A couple of weeks ago, my big 1TB external hard drive died an ignoble death. I tried every trick I knew to recover it, with no success. I even took it to a local repair site to let them try their voodoo; no dice. Thankfully, some parts of the drive were reliably backed up, including all of my photos. *whew* However, I lost my entire music collection. *groan*

What have I learned from this?

• Don't be an idiot; backup yer stuff. In a stroke of good luck, I acquired an Apple Time Capsule a couple of months ago and have been using it for backups. Quelle suprise, it does just what it claims to do, and does it really well. Three cheers for technology that "just works"!



• The drive that died was a Western Digital My Book hard drive. Notice how big and chunky that case looks? If you open it up, you'll find out there are two 500GB hard drives inside, plugged into a little circuit board that stripes the drives together a 1TB RAID. This works, but it has a pretty serious implication; with a striped RAID data is scattered across both drives. Which means that if one drive in the RAID dies, you've essentially lost access to the data in the entire RAID. So a striped RAID basically has double the odds of a catastrophic failure compared to a traditional single hard drive. Yikes! Had I been thinking clearly, I never would have bought this drive in the first place.



• I've purchased a modest amount of digital music online from the Amazon MP3 store. I respect the fact that their music library is DRM-free, and encoded at a high bit-rate. But I was really sad to read this in their FAQ: "We are currently unable to replace any purchased files that you delete or lose due to a system or disk error." That tears it; I will no longer buy music that way. It's back to CDs for me.

Thankfully, I've been able to retrieve about 2/3rds of my music collection from raiding a friend's music library (not pirating; just retrieving copies of stuff I own and lost on the dead drive), and I recovered a little more from what tiny percentage of my music was on my little 8GB iPhone. Now I've pulled eight (8!!) boxes of CDs from the attic and am selectively re-ripping stuff to fill in the holes in my collection.

• Keep your CDs; don't sell them to the used CD stores unless you really don't like them. You'll never know when you might need that media again.

I'll conclude this little blog post with a relevant bible verse (you didn't know I had it in me, didja?):
To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.
- The Apostle Paul, Phil 3:1, advocating backups.

Well I did, duh.

I finally got around to seeing the movie Watchmen tonight. Assorted thoughts, in no particular order.

• I'm a fan of the original graphic novel the movie is based upon, so I approached the movie with some apprehension. When the credits rolled, I was satisfied. For me, the movie captured the mood of the book, and was faithful to many of the iconic images and intentions of the original. Several things were omitted, or changed out right. None of those particularly irked me.
  
  
• I commend Zack Snyder (the director) for not hacking the material down to the traditional 1 hour and 45 minute movie. The story warranted the longer running time. But jeeze, movies that long should come with a catheter.
  
  
• I was especially struck with how the actors in the movie matched my memory of how the characters in the book looked. That was one of those nice touches that made the movie especially satisfying.
  
  
• Apparently, IMAX versions of mainstream films just means they're showing the film on a properly large screen, rather than the typical mall cineplex postage stamp screen. It's not even remotely the massive dome/immersive experience you get in a proper IMAX movie.
  
  
• It was obvious that Snyder decided to use large swaths of the comic as storyboards for the film. I think this was an excellent decision. Dave Gibbons (the artist) doesn't get enough credit for his part in making the Watchmen comic.
  
  
• Big Blue Penis! Sorry, "Penises!"
  
  
• I was tickled to see Veidt's computer was a vaguely period Macintosh SE, dolled up in black, running some variant of System 6. Cute. But you'd think the World's Smartest Man(™) could pick a better password.
  
  
• When movie theaters are a thing of the past, you can lay some portion of the blame on 30 oz "medium" sodas that cost $5, and 15 minutes of ads and trailers before the movie itself begins. (Yes, I timed it.)
  
  
• The budget for the soundtrack of the movie must have been staggering.
  
  
• If you're planning on doing cosplay as Dr Manhattan at some con, you better have the proper build for it. You're running the risk of being mistaken for Papa Smurf.
  
