Congrats to Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook. Not bad for a 13 person team to rake in 1 billion dollars! Individual payouts vary on time spent, but one payout is rumoured to be at around 400 million in money & stock.

Just say no to negativity – don’t surround yourself with it. There are better things to do with your time. Build something, instead of tearing it down.

Maybe this will help someone else who wears contact lenses.

With my my saline solution and glasses left at the office, I was stuck. It’s late, and I need to take out my contacts. They are not the disposable kind.

I normally store them in saline solution, because most disinfecting solutions bother my eyes, even after neutralizing the solution.

I was forced to put them in a multi-purpose solution overnight. “No rinse needed.” Yea, right.

The next morning after putting the contact lenses in my eyes, the eyes quickly turned red, itchy and burning.

I read the ingredients on the back, and saw it only had a small amount of cleaner it. So, I tried splashing some water on my eyes. Normally this bugs the contacts, but I had nothing to lose.
It gave me instant relief. After a couple minutes, I splashed more water on my eyes. It felt much better.

I was able to go work without them bugging me too much. Rinsing them with saline there did the final trick.

Thank goodness – my eyes just needed a sip of water.

This is post is about getting Wordpress to properly work with WAMP.

I often use WAMP , a full-featured web server with MySQL and PHP  and phpMyAdmin to test out website changes and development on my own machine – one of the best things out there for free.  When running Wordpress in WAMP, one of the features of Wordpress is using search-engine-friendly url’s. An example of how this url looks would be http://www.foo.com/this-is-my-latest-blog-post

However, WAMP out of the box will not word properly with this feature of Wordpress. Luckily, this is easily fixed.

0) Get Wordpress installed in WAMP – instructions for this are at wordpress.org, so I won’t repeat that here.

1) In wordpress, change the permalink setting to /%postname%/

2) In WAMP, make sure the apache module alias_module and rewrite_module are running.

3) If you are running multiple sites in WAMP, you’ll need to make sure that in the httpd-vhosts.conf file the Allow Override line is replaced with AllowOverride FileInfo Options.

4) That’s it! Restart WAMP and it should work.

I stopped in my local Best Buy in Windsor, ON, Canada, and they reduced their cd area to roughly two aisles. It previously was about four aisles. This eliminated around twelve thousand cd’s according to someone there.

What are they going to do with the extra space? They are going to display big screen tv’s with gaming systems, such as the Wii, Xbox, and PS3 to push more gaming systems. This appears to be Best Buy finally responding to trends, although it is a little sad to see.

My Potted Vegetable Garden and Herbs – including Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes, Cucumbers.
Just wanted to see if I could grow anything! View to take the tour, lol.

I play drums, and love a good groove or something that burrows a place in my soul. That said, here are ten great grooves. I’m staying away from really well known songs in an effort to turn you on to some different music. 

In no certain order:

1) Fifteen Minutes of Fame - Michael Cartellone – Damn Yankees.
A cool rock groove with a touch of funk with the bass drum. Michael easily could have played it safer, but I’m so glad he didn’t.  I saw Michael live before, and he is ” energy”.  Last time I checked, he was touring with Skynyrd.

2) Gypsy Train – Jeff Porcaro – Toto
I know a lot of people associate Jeff with Rosanna, but there are a lot of other songs with Jeff on it that are also phenomenal. This was Jeff wearing his rock cap on Toto’s Kingdom of Desire.  To hear Jeff stretch out at the end

This was Jeff’s last release with Toto before he unexpectedly passed away.

3) Dream in Blue – Los Lobos This groove is so infectious, it spreads faster than swine flu.

4) Fashion Fever – Level 42 – Live at Wembly, and/or Running in the Family. My jaw dropped watching Phil Gould in Level 42’s Live at Wembly. His grooves have a lot going on, and if you are checking it out, make sure you get one of these two versions – there are a few versions out there. He is a king of sublety.

5) 6:00 - Dream Theater – Mike Portnoy
This song is well known to any Dream Theater fan, but hearing it for the first time really got me excited about drumming again. I had the pleasure to meet Mike at a DT concert in Pittsburgh.

6) Till The End - Jeff Porcaro – Toto
It’s just a fun groove to play. When this was released, this woke me up to a whole new level of Jeff. Add in some one handed rolls ending in rimshots, and you’ve got a fun time with the drumsticks.

7) Last Goodbye – Matt Johnson – Jeff Buckley
Matt is probably the most underrated guy out there, and he was quoted as saying that had he known how big the album Grace was, he would have spent more time on it. Not to worry, Matt, it is great as it is. His fills punctuate a very sharp groove. I really like his hi hat and bass drum work. This song is a fave among Jeff Buckley fans. A lot of people only know “Hallelujah”, but if so, you’re missing out on Jeff’s secret weapon.

