Mike Burns

Ta!

2005-09-26T01:33:00.000-04:00

Surely you've noticed that I'm with all the hep kids at WordPress. Ciao, category-less suckers.

Couch Surfing How-to

2005-09-09T14:16:00.000-04:00

I haven't updated for a while because I've been in Boston. This would be no excuse to update if I lived in Boston, but I don't; instead, I have many, many friends who live in Boston. These friends have couches.

So, given that I've been couch surfing at Northeastern University's dorms, here are some tips I've gathered:

Give up the couch when someone else needs to crash. Sleep on the floor or on another person's couch.
Have a way home in an emergency. For example, I have my bike locked up less than a mile away.
Clean. Put your blanket and pillow away, tidy up the couch, pick up the kitchen from last night's party, take out the trash, etc.
Do food-related services for the hosts. If you can cook well, do it constantly (breakfast and dinner). If you can't cook, buy them groceries or dinner. The $20 or $80 worth of food is a lot less than they're paying to house your sorry ass.
Hide the fact that you're using their toiletries. Squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom, use a minimal amount of shampoo, don't use their towel without asking first, etc.
You don't live there. It's funny to pretend that you're a roommate, but when it comes to an actual decision or vote you shouldn't be in the way.
Ask permission before throwing the party. It's fine, fun, and funny to throw a party at someone else's house, just make sure they're in on it and can veto it. Remember that if they get in trouble for the party, you're out on the street.
Be prepared to leave. They might need the couch for someone else that night, or might want time away from you, or are just plain annoyed by your mooching. Back-up couches and a way to get home quickly are useful for this.
Be friendly. Really, who wants a jerk crashing on their couch? Deal well with the roommates and their jackass friends, too.

The Beatings, Caspian, Barnicle, The Subject

2005-08-30T13:57:00.000-04:00

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:25401, thesubject, subject, barnicle, caspian, beatings, thebeatings.

On August 25th, 2005, Matt joined me at TT's for The Beatings and whoever felt like opening for them.

The Subject

We arrived late and only heard the last two songs of The Subject's set. The first one we heard was excellent post rock (in the Godspeed You! Black Emperor vein), and the second one we heard was bad indie (whatever that is).

Barnicle

Modern rock; sounded like that dog.. Wasn't amazing, but didn't suck.

Caspian

More post rock similar to The Subject, with a neat twist: a half hour after their set they have free CD-Rs of a song, live from the set that night. Worth seeing again.

The Beatings

One of my favorite Boston bands (I'll admit that I also have a crush on the bassist), and they were excellent as always that night. We even convinced them to get back on stage and play one more.

Kinski, Major Stars, Invisible Rays

2005-08-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

Tags: upcoming:26402, livemusic, invisiblerays, majorstars, kinski.

A week back, on August 23rd, 2005, Matt, and I stopped by TT's for some math rock.

Invisible Rays

They had a neat projector behind them hooked up to the keyboard guy. Various waves representing the current notes he was playing scrolled by on the screen. In addition to this, the music was great math rock.

Major Stars

An interesting rock group who seemed to only be interested in having fun. Sometimes a chick would come on stage and scream into the microphone, then leave for a beer and come back a few songs later. Worth seeing again.

Kinski

Excellent math rock.

Mad Man Films, Polaris Mine, Signal to Trust, Animal Hospital

2005-08-29T22:12:00.000-04:00

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:28021, madmanfilms, polarismine, signaltotrust, animalhospital.

Way back on August 18th, 2005, Matt and I went to Great Scott for some rock.

Animal Hospital

A man, guitar, drum kit, headphones, and mixer. Amazing performance with surprisingly good music. I'm not convinced the music can be as good separate from the performance, however.

Signal to Trust

I'm having the same problem as others; I really can't remember this band. They didn't suck, though.

Polaris Mine

Really good rock without Weezer covers.

Mad Man Films

Of course they rocked, that's their role in life. Heck, they even played an extra song just because we refused to leave.

83 Elm St.

2005-08-28T14:37:00.000-04:00

Back on August 13th, 2005 I went alone to the Elm St. Benefit, with 13 bands perfoming to raise money for the burned-down 83 Elm St. They also had a bake-sale!

Wild Zero

Excited, young punk band. Fun and good.

Fragile

I only remember that they were mediocre; I wish I remembered why. Sorry.

Big Bear

They shocked their fans by doing very faithful Weezer covers. I later saw the same band members in Polaris Mine and my guess is that the Weezer covers were part of a very sick joke.

Tiny Amps

Good rock.

Tramps Like Us

Pop punk. Gah.

Dorkbot

The vocalist/guitarist from Mad Man Films on vocals with the vocalist/guitarist from Tiny Amps on guitar. Really good rock.

Modelo '78

They were missing half the band, including the bassist, so I thought they sucked. They might rock when the whole band is together, though. (Perhaps not—the drummer looked very bored with his work.)

Mad Man Films

One of the greatest rock bands of Boston. This is a fact.

Prime Movers

Mediocre rock. Good, but bored me at times.

Certainly, Sir

Great, danceable techno-rock!

Helms

The drummer wore a Slint t-shirt and they played post rock really, really well. For their last song they swapped out everyone but the drummer, called the band a different name (I couldn't hear it), and played even better post rock (apparently this was the first time that group had played together in six years).

Victory at Sea

Pretty good, sounded slightly like the Dresden Dolls.

Neptune, Thank You, Wzt Hearts, Donna Parker

2005-08-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:23588, neptune, thankyou, wzthearts, donnaparker

I've been extremely busy since the beginning of August so this and the following five posts will be quick, to the point show reviews.

It was August 8th, 2005 when I ventured out to the Midway Cafe alone. It's really a bar with a stage stuck on to it, yet it bored me. At least the music was great.

Donna Parker

Donna Parker (who it turns out is a regular in the local noise shows' audience) had an equipment failure during set up, which is a disaster for her. She did buy a new mixer, but didn't know how to use it. By the time she quit she had figured most of it out, but spent most of the set swearing. What I heard sounded great, though.

Thank You

An absolutely amazing noise rock group, comparable with Neptune. Absolutely worth seeing again

Wzt Hearts

Good, a little too ambient for my tastes, but good.

Neptune

Perhaps the best noise band in Boston. I bought their very, very rare, just-released E.P. which has the song The Late Worm.

Lycaon Pictus, The Pick-ups, Model Down

2005-08-12T18:48:00.000-04:00

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:25402, lycaonpictus, modeldown, pickups,

August 4th, 2005 by myself at TT's.

I've been getting bands annoyed with me because of short reviews, but I really don't have time for anything more. However, I don't like a lot of music so me thinking your band sucks doesn't mean much.

Lycaon Pictus

Picture Devo with only two members, neither of whom is Marky. Now imagine that you like it. That's Lycaon Pictus. I bought their album.

The Pick-ups

At first I didn't really like them—a little too neo-post-punk-ish—but after a few songs I started to get into it. Kinda twangy, in a good way.

Model Down

Didn't really get into this. Left.

Flag Day Party 2005

2005-08-07T17:09:00.000-04:00

With the help of many I threw a party! It went down on August 5th and probably fifty people showed up. According to those in-the-know, it went extremely well.

Music

Matt and myself invited five bands to perform; of those, only Silencio showed and played. This turned out to be fine; after four songs the police came and told us to stop.

For Silencio, and perhaps just for fun, Matt rented speakers from Daddy's Junky Music and borrowed a microphone from his neighbor. The microphone cable turned out to be bad and technical problems spoiled it slightly for Matt and myself, but the audience didn't notice or care and just concentrated on enjoying the awesome music. After Silencio stopped I played CDs through the beautiful speakers:

Lycaon Pictus - Deviation Amplifier
Dr. Frog - Erector Set
Darediablo - Feeding Frenzy
Anal Cunt - I Like It When You Die
Lola Rennt
Godfathers of Hardcore volume 3

Music went well overall and special thanks for that goes to Marcelo, Dave, and Marvio of Silencio and to Matt. Thank you!

Beer

After much debate and discussion it was decided that since we'll be serving liquor in addition to the beer we'll only need one keg. This turned out to be correct; most people left the party before the keg was finished around 1AM. We used Matt's chiller again to keep the beer cold; as always it worked perfectly.

Nate was in charge of picking up, paying for, and dropping off the keg, and the kegmaster position was given to him after much argument among people who didn't want the job. Nate held the job quite well for three hours when his judgement started to fail and the job was handed to Matt.

The keg went quite well and thanks to Nate and Matt we made back some of the money we lost by throwing this party. Thank you!

Liquor

Many people don't love beer—shocking but true. To combat this problem we had available one bottle each of the following:

vodka,
whiskey,
rum;

cranberry juice,
orange juice, and
tomato juice.

In addition we had Coca Cola, Sunkist, Mountain Dew, and Sprite.

Much discussion was had with Mosier about these, but ultimately Sarah pulled through and told me exactly what to buy. She was wrong but still helpful.

All hard liquor was gone by midnight. The vodka went immediately; next time we need twice as much, if not more. The whiskey went next, followed by the rum. The cranberry juice went quickly too; next time we need twice as much. A half gallon of orange juice was gone by the end of the night, and the tomato juice was unopened (this is where Sarah was most wrong). I still have lots of soda left.

To help with this momentus undertaking, Anne constructed a bar for me. It fell apart when Matt leaned on it and was used to keep the fire lit.

Many thanks to Mosier, Sarah, and to Dicky for carting my ass around. Thank you!

Food

For food our mothers helped out: my mom provided chips and dip, while Fred's mom provided a watermelon (which my mom cut). Thank you!

People

People everywhere! As usual it started off with just the party-throwers looking at each other, wondering if people will show up. Then, bam!, everyone and their friend shows up. My best guess is that fifty or sixty people passed through the yard by the end of the night.

Highlights of the evening related to this include the group of people looking for 30 Elm St., which is where their friend Matt Ch-something lives, they think. We found out later that this Matt character told people that he was throwing the party, and in addition he gave out the wrong address. Genius!

