I didn’t start listening to much of any kind of country until my father died just over four years ago. Growing up in the South, I’d always been around it, but I tried my best to tune it out. When Dad died though, something in me yearned for home, heritage and a sense of times long ago passed. Before we left Chattanooga and his funeral, I had by sheer accident locked onto a country station, and found the voice for so much of what had just happened in my life.

When I got back to St. Louis, I started listening to a wide swath of country music, and one of the first CDs I picked up was Will the Circle Be Unbroken, which featured Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny Cash’s mother-in-law. I was drawn into the fabric of the music I heard on those CDs, and started listening to Cash’s music as an extension of that.

As part of that exploration, I picked up a second hand copy of Cash’s autobiography a couple of months ago and devoured the first part of it, before being interrupted by work and life, and only just picked it back up to finish it. I don’t think I’ve read too many biographies (auto or otherwise), but taken on its own merits, this book was an awfully good read. I don’t know how to better describe it other than saying that it was brutally honest, and was written in such a way to make you feel like Cash was right there, telling you the story of his life. It’s amazing how well his (apparent) manner came across in the writing of the book.

I highly recommend this one — it’s outstanding. It won’t make you cry or experience any great revelations… well, aside from the section detailing Cash’s self-destructive time spent in the caves at Nickajack, not far from where I grew up — if you can’t see the hand of God in that, then you’re just flat blind.

Go get this one and read it. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.

This morning on the way to work, I noticed that Steve Wozniak was co-hosting on XM16 (the folk music channel). Apparently he was choosing the music, and I kinda liked the music he was spinning. He was also spinning tales drawn from his amazing life. Fun to listen to, and delivered from the viewpoint of someone who not only lived through the computer revolution of the 70s and 80s, but actually did a great deal to shape part of it.

With the time change this weekend, my cycling after work is done for a while. The sun sets too early now for me to get to the trail, change clothes, and get in a decent ride before darkness envelopes the trees on the trail. In fact, this will probably be the case until the time changes again in March, although I haven’t looked at the sunset times out that far to see if I might be able to get some evening rides in ahead of that.

Bummer that. I guess that means big rides on the weekends, and the odd few miles around the neighborhood after work, until it gets dark too early for even that. (By the Winter Solstice, the sun will set around here before 4.30pm.)

Unfortunately, I think that puts my goal cycling 1000 miles before the end of the year in jeopardy….

Overnight, we completed a huge migration to new hardware at the office. This was the culmination of almost six months of work by the team, and went astoundingly well.

I got home around 3am, and slept until almost 11am — that was the sweet sleep of success. No pages, no e-mails, no emergencies, and no worries about anything major cropping up tomorrow when I start the next work week.

Again, I’m sure I’ll sleep nicely tonight!

In such an improbable pairing — the Cards vs the Tigers — my Cardinals have brought home the World Series Championship tonight. What a great way to christen the new stadium in its first season!

Becky said it best — it’s just plain fun to enjoy the excitement of the folks on the field as they leaped about like little kids, hugging each other, and spraying champaign all over the clubhouse.

For me, this is the first time I’ve been in a World Series winning city. In my short time in St. Louis — just over a decade — I’ve seen the Rams bring home the NFL championship, and the Cards bring home the MLB championship.

St. Louis really is a sports city!

So this morning Slashdot posted a blip about a Microsoftie buying his way into space. (Which, for $20M may be one of the best bargains on the planet — just not very attainable for the masses.)

Of course, there were loads of comments about this, but one really seemed to capture it for me:

Can we take up a collection to send a civilian into space with the ability to translate the experience into art? Somebody like Spider Robinson, or Tom Wolfe, perhaps? How long will the most liminal and mind-expanding human experience only be the province of those who lack the passion and subtlety to appreciate it, and who cannot, therefore, sublimate it for the rest of us? “Space. Wow. It was so damn empty. Man, you can see the whole earth! Even the dark bits, without people!” If we send somebody up who has the craft to record their experience in an engaging and creative way, then it is like sending ALL of us into space. I can think of no quicker way to give the space program the cultural boost it needs to survive increasing (understandable) voter apathy. Sure, Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop like chocolate, but they don’t deserve the factory…

I volunteer to be that artist. Give me my iPod, my camera, a MacBook Pro, and rocket me into space on a Soyuz. I’d capture your art, and make space accessible to the common brain — darn tootin’ I would!!!!

