Download NiggyTardust

May I humbly recommend that you point your web browsing application on over to Saul William's new album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, which was produced by Trent Reznor (Mister Nine Inch Nails to you) and is available as either a free download in 192Kbps MP3 format or a $5 download that lets you pick between the 192, 320Kbps MP3, or lossless FLAC formats. Now, if you ask me, $5 is just about the perfect price for an audio experience such as this. That's pretty much what I paid for the new Radiohead thing, too. It's even more pleasant when I know the money actually going to the artist.

And not only do you get to feel good about "sticking it to the man" by circumventing the record companies, you'll also get what I consider a rather enjoyable album. (Added bonus: Somehow the MP3s have lyrics/blurbs that show up on the iPod. This is magic to me.)

Oh, Internets, how I love thee!

Some tidbits that make me happy:

  • Have you found He-Man? I'm not really sure why they've labeled this guy He-Man. He's much more like a Chippendales dancer with his Swayze mullet, velvet choker, and perv 'stache.
  • You know who makes me happier than He-Man? German Techno Viking, that's who! He makes me giggle with the boundless joy of a little girl.
  • Then there's Tiffany Sutton (no known relation, thanks). Brozo pointed her out to me a while ago when her story first broke. Now she's been to court and "attempted to show her remorse". (I'm guessing she didn't do so well, if that's how they wrote it up in the paper...) I've bolded some awesomeness for you:
    • In one incident, she and the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, were high on drugs and drunk when he agreed to be tied up during sex, a police report states.

      McDaniel told police he became scared and asked Sutton to untie him when she attacked him with a knife. Instead, she sliced his leg, punctured his arm, shoulder and back, and cut his neck and stomach, court records show. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

    • So you're telling me there were multiple incidents? Did the others involve excavation tools?

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Track o' the Post: Moaner from Boucoup Fish by my favorite techno wizards, Underworld (FYI: This is the first time Amazon didn't have the MP3 download for the track I originally wanted to use: "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" by the Arctic Monkeys, which I still think is the more appropriate/amusing choice.)

What's the Meme?

Just a couple quick hits worth noting:

  • This morning I gave Radiohead two British pounds for the digital download of their new album, In Rainbows. They let you pick your own price. I put mine on the low side because I'm only a marginal Radiohead fan (and the album web site is a pain in the ass). It's still more than five times the $0.74 per CD music artists supposedly get from the labels (if they're lucky).
  • Say what you will about the French, they sure have talented news anchors (careful, boobies!).

Amazon Sells Music Correctly

You know what else I like? The new Amazon MP3 Music Downloads thingy, that's what. Prices are roughly similar to iTunes Music Store and there's no DRM whatsoever.

Hotness on a bun. (Y'know... As far as buying music goes. I still say buy directly from the artist if at all possible.)

The boss at Yahoo! Music agrees:

But now, eight years later, Amazon’s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync’d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.

8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, “if we build it they will come�? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn’t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.

I'm also still a big fan of Amazon Unbox with its $4 "rentals" that download straight to my TiVo.

That's sexy, too.

Tattoos Are Social

First, a pointer for y'all to check out Inked Inc., a Ning-powered social site for "counterculture professionals". The site is very young at this point, so it's been kind of fun so far. The biggest thing working for the site so far has been the participation of Marisa from Needled. She's the coolest.

PSA over, I'll just mention that I've started blogging about my next tattoo there.

The Next One A week from today I have a consultation with my artist, Fish at Th'Ink Tank Tattoos in Denver, about my next tattoo. So, what am I going to get? Well, it kind of depends...

I'll keep cross-posting links here, so no worries.

Doom & Despair? Where's the popcorn?

Last night the Wife and I took in Children of Men (via Amazon Unbox, no less -- pretty sweet). I loved it big time, but then I'm a sucker for distopian visions of the near future. My favorite part is when everyone stops fighting when they see the first new born in 18 years, letting the protagonists carry the baby through an urban war zone unmolested... And then suddenly someone fires a rocket and everything picks right back up. That scene right there is is one of the most pointed and concise commentaries on the human condition I've seen in a while.

Speaking of distopia and commentaries on the human condition, our friends at I Watch Stuff had a run of tidbits (two) regarding my favorite sub-genre: Skinhead movies!

First, we have Kevin Bacon going to war against an overblown "skinhead" gang in Death Sentence. It looks absolutely ridiculous (it's directed by the Saw guy...), but at the same time AWESOME.

Next we have This Is England about a young lad falling into the British skinhead family in the '80s. Looks effing fantastic (to me).