Somewhat related is another highlight for me: walking up to the strangers standing around in my yard and introducing myself. Inevitably someone will walk up to us and point out that I'm the one throwing the party (I'm too modest to do it myself). The surprised look on their face never gets old while they piece together why I was asking if they were having a good time.

Advertising was done on The Facebook, Upcoming, and word of mouth. During the party I passed around a notebook and pen for people to sign up for the party announcement mailing list; twenty-six people signed up. I don't know if anyone from Upcoming showed up and I think only one or two people from The Facebook showed up, but word of mouth brought in tons of people. In the future we plan to concentrate on word of mouth and experiment with the mailing list as a far-reaching word of mouth.

A big thanks to all who showed up: thank you!

Police

Fred and I had discussed when we guessed the police would show up: my bet was on twice, once at 9:15PM and once again at 11PM. We were both wrong: they showed up once at 10:08PM. Apparently the entire west side of Wakefield called in complaining about the noise. The cops also said that people were in the street and they'd arrest anyone they found in the street; this was fine by me since if they're in the street then they're not at my party.

They politely requested the music be stopped as Dicky was walking over, so I asked Dicky to go ask the band to stop. Marcelo stopped, but Marvio and Dave kept on enjoying themselves on their respective instruments. Inspector Cass wasn't having any of that so he marched over himself and told them to stop. They reluctantly did.

After the police left we started up with CDs. The band packed up after a bit and left in an hour or two, but nobody at the party left (so far as we could tell). Great!

Thanks

Throwing parties can't be done alone, so thank you again, in no particular order, to Fred, Dicky, Nate, Matt, Anne, Mosier, Sarah, Silencio, and everyone who came. Thank you!

Humanwine, Dreamchild, Amber Spyglass, Desar

2005-08-01T16:18:00.000-04:00

Last night I tortured Nate and his girlfriend Krista with a show at the Middle East Upstairs.

Désar

Désar started off without himself on stage but instead Olga and Natasha. They're not Siamese twins; they're Russian … they are conjoined, though—by an Ace bandage. They sang a cute song about how Olga is a prude and Natasha a slut.

This was great, but then they introduced "Désar—a German!". He played some sad piano songs. One was about a black cat. Nate, Krista, and I left for food.

Amber Spyglass

When we got back Désar was still on stage but was now surrounded by Amber Spyglass. They were more upbeat than Désar, but that doesn't say much. I would say that their drummer was off, but their drummer was a pre-recorded drum beat, so I suppose the rest of the band was off beat. Désar left the stage after a bit, so they invited Dreamchild to join them for their last two songs. Overall, not worth leaving, but not worth $8.

Dreamchild

Cheryl from Dreamchild takes the music too seriously considering how comical the lyrics were to my un-gothy ears. Lots of beautiful screaming. She also preceeded songs by presenting the ideas we're supposed to picture while the song is being sung. They invited Kelly from Amber Spyglass to play the finger cymbals on one of their songs. Interesting to watch, but not something I'd pay $8 for.

Humanwine

Humanwine is an excellent rock group with a good groove and obvious musical talent. Worth $8 if they play with at least one other good band.

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:23321, desar, amberspyglass, dreamchild, goth, humanwine

Flag Day Celebration

2005-07-29T22:09:00.000-04:00

Seems that I'm throwing a party. First, the names for this party:

Flag Day Celebration
Good Riddance Lance
Good Riddance Sarah
Mike's Haircut Party
Two-Months-From-Heidi's-Birthday Party
Mike's Infatuation with Heidi Party
Fred's Model Train Party

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, on to the ridiculous:

At least one band should be there. I put Matt in charge of this.
Swimming pool (bring a towel; swimsuit optional).
Trampoline.
Beer.
Bar.
Go-kart, assuming it works.
Boxing.
Mud wrestling.
Drunkest person contest.
Oh yeah, and way too many people.

Now that you know all this, it's vital that you do the following:

Tell your friends.
Tell your friend's band.
Show up.

This is all going down, without any problems what-so-ever, on Friday, August 5th, 2005, probably around 9PM.

To get involved in this stuff subscribe to the mailing list. To simply be alerted to these kind of events, subscribe to that mailing list.

Oh, and if this is ridiculous and out-of-control, wait until you hear my ideas for The New Year's Eve Party.

Tags: party, upcoming:25107

Gravy Train!!!!, Veronica Lipgloss, SPF Alot

2005-07-29T21:38:00.000-04:00

For Sarah's last night in Boston (for a while, at least) she joined Matt and I to dance while a man got naked on stage.

SPF Alot

I don't remember much about SPF Alot except that they weren't that great. Sarah made a comment about people dancing similarly to how people dance to hardcore techno.

Veronica Lipgloss

A pretty girl with hairy armpits showed us her black-and-white-polka-dotted underwear while her band played funky songs that we all danced to. Very fun, good music.

Gravy Train!!!!

Holy cow this was wild. We demanded Sippin' 40z, and they promised to play it (it is their hit, afterall), but the vocalist was unable to stand with 15 minutes left in the set. One of them took his clothes off, the others stripped down to their underwear, and their roadie shook her breasts with them for a song. The audience was absolutely loving everything they threw at us (Sarah danced for the first time in Boston). Amazing.

Tags: upcoming:23878, livemusic, spfalot, veronicalipgloss, gravytrain

Tristan Da Cunha, Mad Man Films, Roh Delikat

2005-07-24T00:28:00.000-04:00

On July 21st, 2005, Sarah used her other identity to join me at PA's Lounge for more guitars, bass, and drums applied to rock music. Sick of my willingness to walk everywhere, she insisted that we take the bus to Union Square; and in the tradition of my stubborness, I refused to pay for travel to a distance I could walk.

All Combinations

Sarah: Well, we wouldn't want to get there "unfashionably early".
me: We also wouldn't want to "miss the show".
Sarah: Good point.

We totally missed All Combinations.

Mad Man Films

The bassist dressed as a mother at night, the drummer as a father at night, and the guitarist/vocalist as a young child in his pyjamas. They played some rocking funky stuff with amazing guitar and drum skills that we really got into.

Then they made the fatal mistake that drove Sarah to thoroughly enjoy herself: while the guitarist stripped, he requested a lamp on stage next to him; while this happened, the bassist played the first three notes to the Talking Heads' song This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody). At this point it should be explained that Sarah has watched Stop Making Sense at least ten times a week since before I met her.

Mad Mad Films were great, in summary.

Tristan Da Cunh

They decided to switch instruments on this night, I think. That's what I gather. They also performed covers of songs that influenced them, or that they liked.

Regardless, the guitarist was amazing and the songs equally excellent.

Roh Delikat

Not quite as good as Mad Man Films or Tristan Da Cunh. I'd see them again if they played with another good band.

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:24058, madmanfilms, tristandacunh, rohdelikat

Silencio, Something Against You, Fight the Nothing, Visional

2005-07-20T14:47:00.000-04:00

On July 17th, 2005, Sarah, Matt, and I partied with Silencio before seeing them perform at the Middle East Upstairs.

Silencio and their party!

Silencio lives in an amazing location—directly across the street from The Middle East. Packed into their aparment must have been fifty people, all excited to hear Silencio perform. At least two (probably three or four) languages were shouted, stickers were tossed about, and photos were taken of everyone.

At about 8:50PM someone realized that Silencio was to perform in twenty minutes! We left the heat of the apartment to the cool of Upstairs, walking directly in as if we owned the place. Of course, we didn't, and they made us go back and pay.

More photos were taken before Silencio took to the stage. Marcelo was worried about his voice, and they were still missing a bassist, but the audience didn't care. We were all there for Silencio, whom we knew rocked. Marcelo called us closer, to make it seem like a real rock show, and encouraged us to yell and generally go nuts while Marvio, Dave, and Marcelo performed some of their wildest metal. It ended, on the last note of their last song, with Marvio breaking a string.

More photos were taken, more cheers were shouted, and Silencio left. Wild.

Something Against You

Sucked. We left.

Fight The Nothing

Didn't suck.

Visional

Didn't suck.

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:21320, party, silencio, somethingagainstyou, fightthenothing, visional

The Product, The Prime Meridian, Kite, Glint

2005-07-16T16:07:00.000-04:00

July 12, 2005 at TT's with Matt.

The Prime Meridian

Slinty and good. I only heard their last two songs, sadly.

The Product

Fucking awesome. I got their EP.

Kite

Whiny.

Glint

One good song; pretty bad. Good drummer. Left early.

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:23823, primemeridian, product, kite, glint

PantsYell, Love as Laughter, Cass McCombs

2005-07-16T16:05:00.000-04:00

July 11th, 2005 at TT's with Dicky and Matt.

PantsYell!

Yawn.

Love as Laughter

So-so.

Cass McCombs

Interesting and fresh. I'm sick of music in 4/4 or 2/4 time, so when the vocalist counted off "1 2 3 4 5 6" you can just imagine how ecstatic I was. Not sure if I'd see them again, but I don't see why not.

Tags: livemusic, upcoming:23822, pantsyell, loveaslaughter, cassmccombs

Clampede, Slow Motion Driver, Called and Careless

2005-07-16T15:57:00.000-04:00

On July 10th, 2005 I went with Matt to TT's.

The original purpose of this music Web log was to keep track of who I see and what I thought of them. Going with that, these reviews are really, really short.

Clampede

Mediocre hard rock.

Slow Motion Driver

Awful. If you're doing to have a five-stringed bass and a double-bass drum, the least you can do is rock out really, really hard.

Called and Careless

Good; not great, but good.

Tags: livemusic, calledandcareless, clampede, slowmotiondriver, upcoming:23821

Auditory Implant, Throne

2005-07-15T01:05:00.000-04:00

July 13th, 2005 at The Compound with Charlotte.

Auditory Implant

Good live show. Great musicianship. The drummer on vocals was an interesting touch.

Throne

The bassist, also the vocalist, broke a bass string during first song and couldn't transpose well enough to play the remaining songs (unlike Reserve). Bassist on vocals is a nice touch, but they were not as good as Auditory Implant.

Ride Home

After Throne, the guitarist of Auditory Implant (Charlotte's boyfriend) had offered a ride home. However, my bike couldn't fit in his car, so I took a bike trip home.

