This new design and updated version of Wordpress sure won’t count for much if I don’t post things.

So I have these two, new, nice-sounding, song-ish songs that I’ve been working with lately. On one of them I even attempted to sing, which was a disaster. No Auto-Tune can even come close to fixing the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing. I’d like to post something here, but I’d like to set it up as an embedded thing to make it at least a little more difficult to download the file. Once I figure that out, I’ll get some samples up here.

Yesterday, while waiting for dinner, I stumbled into the Aroma Tea Shop on Polk Street. The owner was running the place and gave us a very informative tea tasting. This morning I am having a cup of my Lychee Black Tea. Good stuff.

I’ve been running a lot more, and a lot more frequently. It’s become a regular thing at the gym, and on weekends I try and take a run around San Francisco. This morning I managed to do 12 miles! Twelve miles which incorporated going up and back along the Golden Gate Bridge and along Crissy Field. It was fantastic, and incredibly foggy. About halfway across the bridge and you can’t see land on either side. Here’s the trip (since it’s very interesting information):

… It’s just rust.

I’ve determined that my acoustic guitar is terrible. The intonation is out of whack, tone is awful, and it sounds nothing like I want it to when I record it using the other equipment I currently own. That being said, one option is to buy better microphones, preamps, and revamp my DAW to work with the instruments I own. I prefer the approach of replacing the guitar. And, of course, by “replace” I simply mean “buy a new one”. I still own the first guitar I ever owned - some no-name brand electric - and don’t ever plan on ditching any of my instruments.

Basically, the music I’ve been recording sounds like crap. So, in a slightly related topic: see here.

I tend to go to bed early. Early, of course, is relative as I’d consider 10:00 as “late” relative to the time I start to get tired. It is definitely “early” relative to the time most people my age go to bed. Regardless, I usually don’t fall asleep for a good 45 minutes or more. Occasionally this scenario happens:

I’m in bed around 10ish, and dreaming soon thereafter. For whatever reason my dream turns to something like an action/thriller/horror movie and, in the dream, I’m running/fighting/jumping/screaming/flying/etc. Some event in the dream is so intense and realistic that I wake up and two things happen - One, my whole body feels like spiders are crawling everywhere. And two, I am exhausted and worried that it’s nearly time to start the day. I’ll look over at my clock and it’s sometime between 1 and 2:00 am - plenty of time to fall back asleep.

This has happened every time my dreams aren’t “nice”. Last night it happened not just once or twice, but 3 times! I woke up at 1:00, 3:00ish, and again at 4:30 (the last one sucked since my alarm was going to go off in a little over an hour). Basically, I’m tired today. Boo.

I live in the western-ish part of San Francisco and work in the eastern-ish part. So that means in the mornings I wake up to thick fog, go to work where its sunny, and return home to more fog. Last night was especially foggy and I meant to photograph it, but alas I forgot lost interest (let’s be honest, ha). It was a cool effect though. The fog is so low that you are basically walking through a light mist and the tops of buildings barely 4 stories tall are a little difficult to make out.

You know what’s the best? When an artist’s albums are ordered alphabetically, they are in chronological order too. I’ve been listening to Audioslave today and noticed that they are one of those special bands - Audioslave, Out of Exile, Revelations. Maybe iTunes should have an optional sorting method to arrange your library by artist, then by albums chronologically. I think I’d prefer it that way. That’s how my CD collection is organized anyway. Yes, I am a dork.

Is anyone watching the Olympics? I’ve seen a few seconds here and there.

I think I might post some music since I have no new pictures.

Re Towards Utopia: I could not find (using Google) the lyric “You Shine Among Us” in any songs. I know, I know, it’s just what you interpreted the Hopelandic lyrics from Vaka as in English. I’m just saying, it’s not currently in any songs. And I think it sounds like a cool lyric. All 4 words of it. This is just what I do…

So my time wasn’t amazing or anything. Whatever:

I went to update my iPod shuffle. The list of songs I have on there (strictly for the gym) was getting tired. As it turns out, the connector (seen in the above picture) was bent slightly in multiple places. I played around with it for a while, nothing worked. I took the whole thing apart, no wires were broken inside. The only noticeable thing was the very tip of the connector was clearly broken and unfortunately un-solder-able.

Since Apple sucks for some reason, a new dock by itself is $30, while a new shuffle (which includes the dock) is only $20 more. I was hoping to spend like $10 on a new cable. God dammit. Given those prices though, people should be able to buy both shuffle and dock for $50 and (new) shuffles by themselves for just $20. It’s only fair.