  
• I noticed one of the video snippets on Veidt's bank of monitors was Apple's famous 1984 commercial. Cute.
  
  
• The best aspects of the Dr Manhattan special effects were the most subtle ones. For instance, close-ups on him seemed to include little dust motes hanging in the air around his body. Other-worldly.
  
  
• The movie is riddled with great details. The Batman poster. The smiley face crater. The bloodstain/inkblot in the snow. Moloch's ears. I'm looking forward to the eventual DVD release, with the obligatory "behind the scenes" and "making of" material.
  
  
• I strongly dislike a lot of action movies today. It's as if directors assume spastic cuts and extreme closeups and loud noises and explosions will convey the energy and violence of the moment. Mostly, it just makes my head hurt. I'm pleased Snyder didn't fall into this cliché. In fact, he used periods of slow motion in his action (did Guy Ritchie popularize that?) to excellent effect.
  
  
• I don't know if I can say whether Watchmen was a good movie or not, or whether someone else would enjoy it. I'm a little too close to the source material to have that kind of objectivity. But I sure dug it.
  

Okay, I'm done now.

I went to a benefit show at Devil's Point last night. Some random observations:

And wow, were these performers amazing! From start to finish (when I was too tired to go on), every performer was first rate. I mean, wow! Hell of a show.

Which wasn't true for the one performer I saw before the benefit proper started. Attitude counts for a hell of a lot. All the slick moves and acrobatics in the world won't cover for a performer who is bored and going through the motions.

This was the first time I've ever see someone strip to the theme song for Ghostbusters.

One dancer wore a house coat, curlers and fuzzy slippers, stripping to "Stacy's Mom (Has Got It Going On)". Absolutely inspired idea.

There was a fellow at the show dressed in a full unicorn costume. *shakes head* It takes all kinds.

I saw dancers perform to James Brown, Brian Setzer, Iggy Pop and the Dead Kennedys. Not the usual set list. I loved it!

One dancer did a full on belly dancer set. Wow! That shift from anterior pelvic tilt to posterior tilt snapped back and forth, with mechanical precision and amazing speed. Let me say again, wow!

Someone in the crowd was talking to their friend using a Elmo finger puppet. Again, the mind boggles.

If you attempt to extinguish a flaming torch with a damp towel, and the towel has gotten so saturated with fuel that it ignites, maybe you should use a different towel to smother the next torch. You'd think this would be obvious but... not so much.

I saw Hamell on Trial at Mississippi Studios Sunday night. I have only recently been introduced to his music, and this was my first time seeing him perform.
It was like Anton Levay (aww, c'mon, look it up.) dropped religion and picked up an axe.



I wouldn't have thought that a 50-year-old bald guy with an acoustic (amplified) guitar would be considered "rock". But wow, he just shredded that guitar, creating a cudgel of sound.
His energy and enthusiasm and sharp, wicked sense of humor were infectious.

A hell of a show; I enjoyed it hugely, and would happily go see him again.

I had a friend who claimed that when someone quit their job in high tech, you can measure their worth by how far away they go. For instance, leaving Apple for Adobe... I mean, why bother? But leaving your job to become a search and rescue worker? That's pretty damn cool!

In that vein, I was thrilled to hear my friend Mandy was finally logging off the high tech treadmill to pursue her dream, opening a restaurant! I've known Mandy as a foodie for some time; we've swapped recipes and have talked about our mutual appreciation for good middle-America comfort food. So it makes all kinds of sense that she chose to open a burger joint!

So tonight I drove to Bingen, WA (across the river from Hood River) for the "friends and family preview" night of Viento's Burger & Steak Bar! The joint was hoppin'! I was greeted at the door by Mandy's mom and husband, and got a quick hug from Mandy as she was juggling plates in the kitchen. I quickly ran into a a couple of people I knew from my days living in the Silicon Valley (it's a smaller community than you might think) and chatted with them about various geeky topics while enjoying a fabulous burger.

Mmm, the food! I had the "Melt Your Face" burger, with pepper jack cheese, jalapeños and a chili-ketchup sauce, with sweet potato french fries and root beer. The burger was very moist and flavorful, better than I've had in a really long time. I'll definitely be dropping in again.

