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Behind the scenes at 89.3

Minnesota Public Radio’s music station, 89.3 The Current has launched a group blog called the Current Cue for their DJ’s.

One of the more interesting posts so far, their computer which houses all the music crashed. Apparently they rip all their CDs to PC to play on the air. Interesting story on what happened.

It makes me wonder though – if they’re playing music over the air digitally, what format are they using? It has to be a lossless codec, and there are only a few of those that would work. FLAC? SHN? Windows Media Lossless? Or do they just rip it straight to wav? I wonder what kind of RAID redundancy they have set up for something like that.

SUSE 10 OSS mini-review

Seb Payne reviews SUSE 10 OSS so you don’t have to. More of a mini-review, really, but it hits the good points.

YAST support is so-so and GNOME feels unfinished. One of the things that has driven me nuts about SUSE in the past is it’s KDE icons in GNOME – which it still retains.

Seb Payne is a Hula developer, and has been bouncing back from Ubuntu to SUSE and back again. Like Seb, I’m sticking with Ubuntu.

  • in General
  • 1 min read

How-To Shave Your Head

Courtesy of Headshaver.org.

2 and a half years ago I debuted my new haircut, when I just had the stylist use the clippers on one all the way around. I’ve stuck with that since then, though I’ve gone no guard for the last few haircuts.

That haircut debuted right before a LAN party in Chicago 2 years ago sponsored by BFG. Their third annual one is next weekend, and in honor of that, I took the dive I’ve been talking about for the last year, and actually shaved my head.

We shall see what the reactions are this time.

Ubuntu changes GNOME Taskbar

This week’s updates to the upcoming Breezy Badger release contain an “uh-oh”. The Ubuntu team has changed some of the default GNOME artwork, specifically replacing the GNOME foot with an Ubuntu logo.

Old Ubuntu taskbar:

Old Ubuntu Desktop Taskbar

New Ubuntu taskbar:

Old Ubuntu Desktop Taskbar

I can’t say I’m very happy about it. Sure, it’s extremely minor. But one of the things I love about Ubuntu is how close they’ve stayed to GNOME. Re-branding bits of it I can see, but I struggle with this one. The taskbar, to me, feels like it should be off limits.

This Week in Music

A few new releases came out this week I just had to pickup:

I enjoyed Fiona’s first release, what, 10 years ago? Her second was good, but not as good. I’m looking forward to this after all the press about Fiona over the last two years. (Free Fiona!)

I’m a huge Liz Phair – have been since Exile in Guyville and have bought everything she’s done. 2003’s self-titled album was a bit of a shock as she transitioned to pop, and Somebody’s Miracle is in the same vein. Listened to the album almost twice now, and while her last album had 3 or 4 songs that popped at me right away, so far the new one only has one, which is her current release, Everything to Me, which is catchy as hell.

Public Enemy’s newest album in quite some time, New Whirl Order, was another must have. Other than the Beastie Boys, they’re the only rap group I’ve ever really, really gotten in to. I picked up their greatest hits disc a month or so back, and that was phenomenal. I’m looking forward to New Whirl Order.

Spam Karma 2

I continue to be impressed with Spam Karma 2 for WordPress since I installed in a couple weeks ago.

I was getting about 50 spam comments a day in the blog, and Spam Karma 2 has cut that down to nothing. Zero. Zilch. I think I’ve had to moderate 3 comments so far it wasn’t sure of (which were spam), but that’s nothing compared to the daily maintenance hell I used to go through in deleting comments.

Kudos to the developers.

The Minnewiki

Minnesota Public Radio has launched the Minnewiki, a Wiki page dedicated to the music scene past and present in Minnesota.

Users have the opportunity to add to the articles on the Minnewiki, discussing musical acts, venues and the various musical history of Minnesota.

As with any Wiki, some pages are more comprehensive, but it’s off to a nice start.

Theme Upgraded

Upgraded to the latest and greatest K2 theme – and now comes with the Vader style. Back to a black theme, yay!

Even better, comes with AJAX commenting. Sweet.

Mike and Chris are writing some rockin’ code.

Toyota Sienna



DSC00191, originally uploaded by silwenae.

I officially feel old – we bought a 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan Saturday.

With the baby on the way, that will make 3, and 3 kids do not sit comfortably in a row in the back of my 2000 Ford Explorer, which we traded in.

We bought the XLE Sienna, which has a bunch of features, including heated leather seats, JBL sound system, power everything, and worst of all, some minor woodgrain in the center panel and on the inside front doors. Not too much thank god, but we bought the car sight unseen, as they were quickly running out of 2005s, and it was one of the few left in the state with the features we wanted. It’s nice enough, and drives nice.

But I miss my explorer, and now have to drive my wife’s 2001 Ford Escape while she drives the minivan. She’s about as excited to drive the Sienna as I am the Escape.

Obligatory Escape photo:

DSC00193

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

Entrepeneur or Scam Artist?

The Star Tribune has a story up about E. Adam Web, a man who scans city ordinances around signs and billboards and petitions cities to put up huge billboards, up to 672 feet high. When the city declines the request, he goes after them in court pointing out that the local ordinances are so confusing and outdated that a homeowner couldn’t even put up a “Go Vikings” sign in their own yard.

This causes the entire ordinance to be struck down, and he gets his sign – which he then turns around and flips at a huge profit to someone who wants that advertising.

Mr. Webb claims he’s never lost a case yet out 110 completed or pending cases.

So the business model looks like:

  1. Find confusing city signage laws

  2. Request a huge sign

  3. Sue the city

  4. Profit!

This is the American legal system at work.