I’m going to use this post to draw your attention to a cool little website, called MixTurtle. It’s similar to The Hype Machine without any extra information or news or whatever. If you want to just play a song, check out MixTurtle.

Also, I have this song stuck in my head:
http://mixturtle.com/song/529381/3/peter-gabriel-down-to-earth…

(1) I’ve watched 5 movies since Tuesday: The Shining, Batman Begins, Get Smart, The Dark Knight, and Full Metal Jacket. I think my sixth tonight will be Back to the Future Part 1, or Children of Men. (2) I finally bought a cookbook. The one I had in New York, I left in New York. I’ve gone far too long just throwing random things together and calling it a meal. “Hmm, here’s some canned tuna.. and.. oh, teriyaki sauce, that could work.. annnd, hmm.. I’ve got some peas.. something else, something else.. rice! Maybe I’ll crush up some Cheese-its in there for some extra texture. Great, its a meal!” (3) I need to buy a plane ticket, and that’s all I can say about that for now. (4) This morning I made a latte.

Also, I’d like to say that The Dark Knight is probably the best movie of 2008. Though I want to let it sit with me a little longer since it’s still “fresh”. I would hate to jump to such a bold conclusion. Really though, I rarely see a movie twice in the theater. Let alone twice in about a week! The second viewing was at the IMAX, which I would highly recommend (Some scenes in the film were shot with the special IMAX camera to get the highest resolution possible. The sound’s not too bad either).

I think I’m going to make chicken marsala for dinner.

Ok finally I am going to write another post! I need to keep up on this a bit better. And by “need” I don’t mean “need” at all.

Anyway, I think I’ve finished uploading all of the pictures from the sailing trip. The set (which I will try not to duplicate in this post) is here, nice and chronologically organized. I’m still tagging everything, and adding some titles/descriptions here and there. It’s a tedious process. I made a tour of the trip in Google Earth and was all ready to export it as a movie, but it turns out you need Google Earth Pro to do that. Absolutely sucks. So all I have for you is pictures, for now. I took a few movies with my camera which I need to edit (down to 90 seconds) and then put on Flickr. That should follow soon enough.

The trip began last Friday. I had taken a full week off of work for both the sailing trip and a little additional vacation time to visit my family in CT. My flight was out of SFO at about 10:00 pm Thursday night. I landed in New York at 6 am and, after waiting forever at the gate and bag claim, I made my way to Brooklyn. I do not like red-eyes.

We were all scheduled to meet in Greenport, NY, at the eastern tip of Long Island. The ferry there would take us to Dering Harbor on Shelter Island where our boat was docked. Pete, Keith, Ian and I took the Long Island Railroad from Brooklyn. Somewhere along the line of our 3 separate transfers, the train stopped. We were told that there was a fatality somewhere down the line - someone had walked across the train tracks and was killed. Ultimately, we missed our last connection and had to take a bus for the last hour or so. Totally crappy. But, it made for a good opportunity to run to the nearest 7-11 for a 6-pack. Yay.

The first day (evening) was spent mulling about Shelter Island. We set up camp on the boat and had dinner at the Dory Restaurant. Also we stocked up on some food supplies for the trip the following morning which began bright and early. There was no set destination, we were just sailing east. It was eventually decided to head towards Block Island. Some of us had never been and for the others it had been a while.

The town was quite nice. There was a microbrewery that had a very tasty IPA and two ice cream places that were a little disappointing. We were docked onto a mooring which was good for a cool breeze at night, but bad for a $3 one-way launch ride into and out of town. I slept outside for the second night in a row.

We sailed around some more and made our way to Stonington, CT. There’s some historic story associated with the town and Cannon Square. I don’t plan on trying to write it here. Check Wikipedia.

Then, after sailing and more sailing, we stayed in Mystic Connecticut, home of the famous Mystic Pizza. I dunno, they made a movie about it. Julia Roberts was in it. Anyway. There was also a bunch of boat-related things which was fun to walk through. Also, I got the new Chuck Palahniuk book. I suck at writing recaps.

Anyway, that’s all I’m going to do for this thing. After the sailing trip, I visited my family in Fairfield (minus my brother, who is currently in Alaska). It was a lot of fun, and very very hot. The end.

PS, the title is an inside “joke” from those of us that were on the sailing trip 3 years ago.