Tags: livemusic, auditoryimplant, throne

My thoughts on the topic

2005-07-09T15:12:00.000-04:00

I've just been informed that people are using various things I've written here against people I know. Well, don't. Thank you.

The Constantines, Oxford Collapse, Get Him Eat Him

2005-07-08T23:23:00.000-04:00

Since all my music posts are the same, I now present this music post in a summary form.

Who went: Matt Horan, Mike Burns
When: July 7th, 2005
Where: Great Scott
Overall comment: The Constantines stole the show, as usual

Get Him Eat Him

Sounded like a more exciting version of retro-rock, but it's still retro-rock. Wouldn't buy the albums, wouldn't see them again.

Oxford Collapse

Sounded like a weaker version of The Constantines. I would buy the album, though I didn't. Not enough of a fun live show to see them again.

The Constantines

This marked my third time seeing The Constantines, and I have never been disappointed by their wild tambourine antics. If you thought rock was dead then you haven't seen The Constantines.

They played some new material for an upcoming album, due out in October. The new material isn't as good as their old stuff (especially when compared to their first album), but it was good. They ended with a horrible cover of AC/DC's Ride On, but we didn't care. See this band then try to tell me that there's no good rock anymore. I dare you.

Tags: upcoming:20267, livemusic, constantines, theconstantines, oxfordcollapse, gethimeathim, rock, canadianrock

Neptune, Bread and Roses, The Cankickers, Gutterhelmet, Dreamhouse

2005-07-03T11:51:00.000-04:00

Last night, Matt, Cate, and I found the Harvard Social Forum for some vegan food (er, we ate first) and some noise and rock music.

Neptune

Technical malfunctions everywhere. The snare broke during the first song, the hi-hat didn't show up until the third song, the bass stopped working before the last song, and the snare fell over during the final improve jam session. Once the snare fell over the drummer lost it and threw stuff around.

Despite all this, the music was excellent. I finally got my hands on their original studio album. They're playing at Pan 9 in a few weeks, check them out.

Bread and Roses

They started out fun and fast, but eventually it turned too folky. Good music, just not the kind of stuff that I'm into.

The Can Kickers

A week back, when I told Matt about this show, I described The Can Kickers as a fiddler, banjo player, and washboard player performing wild rock. After this set, Matt agreed.

The drummer is absolutely nuts. I've never seen anyone so happy to pound away on a snare or washboard. At the end of the set he smashes the washboard while the audience tries to make the fiddle and banjo play faster by clapping. (I already had a piece of washboard from the last time I saw them, so I gave a piece to Cate.)

Wild stuff, be sure to see them.

Gutterhelmet

Cate left between the Can Kickers and Gutterhelmet, so I ended up missing some of this set. What I walked in on was song awesome math rock; as I got to the front I discovered a drumkit in the back left corner and an accordion in the front right. They rocked. Hard.

Dreamhouse

We took a seat in the very comfortable couches while the next band set up, which is just as well since it made their performance more of a shock. When my "they're going to play" sense started to tingle we found our way to the front, I thought. There were two drumkits, facing each other; a guitarist behind them; and some microphones and drumsticks laying around. The audience had twenty or so people remaining. They began playing, I think, with some noise from the guitar and one of the drums, when the back door flew open and people ran in, yelling, carrying a very large blue tarp. A bright light was turned on as we were covered in blue tarp. Immediately the audience knew what to do: pass the blue tarp so that it encompasses everyone, shake it, and yell. The light went off, inspiring the audience to pick up the drumsticks and bang on the drums.

I'm also reminded of this story from Sarah (from memory):

I was in a metal band for a week. I was the drummer, except we didn't write a drum part, so I just kinda sat there and banged on stuff when I felt like it. We played at my high school because, ya know, it was an art high school, so we were art.

I've to admit, I'm a sucker for performance art.

Tags: upcoming:23627, livemusic, neptune, breadandroses, cankickers,thecankickers , gutterhelmet, aleckredfearn, dreamhouse, performanceart, harvardsocialforum

Cracktorch, Broken, The Lot Six

2005-07-01T21:57:00.000-04:00

On June 30th Matt and I found the Cambridge Elk's Lodge to figure out who was playing and how much it cost. We ended up getting some awesome hard rock as a result.

Campaign for Real Time

Synthesizer, meet hard rock. You two will get along quite well in the hands of Campaign for Real Time.

One of the most enthusiastic and excited bands I've seen. If someone was at the merchandise table I would've bought their album.

Bury the Needle

Another one of the most enthusiastic and exited bands I've seen. The musicians played well and the vocalist really got into the vocals.

The Lot Six

Not quite as enthusiastic and excited as when I first saw them, but still amazing. A mosh pit formed which nearly took out the cute chick with the camera. They played past closing time (early—11PM) even though the management turned on all the lights and made a big scene about the show being over.

Tags: livemusic, thelotsix, burytheneedle, campaignforrealtime, upcoming:20641

Cotton Ponies, Bug, Reserve, The Hyphens

2005-06-28T11:30:00.000-04:00

On Monday, June 27th, Matt and I went back Upstairs to see the Cotton Ponies headline for Reserve, The Hyphens, and Bug.

The Hyphens

We didn't walk out on them. Standard rock and roll set with people who are good on their instruments.

Reserve

A young punk group with a wild bassist. On the first song he broke his D string and played the rest of the song by transposing onto the G. For the second song he borrowed the bass from The Hyphens; by the third song he couldn't get it to work with his amplifiers so, mid-song, he pulled the D off the borrowed bass and put it on his bass. This was neat, but while he did this he also ran across stage and jumped off the wall, climbed the amps, and posed atop the monitors.

On top of the great performance by the bassist was some fun punk. I intended to get one of their albums but somehow didn't. If they open again I'll definitely check them out.

Bug

Bug played some beautiful, swelling rock. Also an opener worth seeing again.

Cotton Ponies

While the other bands were doing their thing, the Cotton Ponies set up on the side of the crowd. As soon as applause for Bug began to die down, the Ponies jumped into String Puller. I imagine that this has been done before, but it was wild to see.

As is precedent, their music is exactly what I want out of a drone rock set, so I bought their album. (It's also the second album I got in the past month to have hand-written liner notes with a misspelling in it.)

Tags: upcoming:21318, livemusic, cottonponies, reserve,bug , thehyphens

Humanwine, The Cautions, Count Zero, Fluttr Effect

2005-06-28T11:29:00.000-04:00

I had heard of Fluttr Effect from Silencio's Web site, so I figured they were worth seeing on June 25th with Matt. Not only were they worth seeing, but Humanwine was awesome and Count Zero didn't suck!

Photos

There were many people there with expensive digital SLRs, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, taking all sorts of photos from all angles. I can't find any of these online. Really, what's the point of taking photos of a band if you're not going to post them in an obvious place on the Web?

Humanwine

Live, they remind me of Tool; in studio, they remind me of Lacuna Coil. If you like either of those bands you should definitely not only see them live but also buy their album there.

The Cautions

I don't like Weezer and, thus, didn't like this band. Them playing a Devo riff or a Cars cover didn't make up for the fact that all the rest of their songs sounded like Weezer.

However, this was their CD release party. The vocalist, towards the end of the set, held up a copy of the CD. "The first person to the front gets this for free," he said. The whole front row just looked at each other (including Matt and myself). Ouch. In the future if you're throwing a CD release party, make sure to open for bands with a similar audience.

Count Zero

The bassist for this band turned out to be the bassist for the now-defunt Dr. Frog; this explains why so many people at the Dr. Frog show were also here tonight. They were a fun jam rock band who I totally recommend seeing open for a good band.

Fluttr Effect

The place was really starting to fill up, unusual for Upstairs, and it was now that I discovered why: Cos. He was in the front row (to my left), chatting with the band, which meant that he had advertised it on his music 'blog. That also explained all the people dressed as if they were taking a quick break from Manray.

The music was excellent: the cellist was fun and skilled, the guitar worked well with the cello, and the MIDI marimba was both visually neat and musically beautiful. The drums were boring and weak in places, and as pretty as the vocals were the vocalist herself had a grating, attention-loving personality that got to me.
The audience demanded an encore and, though they weren't prepared for one, they did a quick one anyway. That was nice.

Tags: livemusic, countzero, thecautions, humanwine, fluttreffect, upcoming:22239

Ruby REPL

2005-06-27T16:06:00.000-04:00

I've been reading the Pragmatic Programmers Guide to Ruby, wishing I had a REPL, when I finally learned enough to write one. For the help of others and future experimentation I now present my Ruby REPL.

while true
  '> '.display
  gets.each do | e |
    puts(eval(e))
  end
end

Tags: programming, repl, ruby

Update: At the end of the book they talk about the interactive Ruby shell, irb. Now, why don't they mention this at the top of every chapter?!

On overtaking the world

2005-06-26T12:08:00.000-04:00

Matt and I have plans to overtake the world—at least, the world of hispters online. We're guided by the awesome Semantic Web and semantic web technology out there, the many social networking Web services, and two quotes:

JWZ

So I said, narrow the focus. Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

Blake Ross

The next big thing is the one that makes the last big thing usable.

We intend to start … eventually.

I'm still working on that AtomAPI server, only very, very slowly. Hopefully this new project will go faster.

Tags: socialsoftware, programming

Sick Guns and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

2005-06-25T00:39:00.000-04:00

A while back Matt, Sarah, and I saw some bands. One was amazing and the other put on an interesting performance.

Sick Guns

Interesting and fun, but the music was boring and repetitive. The lyrics were uniquely offensive which is refreshing when compared to the boring offensiveness that happens all day. "This song is about female ejaculation," they introduced for one of their songs.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

This is the best neo-traditionalist Christian performance art tree-hugging metal post-rock music group I've seen. Of course it's the only neo-traditionalist Christian performance art tree-hugging metal post-rock music group I've seen. Excellent music atop an excellent performance. Highly recommended.

Afterwards

To quote the great Jerry Seinfeld, Well, sometimes we do actually have to get up early, but a man will always trade sleep for sex.

