Just a Blog

Exceedingly Close to Fucking Phenomenal

cdarwin@noreply.cat-v.org (cdarwin) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently had the pleasure of receiving an advanced promotional copy of Pretty Close to Very Good, the first full length album from the Matt Burke Band. I have spent the better part of my weekend listening to the album in various settings in an attempt to soak up the essence of this first effort. I would like take a moment to offer my thoughts on it to you.

If you aren't familiar, the Matt Burke Band is a two piece fronted by Matt Burke with Brue Baker on lead guitar. The group considers themselves "Soulcoustic Beach Rock" and I can't imagine a more spot on description. Both entertainers use an acoustic guitar as their main weapon for aural sensation; their music is accented by soulful vocals, makes you want to enjoy a cocktail on the beach and is one hundred percent rock. They shine as live performers playing a wide range of covers and originals with the focused goal of making everyone within earshot thoroughly enjoy themselves for the night.

With this album Matt and Brue have taken the original songs they have written together over the years, enlisted the help of a few other exceptional musicians and given their music the full band sound that it deserves. Though they do a terrific job with what they have as a two man band, they have been able to do things with this album that really accent their talents. Matt displays uncanny voice control and uses it as an instrument to give the songs more personality. Brue demonstrates an exceptional ear for adding just the right amount of finger work at just the right moment to tie the songs together. They have successfully captured the energy that comes through in their live performances in this very well produced studio album.

The album starts strong with the single The Weekend War which is available to hear now on their website. I think this was a perfect choice for an opening track as it really gives you a good idea of what is in store. The sound of bar patron chatter fades in for just a moment before the steel drums kick off the main verse melody. This song really makes you feel like you're at the show singing along with the band. Speaking of which, you will notice throughout the album that you are humming along to the songs before you are even familiar with the words. Every song is just insanely easy to digest while remaining interesting on subsequent observation. To say the melodies are catchy is an understatement.

Every song on the album has a slightly different style. The Weekend War has a fun island feel with steel drums while Moonshine Porcelain feels distinctly southern rock with a slide guitar and a bit of a dirty filter put on the vocals. Superstar has a Spanish feel with sexy flamenco nylon string guitar while Fading Faces is a strong driving funk tune. The lyrical content of the album ranges from strictly fun party songs to deeply personal blues jams. Cover to Cover is an interesting piece about the author's struggle to get his thoughts down on paper and ultimately results in a mash up of every popular hit that you already know and love. Superstar is a satirical inspection of what it must be like as a high profile celebrity. School is a recount of a one sided teenage love that never materialized. Also, prepare to hear perfectly executed falsetto and skat licks scattered about the album. It is exactly this diversity that sets the Matt Burke Band apart from your usual acoustic rock outfit.

The album is also very well constructed. In particular, the transition between One Step at a Time and Cover to Cover feels so seamless I can no longer imagine hearing one without the other. Although each song can hold it's own singularly, the album is best appreciated in sequence. This isn't an easy task to pull off and often bands don't even attempt it any more. Pretty Close to Very Good will take you on a journey from start to finish through the heart and soul of all that is the Matt Burke Band.

The album is set to drop on August 13, 2010. Please, take an opportunity to hop on over to the band's website and check out their professional bios, photos, videos, and tell everyone you know about them. This is a great album from a great group of individuals. They deserve all the success in the world. I will leave you with a short promotional video.

Moved Into a House

cdarwin@noreply.cat-v.org (cdarwin) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I recently moved into a pretty nice little house not too far from work. I really like the area and this is the first house I have lived in on my own. This is my story of how it came about.

I have spent the last ten years bouncing around townhomes every few years. There was a very brief period where I was a starving musician and lived on a single bed in the living room of my guitar player's one bedroom flat. I've come a long way since then and I'm pretty proud of that fact. What I'm not so proud of is the fact that I still have a shitty credit score. I no longer have any outstanding debts, but I haven't done anything to fix my score yet. Thusly, I am still stuck with renting for another few years.

I hate moving with a passion. It is always a huge pain and the end result is rarely justified. I was a tenant with my previous landlord in a nice little two bedroom, two bath townhouse for three years. I would have stayed there for another three except that my landlord decided it was time to raise my monthly lease rate. Fair enough, but I haven't received a rise in wages for as long as I lived there. This provided the impetus for seeking new lodging.

