For Andrew's birthday we went skiing. The snow was great (they'd had 21" of fresh snow that week), the weather was great, the scenery was beautiful, and we had a lot of fun. Here are a few random photos...
Friday, March 13, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Let It Snow...
Following up on the last post... one more sign of spring in Boise: snow. We had a regular blizzard this afternoon, with about an inch of snow. Then it stopped, the sun came out, and much of it melted. That's a Boise spring for you.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Signs of Spring
The rain last night melted the last vestiges of snow from our yard. That makes it over two months of continuous snow presence in our yard, which is pretty darned good for Boise. (Or bad, I guess, if you don't like winter so much.)
I've also seen robins in the yard for the last two days, and some bulbs are sprouting in the warmest flower beds.
Looks like spring might be on its way.
But hopefully skiing isn't quite over yet!
I've also seen robins in the yard for the last two days, and some bulbs are sprouting in the warmest flower beds.
Looks like spring might be on its way.
But hopefully skiing isn't quite over yet!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Canning
A few months ago a co-worker ordered a bunch of powdered milk in bulk, and as a result of that we ended up with three 50-pound bags of powdered milk. What do you do with all that? Well, we borrowed the dry-pack canner machine and canned it.
It turns out that 150 pounds of milk fills a LOT of cans. We thought we had enough, but did 60 #10 cans and still had a lot left over, so we got some more cans and finished it (and some rice) in a second session the next day.
The kids all had fun helping. Daniel really got into running the canner, and did most of the actual sealing of the lids the second day. I wish I had some pictures of everybody filling the cans the first day -- we had powdered milk everywhere. Andrew had it all over his face and in his hair. He looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy!
Andrew and Daniel have really gotten into classic rock lately, and they had music playing while we were doing it. This may be the first time the Church dry pack machine has been used with a soundtrack provided by Rush and Boston.
(gratuitous Boston album art)
Friday, February 6, 2009
Rachel's Art
Here's a drawing Rachel recently did for her art class. I thought it was pretty cool. I kinda wish I had some talent... it's pretty obvious which side she didn't inherit it from!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
End of an Era, postscript
Some more thoughts as a follow-on to the previous post...
Monday Lisa needed to bring a cassette tape to her violin lesson, and Yumiko had to look around several stores before she could find one to buy.
It occurs to me that at the same time the record industry is whining about Internet-based piracy and other file sharing, the era of easy audio recording has quietly faded away -- a lot of audio devices these days no longer have cassette decks, and the once-ubiquitous cassette tape is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
For many, many years I kept a running record of currently popular music. I would always keep a cassette tape loaded and ready, and when something I liked came on the radio, it was a simple matter to punch "record" and save a copy for future listening.
As new audio streams came into being -- we had DMX feeds at work for a while, and then still later the streaming audio of Internet radio -- the paradigm remained the same. Keep a tape loaded and ready, punch the record button when something cool came on.
Piracy? The recording industry would say so, but then they live in a bubble of their own little reality where laws like the Audio Home Recording Act don't exist, and radio broadcasts themselves are piracy.
The reality is that after listening to a song a few times, I typically either grew tired of it, or more likely decided I liked it well enough to buy it. Those old from-radio tapes are fun to listen to now as a time capsule, but most of the songs are redundant with CDs I now own.
This effect was even more pronounced with Japanese music. Here in the U.S., there's really not much chance for hearing new Japanese music other than Internet radio, and taping from an Internet stream is a great way to give music a trial run, to listen to it enough to get to like it enough to shell out some yen for it.
Sorry, took a detour there. The point is, cassettes are fading away, and it's getting harder to build a casual collection of music.
Or record a violin lesson. Or record kids' piano recitals. Or record oral life histories.
Maybe what we need is a good recording accessory for iPods?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The End of an Era
Friday marked the end of an era. And the beginning of a new, in a way.
Something to do with Pres. Obama's inauguration? Not quite...
First, for some history.
As near as I can recall, it was in the summer of 1980 that I bought my first stereo. Shortly after that, I got my first album -- ABBA's Greatest Hits.
To tell the truth, what I got was a copy from a friend who owned the vinyl, dubbed onto a 60-minute Memorex cassette from a four-pack purchased at Smiths (now demolished, and soon to be the west Boise branch of the library). Yes, folks, despite the RIAA's whining about downloading, the truth is that music piracy existed long before the Internet. Heck, Edison had barely completed the first phonograph when cheap Malaysian bootlegs of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" hit the black market.