Tags: upcoming:20692, sleepytimegorillamuseum, livemusic, sickguns

Heidi's Birthday Party

2005-06-22T15:09:00.000-04:00

I threw a party to celebrate Heidi Howland's Birthday; other things celebrated were Fred's graduation, Sarah's birthday, and summer. In summary, I out-did anything I had done before.

People

Well over fifty people showed up, perhaps more than sixty people even. This time we advertised with social networking Web services, specifically The Facebook and MySpace. This brought in old friends, friends of friends, siblings, and even random people (some of these random people recognized me as their grader from a class). Aside from the party throwers themselves (Dan Moga, Fred Howland, Mike DiStaula, Matt Horan, and of course myself), most people showed up around 8:00PM.

Music

The original intent was to have two live bands; of course, this did not work out (maybe next time I'll get Silencio to play). To replace the live band I "hired" Fred as a DJ. Rather than combining his CD collection with mine (and Matt's and DiStaula's, plus others), we just used whatever music we had previously put on DiStaula's laptop, hooked directly into the amp.

Music has always been an issue at parties, and this time was no exception. We started off with a playlist that Fred made, but after an hour Fred went out into the party proper to mingle, eat, and drink. Exponentially, people came over and added to the playlist; this in itself was fine. The problems arose when people ignored the simple rules of DJ'ing a party (actual DJs may disregard these as needed):

Do not cut off a song part-way though.
Do not remove other people's songs from the playlist. Re-arranging them is fine, of course.
Do not enqueue non-party music.
Do not repeat songs.

In addition, iTunes did weird things like arbitrarily alphabeticalizing the playlist based on artist.

Firetruck

Somehow an antique firetruck appeared in my backyard a few weeks back. It has working sirens and horn. As you can imagine, this was quite the attraction. If you can, somehow get a working firetruck in your backyard.

Trampoline

We have a large trampoline, which was another big attraction. There was always at least three people on, including the chicks on the trampoline. Despite the alchohol, there was no trampoline-induced vomit. I highly recommend one of these for your next party.

Swimming Pool

A week before it was 97°F; on the day of the party it was 60°F. Despite the chill, at least ten people used the swimming pool. Those who forgot their swimsuit swam in their underwear; those who remembered enjoyed drying off with a towel. Two Matts swam in Speedos. Sadly, no one swam nude.

On the funny-uh-oh side: Fred was drop-kicked by Moga, and Moga found a dead squirrel. Upon seeing the dead squirrel, Sarah exclaimed, "Bring to me a hotdog roll!"

Food

Matt Horan pulled through to amazing levels; he showed up with his car filled with food: hamburgers, hotdogs, cheese, rolls for the hamburgers and hotdogs, mixed snacks, twelve 2-liter bottles of Coca-Cola, eight 2-liter bottles of Moutain Dew, and a thirty-rack of Sunkist. Much loved and appreciated by everyone.

Moga took over the grill, breaking the handle in the process. He's quite the great chef.

I provided pretzels, Jax, and Tostitos, with mild and medium salsa.

Keg

We had been discussing the keg for weeks beforehand, and by Thursday we had decided on a ¼ keg. Friday night and Saturday we discovered just how many people were coming, and Mosier decided to run drinking games. This lead to the decision to get a ½ keg (Mosier and Moga convinced Fred of this) and to charge $5/cup.

This was the right decision: a profit was made and the keg was empty by midnight (at which point we discovered that kegs float in the swimming pool). To enforce and motivate the $5/cup rule, DiStaula was the Kegmaster, complete with funny hat and a real rent-a-cop pin that says "Police & Security". He was an excellent Kegmaster.

To cool the keg we used Matt's industrial chiller, obviously.

Soon after the keg ran out, people left. Next time we'll need at least two ½ kegs.

Fire

On our deck is a Chiminea, which was lit. We wanted it next to the trampoline. The solution: wrap a towel around it and have Moga carry it, while lit, next to the trampoline. It's okay, he's a Marine!

The Chiminea was a big hit, both because of the chilly weather (especially after swimming) and because Petey-poo brought three bags of marshmallows.

Fireworks

I only had simple fireworks lying around, so we lit sparklers, those snake things, and other ground-dwelling fireworks. Sparkler swordfighting was fun. For next time, we should get stuff that can blow people's hands off.

Go-Kart

When J.D. Leone showed up he made a bee-line to the go-kart. I figured that he'd drive around in the backyard, perhaps in the giant field behind the pool. Nope—he drove right into the street! Five minutes later the local police showed up and told us not to ride in the street, "and, uh, turn down the music, I guess."

Tags: party, heidi, birthday

"Big party, lots of kids"

2005-06-16T12:45:00.000-04:00

I'm throwing a massive party on Saturday, June 18th, 2005. It's to celebrate the first day of summer, which is also Heidi Howland's birthday (this is on the 21st). Assuming everything works out, this party involves:

A swimming pool (bring your own towel),
One live band (contact me if you want to play as well),
A keg in the pool,
A trampoline, and
BBQ.

In addition, it seems as if a whole truckload of people are coming (that's a lot). There's no reason why you shouldn't join in on the fun.

60 Elm St.
Wakefield, MA

Dr. Frog, Pako, Wack-ass Egyptians, Chinstrap

2005-06-11T17:47:00.000-04:00

My new hometown friends are too poor to come to all the shows to which I go, so I went alone on Friday, June 10th, to the Middle East Upstairs and saw the event of my lifetime.

Wack-ass Egyptians

That funk hip-hop rock band from Boston was absolutely nutty. The vocalists were the drunkest vocalists I've seen since I first saw Black Helicopter, but that only made them better. Their drunken antics involved pouring beer on each other, humping the guitarist, and slow dancing with the bassist. At the end they gave out all their remaining beers. Absolutely awesome live performance and the music is great as well.

Pako

After seeing the Wack-ass Egyptians my only thought was, "What could possibly out-do that?!" The answer: Pako. They wore masks and had a dedicated cowbellist, with an array of eight cowbells. Their music was fun but the performance was definitively excellent.

Dr. Frog

After seeing Pako my only thought was, "What could out-do that?!" The answer: Dr. Frog. Dr. Frog was a brilliant cross between The Dead Milkmen, The Left-Rights, and Anal Cunt. However, this was their final show; you're welcome to imagine how wild it was, but if it doesn't include a jackhammer then you need to keep imagining. Beer was thrown everywhere (I got a half-full can of Pabst Blue Ribbon right in the chest) and everyone walked home with a piece of a Dr. Frog instrument. This is the show that you'll be lying about going to in 20 years.

Chinstrap

After seeing Dr. Frog my only thought was, "What could out-do that?!" The answer: nothing. Chinstrap was a funk band whose vocalist was belligerently drunk and spent more time arguing with the audience than actually making music. I walked out halfway through from sheer boredom.

Tags: upcoming:19368, wackassegyptians,pako, drfrog, chinstrap, livemusic

Enon, Thunderbirds are now!, Crystal Understanding

2005-06-11T17:06:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, June 9th, Matt and I bumped into Nichole and Katie at TT The Bear's Place. They were there to see Thunderbirds Are Now!, I was there to see Enon, and Matt was there. It was an okay event.

No Photos

I try not to take photos using flash until someone else does, to make me feel like less of a jerk. Of course my camera isn't very good at taking photos without a flash. No one took flash photos that night, so I walked away with nothing. Oh well, you know what they look like.

Crystal Understanding

A trippy techno outfit who barely touched their instruments. They had a strobe light going the whole time and danced a bunch. The music was nice, but I've seen better performances.

Thunderbirds Are Now!

They were absolutely wild on stage: running around to the music, knocking things over, and shouting. The music was retro-rock, which is my current least favorite genre. Worth seeing if you like that kinda stuff.

Enon

They were absolutely not wild on stage, made a few mistakes, and played rather boring music. Their first encore was fun and rocking, though. Their second encore didn't happen because the audience left.

Tags: upcoming:17875, enon, thunderbirdsarenow, crystalunderstanding, livemusic

Nothing is secure

2005-06-11T16:23:00.000-04:00

Attention people of the Internet: There is no such thing as perfect network security. If you do not want information to be public, tell no one about it.

Silencio, The Hate Game, Reagan Babies, Of The Hour

2005-06-11T04:37:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, June 8th, Matt and I were the only people to go to TT The Bear's Place. I suppose I exaggerate a little; the bands also showed up. During this "private" show, we saw Silencio, Reagan Babies, and Of The Hour.

The Hate Game

Pop punk. We heard the first two-and-a-half songs then decided that standing in the pouring rain outside was better.

Silencio

This band was the only one I had demoed before the show. They alone were worth the $6, and with some other good bands would be worth $10. They're metal as fuck.

After their set the vocalist, Marcelo, chatted with his audience (that's Matt and myself, you'll remember). We exchanged email addresses, chatted about where we were from and the other smalltalk. We're close buds now, three days later. Probably.

See this band. I mean it. They're playing again on July 17th, so you damn well better be there.

Reagan Babies

The bassist and keyboardist for this band were absent (drunk and camping, respectively), so I really have no idea if this band is any good. They were quite political ("This song is about the oppression of black people. Uh, what a diverse audience…") and had an folky feel to them, which is cool at a rally or whatnot, but not so much at TT's. On the upside, they didn't totally suck.

Of The Hour

This band's vocalist sang really well. Of course it should be noted that I hate vocals and I especially hate singing. However, the backing music was really well-done and swelling, almost post-rock in a Talk Talk kinda way. Pretty songs, but not something I'd be interested in seeing.

Tags: upcoming:21158, silencio, reaganbabies, ofthehour, livemusic, metal.

Electrelane, Breaker! Breaker!, and Neptune

2005-06-07T12:56:00.000-04:00

Matt and I were ready to go to the Joe Turner show at TT The Bear's, but at the last minute Sarah emailed me with her decision of which show I should go to. She was right.

So Matt, Mike, and I went to the Middle East Upstairs to see Neptune, Breaker! Breaker!, and Electrelane, and it was the best show we've seen in over a week. If you backed out of this, you missed an awesome show.