With the help of friends, I narrowed my results and settled on the spot I'm on about today. It is a three bedroom, one bath home with a garage and a decently sized back yard. The place was built in 1979 and refurnished about nine months ago. This includes a new roof and shingles, hardwood look laminate flooring throughout most of the house, tile in the laundry and wash rooms, carpet in the bedrooms, and new kitchen appliances and cabinetry.

The garage is just large enough to fit my little Civic, but I don't plan to use it as such very often. For now, it provides storage for everything that doesn't have a place in the house as well as my homebrew gear. The back yard is fairly substantial. I have three good sized dogwoods and a pine tree providing ample shade for lounging in the hammock with a good book on a clear afternoon.

The living room area seems to be sufficient. I donated my old, embarrassing couches to goodwill, so I'm now on the hunt for replacements. I'll have a better idea once those are in place, but I suspect there will be no problems. I have appropriated the middle sized bedroom for my study/office/instrument storage. The small bedroom will eventually get a bed for guests.

The master bedroom is a secret to be shared with only the most worthy of guests. A series of obstacles, not so dissimilar to Atreyu's quest to stop the Nothing of The Neverending Story must be completed before entry is granted. If you find yourself in the master bedroom, I probably don't hate you.

My neighbours on either side seem pretty great so far. The older lady on the one side doesn't mind about parties and the dude on the other side seems to be in a perpetual purple haze. As soon as I get some seating, both inside and outdoor, I would like to invite everyone over to christen the place with a proper get together of good company, good music, and good beer. Consider yourself warned.

The picture at the top of the page links to a gallery of stills I took of the place for your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy them and get to enjoy my company in the new place very soon.

A Week with a Nexus One

cdarwin@noreply.cat-v.org (cdarwin) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Actually, I've had it for a few weeks now, but that's not as catchy a title. This review is of a Google Nexus One running the most recent release of the CyanogenMod ROM (5.0.5.3-N1 at the time of this writing) on AT&T US.

I have not used the stock ROM. Upon receiving the device, I unboxed it and plugged everything in to ensure I had working hardware and promptly rooted and installed the CyanogenMod ROM. I can't compare this to stock, but the modded ROM sold me with built in USB tethering and everyone claims this ROM is highly optimized for the N1. It does feel blazingly fast.

UPDATE: I am keeping up with the latest ROM releases using CM Updater.

The Good

The interface is quite snappy. I quickly changed the background from the default "living wallpaper" or whatever nonsense they call it in favour of a plain black background. Did I mention I'm a minimalist?

USB tethering was painless. Just connect the phone to the laptop with the included USB cable. I run Arch Linux as my main OS and here is the relevant output of dmesg after plugging the "modem" in.

usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
usb0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-0000:00:1a.7-3, RNDIS device, ca:61:d2:1c:6f:1d
usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host
usb0: no IPv6 routers present

Nice! Now ifconfig -a shows a new network interface named usb0. Just bring the interface up and get a dhcp client running for it. The CyanogenMod ROM also includes a kernel module to tether over WiFi (requires android-wifi-tether application installed), however my ThinkPad's wireless device seems to take issue with Ad-Hoc networks. I suspect this would be resolved either using Windows or another wireless chipset, neither of which appeal to me personally so I live with USB tethering.

UPDATE: We tested WiFi tethering last night and successfully connected a MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini and streamed the most recent episode of Lost on Hulu.

Integration of Google services is very nice. I use Google Apps Standard Edition and the phone had no problems synchronizing my Contacts, Calendars, and Mail. I really like how the Gmail application gets you all the features of Google's webmail client, but nicely optimized for viewing on the phone. For other IMAP accounts I use k9mail, a major improvement over the included Mail application. I use Google Voice for visual voicemail and to cover my limited text messaging needs.

The Bad

As far as I can tell, every application defaults to running in the background. This minor annoyance can be overcome by using Advanced Task Manager Free. It stays in the status message area waiting for you to kill pesky battery draining applications and services at will.

UPDATE: Running Advanced Task Manager as a service drains nearly as much battery as not running it at all. I have resorted to launching it from my home screen and killing it along with the others. This way it behaves as a stand alone application.

Automatic screen brightness adjustments don't seem very sane. I have overcome this issue by leaving the Power Control widget on my home screen so I can quickly switch between full brightness (the only way to view the screen outdoors) and the lowest brightness setting (great for indoor lighting). This has the added benefit of giving you quick access to toggle WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS radios.

