So this weekend, my friend Carla came up from LA and we went up to Tahoe for the weekend.
Andy and Mer came too.
We went to snowfest and snowshoeing and hung out at the house.
And then Andy made this AWESOME VIDEO.
I’ve watched this thing like 173 times. It makes me happy.
Ok, so I got a ridiculous red light ticket in San Mateo (red light cameras are actually one of the topics that we frequently cover at Techdirt, ironically), and as a result, I had to pay a crazy ridiculous fine AND take traffic school to get the point off my license. I haven’t had a traffic violation (knock on wood) since 1997, so this kinda pissed me off to ruin over a decade of good driving.
Anyway, I just finished traffic school, and I thought I’d share with everyone an example of the quality things that I learned today that will SURELY make me a better driver.
Which of the following is an unlikely alternative to driving?
Driving steadily can improve your gas mileage by as much as ___ miles per gallon.
It is your responsibility to ______ and protect the environment you enjoy.
Uh yah.. awesome. Well, I sure do feel like a better driver now, don’t you?
I think 2010 is starting off with quite a bang for me.. Just got back from Cannes for MIDEM (still trying to recover from the hangover.. oof).
Anyway, this mix is quite.. um, lively, I think..
It starts off with Earworm’s tribute to the top 25 hits of 2009 — I can’t really stand that Black Eyed Peas song after the NRJ awards effectively hammered it into my head for hours on end, but the mashup itself is kinda catchy and a pleasure to listen to.
Caesar is an awesome track by Sting’s 19-year old daughter, “I Blame Coco” (whose name is strangely timely in light of all of the Leno vs. Conan stuff).
And then.. number 3, Brooklyn band Sleigh Bell’s “Crown On The Ground.” It’s a LOUD song. It sounds like the levels are mastered WAY too high, and actually sounds like your speakers are crapping out. But, for some strange reason, I love it.
So, as a palate cleanser, I thought M.A.G.I.C. was a nice choice — just picture unicorns floating across a rainbow filled sky as you listen to that one.
Dr. Rosen Rosen’s remix of Weezer is kind of awesome, but actually, all of his remixes are pretty incredible. I really didn’t mean for this mix to be all mashups and remixes, but I guess that’s just what I’ve been listening to a lot lately.
Ok, nobody really is reading this are they? Just go listen to the mix.
Enjoy.
I like following what the “other” Dennis Yangs are up to around the world.. this just came across the wire:
Dennis Yang, 31, Chaska, Minn., assault on firefighter/medical personnel and assault, failed to appear, warrant ordered.
Oh Dennis, of Chaska, Minnesota.. what are you doing? You’re tarnishing our good name.
Anyway, this reminds me, if any of the other Dennis Yangs are out there, feel free to drop me a line, and I’m happy to give you a coveted “dennisyang.com” email address. C’mon, I know you’re out there.
Happy New Year everyone.. 2010 is well on its way, so I’ve put together a little mix to get it started… 2009 was an amazing year for new music. Whoever said that the digital age is killing music obviously isn’t actually out there listening to the stuff.
The year opened for me with a whole lotta Bon Iver, whose Blood Bank EP was an awesomely haunting way to open the new year. Then, pretty much most of my 2009 was spent listening to Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.. man, that entire album is insanely awesome. And then, just as 2009 was about to close, the xx stormed the scene.
2009 was also the year of the remix for me, aided with the hype machine, remixes (good AND bad) are flooding out more than ever. Yes, it takes time to sort through the crap to find the gems, but once you do, it’s quite rewarding. Also, if you haven’t heard the brazilian remixing duo, The Twelves, yet.. I highly suggest you go and check them out. Now.
Anyway, I’m rambling.. so, without further adieu, here’s my picks for best songs of 2009.
Enjoy.
As long as I have your attention, I might as well also list out the live shows that I saw for 2009:
Not a bad take for this year, I suppose.. I got to see 2 of my top 3 acts of 2009 — Phoenix actually played the Warfield, but I refuse to go to that venue cuz I hate it.. yuck. Clearly, The Independent is my favorite place to go see shows this year (and I’ll be back there for Miike Snow soon). Strangely though, no shows at the Greek for 2009.. Weird.
Anyway — hats off to a super awesome musical 2009.
Happy New Year all.
Happy Holidays everyone!
This is becoming somewhat of a tradition, having done this for 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005 now…
This year featured New Years in Philly for AJ & Joann’s wedding, Angie’s bday trip to Whistler, a “non-wedding wedding” trip to Charleston, SC, and thanks to my knee injury, I had to cancel my trip to Cancun, but then, because of the knee injury (since I couldn’t play baseball on the weekends anymore) a few camping trips were added. As compared to the 9 weddings last year, I only had 2 this year.. My family’s new place in Tahoe meant several trips up to Tahoma, and more to come in the future… All-in-all, a great year, and honestly, I can’t believe 2010 is already upon us.