(Back in those days, I was only vaguely aware that it was illegal, immoral, and/or unethical to dub music like that. And, on the wildly remote chance that Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha, Frida, or one of their lawyers happen to read this, let me haste to point out that I redeemed myself a dozen times over buying vinyl and then later replacing with CDs.)
The next big milestone was in December of that year, when I joined for the first time the Columbia House Record and Tape Club. I still remember the excitement of opening that first box and pulling out eight brand new records. That first set included "The Game" by Queen, "Paradise Theater" by Styx, "The Stranger" by Billy Joel, and of course we can't forget "ABBA's Greatest Hits Volume 2".
Over the years, I re-joined Columbia House several times, building up a reasonable collection of vinyl (now sadly idle in a box in the garage).
The next major milestone was early summer 1989, when I bought my first CD player -- a very cool Sanyo which also featured dual auto-reverse cassette decks and detachable speakers -- in a shop in Kichijoji, Tokyo. Despite two annoyances (the radio tuner is naturally designed for the Japanese frequency bands, not U.S., and it needs a transformer to convert U.S. voltage to Japan-standard 100 V), it has served faithfully now for nearly 20 years, and still works just fine and is used regularly.
Shortly after, and enabled by, this milestone comes the next major event -- buying my first CD. This was the start of a new, digital era of music enjoyment, changing everything that came before.
But not everything, because I continued to patronize Columbia House, and then BMG Music Club (which had lesser selection but better prices). The music clubs changed with the times, and started selling CDs, so I started buying them. I often held two simultaneous memberships, buying what I could from the cheaper BMG, and using Columbia House to get selections that BMG didn't carry. (The two clubs later merged, which killed that strategy.)
While BMG's selection was never great, even after the Columbia House merger, it was impossible to beat the prices. Even with their higher-than-average sticker prices, and very steep shipping and handling, the "12 for the price of 1" offer worked out to about $4 for a brand-new CD. You've got to love it -- and I did.
The next sea change was the day I started ripping CDs into iTunes on my Macintosh. It's amazing the effect it has on listening style to have your entire collection instantly available, playable at random. For the most part, it's a good thing. At the same time, there's something missing from the old experience of pulling a record off the shelf, slipping on the headphones, and listening to an album straight through while perusing the cover art and record sleeve. (By the way, I must note that while CDs are very cool, there's a lot to be said for 12" cover art!) Of course, for many songs, there's not much difference listening to them out of order, but for some, a lot is lost. (Interestingly, three of the first records I bought are like that -- "The Game," "Paradise Theater," and "The Stranger" all have very definite arcs across the entire album that are lost when the songs are listened to out of order.)
For all the MP3s I've accumulated, they've all been ripped from CDs I own. I have never purchased an MP3 file. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer CDs. (Can you count technology that was invented in the mid-80s as "old fashioned"?) MP3 is a great format for storing on computer or listening to with an iPod, but I still like having the physical medium, the (admittedly puny) artwork, the lyrics booklet, etc. I also enjoy the visual satisfaction of a set of oak shelves with several hundred CDs sitting on them, and a search algorithm that consists of running a finger down the row of alphabetized titles. (The iTunes "cover flow" feature does go a long way toward replicating that experience, but it's still not the same.)
That, and I'm cheap, and a $4 CD from BMG with 15 tracks on it is much, much more cost effective than 15 tracks at $0.99 each.
So, I never purchased any MP3s -- until Friday.
Truth be told, I'm still basically cheap, and I actually bought the MP3s using a free credit from Amazon that they gave out as a bonus for buying stuff from them during the Christmas season. But it still counts.
And the very same day as this landmark event, as I was looking around trying to decide which MP3s to download, I happened to check BMG's Web site and found a message indicating that BMG was no longer accepting new members.
No more "12 for 1" deals. No more "Featured Selection of the Month." No more eager opening of the box of an initial membership shipment, with a stack of new music to anticipate.
The end of an era.
Something to do with Pres. Obama's inauguration? Not quite...
First, for some history.
As near as I can recall, it was in the summer of 1980 that I bought my first stereo. Shortly after that, I got my first album -- ABBA's Greatest Hits.