Although I have grown accustom to the Android touch input (long time iPhone user), placing the cursor precisely anywhere is nearly impossible. You have to resort to the trackball, and that can get annoying.

The Ugly

The device is not quite hideous, but it is certainly no beauty queen. The casing is not very confidence inspiring and even seems a bit cheap. I hate the trackball and the stupid half-hardware-half-software keys at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps HTC has remedied the situation with the Desire, which has four physical hardware keys.

The Comparison

I used the first generation iPhone on T-Mobile until the iPhone 3GS came out. Since then, I have been using the iPhone 3GS on AT&T's 3G network. The first generation iPhone is a paperweight if not jailbroken and unlocked. Even then, it is limited by hardware to GPRS (EDGE) speeds which is totally unacceptable these days. A virgin iPhone 3GS is actually quite nice for most folks looking to get a smartphone for the first time. A jailbroken iPhone 3GS is the holy grail of smartphones, in my opinion.

That said, the N1 comes damn close. The Facebook application for Android is utterly appalling compared to it's counterpart on the iPhone. This may actually be a good thing, though. When I need to do much more than check and comment on stuff in my news feed, I just switch the User Agent of the built-in browser to Desktop and get the full Facebook experience. Aside from that, most of the applications I tended to use on the iPhone have ported fairly seamlessly to Android. The phone has a number of hardware improvements alone that set it just ahead of the current iPhone. Not being caught in the cat and mouse game between the dev-team and Steve Jobs is relieving.

In the end, I am extremely happy with the Nexus One, though I will readily admit that I am surely justifying an unnecessary purchase. Would I recommend the phone to someone looking for their first smartphone? Emphatically, "No!" I can, however, confidently recommend it to anyone who likes to tinker around and have some sense of control over their own hardware. I have zero experience with Windows Mobile, but from what I have seen and heard of it I expect this to be a drastic improvement for anyone coming from that camp.

Minor Updates, Still Moving Forward

cdarwin@noreply.cat-v.org (cdarwin) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Since I last had a chance to sit down with my thoughts, I have purchased a vehicle and been turned down for a job opportunity. I can hardly believe it has been over a month already. Time really flies when you're being productive.

Let's start off with my vehicle. After reinstating my licence, the next logical step was to look for a vehicle. I was in the market for something fairly inexpensive and economical. Inexpensive because, well I've been doing just fine without one for seven years and I had just acquired a small amount of spendable income. Economical because I plan on making frequent 500 mile trips and petrol is becoming quite expensive.

After looking for a handful of weeks, I stumbled across a cragslist post for a 1990 Honda Civic. I was surprised to find this twenty year old hatchback had only 106k miles on it! I promptly scooped it up, got it tagged and registered with the FL DHSMV, and was parking in the lot just outside my office in a matter of days. The thing is cherry with respect to being completely bone stock with no major modifications done to it already. The most that has been done are the 1999 Civic Si wheels it came with and the extremely inexpensive radio I installed.

Well, I had my interview with Coraid last month. I drove up to Athens on Superbowl Sunday and stayed at a reasonably priced hotel. Got up bright and early Monday morning and walked the few blocks to the building and boarded the elevator to the top floor. I walked in and asked to speak with Erik who was quite surprised to see me. It turns out, he had never gotten my response to his email requesting my presence for interviews. I was there so he asked me into a conference room where I waited to be drilled. Brantley started the festivities by giving me a brief background into the Coraid history as well as his own. Then, one by one, I was interviewed by nearly everyone on staff at the time. At some point they treated me to lunch before returning to the interview process. Brantley finished off the day by summing up what everyone had already told me and asking if I had any questions.

Now, from my perspective the interviews went great. In fact, I've never felt so comfortable, let alone confident, in an interview. Everyone had great questions and I felt like I handled them all quite well. At one point, an unnamed interviewer gave what I perceived as a smirk of approval to one of my responses. It is quite possible that I am highly gullible. After interviews were through, I made for some food and then to the local pubs. I spent the remainder of the evening enjoying the presence of good company and great wine. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Athens as I have every visit.

I sent an email the next day, thanking them for the opportunity. By the end of the week, I had received a rejection notice. I am not upset, in fact I am sincerely grateful for the experience. Before the posting to 9fans, I had not even considered pursuing anything. Now, I have found a renewed interest in pushing myself further in my career. I have taken this as a learning experience and used it as the motivation to finish up some lingering projects that have been haunting me for a little while. I think I am now more prepared than ever to take on whatever may stand in my way.