Neptune

Comparable to Einstüerzende Neubauten, but more raw. An amazing sound came out of their homemade instruments (including two homemade guitars), upon which they banged for their hour on stage. Matt bought two of their albums on the spot.

They are bizarre, fun, loud, experimental, and worth seeing live.

Breaker! Breaker!

This was the weakest band there, and probably one of the top ten best bands I've heard this year. They did a normal rock routine, teetering on retro-rock were it not for the electronics coming from the keyboard. Lots of energy and excitement, and the guitarist's seemingly drug-induced state was funny against the drummer's joy. They ended their set with, "We're Breaker! Breaker! from New York, and we need a couch to crash on tonight!", which made me wish I still lived in Boston.

Electrelane

How have I not heard this band before?! An all-chick math rock group where everyone had mastered their instruments better than I've seen in too long a time. The guitarist's skill is comparable to that of the guitarist from Darediablo, and the keyboardist nearly matched her when she picked up her own guitar. Excellent bass and drumming, too, of course, but the guitarist really stood out.

They did a planned encore, which is a bummer, but their last song seemed to be a cover of Peter Gunn. Flat-out awesome and amazing.

The Music over the PA System

Usually they'll quietly play obscure music over the PA system between sets, sometimes from bands who have played in years past. Instead they played non-hits from well-known classic rock bands, including the Beatles. Notable for the let-down it caused among myself and others.

Annoying Photography

Years ago, before I owned my camera, I was annoyed by anyone using a flash at a show. Cameras have become more popular and very few people seem to be annoyed by that now.

At this show I saw a new annoyance: this guy's camera had an orange targetting light. It would illuminate, in orange, whomever the target of the photo was. The bands made it quite clear that they hated it (he got no face shots of Electrelane).

That and his red-eye reduction flash annoyed far too many people. I hope this doesn't become acceptable.

Tags: upcoming:20262, electrelane, breakerbreaker, neptune, livemusic

Cotton Ponies, The National, Pela, Charlene

2005-06-05T13:57:00.000-04:00

At least the Cotton Ponies were good.

Last night Matt and I went to TT The Bear's to see Cotton Ponies and anyone who wanted to headline for them. We left early, after The National got three songs in.

Cotton Ponies

Good post rock from some people who seemed serious about their music. The guitarists (no bassist) were really good and knew what they were doing. The most I can say about the drummer is that she could keep a beat. This is quite important, and not to be looked down upon, but also less impressive than the drummer for Pela.

This band would be worth the $9 if another good band played with them; if it was just this band alone, it'd be worth $7. Definitely a band to see again.

Charlene

A boring, whiny emo band.

Pela

A boring, whiny emo band with a yeah dude as the lead vocalist. However, the drummer not only held the band together but also threw some life into the music. Get this drummer out of the band and into something good.

The National

I have a strict policy when deciding whether a band sucks: I'll give any live performance two-and-a-half songs, any album three songs, and any demo from the band two songs. By the end of their first song I realized that they weren't going to last the full two-and-a-half, but I gave it to them anyway and was right. Boring moaning about lost love or something.

Yawn

Follow Cotton Ponies, get the drummer from Pela, and stop whining.

Tags: upcoming:21154, cottonponies, thenational, pela, charlene, livemusic

AdFrank & The Fast Easy Women, Les Sans Culottes, Ziaf, World's Greatest Sinners

2005-06-05T12:42:00.000-04:00

On Friday (two days ago now) I met up with Sarah at TT The Bear's to see some good bands and some okay bands.

World's Greatest Sinners

A fun jazz band. Even their slow songs got fast, so people were dancing and shouting and generally having fun. The vocalist had a surprisingly deep voice for a female, but it sounded good against the backing music. The band was tight, as all jazz groups should be, and music and vocals seemed to be considered equal among the band members. Definitely worth seeing.

Ziaf

A beautiful French woman sang traditional-sounding French songs, in French, against a pianist and drummer. In a different setting it might have made me feel sophisticated and smart, but in this setting it made me anxious for something harder. This is where Sarah showed up, which is a bummer because she missed the fun around World's Greatest Sinners.

Les Sans Culottes

Attractive French women in cheerleader outfits (with "their" name on the shirt, too—Celine Dijon and Bonnie Day) singing poppy rock songs in French. The audience loved them, causing dancing all around and a good time for all. They ended with a cover of These Boots Were Made for Walking. The backing band was also quite good but easily de-emphasized by the attractive vocalists in short skirts and knee-high boots.

This is the first band I've seen do an encore when they're opening. I have no idea how they expected to pull it off, but it was fun regardless.

AdFrank & The Fast Easy Women

They had a catwalk where the guitarist did a solo, which was awesome. The vocalist would come out onto the catwalk during every song to get closer to the audience. The first song was good, the second was the same, and by the third we were sick of it. They did at least two overly-dramatic encores (we left).

Summary

Les Sans Culottes and World's Greatest Sinners are worth seeing again; Ziaf and AdFrank & The Fast Easy Women are not.

Also, Sarah and I discovered that Hi-Fi Pizza and Subs does close. Shock and disbelief all around.

Tags: upcoming:21153, ziaf, adfrankandthefasteasywomen, lessansculottes, celinedijon, worldsgreatestsinners, livemusic

Dick Dale, Brant Bjork and The Bros

2005-05-29T19:13:00.000-04:00

Dick Dale is a bit of a celebrity, making the show expensive. Because of this, my friends were unable or unwilling to go. Many people in the audience seemed to have a similar problem; their friends would be willing to pay $400 for U2, but won't pay $20 for some good surf rock. Ah well.

Brant Bjork and The Bros

I don't like jam bands, and this was definitely a jam band. However, their drummer was a rock drummer, and he saved the band from being totally boring. I doubt I would go to a show to see them. They were all really good at their instruments, and some points of songs really rocked, but I also found myself yawning.

Dick Dale

Dick Dale and his band were an hour late, but the Dickheads next to me assured me that waiting is worth it. It turns out that they were right! If you thought Hawnay Troof had energy, you haven't seen Dick Dale. "I'm a twenty-year-old in a 56-year-old's body," he said. He'd run across the stage, pose with his bassist, run to the other end, flirt with a cute college student in the front row, grab some drum sticks and play the drums over the drummer, then bang on the bass with the drum sticks. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

He's very friendly and appreciative of his family and fans. On stage he brought one of his school teachers from when he was younger and a friend from high school. Instead of an encore (I hate encores) he signed anything people wanted signed.

His stories are funny, his stage presence is wild, and the music is awesome. See him, it's worth $20.

Audience

The audience left much to be desired. Many were tourists to local shows, who are always vocal about their lack of knowledge about the bands or scene. "I bet he's forgotten how to sing after all these years," said one. Another guy spent all night bragging about the shows of famous bands that he's seen.

Also in the crowd was my doppleganger, spotted by my friends before at other shows. He looks identical to me but with frizzier hair and a distict lack of rhythm. Such an out-of-body experience is absolutely odd.

Summary

Even though I have much negative to say, it was an excellent time and you'd better regret missing it.

Tags: upcoming:14473, dickdale, surfrock, brantbjork.

Juliette and the Licks, The Beatings, and Parker Hill

2005-05-27T20:31:00.000-04:00

Matt, Dan, and myself went to T.T. the Bear's Place for The Beatings, and ended up enjoying a wild show.

Parker Hill

Before the show, my friend Steve Lord found me and asked if I was here for The Beatings. "My band is on first", he said. I told him that they better not suck.

Anyway, they sucked. The drums were too loud and the music sounded not together enough. Sarah thinks they should get rid of the vocalist.

The Beatings

I'm still in lust with Erin Dalbec. In addition, they're a good band who obviously feels comfortable on the stage.

Juliette and the Licks

I had never heard of this band, but apparently many, many people have; Sarah had come to see Juliette, since she is in love with her. Juliette is Juliette Lewis, a well-known actress who decided to start a rock band instead.

They were really wild and exciting. I think they mostly played covers, but she was so enthusiastic that the audience was willing to listen to anything she sang. The Licks, her backup band, were the perfect backing band for her frenzy.

I probably wouldn't buy their album, but I would definitely see them again.

Afterwards

I met a pretty girl named Sarah at the show; she kept bumping into me during The Beatings and shared her excitement for Juliette with me. She turned out to be really cool and likes lots of good music, so I hope I bump into her at another show. (And if she finds this: hi!)

Tags: upcoming:19901, juliettelewis, julietteandthelicks, thebeatings, parkerhill

Boys In Static, Les Georges Leningrad, Hawnay Troof, Stereo Total

2005-05-13T03:14:00.000-04:00

Tonight Matt and I saw Boy In Static, Les Georges Leningrad, Hawnay Troof, and Stereo Total. The audience grew wilder as the night went on, for no apparent reason—they just wanted to make noise and dance around constantly. Thus, the audience made a good show into a great show.

Boy In Static

Imagine a whinier Smashing Pumpkins covering a Björk song, and you have Boy In Static. The guitarist/vocalist only used two chords in each song (not including power chords), and likewise the bass lines were very simplistic. Their neat bits were their finger drummer, who played a tiny drum machine very well with his fingers, and the guy in the back who kept turning knobs. I think the guy in the back was playing the soundboard.

Les Georges Leningrad

Wild, mysterious, and totally uncomprehendible. Avant garde punk played with masks over their faces and wigs. "This song is about loneliness. Aaahh! Ahahaaa! Yaaa! ..." Do see them.

Hawnay Troof

By this point I had bumped into Sid and he was talked about past times he saw Hawnay. "Expect crotch in your face and a very fun set", he under-exagerrated. This short man took the microphone, paced frantically across the stage, and yelled to us all how he loved us and life and that we need to yell and scream and stop caring so much about updated MySpace and The Facebook and LiveJournal; then he played some tracks off a CD on the stereo system while rapping over them in as loud, excited, and entertaining way possible. There is no controlling this man.

