Possibly useful thoughts collected throughout May:<\/p>\n
Sorry about the point release, but we had a tiny regression bug between RC4 and 2.0 which was only noticeable under rare circumstances in old versions of Mozilla. It is now fixed, and the update, as usual, requires only the swapping of your sifr.js file. Head over to the Official sIFR Landing Page<\/a> for the download.<\/p>\n I’ve always loved Mike Doughty’s<\/a> lyrics and vocals but could never figure out what I didn’t quite like about his former group Soul Coughing. Now I know. The rest of the band.<\/em> I went to Doughty’s show in Seattle earlier this month, and it blew me away. Usually when singers leave bands to go solo, they get worse, but Doughty has not only gotten better as a singer, he’s a better songwriter as well. More soul, less coughing, as one magazine puts it<\/a>. The guy loves touring too. Before the Seattle show, he stood on the streetcorner outside the club<\/a> with his acoustic guitar taking requests from fans and cracking John Curley jokes<\/a>. I’ve never seen anything like it. Oh, and not only does the man play for free on streetcorners, but he’s a Movable Type user as well<\/a>. How can you not love that? *Note to Doughty’s IT guy: The man gives you music. Please get him onto MT 3 or WordPress already.<\/em><\/p>\n Their latest album “Picaresque”<\/a> is my Album of the Year so far. The band’s previous release “Her Majesty the Decemberists” never did a lot for me, but this effort is epic. Long live folksy pirate music.<\/p>\n Croftie may not like live music<\/a> but I do. As a result, I’ve found myself downloading a ton of shows lately off of Archive.org<\/a>. It’s a bit frustrating that most shows are only available in lossless (see: overkill) formats like SHN and FLAC, but you can convert these to MP3s with a program like xACT<\/a>. Can someone please<\/em> point me in the direction of an app which automatically tags your converted MP3 files from a playlist file or something? Manually entering song info for each track you download is a pain and a half. Is there an AppleScript perhaps (or Automator workflow maybe?) which will convert an entire folder of FLAC\/SHN files to MP3 and then tag them? That would be of incredible use.<\/p>\n If anyone is in the market for a good city bike, I just picked up a Marin Fairfax<\/a> and I love it. Hybrid bikes are usually either heavy, ugly, or both, but this thing is only slightly heavier than a road bike and made of brushed aluminum and carbon fiber. I got mine for $599 at a local shop, but you can get the 2004 model for $329 online at REI<\/a> if you don’t mind different components and a few other details.<\/p>\n Thank god the end of good TV season coincides with the beginning of summer. This year, we had some great reality shows and some dud dramas. Survivor made a strong comeback from last year’s miserable season proving that it’s still the king of all reality shows. The Apprentice was entertaining, if not much better than the previous two seasons, and finally The Donald hired someone who isn’t a white male. Surreal Life was its normal entertaining self, making you embarrassed to be a human being, in a good way. And the newcomer, The Contender, proved to be a great addition to Mark Burnett’s lineup, despite Sylvester Stallone’s and Sugar Ray Leonard’s complete incompetence as hosts. On the flip side, I’m sad to say that the hitherto spectacular show 24 appears to be on its last legs. This season went south after about the 8th episode when the plot climaxed prematurely, the most interesting characters were killed off, and the least interesting (a.k.a. Tony Almeida) were brought back. The most pathetic episode saw mild-mannered Chloe O’Brien wielding a machine gun and shooting up a Jeep. Ummm, yeah. Time to put this show to rest. Quit while you’re ahead Fox. Somehow I don’t think they’ll listen to me, and somehow I’m sure I’ll still watch season five.<\/p>\n Haagen Dazs Cr\u00e8me Br\u00fbl\u00e9e<\/a>. I can’t believe it took this long to invent this flavor… or maybe it just took me this long to find out about it.<\/p>\n I’m not too concerned with getting off of coffee, but if you’re looking to kick your Coke and Pepsi habit instead, I highly recommend replacing your thirst for fizz with high quality mineral water. I didn’t drink mineral water for the first 20-something years of my life, but I’ve really taken a liking to it lately and have been virtually pop-free for about six months now. I recommend San Pellegrino<\/a> especially if you’re new to the stuff. It’s a lot milder on the fizz than most other brands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Possibly useful thoughts collected throughout May: sIFR 2.0.1, The Other Mike D., The Decemberists, Downloading Live Shows, Hybrid Bikes, The TV Season is Over, New Favorite Ice Cream Flavor, Kicking the Soda Habit, and MORE…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany","category-original"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29364,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/29364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Other Mike D.<\/h4>\n
The Decemberists<\/h4>\n
Downloading Live Shows<\/h4>\n
Hybrid Bikes<\/h4>\n
TV Season Is Over<\/h4>\n
New Favorite Ice Cream Flavor<\/h4>\n
Kicking the Soda Habit<\/h4>\n