Off to a Good Start

cdarwin@noreply.cat-v.org (cdarwin) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This year I am really starting off on the right foot. For some reason, I have been extremely motivated. I am fairly excited about the things that have happened already or are in the works. So far I have officially reinstated my Florida Class E Driving License, filed my taxes, brewed a new batch of stout, and have an interview scheduled with Coraid in Athens, GA.

In regards to my driving privileges, I would like to clear the air and avoid all confusion. I never got a DUI or anything else all that reckless. The story is that I can be quite a slacker at times. A few minor traffic violations got compounded after not paying them which caused the infraction to escalate to a suspended license. On three separate occasions I was caught driving with a suspended license. This put me in the category of Habitual Traffic Offender and I lost my license for five years. I got on just fine without a license the whole time, so I let that go for a total of seven years. Now I am legal again and plan to be a much more careful and considerate motorist.

Filing my taxes was a bit of a pain, but worked out in the end. I filed through TurboTax, but in my rush I spelled my own name incorrectly. During the time it took for the IRS to reject my filing I received a 1098-T which is a Tuition Tax Statement. I refiled, including my tuition statement this time, to find out that Uncle Sam will be reimbursing me for that full amount!

Max and I just brewed a new batch of beer. Our last batch was a stout, but we decided to do another anyway. This time we chose the high gravity (think high alcohol content) Black Hat Imperial Stout. I'm pretty excited to see how this turns out. I checked on it this morning and it has kicked off good and proper already. I should be able to pull the hose tomorrow night and replace it with a simple airlock.

Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I am the most excited about what might happen in my interview. Coraid just secured 10 million USD in VC funding. Brantley posted to 9fans that they were hiring for a couple of positions. I decided this would be, at the very least, a good excuse to update my resume and possibly a chance for a serious career opportunity. Well, I had a phone interview very shortly after submitting my application and Erik has scheduled an on-site interview on Monday. I will be crossing my fingers that everything goes well.

New Year's Resolution

cdarwin@noreply.cat-v.org (cdarwin) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I have decided that I will do a better job of writing down my musings this year. I would like to commit to at least one informational post a month. If I can come up with more, then so be it. Hopefully, I can provide some valuable insight into the things that I am intimately familiar with for others who may not be so fortunate.

I will start this off by just giving a brief update into my own life. I have already made some progress in a positive direction this year. One of my biggest steps so far has been the completion of an Advanced Driver Improvement course. I needed to do this as a final step towards regaining my driving privileges. After seven years of not driving at all, I will finally be legal again and able to help out my friends and family.

I have decided to no longer waste any more of my time or money on University studies. I know, it seems like a bit of a waste, but I think it is for the best. I have looked back on the amount of hours and money I have put into obtaining a degree and I currently think it best to just get some certifications and start moving forward. I don't plan on staying in this town forever and so I want to make some changes that will help me move forward immediately. I may reevaluate this decision in the future, but for now I have signed up to take a CompTIA Linux+ certification and shortly after that I plan to go for a Red Hat Certified Engineer.

Also, I am going to make a serious effort to work on some of my personal projects. I have a book store to create for Shara Azod. Once I get her site all polished up, I will put some effort into giving Drea and Laura's site a makeover as well. I also have some ideas about a hosting solution based around Uriel's great werc solution, but Orby doesn't like them.

In the area of music, my brother and I are seriously preparing for the debut of our little two man band. I have wanted to do something with him for ages, but we never seemed to be able to make it work out. We finally decided that we would get together a few times a week to rehears for an open mic night here in town. We've got some really neat ideas for the set and what we do have down so far is really fun and interesting.

I have been brewing beer! A great mate of mine introduced me to the idea some time towards the end of last year and we are starting to get somewhat of a schedule down. We get our kits from the local HomeBrew Den and the whole process takes anywhere from five to seven weeks depending on the type of beer we do. So far we have brewed an IPA, a black beer, a Hefeweizen, a stout and we should be brewing another high gravity stout in the next week or so.

Finally, I am making some changes in my personal life as well. Without going into details or embarrassing anyone, I just want to say that it has been a long time coming. I am glad to be moving forward with my life. I plan to use this time to better understand myself and my limitations.

I am really looking forward to the good things to come this year.