Anyway, without further adieu here’s my list of cities that I’ve spent one or more nights in for 2009.. (* means more than 1 trip there)..
Philadelphia, PA
San Francisco, CA*
New York, NY*
Kings Beach, CA
Whistler, BC, Canada
Truckee, CA
Toronto, ON, Canada
Tahoma, CA*
Las Vegas, NV
Charleston, SC
Usal Beach, Lost Coast, CA
Kenwood, CA (Sugarloaf Ridge SP)
Chelmsford, MA
San Mateo, CA
Zephyr Cove, NV
Hmm… on second thought, 2009 apparently wasn’t a big travel year.. just a few trips here and there, and I never even left the North American continent. Oh well. 2010 should promise more world locales, with trips to Cannes and Switzerland already in the works.
Happy New Year everyone!
I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. Mine was spent with family up in Tahoe. After pigging out on Turkey with all of the fixin’s, we marked the official start of the holiday season by putting up the tree.. Nature cooperated by dusting Tahoe with a few inches of white, fluffy snow. Awesome!
And, to put the whole room in the mood, I played my xmas mix.. Yes, I had originally thought that last year’s xmas mix would be the last one, but people keep putting out new, fantastic renditions of holiday classics. Even Bob Dylan did a holiday album this year.. I love ya Bob, but.. um.. yah, not my favorite, sorry. Anyway, here’s this year’s mix:
Anyway, if you want a cd/downloadable link — tell me and I’ll get it to you.
Previous years’ xmas mixes:
Happy Holidays!
For the past few years, my friend shooey has gone to this super cool event called Visual Aid — it’s a charity art auction, proceeds of which go to artists with life-threatening illnesses. How it works is this.. admission is $35, and it’s a “flat price auction,” so each piece of art is $160 — and every person gets to pick 2 pieces they want at that price, first come first serve. Then, once everyone is done, they drop the price to $130.. people buy at that price.. then $100.. then $75.. and finally $50.. There’s 650 pieces of donated art to choose from, and I’d say about 500 people in attendance.
Since it’s first come first serve, in years past, people have started camping out as early as Thursday to get a good spot in line. This year, for one reason or other, they decided to outlaw camping, instead opening the gates at 5am on Saturday, and auctioned off the top 10 spots in “line” to raise some more money. Now, while I was not exactly *thrilled* at the thought of sleeping outside in SoMa Friday night, the whole “no camping” policy kind of put a slight damper on things for me — I mean, I haven’t camped out for anything since college, but yah.. the initial concept without being able to “buy” a spot in line was kind of cool..
Anyway, we toyed with the notion of bidding for one of the top spots in line, I mean.. what’s a few hundred bucks in exchange for a night of sleeping comfortably in bed. But, I had never been, so I didn’t know the quality of the art, and I think the whole auction thing was kinda pissing me off so I didn’t wanna support it.
So, instead, shooey and I met up at 3am on Saturday. Ouch. And, to make things even better, it was FREEZING and RAINING. Ok, FREEZING in the SF sense, in that 45 degrees in San Francisco feels more like 25 degrees anywhere else. It was cold. I was not happy. But, luckily, SomArts is like 5 blocks from my house, so after a few miserable hours of sitting in the rain freezing my arse off, I ran home and changed into my ridiculous winter coat and snow pants. And then.. we waited.
I slept for a bit, listened to two episodes of “This American Life,” and chatted with shooey to pass the time. We had originally thought to bring cards or something, but it was too cold and rainy to even attempt that.
That said, I think I’m pretty good at sitting and waiting. It was actually kind of nice to be slightly (ok, I still had my iphone) disconnected from the world for a few hours. The hours rolled away easily, and soon enough, we had our bid cards in hand, and then I was able to steal away home for a few hours before the auction. I was #16.
The doors to the gallery opened at 4pm, and we all piled in excitedly. Sure, there was free food and drink, but I barely remember eating or drinking anything for the first hour, I was so focused on finding the pieces of art I wanted. I was slightly disappointed to find that my favorite pieces from the art preview that Visual Aid had posted on their site were all in the live auction, and not the flat price auction… Aondrea Maynard’s Horizon and Gale Antokal’s Place 10 were both ridiculously beautiful in person. They went for $3,000 and $2,500 respectively during the live auction.