Oh yeah, and I took some pictures!



Best wishes to Mandy and crew in their new endeavor!

Last night, I saw Dead of Winter, a collection of three short plays, ghost stories, really. It was like attending Le Grand Guignol in February. Each of the vignettes were short on gore and special effects, but still managed to be creepy as all hell and present a couple of good "jump" moments. I'd love to see this same crew put together something in a similar vein for Halloween.

I'm a sucker for small-scale theater like this. I really enjoy seeing what can be done in a modest space, without a lot of flash to spend, with local playwrights and actors.

The venue was Performance Works Northwest, 4625 SE 67th Avenue, off of Foster. The show runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through February 23rd. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and $10 for students and seniors. Thursdays are sliding scale. Tickets can be purchased online at www.theblustockings.com. For reservations, call 503-777-2771.

Last night, I saw Mike Doughty at Mississippi Studios.

Before I saw something about the show, let me talk about the venue.
There's a doorfront on Mississippi Ave for the place, but that's not where you enter. Instead, you go in through Mississippi Station (a bar/pub next door), pass through the restaurant, out the back doors to the outside patio, keep going, then bear left into... what looks like someone's backyard. Up the stairs to the house, and go on in. Sure enough, the place is a converted home that sits fewer than 100 people. (Okay, I confess to being anal enough that I counted. 79 seats.) In such a small space, it seems silly to talk about a balcony, but there is a section of seating towards the back that is elevated just barely above the heads of the people ahead, and I found a pair of seats on the front row of that platform. I've seen Doughty in clubs of over 1000, and in this show, it was like he was hanging out in the living room with me. This place just become my favorite Portland venue. If there's someone I'm even mildly interested seeing that is playing at MS, I'm so there.

As for the show itself: I've seen Mike play smaller two man shows, and larger shows where he has a full band behind him. I prefer the smaller gigs, hands down. I just prefer the simpler, sparser sound when it's just Doughty and his guitar, maybe with one side man. Given that, last night's show made me really happy. He had one other musician with him, a fellow named Scrap Livingston playing cello and resonator guitar. (I had to do some digging on Google and Wikipedia to find the name of this. I hope I got it right. It looks like a standard guitar, except for the large, round metal platter on the body of the guitar, which gives it a sound a bit like a banjo.)

Mike and Scrap performed a great mix of audience favorites and some new songs from his forthcoming album, "Golden Delicious". Off-hand, I recall them playing 27 Jennifers, White Lexus, Busting Up a Starbucks, Grey Ghost, Janine, Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well, Madeline and Nine, Rising Sign, Sunken-Eyed Girl, Thank You Lord For Sending Me The F Train, Tremendous Brunettes, True Dreams Of Wichita, Unsingable Name. In between songs, mike and Scrap drew questions from the Question Jar, answering queries from the audience. We learned what the "Unsingable Name" was, which albums changed MD's life, his perspective on his past drug use, his recent experience on morning drive-time radio shows, his thoughts about our fair city, and much more.

All in all, it was a hell of a show, maybe the best I've seen in Portland (and I've seen some real winners)! A big, enthusiastic "Hell yeah!"

Last Saturday the lovely pre-doc and I went to the grand opening of Batty's Hippodrome, a new venue in Portland for circus arts. I saw the late show, which featured Seattle's Pure Cirkus.

The Hippodrome is buried in ( the dark )

A friend and I went to the Clinton Street Theater to see a screening of a local indie film, The Auteur. The film is about a "past his prime" director of hard-core porn movies who is trying to recapture his past stature.

The writing was great, and the acting dead on. This was only the second public showing of the film, and there is still some work to be done on the color balance across the clips and the tone of the sound track. But the writing is sharp and the acting dead on. And the familiar shots of Portland made me smile.

I really enjoyed this movie, and I'm looking forward to seeing the final, finished product. When it hits a regular run, I heartily encourage you to check it out.

Hmm, second porn-related movie in a row I've seen at the CST. What's up with that?