Stereo Total

Two French people playing German industrial rock on a drum or guitar and a keyboard or guitar. She played the straight-man to his wild antics, and sometimes forgot the words or just wasn't ready to continue playing. The audience was absolutely crazy by this point, knocking myself, Sid, and everyone else in the front row onto the stage, subwoofers, and middle of the dance floor, continuously. In addition, they invited Hawnay Troof on stage to sing about being hungry, and then invited a young female from the audience named Jenine (I think) on stage to sing with Françoise. A not-so-wild band with an absurdly wild audience made for the best time I've had in quite a while.

Summary

Do see and listen to the following musicians:

Tags: upcoming:14383, upcoming:19363, boyinstatic, lesgeorgesleningrad, hawnaytroof, stereototal.

Introduction to Ruby

2005-05-08T22:27:00.000-04:00

I'm about to embark on learning Ruby, so that I can implement a HTTP server that only implements the Atom API—nothing more. I've already found my HTTP framework (technically, Matt found it for me), which saves me the trouble of reading HTTP 1.1, writing the conformance suite for it, then writing the HTTP framework (this would have been done in PLT Scheme; I've switched to Ruby because of WEBrick). Now I need to:

Figure out unit testing in Ruby. Should be easy.
Learn the Atom API and Atom.
Find for or write the conformance suite for Atom API.
Write and release the program.

If anyone can point to good resources, let me know.

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

More live music!

2005-05-05T12:05:00.000-04:00

Cool bands who are playing live soon: Irepress, Wack-ass Egyptians.

Dust makes computers crash

2005-05-02T21:18:00.000-04:00

If your computer is crashing (rebooting, freezing, what-have-you) whenever the computation becomes heavy (ripping CDs or compiling programs), clean it. Buy some canned air and clean the dust out, especially the CPU.

May means shows!

2005-05-01T02:58:00.000-04:00

May has yet to begin and already six good concerts are scheduled for it! Join me in going to all of them, please.

Upcoming Shows

2005-04-16T04:03:00.000-04:00

When	Where	Who	Price
Sunday, May 1st	TT The Bears	Mahjongg, La Faccia Brutta, Fraction	$8
Sunday, May 8th	Middle East Downstairs	Erik Friedlander, The Mountain Goats, Shearwater	$12
Thursday, May 12th	TT The Bears	Les Georges Leningrad, Stereo Total, Hawnay Troof	$14
When	Where	Who	Price

py-xexpr

2005-04-13T00:34:00.000-04:00

With lots of help from Pete Markowsky, and last-minute checking by Matt Horan, I released into the wild the Python X-expression library (py-xexpr). It's even on PyPI.

The license is LGPL, and there are only two public functions provided. The data structure was changed at the last minute to be more rigorous. The XML -> Xexpr function takes an optional argument telling it to strip whitespace. And there are many tests.

Distaula's good party, geeky fun, and upcoming things to do

2005-04-10T04:01:00.000-04:00

Party

Mike Distaula somehow threw an excellent party. About thirty people showed up, we threw a flying disc (both inside and outside), some good music was played (and lots of bad music was played), and it lasted for six hours.

Programming

This party come immediately after a 30-hour hacking binge, during which many a fight broke out and much food was consumed. As of Tuesday, April 12th, at 4:30PM, I am done hacking on Carcassonne. Probably.

An outcome of this project is the yet-to-be-releaseed py-xexpr (I'll announce it when I release it). It is two Python modules (Read and Write) which provide XML as a native Python data structure, called an Xexpr (very similar to the Xexpr used in PLT).

Having gone from discussing a party to discussing programming shows that I need to split this Web log into three: parties, music, and programming. I'd love ideas on how to use my existing Blogger to do this (I don't know enough about things like Technorati to know that it will fix this; will it?), or some other service for each Web log, or any other idea.

Upcoming

Dick Dale, May 5th.
Allie Party, April 22nd. Tell your friends to tell their friends.

Music to hear

2005-04-07T04:38:00.000-04:00

Please come with me to help me find the venue of (and enjoy the presence of) the following shows:

Lizard Lounge:
4/12
Sam Bisbee

Middle East Downstairs:
Thu 5/5
The Reverend Horton Heat with special guests Supersuckers – 18+ $22

Great Scott's (Allston):
Sat 5/7
Black Helicopter, The Beatings, Lady of Spain

Middle East Downstairs:
Sat 5/28
Dick Dale – 18+ $20

The Beatings, and some other bands

2005-04-06T00:48:00.000-04:00

On Friday (April 1st) I, along with Matt, Mike, and Sarah, saw The Beatings open for Mittens, The Lot Six, and Apollo Sunshine (to be exact, they saw Apollo Sunshine headline a show with The Beatings, The Lot Six, and Mittens as openers). Half the bands were really good.

The Beatings

Although they were the reason I went to this show, they ended up as my second favorite band from the night. The bassist was really cute and songs like Nothing particularly rocked, but they also played songs like When The Guns Come Out, which, while good, sounds just as good from the comfort of my room. I bought Italiano finally, from Erin (the cute bassist).

Mittens

They were fun, and the vocalist had a good sense of humor and performed well. For example, the band forgot their second song halfway through; this normally-devastating event was saved by the vocalist singing "We don't know the words/We just wrote this song/Sorry! Sorry!/Maybe we should stop?". I wouldn't (and didn't) buy their album.

The Lot Six

To me, The Lot Six stole the show. They flat-out rocked. I let my hair down and headbanged, jumped into the mosh pit, then back up to the front where the vocalist was throwing the microphone stand into the subwoofer and the front row. He also decided to help the drummer out by jumping on the drum set. They kicked our ass for 40 minutes then left, and it was worth it.

Apollo Sunshine

I met a high-school friend in the audience who is apparently the roommate of some of the members of the band. For me, he told them that they'd better not suck; sadly, it didn't work.

They:

Were seven minutes late because they had to wear suits to perform.
Did not rock. Did not even make me nod my head.
Have fans who act similar to the fans of Pretty Girls Make Graves.
Performed a planned encore.

Mike Burns's Mediocre Party

2005-03-26T04:00:00.000-05:00

Some people showed up to my Spring Break Party, Part 1. Many, many more people will be at the sequel. There's also a party happening on June 18th. More details on both the Spring Break Party, Part 2 (The Allie Party) and Heidi's Birthday Party will appear later.

About 12 people showed up to tonight's party; not horrible, I suppose. It was a rockingly fun time, though. Good music was played, beer was drunk, pizza was eaten, and people socialized.

Food

Reheatable Prince pizzas were baked. At first (10PM) they weren't popular; by midnight they were gone. We had eight total, but there was demand for more.

Drink

Sunkist and Coca-Cola went. Root beer and Sprite didn't.

People were shocked to find that Sunkist has caffeine. That's why I drink it!

Music

I decided to play what I normally listen to, instead of typical party music. I took one request—Dead Kennedys.

The 90 Day Men - 1975-1977-1998
Big Black - Songs About Fucking
Shellac - Terraform
Rodan - Rusty
Slint - Spiderland
Slint - Tweez
June of 44 - Four Great Points
Darediablo - Feeding Frenzy
Turing Machine - Zwei
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
Turing Machine - A New Machine for Living
Trans Am - Futureworld
The Ventures - Walk Don't Run

Someone requested "party music", so I turned the volume up. That worked.

The End

The only couch-crasher was Nate. Jessoe drove three partiers back to Northeastern University (and Heidi home, down the street), and Mosier took care of Jim and Anne.

Slint's Mediocre Comeback

2005-03-21T01:05:00.000-05:00

Slint is performing their first tour in 14 years. They invented what would later become post-rock and math rock. And yet, the concert wasn't great.

We'll start with the good things:

It's Slint.
90% of the songs they played kicked ass.
It was a fun, close audience with two generations of hipsters in it.
Due to poor marketing, only non-trendy scenesters were there (give or take).
They did not play an encore.

Okay, now the not so good:

The opener needs to fire their vocalist. Of course, the opener was just a vocalist.
It took unnecessarily long for Slint to set up.
Two or more minutes of dead air between songs.
The Roxy is a crappy venue. We had a tiny dance floor to stand on, or seats.
10% of their song choices didn't rock.
The fog machine—can you get any more lame?

I do not regret giving Slint my money; I only wish the show was better.

Lazy Programmer

2005-03-14T01:20:00.000-05:00

I've been a busy/lazy/bad programmer, in that I haven't done anything useful. Sure, I'm working with Pete on the Carcassonne project in Software Development, but on the weekends all I do is party.

Because of this I'm not going to finish guploadr. Maybe I'll write the GNOME organizr later. Probably not.

On the upside, I'm getting practice at Python and, in the process, learning that I wouldn't enjoy using it as a real-life language. PLT 300 should have GNOME libraries, so I'll just wait for that.

Party

Speaking of what I do on weekends, I'm throwing a party on the 25th of March (2005). It's a Spring Break Party, Part 1. This is a party in two parts, and only certain people are not invited to the initial screening. Other names for the first party are "Good Riddance Friday" and "The Anti-Allie Party". Everyone's invited to the second, yet-to-be-announced party, named "The Allie Party".

I expect to see you at both! (That is, unless you're one of the uninvited. Jerks.)

Kevin Devine, Invert, and Rachel's

2005-02-28T01:40:00.000-05:00

Just got back from the Rachel's show.

Kevin Devine and the Goddamn Band

Were I in charge of this band, I'd fire the vocalist, have the backup vocalist sing, and let the drummer, bassist, and pianist play.

It takes a lot to play on stage. It takes more to play bad music on stage. I applaud this band for that.

Invert

Fucking good. See them and buy their shit.

Rachel's

I'd like to thank Rodan for Jason Noble, Rachel Grimes for having musicians as friends, and Eve Miller for being so fucking hot.

Rachel's was "Punk as fuck", to quote Jason Noble. I mean, they kicked over a music stand. Can you be any more punk?!

See this band and buy their shit. Perhaps more-so than with Invert.

Party Music Outcome

2005-02-27T03:51:00.000-05:00

I made three CDs worth of music for Mike Distuala's party. Overall, it sucked, but it was much better than the alternatives.

This write-up is split into two parts; the playlists, and comments on each song.

