My Best of 2004

’tis the season, and since I’m not used to doing these things yet, and I can never give an album a numeric ranking, here are my Ten Best Music Albums of 2004, in alphabetical order:

  • The Animal Collective — Sung Tongs
  • The Arcade Fire — Funeral
  • Robyn Hitchcock — Spooked
  • Jolie Holland — Escondida
  • Joanna Newsom — The Milkeyed Mender
  • Of Montreal — Satanic Panic In The Attic
  • The Polyphonic Spree — Together We’re Heavy
  • Sterling Roswell — The Psychedelic Ubik
  • Jim White — Dig A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See
  • Brian Wilson — Smile

There are a lot of new artists that I hadn’t heard before this year.

Music that discovered me this year, although not necessarily released this year, includes:

  • Devendra Banhart
  • Calvin, Don’t Jump
  • The Decemberists
  • Dressy Bessy
  • The Fountains Of Wayne
  • The Handsome Family
  • Kristin Hersh
  • The High Water Marks
  • Bob Log III
  • Kate Rusby
  • The Sadies
  • Elliott Smith
  • Carl Stephenson

With my monstrous commute, I do listen to a lot of music now. And I like it.

iTunes out, I does

So I registered with iTunes Music Store. With the buzz I was getting from users down south, I was expecting it to be like my favourite indie record store, only online. Um, no.

So I searched for artists I’m listening to right now:

itunes does not know joanna newsom
Ah, I see. It didn’t seem to have most of the artists I wanted. In all, it failed to find:

  • The Apples in Stereo
  • Devendra Banhart
  • The Decemberists
  • The Holy Modal Rounders
  • Bob Log III
  • Neutral Milk Hotel
  • Joanna Newsom
  • The Polyphonic Spree
  • Kate Rusby
  • XTC

As you’ll be able to find at least five of these in the most dismal mall chain store, it didn’t start off too well.

I browsed the music genres, and was shocked. There was no folk genre, but there was a roots one which seemed to overlap what I’d call folk and world. Confusingly, there was also a world genre. Oh, and people, disney is not a genre, it’s more a malignant/cryogenically-preserved state of mind.

(I was amused to see the appaling faux yokel band The Wurzels listed as roots. I guess they are, if you know the etymology of their name …)

So I found a RobynHitchcock spoken word track that I hadn’t heard from Millennium Thoughts. I downloaded it, and on trying to play it, it said:

do not make me authorize this again

I thought that the pretty proprietary interface would at least remember that it was me logged in at the store, and using the same computer. I guess that’s how paranoid those DRM types are.

Once I was over that, I decide to buy a whole CD: XO, by Elliott Smith. Since I knew that the service used a propritary encryption scheme, I figured on buning a CD, and ripping it later. So I selected the tracks:

and started to burn a disc. But it assumed I meant all the tracks I’d downloaded into some “playlist”, so now I have a CD with one Robyn Hitchcock track, and all of XO. Annoying. Especially when iTunes doesn’t burn CD-TEXT information to the disc, grr.

I wonder why iTunes uses something very close to the radioactive symbol for the “Burn Disc” logo?

I’m not impressed with iTunes Music Store. The content is woeful, the user interface is contrived, and the tracks are very expensive, and in a proprietary format I can’t use directly with my MP3 player. I’ll be giving it a miss in future.

baaaaaarp!

I just ate the most amazing chicken roti from Sea Town Restaurant, on Eglinton East near Ionview. Not merely was it at least the size of my head, but it wasn’t the usual saffron-coloured Jamaican curry, but a rich dark brown. It was also extremely spicy; up there with a Madras, at least.

Single Serve Coffee.com – why?!

We have to wonder why Single Serve Coffee.com – The One Cup Coffee Lovers Weblog exists. We already have th perfect ‘single serve’ coffee in the shape of a coffee grinder and a one-cup caffetière. And there’s no waste involved, unlike a pod machine.

I predict that in five years’ time, the single-serve coffee maker will be the yard sale sandwich toaster of today. The manufacturers will come out with new and incompatible pods, or stop supply altogether.

Remember, there are only two things you need to know about coffee: the perfect flavour for coffee is coffee; the perfect addition to coffee is nothing. Thus endeth today’s lesson.

b.log III

I like Bob Log III. He sounds like Beck or E in heavy disguise. Some of his music is definitely NSFW, but I think you might like:

If you like whacked-out electric slide blues, Bob Log III’s yer one mand band.

livemp3 – convert those big old audio torrents to something listenable

You’ll need Perl, and Config::IniFiles.

Program: livemp3.

A sample ini file so you can see how to set this up: welch_rawlings_shepherds_bush.ini.

At the moment, this just generates output that you’ll need to feed to sh, but it handles renaming, converting and tagging MP3s to my satisfaction.

Update: it doesn’t handle FLAC tags, even though they’d be a good source of metadata. I may look into implementing that some day.

The Accidental Terrorist

Catherine and I flew from Toronto to Kansas City on Friday night. Crossing the US border is always a pain at the best of times, but now with mandatory fingerprinting and photo-taking, it’s even worse.

I didn’t think much when my carry-on caused the scanner to throw a conniption, since there was all sorts of digital camera and GPS trickery inside. What made me gasp was that they exclaiming, “He’s got keys in there!”.

So they took me aside, and asked me to open up the top pocket of my luggage. The agent dug out my keys, and turned them over in her hand. I blanched when I realised that my Swiss+Tech® Utili-Key® was still on my keyring. I just about passed out when she dropped the keys back in my bag, and told me to be on my way.

The Utili-Key®, if you don’t know it, is a tiny multi-tool that looks a bit like a key, and clips onto your keyring. Its main feature is that it has a very sharp, 4.5cm blade on it:
Swiss+Tech® Utili-Key®
You might be able to hurt someone with it. It’s certainly a lot more fierce than the nail clippers or knitting needles they’ve been confiscating.

It was a complete accident that this was in my hand luggage. It wasn’t any attempt to prove a point, discredit border security, or anything more than an oversight. I guess my terrorist appearance potential is pretty low (unless you’ve seen my OHIP photo card). Flying with your partner on a wee regional jet is also hardly known terrorist scenario (unless Catherine’s secretly joined the direct-action brigade of the Merched y Wawr [literally “Daughters of Dawn”]). But if an entirely harmless Quaker wind farm designer can get a blade on to a plane, I can’t help but wonder what someone more determined could do.

I can tell you now!

Remember how I said that I can’t tell anyone?

Well, today Provincial Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced the successful projects in the Ontario’s renewable energy RFP. To quote the Bloomberg story:

Wind farms will generate most of the power from these announced projects, adding 355 megawatts electricity to the province. Superior Wind Energy Inc., Erie Shores Wind Farm LP, Canadian Hydro Developers Inc., and Epcor Utilities Inc. are behind the wind projects.

[link/emphasis mine]

As co-designer of the Erie Shores Wind Farm turbine layout, it’s great to see some more wind turbines being built.