Les Paul, Tivo, Netflix On Demand

I watched the 2007 Documentary “Les Paul: Chasing Sound”. It was really great and I highly recommend it. Actually for anyone, it is a very interesting and inspiring story. I had not heard some of the very innovative music he has done. And he was over ninety in this documentary….gad…

The other awesome thing about this is that, I simply stumbled on it while searching the Netflix library, then said add it to my “instant’ queue. There it was…simple as that. The TV is a terrible place to browse shows, so you still have to use Netflix, but there site is not bad. I’m impressed at how simple it is.

American Music Awards??? WTF???

So with the fascination of watching a train wreck live, I watched this show. Fortunately, I could Tivo it so I could fast forward…but OMFG the garbage!. This is like when the terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethics’ were co-opted by raving lunatics. American Music? stupid. The best act was a 53 year old Scottish woman. Annie Lennox is great, and I have to ask..well…how many of the so-called artists on stage will have a career when they are 53? Check out these ‘totally awesome’, freakin’, so-called AMERICAN MUSIC performers:

  • Christina Aguilara – blech…
  • Natasha Bedingfield – pretty crap
  • Beyonce – setting women back to the stone age
  • Mariah Carey – undeniable good pipes, but what garbage tunes
  • Coldplay – mildly interesting since they had Brian Eno produce their last album
  • Miley Cyrus – Taco Bell
  • The Fray – huh?
  • Jonas Brothers – Mouseketeers that have studied Mick Jagger and Elvis Costello
  • Alicia Keys – I can’t blame her for making money, she will be able to play real music later in her career since she is an actual musician. Kind of a modern day George Benson
  • Leona Lewis – huh?
  • Sarah Mclachlan – well, at least she has a nice voice to my ears
  • Ne-Yo – new yo? the latest short lived…
  • New Kids On the Block – you’ve got to be kidding me
  • Pink – mildly interesting as a rocker
  • Pussycat Dolls – who would have thought that soft porn still had a market, this really made me puke
  • Rihanna – like a bizarro world version of Prince? so wrong…
  • Taylor Swift – how many of these are there????
  • Kanye West – earned my respect for having Jon Brion produce his second album…but he still sucks
  • And that is who represents ‘Amercian Music’ in 2008???? I won’t even wast the typing time for the so-called winners..though I do love the fact that Alvin and the Chipmunks are the first listed. Good grief. It is as if the so called music industry is nothing but American Idol participants…er…wait, I think that is true. I am going back in my cave now…

    Why We Fight

    Watched the 2005 documentary movie, ‘Why We Fight’ the other day. Below is link to the home page which has a video playing of Eisenhower’s farewell speech, which I find fascinating. The speech really takes you back to what seems like ancient times, though it was less than 50 years ago. The weird thing is how relevant it is today. The movie is worth watching to get a view into how our Defense Department actually works.

    Why We Fight 

    The wikipedia ‘review’ here…the title comes from a series of propaganda films that Frank Capra did for the US government during WW II to tell American Soldiers the ‘reasons’ for them being in the war. All very interesting stuff…

    Grails

    Having played around with Grails, I think it is a suitable development and deployment technology choice, especially for java shops. It seems to be gaining traction and with the endorsement of Rob Johnson framed in the context of his companies acquisition of G2One. His explanation of why it makes sense is here and is very succinct and articulate. It seems like there will be lots of growth. All the goodness of RoR with extra power and leverage when you need it. Having gone through working with Hibernate around the transition from Hibernate 1 to Hibernate 2 and sticking with it (the current is V3.4) I really like how Grails lets you just not worry about it…of course, like anything good technically, you can get down into it easily if you want to. They just make it easy to avoid the temptation. I am working on a web app that will use Grails and also expose services accessible for the iPhone. I’ll post more on that later…