(gratuitous ABBA album art)
To tell the truth, what I got was a copy from a friend who owned the vinyl, dubbed onto a 60-minute Memorex cassette from a four-pack purchased at Smiths (now demolished, and soon to be the west Boise branch of the library). Yes, folks, despite the RIAA's whining about downloading, the truth is that music piracy existed long before the Internet. Heck, Edison had barely completed the first phonograph when cheap Malaysian bootlegs of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" hit the black market.
(Back in those days, I was only vaguely aware that it was illegal, immoral, and/or unethical to dub music like that. And, on the wildly remote chance that Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha, Frida, or one of their lawyers happen to read this, let me haste to point out that I redeemed myself a dozen times over buying vinyl and then later replacing with CDs.)
The next big milestone was in December of that year, when I joined for the first time the Columbia House Record and Tape Club. I still remember the excitement of opening that first box and pulling out eight brand new records. That first set included "The Game" by Queen, "Paradise Theater" by Styx, "The Stranger" by Billy Joel, and of course we can't forget "ABBA's Greatest Hits Volume 2".
(more gratuitous ABBA album art)
Over the years, I re-joined Columbia House several times, building up a reasonable collection of vinyl (now sadly idle in a box in the garage).
The next major milestone was early summer 1989, when I bought my first CD player -- a very cool Sanyo which also featured dual auto-reverse cassette decks and detachable speakers -- in a shop in Kichijoji, Tokyo. Despite two annoyances (the radio tuner is naturally designed for the Japanese frequency bands, not U.S., and it needs a transformer to convert U.S. voltage to Japan-standard 100 V), it has served faithfully now for nearly 20 years, and still works just fine and is used regularly.
Shortly after, and enabled by, this milestone comes the next major event -- buying my first CD. This was the start of a new, digital era of music enjoyment, changing everything that came before.
But not everything, because I continued to patronize Columbia House, and then BMG Music Club (which had lesser selection but better prices). The music clubs changed with the times, and started selling CDs, so I started buying them. I often held two simultaneous memberships, buying what I could from the cheaper BMG, and using Columbia House to get selections that BMG didn't carry. (The two clubs later merged, which killed that strategy.)
While BMG's selection was never great, even after the Columbia House merger, it was impossible to beat the prices. Even with their higher-than-average sticker prices, and very steep shipping and handling, the "12 for the price of 1" offer worked out to about $4 for a brand-new CD. You've got to love it -- and I did.
The next sea change was the day I started ripping CDs into iTunes on my Macintosh. It's amazing the effect it has on listening style to have your entire collection instantly available, playable at random. For the most part, it's a good thing. At the same time, there's something missing from the old experience of pulling a record off the shelf, slipping on the headphones, and listening to an album straight through while perusing the cover art and record sleeve. (By the way, I must note that while CDs are very cool, there's a lot to be said for 12" cover art!) Of course, for many songs, there's not much difference listening to them out of order, but for some, a lot is lost. (Interestingly, three of the first records I bought are like that -- "The Game," "Paradise Theater," and "The Stranger" all have very definite arcs across the entire album that are lost when the songs are listened to out of order.)
For all the MP3s I've accumulated, they've all been ripped from CDs I own. I have never purchased an MP3 file. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer CDs. (Can you count technology that was invented in the mid-80s as "old fashioned"?) MP3 is a great format for storing on computer or listening to with an iPod, but I still like having the physical medium, the (admittedly puny) artwork, the lyrics booklet, etc. I also enjoy the visual satisfaction of a set of oak shelves with several hundred CDs sitting on them, and a search algorithm that consists of running a finger down the row of alphabetized titles. (The iTunes "cover flow" feature does go a long way toward replicating that experience, but it's still not the same.)
That, and I'm cheap, and a $4 CD from BMG with 15 tracks on it is much, much more cost effective than 15 tracks at $0.99 each.
So, I never purchased any MP3s -- until Friday.
Truth be told, I'm still basically cheap, and I actually bought the MP3s using a free credit from Amazon that they gave out as a bonus for buying stuff from them during the Christmas season. But it still counts.
And the very same day as this landmark event, as I was looking around trying to decide which MP3s to download, I happened to check BMG's Web site and found a message indicating that BMG was no longer accepting new members.
No more "12 for 1" deals. No more "Featured Selection of the Month." No more eager opening of the box of an initial membership shipment, with a stack of new music to anticipate.
The end of an era.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)