What's New With Mick

Category: Explanation

  • The Stumble

    Today as I was listening to A Hard Road by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers for the first time, the song that most caught my attention was their cover of Freddie King’s “The Stumble”. Since I had recently added The Very Best of Freddie King to my iTunes collection, I knew I probably had the original:

    iTunes search for "The Stumble"

    Sure enough I had the version by Freddie as well as another by Jeff Beck I immediately queued them to play next: Freddie followed by Beck. In the meantime, I pulled up the Wikipedia article to find out more about this rollicking electric guitar solo + what is the wah wah effect. There’s not much there but the article does have a list of artists that have covered it. My eyes immediately found Gary Moore who was more or less a disciple of Peter Green, Mayall’s guitar player on his version of “The Stumble”. Having just downloaded a chunk of Moore’s work the night before, I anxiously scanned the files for his version of “The Stumble”. I dropped it into iTunes just as Beck’s version faded out.

    As Moore’s version blasted my ears, I went to YouTube for further insight. I wasn’t able to find the Freddie King version but I did find Green, Beck and Moore as well as a couple of interesting versions.
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  • Mega Cool Super Church (and Technology)

    Saturday I drove down to Happy Valley to pick up Graham following an overnight at his friend’s house. On the way there I saw a monstrous building and noted it was a church. On the way back home, we stopped so I could get a picture. I posted the first picture to Instagram (warning: link opens iTunes). In that picture, I included the sign as a point of reference but it somewhat eclipsed the gigantic church so I moved a few steps east and snapped another:

    Abundant Life Church
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  • The Impact of War on Segments of the Middle East Population

    Have you seen Google’s Public Data Explorer? It’s an interactive interface to some gigantic sets of data gathered from around the world (sorry, requires Flash). I found it when I searched for “population growth” on Google. If you click the chart at the top of the list of results, you can graph the change in population growth rates for any country from 1960 to present. The chart graphs the US population rate by default but you can turn on any combination of countries as well as the world population growth rate for comparison.

    After playing with it for a few minutes, I wondered about Iran and Iraq, two countries that we all probably wish we knew less about:

    Remember the Iran/Iraq war? You can see it right there in the data. Can you tell who “won” and who lost that war?

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  • All I Got For Xmas 2010



    All I Got For Xmas 2010
    Originally uploaded by rynosoft

    Once again I had a very bountiful Christmas. Click the picture to see the details but my gifts included:

    • Earth: The Book
    • Microwave safe soup bowl
    • Soup spoons
    • Chopsticks
    • Microwave safe coffee cups
    • Instant coffee
    • My four favorite Beatles albums remastered
    • $75 in cash
    • Personal audio mixer
    • Let It Be…Naked
    • Sugar free candy
    • New earphones for my iPhone
    • Six pack of grilling sauces/rubs
    • Two iTunes gift certificates worth $45 (not pictured) – redeeming for various apps and songs
    • Amazon gift certificate for $50 (not pictured) – redeemed for iLife ’11

    Thanks to Buddy, Leroy, Tom, Jan, Michelle & Ric, Tina, Thomas, Graham and the Kittens. I know I’m hard to shop for and appreciate when people do so anyway.

  • Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

    If you were a teen in the 80s like me then you probably remember the short-lived sketch comedy series, Fridays, on ABC. Although it only lasted two seasons, it left an indelible impression on my young brain.

    Sadly, a DVD release of those two seasons is reportedly held up by Michael Richards. Luckily, YouTube has most of their great sketches including the ones I’ve included below the fold:
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  • Fun with the iTunes “search box”

    Here’s a fun little exercise you can do in iTunes:

    1. In iTunes, click on your music library in the sidebar.
    2. Turn on shuffle, ensure that you have “By Songs” selected in the Shuffle menu (which is in Controls in the main menu)
    3. Type the first word that comes to mind in the search box
    4. Play one of the songs that is displayed
    5. Pick a new word or name from the currently playing song, type that word into the search box
    6. Listen
    7. When song changes, repeat 5

    Note that in step 5 that you must pick a word that will include the currently playing song or iTunes will get confused and stop playing after the song is over. Obviously, having a large music library (23847 songs for me) and lots of metadata helps make the game interesting.

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  • Cee-Lo Green and the Horse He Rode in On

    Remember Gnarls Barkley‘s first single in the summer of 2006? “Crazy” was the first single to chart in the UK based purely on online sales. Now one half of that duo, Cee-Lo Green, has released an equally enchanting single called “Fuck You” off his upcoming album, The Lady Killer. Here’s the first video for the song:

    If you love the song as much as I do, you won’t mind hearing it a second time (in a different video):
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  • An Extra Day in Milwaukee

    I spent most of last week in Milwaukee (actually Menomonee Falls), Wisconsin, searching for the cause of a crash in our software that is adversely affecting a client. I flew into Milwaukee on Monday, spent three days on the client site and planned to fly back home Thursday evening. Thursday morning I glanced at my Google Calendar on my iPhone for my departure time. This is what I saw:
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  • 3G Data Usage On My iPhone

    Can you tell when WiFi stopped working on my iPhone?

  • Page 2: In Which I Explain My Life To The Class of 1985

    I’ve been in Portland since 1990 after a short detour to San Diego after graduating from Wartburg. I met and married my wife, Tina, in 1992. We have two awesome boys who dictate how we spend most of our time. Both are very active in Boy Scout Troop 820 (troop820.org) and both play the double bass in the school orchestra after converting from the cello.

    Graham is a nerd of the first order and thinks I’m the coolest nerd on the planet. He loves to play video games on our Xbox and Wii but is enthusiastic in almost everything he does — even when I enlist his help in yard chores. Since he was a baby we have known that he is strong-willed and joyous. He’s also very intelligent and somewhat arrogant about that fact, regarding it as a fact of life that he’s smarter than everyone else. I’m trying to work that out of him.

    Thomas is more reserved than Graham and less likely to risk looking uncool. A year ago I helped him buy his first electric bass. Since then he has learned to play all of his favorite sons and a few “classics” that I asked him to learn. He can also has pick up Tina or my guitar and play them much better than either of us. In many ways he’s very much like I was at that age: long hair, quiet except with friends, stubborn and often inconsiderate. He’s also very smart but not always willing to work hard for great grades.

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