The Playlists

Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
Les Savy Fav - Who Rocks The Party
Liquid Tension Experiment - Acid Rain
Tight Phantomz - Ninja Talk
The Flaming Lips - Kim's Watermelon Gun
Scissorfight - Blizzards, Buzzards, Bastards
Wesley Willis - Casper the Homosexual Friendly Ghost
DVDA - Now You're A Man
Big Black - Precious Thing
Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized
Wack Ass Egyptians - Rub Your Legs Like A Cricket
Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right To Party
The Vandals - I've Got an Ape Drape
Green Jelly - Chewbacca, What A Wookie
Anal Cunt - Tim Is Gay
Turing Machine - Don't Mind If I Don't
AC DC- TNT (live)
Matt Burns - Howard Dean - Unchained

Trans Am - I Want It All
Einstüerzende Neubauten - Negativ Nein
Underworld - Dark And Long Dark Train
Front Line Assembly - Comatose (Grisha Mix)
Front 242 - Religion (Bass Under Siege)
Rotterdam Terror Corps - Sieg Heil Kanker Zwarten
Daft Punk - Around The World
Benni Benassi - Satisfaction(Radio Edit)
Fischerspooner - Sweetness (Mike Burns edit)
Underworld - Mmm Skyscraper I Love You

Fatboy Slim - Fucking in Heaven
Astral Projection - Kabalah
Underworld - Two Months Off
Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want)
Underworld - Rez & Cowgirl
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
Front Line Assembly - Big Money (Remix)
Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers + Queers (Mike Burns edit)
Devo - Jocko Homo
Hot Butter - Popcorn
Kompressor - Kompressor Does Not Dance

Comments

Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle: Keep it, and at the beginning.
Les Savy Fav - Who Rocks the Party: Mixed reviews. I want to try it again, but next time don't put it so close to the beginning. Can't follow something like Welcome to the Jungle.
Liquid Tension Experiment - Acid Rain: Too long, but well-liked.
Tight Phantomz - Ninja Talk: Ignored. Remove.
The Flaming Lips - Kim's Watermelon Gun: A crowd-pleaser. Keep.
Scissorfight - Blizzards, Buzzards, Bastards: Too quiet; normalize. Also didn't fit here. Consider replacing.
Wesley Willis - Casper the Homosexual Friendly Ghost: Well-liked. Keep.
DVDA - Now You're a Man: Keep, but shorten.
Big Black - Precious Thing: Remove.
Suicidal Tendencies - Institutalized: Remove.
Wack Ass Egyptians - Rub Your Legs Like a Cricket: Keep.
Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right: Keep. Ooooh man, keep.
The Vandals - I've Got an Ape Drape: I think keep. Probably.
Green Jelly - Chewbacca, What a Wookie: Keep. Maybe make it longer, if I can.
Anal Cunt - Tim is Gay: Either keep or replace with another AC song. Keep AC, though.
Turing Machine - Don't Mind If I Don't: Replace with The Doodler because it's shorter and has more of a beat.
AC/DC - TNT: Doesn't fit here; move closer to Welcome to the Jungle.
Matt Burns - Howard Dean - Unchained: Keep.
Trans Am - I Want It All: Good transition; keep.
Einstürzende Neubauten - Negativ Nein: Remove.
Underworld - Dark and Long Train: Keep.
Front Line Assembly - Comatose (Grisha Mix): Keep. Remove the end part with the lyrics.
Front 242 - Religion (Bass Under Siege): Keep. Normalize.
Rottendam Terror Corps - Sieg Heil Kanker Zwarten: Keep.
Daft Punk - Around the World: Keep.
Benny Benassi - Satisfaction (Radio edit): Keep.
Fischerspooner - Sweetness (Mike Burns edit): Cool song, not hated, and works well followed by Mmmm Skyscraper I Love You.
Underworld - Mmm Skyscraper I Love You: Keep.
Fatboy Slim - Fucking in Heaven: Keep, but: too long and remove the final spoken words.
Astral Projection - Kabalah: Keep, follow by Two Months Off.
Flying Lizards - Money: Put elsewhere, but keep.
Underworld - Rez & Cowgirl: Keep.
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker: Undecided. Breaks the mood, but could be useful for when the mood has become too repetitive.
Front Line Assembly - Big Money: Remove.
Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers + Queers (Mike Burns edit): Keep.
Devo - Jocko Homo: Remove. More of a crowd favorite than a good party song.
Hot Butter - Popcorn: Keep.
Kompressor - Kompressor Does Not Dance: Keep.

I might move many songs to a separate "Favorites" disc, with just often requested or funny songs.

By the next release I hope to mix the techno songs and provide a better transition between the rock songs.

Also, it should be noted that CD-RWs will not play in CD players, but CD-Rs will. I need to buy some CD-Rs.

Party Mix

2005-02-25T01:51:00.000-05:00

What music should be at a party? Here's the beginning of a list. I try not to include doubles of a band at a party, since there's a lot of music out there, but there are some bands that are really good for parties.

Music that is good for a party (the kind that I throw and go to, at least) is music that has a driving beat and exciting. For example, the genres goa or speed metal are useful, while the genres classical or blues are not. Also useful are short party favorites, but the music at a party shouldn't be noticed unless someone is trying to fall asleep.

AC/DC - TNT
Anal Cunt - Tim is Gay
Astral Projection - Kabalah
Big Black - Precious Thing
DVDA - Now You're a Man
Devo - Freedom of Choice
Einsterzende Neubauten - Negativ Nein
Fatboy Slim - Fucking in Heaven
Fischerspooner - Sweetness
Flaming Lips - Kim's Watermelon Gun
Flying Lizards - Money
Front 242 - ?
Frontline Assembly - ?
Green Jello - Chewbacca
Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle
Hot Butter - Popcorn
Howard Dean - Unchained
Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator
Kompressor - Kompressor Does Not Dance
Les Savy Fav - Who Rocks the Party
Liquid Tension Experiment - Acid Rain
Pink Floyd - The Nile
Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers, and Queers
Rotterdam Terror Corp - Sieg Heil Kanker Zwarten
Smashing Pumpkins - Adore
Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized
They Might Be Giants - How Can I Sing Like A Girl?
Tight Phantomz - Ninja Talk
Trans Am - I Want It All
Turing Machine - The Doodler
Underworld - Spoonman
Unwound - Scarlette
Vandals - Ape Drape
Ventures - Misirlou
Wesley Willis - Casper The Homosexual Friendly Ghost
Wack Ass Egyptians - Rub Your Legs Like A Cricket

Updated: Based on ideas from Konstantine Mandrika (Astral Projection) and Fred Howland (AC/DC).

Beavis and Butt-head Music Collection

2005-02-24T21:23:00.000-05:00

A goal over my Spring Break (wooo!!!) is to collect all the songs played on Beavis and Butt-head—illegally, of course. If someone knows of an existing, complete collection let me know.

Five Day Weekend!

2005-02-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

Party

Moga, Fred, Nate, Mosier, Anne, and myself threw a party at Jeff's. I'd like to thank Jeff for organizing it.

Boink

If you are college-aged and have not done so already, go buy Boink.

Railroad Gates

Railroad gates are made of a fiberglass material. Do not handle them with your bare hands unless you want itchy hands.

Another Person's To-do List

2005-02-19T01:58:00.000-05:00

I've come to accept that I will not do a single thing that I want to do until next semester, and perhaps until I graduate. So here are my really simple ideas that I want to do but do not have the time. Can someone please do a really freakin' good job on these for me, so that I don't have to rewrite them?

guploadr

Simple drag-and-drop Flickr photo uploading program for GNOME with clean support for multiple photos at once, an account, etc.

RDF library for PLT

Port Python's rdflib to PLT and post it to PLaneT.

GNOME Syndication Aggregator with Planet View

Straw sucks because it has bad programmers. Blam! is okay but has no Atom support and a language that runs poorly on non-GNU/Linux. I'd love a user-interface that is just a single view of the aggregation of all feeds, much like Planet, but entirely client-side (no server needed). For GNOME, of course.

Nautilus View for BSD Ports Tree

Open ports:/// and get the categories; open a category and get the programs to install. Right-click a program and select "Install" and that's it, it's done. Or something.

GNOME/Flickr integration for full control of Flickr

Never make me open a Web browser to look at Flickr. All the Flickr Web tools in native GNOME.

GNOME/RDF integration

Generate a FOAF based on the contact lists. Have Eclipse or Glade, etc., generate DOAPs. Generate Atom for every action the user takes (a friend can subscribe to the feed of the music you're listening to, for example). Automatically publish these to defaults and any additionally configured server.

Mid-week Weekend Summary

2005-02-16T00:49:00.000-05:00

Might as well summarize my weekend now, in the middle of the week after it. I suppose that's actually an example of this semester: more things to do than there is time in the day. Of course, if I didn't do my fun little things (e.g. this, eat, sleep, etc.), I'd have the time to do everything I need. Ah, but you don't care how busy I am.

Saturday I bought a 120GB hard drive from Computer Depot in Reading, MA. The rest of the evening was spent with Charlotte. Met in Boston, ate in the North End, then went to a party at Moga's. We also watched Garden State; I thought it was an over-done genre. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you think the genre is smart and unconventional (which it never was). Note that I have no idea what the genre is.

Yeah, that's all I did.

Oh, and if you're the chick who took a photo of my socks at North Station: hello.

Party Update

2005-02-12T13:50:00.000-05:00

In discussing the party last night with Mosier and Fred, we decided to supply a keg for the event. However, Mosier will run drinking games this time to make sure it gets finished.

Another cool idea is party t-shirts. I plan to get these made for my next New Year's Eve Party. Imagine wearing "I Survived Mike Burns' New Year's Eve Party 2005".

More party ideas forthcoming.

Weekend plans for 2005-02-11

2005-02-12T03:44:00.000-05:00

Friday

Nothing. That is

go to class,
turn in homework,
come home,
eat dinner,
watch Beavis and Butthead episodes,
watch MST3K,
coffee.

Saturday

Meet up with Charlotte around 8PM at North Station, then come back to Wakefield for fun and hijinx. She wants to watch Garden State, so I downloaded it. I haven't read anything about it, just in case it sucks.