21.21% Mainstream

I've become a "scrobbling" addict lately. I'm especially concerned with my last.fm profile accurately demonstrating my overall musical tastes, so I'll tailor my day-to-day listening to try and balance out any temporary flights of fancy I might have (Like the Monkees binge I'm on right now, thanks to Merlin.). Nothing feeds into this obsession more than this Mainstream-o-meter, which compares your top 30 artists with everyone else. My results are skewed due to a couple audiobooks and a few artists that really shouldn't be ranked as high on my list as they actually are currently.

Interesting observations that illustrate an obvious "last.fm users vs. the rest of the real world" bias:

  • Elliot Smith and Sufjan Stevens are more "mainstream" than The Beach Boys.
  • The Beatles and Radiohead are both above 100%, they are so mainstream.
  • Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Tori Amos all seem surprisingly low.

(via Brandon's del.icio.us)

Hi. How are you?

So the big news of the past few days is the hot water heater saga: Last Thursday evening The Wife and I went out in Boulder to the Rio with a gaggle of my new coworkers. After a lovely evening discussing the possibilities of attending a roller derby, a mixed martial arts bout, or a minor league hockey game (or all three) with the company founder's wife, we came home to discover that we had no hot water. A quick trip downstairs revealed that our twelve-year-old tank was done and dead and pissing itself on the basement floor. Off go the water valves, and I know what I get to do Friday (hardly a worthwhile day off work, if you ask me).

Long story shorter than it might be: We actually had the funds on-hand to do the upgrade to a tankless water heater like I've wanted to do. Now I'm a proud owner of a Rinnai unit hidden away in my crawl space. The old space for the water heater is now only filled by a wall-mounted control panel. Best of all, I can take a shower all friggin' day long if I want to.

There are couple downsides: the hot water is mighty slow to come at first; the hot water pressure is noticeably lower than that of the cold water. But neither of those bother me much -- the continuous nature of the hot water (I can now happily take my shower after everyone else in the house!) more than balances them out, IMO. (Oh, and I guess I get $300 next tax season...) Also worth noting: David at Oasis Plumbing rules me - highly recommended.

Other News:

High Ho, High Ho

I have no idea how long it's been since I've actually been to work. I had the week between Christmas and New Year's scheduled for vacation, but then we had the Hanukkah Blizzard of 2006 so things got started off really early for me. I guess two weeks ago today was the last time I was in the office. Take a guess at my motivation level... ;)

Thanks to the Hanukkah and Kwanzaa blizzard combination, we ended up spending the holidays doing a lot of sitting around and staring at each other. We did get out to the tattoo shop to get the Mother-in-Law a new piece (of which I should really get a better picture) and for The Wife and I to get some touch up done.

Other than that, not a lot to report. We did watch some DVDs:

  • Nacho Libre (B) -- Jack Black, yo. Plus I love me some Lucha Libre.
  • Talladega Nights (A-) -- Best Will Ferrell joint ever. Period. John C. Riley is a king.
  • Aeon Flux (B+) -- I was a big fan of the animated shorts on MTV's Liquid Television, but I kind of like this better. There was actually a storyline available without creative interpretation. Plus Charlize is badass.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (B-) -- Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow was weird in this one. Not nearly as good as the first one.

One quick link, while I'm at it: I like this guy's style.

Updates & Stuff

First a floor update: After taking yesterday off completely thanks to the chill I caught on the motorbike and general laziness (it is a vacation, after all), I came out firing today. First, I scooted around on the subfloor removing the remaining staples from the carpet pad. After that bag o' fun, I scooted around on the subfloor some more, this time sanding the seams of the OSB to flatten them out enough for the mortar bed not to mind. After a bunch of sweeping and vacuuming and choking on the dust (I'm positively covered...), I finally got around to measuring out a standard centerline by centerline layout and giving it a bit of a dry fit test, as demonstrated below (see also: my Flickr set for this project): Office Slate Project: Testing the Layout SW Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.

Car update: The mechanic tells me "there's definitely something wrong in the clutch area" of my Rodeo. So he's going to drop the tranny and see what's what. His initial guess (which covers a new clutch and clutch fork) is about $1400. Sadly, this is almost exactly the number I was expecting. Here's hoping it doesn't grow much.

One from teh intarweb: Seriously? People worry about this crap? Myself, I don't sign off personal emails at all. If it's someone I don't know that well or haven't been in touch with recently I might end with "- Jake". On rare occasions, I'll toss in a "Cheers" or "Ta". Work emails generally just get the hyphen-space-name treatment.

Quick Hits

Two Words:

Holy crap! (The Waxy article is SFW, but the links thereafter are not.) Don't be an idiot on the intarweb, kids. That's good advice for both the people who respond to "casual encounters" ads (never use real names, work emails, etc. dummies) and for those who would bait them -- This Jason Fortuny guy's just begging for a beating (at least).