Today was the fifth birthday of the iPod, and there’s been much rejoicing and hullabaloo all over the ‘net about this momentous occasion. Adding my voice to that cacophony probably doesn’t bring much value, but I will tell you how this little device has both rocked and rolled my world.

But first, I need to tell you about my music appetite.

When I was in high school in the late 70s, I was a rebel without a clue, but I did have an AM/FM transistor radio that I carried daily to school. I’d wolf down my lunch, and sit in front of the school, reading a book, and listening to the local rock station.

Fast forward a few years to about 1983, and CDs started to hit the market. At this time, I had hundreds and hundreds of LPs, and was a nut about taking care of them – linear tracking turntable, play-once-and-record on a dbx-enabled tape deck. I saw a second generation Sony CD player, and I was hooked. I think I paid about $700 for that beastie, and began building my CD collection.

Not too many years after that, I saw my first portable CD player, and was convinced that was the direction I needed to head. By the time the late 1980s rolled around, I had a portable CD player, and as the calendar turned to the 1990s, I regularly took it to work, schlepping a dozen or so CDs with me to listen to throughout my day. Later, I’d just play them in my PC at work, but the drill was the same – listen to a few tracks, change the disc, and move on.

The late 1990s introduced me to MP3s, and I ripped all my CDs to MP3s so I could carry them to work that way. With almost 10 CDs stored on a single MP3 CD, I thought this was as good as it could get, and I worked this way for years. I’d carry a few to work, and listen there, but once I got home, I didn’t listen so much. While there were portable MP3 players out there, I never really jumped on the bandwagon.

Frankly, I don’t remember when I first heard about the iPod. It was not at its time of announcement, I know that. I didn’t even think about buying one until the iPod Color (4G) model was released in 2005. By then, I’d started delving into photography seriously, and I saw the potential for not only showing off my work on the device, but being able to use it as a portable storage device during shoots. As it ends up, I barely used it for either purpose. Why, you might ask?

Well, I discovered my music again. I was like a kid in a candy store. I filled up my iPod (60Gb), and quite by accident, began living my life to a soundtrack… one I was making up as I went along. My iPod went with me everywhere – work, mowing the grass, cycling, photo shoots.

This year, I upgraded to an iPod (5G) 80Gb. I’m putting video on it, and enjoying the soundtracks of some of my favorite films while going through my life.

I’ve never listened to music as voraciously as I do now, and it’s all the iPod’s fault. Now I listen to the “dead” tracks on CDs that I’ve never listened to before. I have playlists, both automated and with tracks selectively chosen, that can transport me to particular points in my life, as well as making certain events more pleasant: coding, cycling, and all kinds of other events. I stay up to date with things both tech and photographic via podcasts.

This little device has not only brought me and my music back together, but it has made it so easy to consume mass quantities of music, video and podcasts anywhere I am. The ease of doing this takes me back to my music-listening roots… and I can do that anywhere I want!

Happy birthday, iPod!

Being a fan of black and white photography — and I am — I found a site I enjoyed mucho. It’s called New York Changing, and is chock full of old photos of Gotham alongside re-shootings of the same area now.

I’ve not yet scolled through all the photos, but they are wonderful, and really tell a great deal about the growth of New York. In some photo pairings, there’s little change. In others, the change is so dramatic that it’s easy to question if the photos are of the same place.

Cool stuff, and well worth looking at.

WordPress has this little feature on its dashboard that shows me (sometimes) when other blogs link to mine. I don’t get too many hits from other blogs — my site just isn’t that popular! I noticed one recently, and went looking to see what it was.

Bob Rhubart writes a blog for Flashline, which is a technology suite recently picked up by BEA and rebranded as Aqualogic Enterprise Repository. He was also at BEAWorld and saw Shaygan Keradpir’s presentation at the keynote, and sounds like he was every bit as impressed as me. I guess my coverage was good, as Bob quoted my blog here. I don’t think I’ve ever been quoted out to a decent sized audience like this.

Pretty cool stuff!!!!

Man, I hate finding stuff like this….

Friday, I was listening to some podcasts from the Photo Talk radio guys, when my iPod suddenly reset. Huh? That’s not supposed to happen. I tried the same podcast again, and once again I was transported to black screen with an Apple logo.

As I dug into this weirdness on the ‘Net, I found that lots of folks had been having this problem, which seems to date from the latest update for the iPod that came with iTunes 7. From what I could gather, podcasts greater than 45 minutes in length and material in mono were both culprits.

My oh my, I can’t believe one of the staples for the iPod — podcasts — are busting up the happy little Apple world!!!!!