Before then, I really don't know. I'd hope to work on guploadr or Subversion, both of which are nowhere close to ready. I also need a new hard drive; maybe I'll go to a nearby computer shop and get a giant hard drive.

Sunday

Work on setting up Subversion.

How to Throw a Party

2005-02-08T23:33:00.000-05:00

Rumor has it I can throw a party. To throw a successful party you need two things: many people, and lots of women. So when you come to The Spring Break Party, remember to help me out by bringing many, many friends. I can fit them.

However, there's more to a party than the people, and since I have a month to prepare I want to know what you, the potential party-goers, want from my party. For example, BYOB, no alchohol at all, or a keg? DEVO videos on loop? PlayStation with GTA:SA always on? Pizza? Chinese? LSD? And so on.

The party is Friday, March 25th at 9PM at my place in Wakefield. Please let me know how you want it run (use the comments, dammit!).

More Good Music

2005-02-07T23:21:00.000-05:00

Dick Dale is coming to Cambridge (MA, USA)!

Saturday, May 28th @ 8PM
Middle East Downstairs
Dick Dale
$20

Party

In other news, I'm throwing The Spring Break party. It's March 25th, a Friday, so you have no excuse to miss it. None! Not only should you come, but you should bring your friends!

And yes, random Internet stalkers are also invited.

60 Elm St.
Wakefield, MA (USA)
9PM
Food, alcohol, and fun, with a DEVO video.

Music to Own

2005-02-06T19:18:00.000-05:00

I'm one of the very few people who still buys music (almost to prove this I attempted to link to someone else who wrote about how he or she still buys CDs, but couldn't find anything good). I prefer, of course, to buy directly from the band, but even when I can't the quality and reliability of an audio CD is nicer than some crap stolen off the Internet.

However, I still steal music off the Internet for demo purposes. I suspect I'm not alone here, since many of the bands I listen to have samples on their Web site (some bands, like Invert, have samples in Ogg Vorbis, assuring me even more than I'm not alone in my crazy views). This weekend I went threw my downloaded music and came up with this list of bands who's albums I need more of:

Big Black

El Guapo (specifically Fake French)

Jesus H. Christ

Mermen

Rapeman

Sam Bisbee

Six Finger Satellite

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Wack Ass Egyptians

Sadly, I missed the Sam Bisbee concert, since no one wanted to go with me who was over 21. I hope I don't miss the other upcoming shows for the same reason.

Weekend hacking summary

2005-01-30T14:49:00.000-05:00

As I learn GNOME Python programming by way of Google, I come to realize that I need to document what I've learned so that future coders can use Google easier. My intent is to write a summary each weekend that I hack; we'll see how that really goes.

My hacking was cut short Friday night (well, 3AM Saturday) by a hard drive failure in my mail server (and Web server, and database server, et.c). I did an emergency hard drive replacement and recovered what I could from the old one (causing two kernel panics on the way), finishing up at 7AM with a working Exim. I just now got Apache going again (there was a party in between, you see) and will get PostgreSQL going in a minute. Future plans (next weekend, or maybe this week if I need it sooner) include Subversion.

Despite all that, here are some tips:

gnome.init

If you get the error message:

(guploadr.py:33062): Gnome-CRITICAL **: file gnome-program.c: line 870 (gnome_program_locate_file): assertion `program != NULL' failed

That means that you forgot to do this before calling gtk.glade.XML:

import gnome.ui

gnome.init('guploadr','0.01')

GNOME File Selector Dialog

To use the file selector dialog use this callback:

def on_open1_activate(self, widget, *args):

    chooser = gtk.FileChooserDialog(

        title="Select an image",

        action=gtk.FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_OPEN,

        buttons=(gtk.STOCK_CANCEL,

          gtk.RESPONSE_CANCEL,

          gtk.STOCK_OPEN,

          gtk.RESPONSE_OK))

    if gtk.RESPONSE_OK == chooser.run():

      print chooser.get_filename()

    chooser.destroy()

About Dialog

To show a dialog window, such as the About dialog, in your constructor create an instance of it:

self.about_dialog = self.widgets.get_widget('about2')

Then in your callback just show it:

def on_about1_activate(self, widget, *args):

    self.about_dialog.show()

Unsolved

I don't fully understand drag-and-drop yet. I'm reading example code at the API Web site, but I'll need to check out real code soon.

Speaking of real code, I need to use the thumbnail viewer from gthumb. It's a bonobo component, I think. How do I do this?

Other Software Ideas

A good-looking, working, easy-to-use Web log publishing software for GNOME.

A syndication aggregator for GNOME with a Planet-like view.

GNOME Flickr Organizr.

More upcoming things to go to

2005-01-29T01:33:00.000-05:00

Who wants to join me on these?

February 5th; 9PM
Sam Bisbee
TOAD (someplace in Cambridge, MA, apparently)

February 3rd, 4th, or 5th; 8PM
The Who's Tommy
MIT

Weekend guploadr plans

2005-01-28T23:25:00.000-05:00

It's the weekend again; time to hack!

My fake plans: write test cases for all the testable guploadr functions. This will fless out the API and help me know when I'm done. Before writing any non-GUI code I will write tests.

My real plans: play with the GUI. I figured out Glade and how to use it with Python and now need to figure out more of how to use it. That is:

Drag and drop

Dialogs (About, Publish, and Open File)

I might not have a lot left to write, but I still need to learn this stuff. Easier said than done, but Google is helping.

Next weekend I'll write the tests. I have my Flickr API key (stored on two computers so I "won't" lose it). Maybe I can interest a friend in some programming tennis.

Python/guploadr update

2005-01-26T14:27:00.000-05:00

I talked with Peter Markowsky about my Python questions. He pointed to PyUnit for unit testing. Testing GUIs is obviously not easy, so I suspect that no such library exists for Python. He also told me about Distutils. Thanks, P. Laurence Markowsky-von Brown!

I also talked with Michele Campeotto, the author of FlickrUploadr. My plan is now to build my prototype, mostly to learn how to use Python with the GNOME libraries and Flickr backend, then abstract my code to be useful for both projects, then develop either FlickrUploadr or guploadr. Since I'm a Schemer my code will be drastically different and a lot of other Python won't make sense to me, so I'll probably just stick with my code for a while.

What I ended up coding

2005-01-25T01:12:00.000-05:00

I had all sorts of plans involving RSS and RDF and PLT Scheme, but I ended up teaching myself a little Python and coming up with the grandest idea that I might be able to follow through with: guploadr. That is, the GNOME Flickr photo upload program.

I've switched to Python because I do not have the time or the patience to write the GNOME and Flickr (and GTK+, REST, libglade, and so on) libraries for PLT Scheme. My plan is to use Glade to generate the user interface and James Clarke's Python Flickr module to handle the backend, leaving me with nothing but glue code.

So far I'm trying to learn Python (and by "learn" I mean writing code like:

def reverse (l):

 q = l

 q.reverse()

 return q

) and Glade. Next up I'll apply for my Flickr API key and spit out the program.

The common use case is extremely simple: drag images onto guploadr, select a bunch of images, edit their tags, select more images, edit their descriptions, then publish the images. The first time this will ask for your email address and password; after that it will save it.

I do have some pending Python and Glade questions:

How do I test units?

How do I test GUIs?

How do I package this all up?

Why are so many Python procedures destructive?!

I've created a mock-up of what I think I want it to look like. Next I have to read the HIG and apply that.

Update: I should Google first, think later. Mine intends to be quite different, so I will persist regardless.

Upcoming Shows

2005-01-22T21:29:00.000-05:00

I hate going to shows alone. Who's with me for either of these?

Sunday February 27th, 2005
Middle East Downstairs
Rachel's and Invert
$15 in advance, $18 at the door
8:00PM

Thursday March 3rd, 2005
Middle East Downstairs
Irepress and Subtle
$12
8:00PM

New digital camera

2005-01-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

I got my new digital camera, an Olympus D-580. Not exactly what I wanted, but I really just wanted to get out of Best Buy. I never realized how much salespeople piss me off until today.

Regardless, it worked flawlessly under FreeBSD 5.3. Here's my /etc/fstab:

/dev/da0s1    /camera    msdos   rw,noauto       0       0

And, for automounting, here's what I added to /etc/usbd.conf:

## Olympus Digital Camera

device "Olympus D-580"

  devname "umass0"

  vendor 0x07b4

  product 0x0105

  release 0x0100

  class 0x0000

  attach "sleep 1; chmod 0666 /dev/da0*; /usr/local/bin/sudo -u netgeek /sbin/mount /camera"

  detach "/sbin/umount /camera"

I don't think the detach line works. Also note that I manually chmod the device, because I couldn't get devfs to work properly for da0. The user netgeek owns /camera, so that it's user-mountable.

The automounting plus Nautilus makes getting photos as simple as plugging the camera in.

Relevant weekend plans

2005-01-22T01:07:00.000-05:00

I need to work on my PLaneT modules this weekend. To be exact, I want to update my RSS module to handle Atom and verify that it produces correct RSS 1.0. It should also default to producing RSS 1.0 for now.

Also on my list is my PLaneT RDF library, to be modeled after Python's rdflib. Ideally this would be used as a back-end to the RSS library, so that the RSS library can produce RDF/XML or n3 in a way that can be reused for the FOAF and DOAP libraries I plan to make. So, maybe I'll restart work on my RDF library this weekend.

This all got inspired because Matthias refuses to publish the course 'blog in a syndication format, so I undertook the responsibility of scraping and producing my own. I have something but I don't want to link to it yet in case I want to change the URL later.

On a totally different topic, I bought a Pro account at Flickr, which would seem stupid since I don't have a digital camera, but tomorrow I am purchasing one—hopefully an Olympus Stylus 300 Digital.

Web services

2005-01-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

I'm getting into Web services lately, even those with a community around it. No, I'm not signing up for LiveJournal, but I want to make announcements that survive past the change of an away message.

So, I'm now on Flickr, Freshmeat, and Blogger. I mainly use my real Web site as a central place to find me and my resources.