No Surrender – Alan Jackman – The Outfield
A cool sixteeth note pulse with some creativity mixed with some great cymbal groovin. It feels magical somehow. This song really takes off on the creative chorus. It was recently announced that he rejoined the band after being away for several years. Looking forward to seeing what he comes up with again.

9) Operation – Bryan Holmes -The Producers
The entire You Make The Heat release in the eighties was a testament to Bryan Holmes’s playing creative drum riffs to very melodic songs. The whole drumset gets used in a pretty cool way, especially in this cut.

10) Friends, Lovers or Nothing – Steve Jordan – John Mayer
Steve closes the Battle Studies release in 2009 with this mid-tempo blues number. Great swingin groove, longer beatle-esque fills, and Steve being blues-pop Steve, which he does so well.

What are some of your own favorite hidden groove gems on drums?

I happened to find a pretty addictive site.  By now, a lot of people are familiar with the Google car that has a camera on a tripod, attached to the roof of the car.   The site contains photos of oddities and random things, but there is a lot to look at.  I finally had to pull myself away from  it, in fact.

As the Google Street View car passes by, it is constantly taking pictures (and until recently, collecting wireless information).  So… it is pretty obvious when you see this vehicle that you know what is going on.  It’s been through the city twice here.  It appears that even people in Portugal know what the vehicle is.  Keep on the lookout for the Google Street View bike – which I hadn’t known about before.

There are a ton of photos in this site’s collection.  There are photos of  people waving, people flipping off the camera, but the funniest ones are when people don’t notice the vehicle.  There are multiple photos of people caught urinating in bushes or alleys, photos of guys checking out women, a drug deal, a fight, and people pulled over by the police. There also is one of a very pregnant women smoking, and (believe it!) a mother holding her baby daughter above a storm sewer to go to the bathroom.  This collection is from all over the world, so that in itself is pretty interesting.   People can submit their own findings on Google Street View also.

Cool stuff.

http://www.streetviewfunny.com

I am taking a departure from tech talk to discuss the new Lifehouse cd, “Smoke & Mirrors“, which in my opinion, is an extension of the incredible musician-songwriter Jude Cole. Kiefer Sutherland is also connected in all this, which I will get to in a moment.

Jude Cole is known for the 90s hits, “baby it’s tonight”, “house full of reasons”, “compared to nothing”, “believe in you”, “worlds apart”, among others. Jude was always surrounding himself with the best talent, from Jeff Porcaro (Toto, Michael Jackson) to Pat Mastelloto on drums, and guest appearances by Tommy Shaw, Jack Blades and others. The production on his stuff was always great, and his mid-nineties stuff sounds as fresh as anything today, but without the squashed overcompressed sound.  Jude Cole’s most recent release of his own can be checked out here .

Jude’s footprint is seen all over this Lifehouse cd, “Smoke & Mirrors”. Guitars, keys, background vocals, and co-songwriting are all classic Jude, from the Led 7eppelin-like Nerve Damage to the dance rocker All In, it feels like you have blessed with a Jude Cole release. Also, you have Chris Daughtrey co-writing and singing backgrounds on a song “Had Enough” . Jason Wade does a great job, and the band has never sounded better.

So how does Kiefer Sutherland fit in? Jude and Kiefer are best friends, and Kiefer’s Strat always made an appearance on Jude’s stuff, and Kiefer does spoken word on a Jude Cole song called “Joe”. Kiefer named his daughter Sarah Jude.

Once Kiefer started making big bucks with the tv show 24, he partnered on a recording studio with Jude, Ironworks Recording Studio.

It is by far my favorite release for the year.

I read a really good book recently, and thought I would mention it. It is called Crush It, written by Gary Vaynerchuck. 

It is a really good read at approx 170 pages, and basically it was a “Here’s how I increased business by 10x by creating a personal brand, using blogging and social media.”    The author has close to a million followers on Twitter, and over a hundred thousand fans on his facebook fan page.  Based on that alone, it peaked my interest.  I went out and bought it at Chapters for $25.99, although it can be found on Amazon for less.

I read it in the span of two days, and I thought it was filled with great nuggets, as well as free tools and sites that worked for him. Sometimes it takes someone connecting the dots like this. There are ways I hadn’t thought of that can make all the difference in the world.  It gave me excellent ideas on some things, and it made an immediate difference.

If you are looking at building a personal brand, increasing your sales, blogging, or using social media at a corporate level (or individual level) – be sure to check it out.