I recently bought a new pair of cheap headphones to use at the gym. I didn't need anything fancy; my only criteria was that they had to fit my massive melon, and I really wanted a volume control on the cord. I just find reaching for a volume control on the cable easier than reaching for the scroll wheel on my iPod, especially when I'm on the elliptical machine at the gym.

So I found a cheapie pair of JVC headphones at Amazon. They have a volume control and they fit, so all is good, right? Well, mostly. Here's a photo of the headphones.



I know the picture is small, but there's a little thumb wheel on that black box on the cable. Here's a quick intelligence test. Given the orientation of the cable dangling down your chest when the 'phones are on your head, which direction would you turn the thumb wheel to increase the volume, and which way would you turn it to decrease the volume?

If you said turn the wheel up to turn the music up and turn the wheel down to turn the music down, then I'm sorry, you're too intelligent to work at JVC.

Sheesh! Who was responsible for this product? I mean, did anyone with a triple digit IQ even try the damn things before they shipped?

For the first time in ages, I bought an album off the iTunes Music Store this morning!

I stopped using the iTMS entirely several years ago. The store was originally unveiled back in April 2003, and I was a big fan at first. I didn't like swallowing the digital-rights management embedded in all purchased tunes, but Apple had negotiated fairly liberal terms from the music labels and I didn't find any of the restrictions particularly onerous. But in April 2004, Apple changed the terms of their DRM. The changes were not burdensome; for instance, purchased music in a playlist could be burned to a CD only 7 times (down from 10 previously). The content of the change didn't bother me at all. But the implication, that Apple could change the terms of the purchase at any time, was deeply disturbing to me. And so I left the store behind. I've purchased a few CDs since then, mostly at concerts, but otherwise my music buying dropped tremendously.

Fast forward to today. Oh frabjous day, iTunes 7.2 has been released, providing support for high-quality DRM-free music from the EMI label. And I'm fairly confident this is merely the leading edge of a wave that will eventually include all of the major record labels. "They are grapes in the path of the steamroller of progress."

Finally, I can purchase music from the iTMS again, secure in the knowledge that Apple cannot mandate a change in the terms after the fact.

Hoo-rah! So, I've bought one album and one single this morning, and would have purchased more, except that the iTMS seems to be slowed to a crawl, no doubt from all the extra traffic.

Footnote for abrichar: This is not a paid endorsement. :-)
Footnote for sarahlibelle: The album was KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope". Further proof that I'm an old man.

I'm a big sucker for "circus arts" theater. Tell me a show has fire play, contortion, acrobatics, and I'm there. I blame it on the time I spent around the SF bay area, where you can find small events like that just about every weekend. This weekend I heard about a show that sounded promising on Sunday night (Sunday night?!). Sounded promising, though even after reading the venue's website, I still didn't have much of an idea what to expect. Which is not all bad; walking into a show with no expectations or pre-conceived notions can be a good thing.

The venue was new to me, the Someday Lounge in Chinatown of downtown Portland. It's a smallish venue, but with enough wide open space that it doesn't feel claustrophobic. There's even a little balcony area that provides some additional seating, though on a damp Sunday night, there weren't enough people to overflow up there. The act was Cirkus Pandemonium, a local troupe of circus performers. Our master of ceremonies was a stilt-walking fire breather who introduced the acts.



The various performers included...
- a pair of aerialists working from a single trapeze bar
- a pair of women swinging fire poi
- a matador swinging red-caped poi to entice a "bull" on a unicycle
- an aerialist working from silks hanging from the tall ceiling
- an assortment of jugglers



It was an unexpected "find", and great fun. I'll definitely look for some future shows from this troupe.

After reading some of the horror stories on the net, I had great trepidation about ordering new FIOS service through Verizon. But, the price/bandwidth ratio were too sweet to ignore, so I took a big breath and placed the order.

Installation happened today. It took a while (three and a half hours), but the installer was a champ. He was happy to install the "outside" box in my attic, rather than hanging it off the outside of the house. The rest of the goodies were installed in my utility room downstairs. Once he had everything hooked up, I rushed to test the speed of the line.