Anyway, I ran around like a mad man looking at the 650 pieces of art. At first glance, I only liked those two that were for live auction, and I was kind of annoyed. Grrr! I didn’t want anything! But, then I started looking a bit more, and more deliberately, I started seeing a few more things I liked. Phew.
My first choice was this one:
Bunny Existential, by Addie Shevlin
Shooey also liked that one, which was an issue — what happened if we both had overlapping choices on our list!? Out of the 650, I had 16 that I liked… out of that list, Shooey and I overlapped on 3.
Turns out, it was moot, cuz all of the ones we both liked ended up taken by the time it was our turn to choose. Bleh. Shooey was super bummed cuz the one that she really liked was this bee painting, and on the big board, it was still available — but, when she went to choose, it was gone, so she had to make a gametime decision and choose another.
So stressful!
Anyway, I got up to the desk, heart a-poundin’ and I was able to get my #2 and #3 choices of the show:
Betula (Red) by Phillip Hua 2009, Mixed Media
I really liked the whole idea of making art on newspaper, and somehow, the fact that we cover the newspaper industry a lot at work made me appreciate this pieces a bit more, who knows.
Sleeping Tanks by Manu Schnetzler, Photograph Mounted on Aluminum
Now, ideally, I really wanted a painting — I dunno, I LOVE photography, and I have a lot of it, so I wanted to balance out my collection a bit with some paintings.. But, I couldn’t resist the allure of this piece, which was mounted beautifully on aluminum. It’s a bit hard to photograph it, so here’s a better image of the photo (but mine is cropped a bit).
After the excitement of choosing my works, I was able to eat a bit and drink a bit (really strong martinis, hello.) And then the live auction started.. Now, I’ve never been to an art auction of any sort, but this one, perhaps fueled by 2 hours of free drinking, was loud and raucous. People were jumping up and down and high fiving after they won their bids. I may have incited some high fiving. That said, man.. when thousands of dollars are flying around, it’s insane how ITCHY your head gets.
Head… so… itchy… need to scratch.. but don’t want to bid $5,000 for gummy bear painting…. crap crap crap crap.
But I didn’t end up buying anything by accident, although I was very, very tempted by that Aondrea Maynard painting — after checking out her site, I am coveting even more of her work now. Amongst my favorite artists are JMW Turner and Rothko, so her work kind of evokes that kind of feeling. Crap, maybe $3,000 would have been a good deal. Art is a good investment right?
In any case, the live auction concluded and they started dropping the prices on the remaining artworks. Mike Mcconnell had a drawing in the sale that I liked, and since his work was kind of lower on the wall, I was hoping that it would go unnoticed and I would be able to swoop in and grab it. I already have one of his paintings and would love to add some more to my collection.
I had my eye on this one photograph that I wanted when the prices started to drop. It was of a snowy country field, and reminiscent of some of my own photographs, so I really liked it. It was hung in a prominent eye-level spot, and one by one, the works around it kept getting bought… but I waited.. $130.. no.. wait wait.. nervously trying to look at it, but not pay it *too* much attention lest someone else notice that I was looking at it a lot and buy it.. $100… steady as she goes.. and finally, at $75, I bit the bullet and bought it.
Hill Road by Jonathan Taylor, c print ed. of 30, 2006.
We got home at around 10pm and surveyed our take.. Amongst the three of us, me, Shooey and Shissla:
17 hours + a few hundred bucks = 7 pieces of art.
Not bad. Now, just need to figure out where to hang it all.
So, I just posted my fall mix:
Track List:
Basic Space, by The xx
Fables, by The Dodos
HUNGRY, HUNGRY HIPPOS, by Harperactive
The Lucky Ones, by Tim Myers
Lisztomania (Classixx Version), by Phoenix
RadioheadChopin, by Jack Conte
Melody, by Kate Earl
I Want You To Want Me, by Damhnait Doyle
From South Carolina, by Her Space Holiday
I Don’t Know What To Do, by Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson
Grey Skies, by Alexa Wilkinson
Fun Stuff, by Frightened Rabbit
Tired, by Adele
Exit Music (For a Film), by Vampire Weekend
Save Me, by Aimee Allen
Somewhere, by Vic Chesnutt & Liz Durrett
Psychic City (Voodoo City), by YACHT
Rome (Neighbors remix feat. Devendra Banhart), by Phoenix
When Will Be The End, by The Ethiopians
This one is quite mellow.. even the electronicky songs are kind of mellow. I suppose I’m in a mellow mood or something. And the other thing I noticed is how many covers are on this one. Maybe it’s cuz I just saw Joan As Police Woman on her “Cover” album tour. (Check out the CD that she signed for me). Anyway, there are a ton of covers on this mix — definitely check out “I Want You To Want Me,” it’s a great version. And yes, there are two Phoenix songs on this mix, breaking a cardinal rule that I have (don’t repeat artists on an album), but I also arguably have the same Radiohead song twice (Jack Conte and Vampire Weekend) and that’s an even bigger rule I’ve broken. But, rules are made to be broken, so whatever.
