What Is Noise

I should admit that I sometimes sit on an odd level with technology. I am by no means a luddite, but sometimes the point of new technology just doesn’t make sense to me at first. The true usefulness, as well as coming to terms with the balance of positives and negatives of the technology, sometimes takes a little time for me.

When I first heard of the iPhone, I was totally on board. I had already been sold on cellphones (which I should admit I did not own one in the 90’s, and rather disliked them and barely knew how to use one), as well as the merits of PDAs and iPods.

However, I heard about the Kindle I honestly didn’t get it at first. From what I’ve heard I’m  not about to rush out and get one but I’ve realized how it could ‘in theory’ simplify my life.

So far, I’m sure this doesn’t make a bit of sense. Let’s back up. I live in a very small apartment.  Yes, that room is the room… well in addition to a tiny bathroom. As you can see I have a huge bookshelf taking up an entire wall. That’s by no means all of the books that I own. There’s a few hundred vinyl albums on there, and I don’t know how many books. I honestly wish I had more books. However in a small apartment, there simply isn’t the room and the more paper in my life just makes my apartment look like trash.

I also do a decent bit of photography. Most of it’s digital, although I own several film cameras. This stuff takes up space!

In theory, and this isn’t the way it would work out, but I could see a world that I don’t have to have a bookshelf. I don’t have to have my massive record collection. I don’t have to have boxes of photos. I’d simply use digital replacements like an iPod/iPhone, Kindle, and Flickr/Aperture to keep all of my media.

No magazines. No physical albums. No printed photos except for a few on the walls. Keeping it really minimal.  I’m just thinking of ways to make a 180sq/ft apartment not so small.

Of course, this doesn’t apply or matter to people living in 4000sq/ft houses with 20 rooms and 3 floors, but for those of us urban dwellers who sacrifice size for location it’s an interesting world to imagine.

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I’m trying to get into the habit of reviewing more music as soon as it comes out. I guess I know where I’ll be on most Tuesdays (Newbury Comics first thing in the morning). I just ordered the new NIN remix album, Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d, which in case you can’t tell is a remix album of Year Zero. I won’t have it for a few days, since they are shipping the the vinyl (would have gotten the MP3, but I’m a sucker for vinyl still). Vinyl makes me do ‘intentional listening’, which I find is far better for actually getting the most out of an album. I will admit (and Trent I have a feeling won’t hate me for this) that I’m probably going to go and download the MP3 version from The Pirate Bay or something. I’m already paying nearly $40 for the vinyl damnit! Yes, that’s my rationalizing here, and I know that less vinyl is being pressed these days, so the price is up. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to pay another $9 for the MP3 download. Yes, I’m a sucker that will pay 4x as much for an album just to have that 10% difference in audio quality. 

Speaking of the MP3, iTunes has the album (with DRM) for $9.99, and Amazon has it (sans-DRM I believe) for $8.99. Amazon sounds like a better deal imho. I still need to order the Radiohead In Rainbows vinyl, but the dollar keeps tanking and it keeps getting more expensive. I wonder if Newbury Comics will have it in a few days.

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I am not observing Thanksgiving, nor doing the Black Friday shopping madness thing this year. That probably gets me on some special FBI watchlist and a no-fly list for anti-American activities for sure. I’m even planning to work a decent amount today (albeit mainly on my own ventures, but I’m still logged into IRC for work and checking my to-do lists).

I’m not doing Thanksgiving because I have no family around here (and no friends that I felt I could invite myself to their tables), and I simply hate traveling on Thanksgiving after a 14 hour, 5 airport trip from Greensboro to Boston that I had a few years ago, whereas I can drive it in 12 hours.

No Black Friday, because I don’t really believe in ’sales’ and buying for the sake of buying. I don’t do my Christmas shopping until Dec 20th at best. If there was something that I really wanted that was $200 off, but I had to stand outside, in Boston, at 3am until the store opened and then still only have a chance at getting it, then I still wouldn’t do it. It’s simply not worth it. The only sale that I ‘might’ participate in, is the stupidly crazy one that Amazon has. No lines, no waiting, no traffic, no carrying large boxes home. I’m cool with that, and if I can get a Wii for $79, then alright. If I don’t like it, then I can eBay it.

I will also watch no Football. Yes, I am just that lame.

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I ran across the band Emilie Autumn.

It’s some pretty interesting and unique sounding things. Their stage theatrics fit them in with the Dresden Dolls crew (and I’m pretty sure they have played/toured together some), but if you like the Dresden Dolls this is a little bit less ‘heavy’ and more electronic sounding (somewhat in the Postal Service way, but not so contrived sounding). Most of the lyrics are fairly dark and brooding, but it’s some really good stuff.

I’ve just listened to a few songs on Youtube, but I’m going to get one of their CDs soon I believe.

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Hello readers! I’m sorry if some of you were searching and just hitting the front page here, or getting a 404. That’s not cool on my part. I’ve had a few small growing pains since upgrading to Wordpress (mainly due to my lack of knowledge of things), but I think now I’ve got it fixed.

For anyone that cares, I had to change the permalinks structure of this page to match what Google’s Blogger service had. To do this I simple used a custom permalinks definition of, “/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html”. The default had year/month/day/postname/. At first I tried removing the day and putting it without the .html and realized quickly that the pages needed to have the .html as that’s the way that Blogger did it. The .html doesn’t actually create an html page, but just tricks it somewhat to redirect.  Now it should all be working and whatever you’re finding on a search engine should work again. If something isn’t working, please send me an email or comment here about it.

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