Yeah, bay-bee! It's early yet, but so far I give the experience two thumbs up.

Oh yeah, and Happy 4/20!

After a quiet week of work and gym, I was ready to get oot and aboot Friday night. I hit the White Eagle Saloon, another McMenamin's spawn. After camping at the bar for a bit, I was able to lay claim to a vacating table.

Some years ago, I was preparing for my first trip to Amsterdam and encountered the term "gezellig". It's hard to translate, but it means something along the lines of "What are you in such a hurry for? Slow down. Relax. Here, smell this.", and it was especially relevant to Americans who might fume for twenty minutes in a restaurant wondering "Hellew? Is anyone ever going to bring us a friggin' menu?" One guide book even (jokingly?) suggested you bring along a deck of cards to keep yourself entertained whilst waiting. I didn't take it as a joke, and I have many fond memories of idling in a canal-side cafe, playing cards and enjoying the moment.

For some reason, I brought a deck of cards to the White Eagle last night. (Ahh, you thought I had forgotten all about that, didn't you? I am in the prime of my senility!) So I played several hands of whist around a number of bourbon and cokes, cajun tater tots and eventually a real meal.

But, truth be told, I was there for the music more than the food. The opening act was a fellow named Colin Lake. Colin is a talented lap guitar player, singing the delta blues. I admired his playing, but it was a little slow and low-energy for the venue. And maybe this marks me as a bigot, but especially after growing up in Memphis, there just seems to be something wrong about a 20-something white boy playing the delta blues. But he was a good performer, and I was winning hand after hand, so it was all good.

And then came the act that drew me out in the first place, a guy named Jonathan Coulton. This was my first time seeing JC live, so I didn't know what to expect. He performed alone, just a guy and his guitar, and had the casual unassuming pose of the former computer programmer that he is.

If you haven't heard of him before, Jonathan plays very upbeat acoustic pop/rock about... fractals, giant squids from the ocean depths, paeans/curses about Ikea, scientist villains in their mountain lair... you know, the usual sorts of things. It helps if you know Coulton is a contributing troubadour for Popular Science magazine, and once wrote an album for a single issue of the magazine with songs about the main articles.

The venue was standing-room only, and the crowd obviously knew JC and were big fans. There was a fair bit of singing along to assorted songs, which is great until you hear a large room of people singing "All we want to do is eat your brains" in full zombie-voice. Some of the people were entirely too enthusiastic about that topic.



It was a great night out, and I will definitely be looking for JC's next swing through town.

I went to the Doug Fir last night to see Erin McKeown sing.

I had never seen a show at the Doug Fir before, so I wasn't really prepared for the hipster log cabin feel of the place. Add to that, the opening act really drove home the Twin Peaks vibe. The singer, Eleni Mandell, had a quiet haunting voice, and the electric guitar player used lots of echo to achieve an effect that would have made Angelo Badalamenti smile. Really, I was waiting for a dwarf to come out on stage and dance during some songs.

But I'm not complaining; I really enjoyed it. The stand-up bass player in particular was really fun to watch, swinging from plucking a driving beat, sometimes picking up the bow to add to the creepy feel of some songs, and slapping time on the fret board during some of the more energetic bits.

If anything, Eleni reminded me a lot of early Erin McKeown; a very quiet, introspective singer-songwriter with folksy roots. But the Erin of today is a very different performer, very high energy, bouncy, and an undeniable rockabilly sound. Her sense of humor comes through in a playful fashion on stage now. I was introduced to Erin via my pal Anita, who heard her open for Mike Doughty. Anita is down in SF currently, and saw Erin play just two days ago. And then at tonight's show, who should show up but Anita's brother Ed and his gal pal Jill (the Thrill). Ed's in school down in Corvalis, and he and JtT decided to come up to see the show on Anita's recommendation. So they sat with us during Erin's set and seemed to enjoy the show.

I'm only irritated that I forgot to bring the camera. I had a great view of the stage and could have gotten some memorable shots. Sigh. Next time.