saw what was going on watched the guy scope out my truck. had a saw stolen from it right after i moved in, and i've made a serious effort not to leave anything valuable in it ever since.

so far, so good. so roof, dagos. so for, so goad. so go rod sofa. so doofos arg. sodas for goo. so sad for goo.

really oughtta get back to conventionalizing my MP3s. wonder where the hell i left off on that endeavor? always get into it and get distracted by something. usually a major holiday or something. tells you how long the process has taken. craziness. nothing more frustrating than having a (conservatively estimated) 6-month-full-time project dragged out over a period of years by....LIFE.

tired. think i'll go wash up, get the shop off me. sit someplace more comfortable for awhile before i completely and utterly hit the wall.

experimenting with Flickr's site / contemplating a domain, again

i've posted some pics on Flickr.com, and i'm pretty much liking the way their site behaves. still mulling over whether it's worth it to host my pictures on a service like theirs, or to spring for a full-blown domain, and have an offsite backup and web server.

one of the things i like about Flickr is the ability to post pictures directly to my blog, but FTP is just overall a much better interface for large file transfers. however, Flickr does automatically index the captions i create for pictures. there's just so much i don't know how to do with databases! if there were good, easy to use, quick, powerful tools for creating indexes parsed from file names on my own server, that would be the way to go, because i could make dynamic pages. but i just don't know diddly about the nuts and bolts of database creation and management.

anything reasonably quick and functional beats anything time consuming. i guess i should explore the 3rd party upload tools for flickr a bit more and see if they can improve on Flickr's proprietary ones.

...and if i could only get IIS to work right, i could just run my own ASP, CGI or PHP scripts onsite, on a dedicated server. maybe the new Windows will solve my problems....

you know you're broke when you hesitate to spend $25 to squeeze the last bit of functionality from something you're contemplating.

and i suppose the fact that i'm sitting here debating about the best way to serve content on the web, to an audience as small as mine, smacks a little of tilting at windmills. who's the patron saint of lost causes? he's my guy.

everything seems to point to needing to know more than i do about databases and dynamic pages....which is wierd, since i'm actually a pretty big fan of static pages....but there's just so much manpower involved each time you add content that way.

i'd like to have a simple link on my main page, that opens a dynamic page with keyword or date/time searchable (and sortable) automatically created thumbnailed images of any visual or textual content added to the server. and i'd like another simple link on my main page that opens a dynamic page with keyword or date/time searchable audio. and another simple link on my main page that connects to a 24/7 streaming audio broadcast.

i have means of doing most of those things manually, but nothing that can be connected together into a coherent site with the functionality i'm looking for. this blog is a perfect example of a low-maintenance high-functionality tool, which is why i've managed to stick with it for the last couple years. it does what i need it to do with a minimum of hassle. but anything media-related still seems to take forever to deal with. i need better options, and i'd rather not spend (even a small amount of) money or invest time in semifunctional near-solutions. i want to solve the whole puzzle at once. the more i think, the more it sounds like i'm leaning toward a domain solution, which makes me even more hesitant to spend a lot of time on a Flickr photo posting site.

but i'd certainly like to know what anyone else thinks about the Flickr thing, so here's a link to all (for the moment) of my pictures hosted there, taken in mid-August. it's a single series of only 7 pictures, so a likely candidate for a trial run of Flickr's service. anyone who signs up for a free Flickr account should have access to the highest resolution files made available from free accounts like mine: 1024x768- much higher resolution than those available from any other site i've seen.

time to fold the last load of laundry before bed. actually a little tired tonight.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELISSA!!!

well, Loren's sitting here playing old Atari games with a friend, and i just finished posting pics from our recent trip. yes, we made it out for a little adventure this summer after all. i put up a quick (ha!- that's a relative term, for sure) page with 49 pics of our whirlwind 820 mile, 3 day 2 night, rafting / camping / caving trip, including the (huge, 8 megapixel) shots the pros took of Loren and me and our party actually coming through some of the rapids on the Deschutes River. unfortunately the pro shots of our boat don't really show how bumpy or wet the ride actually got, but it was definitely nice and rough in a dozen places, and the looks on everyone's faces (except maybe the guide's, who was pretty much workin' hard throughout the rough spots) show how much fun it was. Loren had a blast.

thanks again to my sisters and their husbands for a great birthday gift for Loren (the rafting trip), and enjoy the pics, guys.

click here for the pics page.

PEACE