And yes, it’s that Scarlett Johansson.. Her new cd is.. ok. I blame Anna’s review for me buying her cd, but I like that track.
I was just chatting with Masnick last night about how much frikkin’ good music is coming out lately. I mean, I consume a lot of music as it is, but with sites like The Sixty One, RCRD LBL and Hype Machine, it’s getting easier to find awesome new music (and with SonicLiving, easier to see them live). Anyway.. this year has been awesome so far for music.
Next up.. the 2009 xmas cd.. I know you are waiting for it with bated breath.
I work from home, which means that most of my daily interactions occur in the virtual realm. I feel like my real world social skills are starting to suffer as a result. Apparently, these IM habits that I’ve been learning are not transferable to the real world.
1. The scrollback buffer allows you to multitask.
When you’re chatting with someone via IM, as soon as you’re done with typing your thought, you can switch over to doing something else while the other person is typing and composing their thought. IM clients even have a convenient “audria is typing” notification to let you know that your friend is typing madly away. And then, when they’re finished with their diatribe, you can go back and look at what they’re written, and respond.
Apparently, the “real world” does not have such a buffer. In fact, when speaking with people, you have to listen when they are talking. For someone that is constantly multitasking, I find my mind wandering as soon as I finish my sentence (when I really should be listening). And then I kinda look back at them when they’re done talking, half expecting to be able to “scroll back” and see what they’ve just been saying..
CRAP. Real life has no scrollback.
The other unfortunate side effect of this phenomenon is that now that we’re all conditioned to this constant barrage of information, normal “live” conversation isn’t enough to keep us engaged.
The nice family dinner that used to look like this:
Now looks like this:
2. The internets make you seem really smart and knowledgeable.
So you’re chatting with someone, and they say something like, “Hey, have you heard of the xx?” Now, in the real world, you’d be like.. uh, I have no idea what that is (isn’t that like a Mexican beer or whatever?). But, of course, online, you have the world at your fast fingertips, and if you’re an online citizen worth your salt, you just quickly google it, read up, and then formulate an opinion and respond. “Oh, you mean the band the xx? Yah of course, I’ve been following them since they formed in London in 2005. They’re pretty good.” Voila, you’re really smart.. and super cool.
Since the pace of the conversation in IM is at just about any speed you want, you have ample time to finely handcraft witty responses. Did it just take you 5 minutes to respond with that awesome quip? It’s fine — maybe someone at work walked into your office (but really you were busy polishing each and every word).
Of course, this works really well if you’re trying to impress some girl that you’re trying to woo over IM, since you can intelligently respond to just about any subject that she brings up.
Level 2 skills: Trying to prove a point and Wikipedia doesn’t agree with you? Victory is only a quick Wikipedia edit away.
Now, in the real world, your brain is no longer augmented by the information fire hose that is the internet. In fact, those parts of your brain that used to house said information have now completely atrophied from misuse, and without it, your brain has been reduced to that of a drooling 3 year old.
Sure, you could whip out your iTelephone or whatever and look up stuff, but you really don’t want to be *that guy* do you?
3. You can start & stop conversations whenever you want.
Online, chats can span over several hours or days. Well, actually, this is big complaint I get from Korby; he claims that most of our chats go something like this:
Dennis (11:13am): Hi.
Korby (11:15am): Hi.
Dennis (1:17pm): Hi.
Korby (1:18pm): Hi.
Dennis (3:02pm): Hi.
Korby (3:03pm): Hi.
Dennis has signed off.
Ooops. Uh, yah sorry Korby. Anyway, my point here is that conversations can take a looong time to get through over IM, and there’s really nothing that wrong with starting a conversation, and then pausing it for awhile while you do some other thing, and then re-starting it later. Ok, maybe there is something wrong with it, but at least online, it still works, since it’s pretty much stateless.
Apparently, this is not the case in real life, and people get really annoyed when, mid-conversation, you get up and start making yourself a hot fudge sundae.
Oh wait, what? Sorry, were you still talking?
Ok, rambling done…
Anyway, that’s it for my rant for now. So, if the next time I chat with you, I seem to not be paying attention, please cut me some slack. Augmented reality systems are getting better & better, yah?? Surely live talk bubbles are right on the horizon.
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