Prepared several additional live recordings and aim to have enough of them uploaded, so that I can easily post them while we are on tour for six weeks. Now I have to decide whether to post a 2008 concert or a 2005 tomorrow…
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I love the way my house works! See, I don’t believe in air-conditioning. (((I do have AC in the studio, but that place was designed to handle class-A analog equipment, which puts out a lot of heat))) I just checked AccuWeather, because it seems so hot outside and indeed it is 95ºF “feels like 102ºF”. (((traditionally the upper nineties were the height of July and August heat… it’s ominous that we are hitting those numbers at the beginning of June already))) Inside the kitchen, where I am writing this, it is 74ºF. Perfect. I am not sure whether the house itself was well designed or whether it is just a fluke. The house is warm in Winter and cool in the Summer. A true refuge.

Once, during the Summer of 1992 I believe, the Chinese-American architect of my house stopped by. He said he wanted to take a look at the house, which he had never seen finished. He explained some of the stranger features and confided that the builder (((I think it was basically one guy with a few friends, not a corporation/developer))) was a bit of a pot-head, who would occasionly call and ask the architect to re-design a wall, or re-engineer a load, because the builder had deviated from the design… very Santa Fe, I guess. But it turned out well. I found the house when the builder had to sell it, near foreclosure.
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Judges Liken P2P To The Ancient Practice of Lending Books | TorrentFreak
In their ruling, judges Ocariz, Gutierrez and Campillo said that “..since ancient times there has been the loan or sale of books, movies, music and more. The difference now is mainly on the medium used – previously it was paper or analog media and now everything is in a digital format which allows a much faster exchange of a higher quality and also with global reach through the Internet.”

Wow, that’s really dumb. Are these judges stupid or just old? When I lend you a book, a CD, a photographs, I no longer have said book, CD or photograph. You now have it. If I want to read the book again, listen to the CD again, look at the photograph again, I have to come knocking at your door to request that you return them to me. And you might go out and buy the CD or book because you liked them and want to experience them again.

In the digital format there is no lending, only copying. When I give you a copy of the book, photograph or music album, we’ll both have it. We, in fact, both have identical copies of a digital original.

There, not the same at all, not even close. A whole new paradigm, and not one we have dealt with particular well. It’s one that favors digital hard and software manufacturers, and leaves content providers, like authors, musicians, photographers, scratching their heads.
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My iPad contains four book applications: Apple’s iBook, Amazon’s Kindle, the Barnes & Noble eReader and Kobo, which will be the Borders reader. Here is what I have learned:

At night I prefer to read negative text, that is white on black. It saves battery and is easier on the eyes, I find. Except for iBook, all apps allow negative text, some call it night-reading mode.

iBook and eReader have built in dictionaries, which I find very useful. I am a sucker for an author who has a great command of the english language and refuses to dumb down his/her writing. iBook and eReader make it easy – touch a word and get the definition. I think the Kindle reader has a built-in dictionary and think it is a real mistake not to include it in the Kindle app. The reason might be that Amazon wants people to buy the Kindle hardware, but in the process they are losing customers who are not interested in spending $250 on a Kindle when they can get an iPad, that does so much more, for twice the investment.

I thought I would dig the sync capabilities of the Kindle and eReader – to sync between reading on iPhone and iPad, but I haven’t used that feature very much – plus the iBook will get that feature with iOS4 in mere weeks.

It is true that Kindle has the largest library at this point, but I have noticed that especially for older titles the digitizing of the text was handled badly. I have noticed many spelling errors and tons of false line-breaks.

All apps are free and none of the stores have every book. In fact, I have found some books of a specific series that were only available for B&N’s eReader, and others that were only available for Kindle.
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Shrubs on Wheels
Terrestrial Shrub Rover by Justin Shull.
(Via swissmiss)
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A Qwest technician came Tuesday morning, because the new DSL wasn’t quite up to speed. The phone company guarantees at least 80% of the 7mbps I signed up for, which is the fastest DSL available in my neighborhood. I was getting 4.1 instead of the minimum of 5.6mbps. Well, he fixed the DSL, now running at 7.1mbps, as well as a couple of other problems I have had, but had not been willing to deal with… It turned out he went to school with James Bobchak, who was in the 1997 Luna Negra XL band. I made him a cup of coffee we chatted for a couple of minutes.

A memory… my mom always offered any repair-men beer. They almost always accepted. If wine is the water of France and Italy, then beer is the water of Germany. I made that mistake a couple of times, but stopped offering about 14 years ago, after I noticed that the work on my patio floor slowed down to a crawl… While beer is just a drink in Germany, in America is seems to signify “miller-time” and the end of work… :-)

Yes, better to offer coffee.

So far I am quite happy with the DSL modem. It appears to be faster and more reliable, in addition to being cheaper than the cable modem from Comcast. Goodbye Comcast. I don’t think I am going to miss you.

I may have spoken too soon… I awoke to not having a dial tone anywhere in the house, but the DSL is still working! Calling the tech…