DevelopingStorm

Thoughts on Buying Guitars

2014-11-05T20:46:00.002-05:00

A common refrain I here from my more experienced musician friends is that the instrument doesn't make the musician. They never say those words exactly, but that's their message: a new instrument isn't going to make you be a better musician. And who can deny that? The instrument doesn't play itself, unless of course it's some newfangled thing, but let's ignore them. An instrument is only as good as the person holding it. It's a truism, so why am writing this?

I remember the first day I brought home a guitar. It wasn't even mine, technically; it was my nieces, and she lent it to me. I had no idea how to play the thing. I didn't know the tune of the strings, the shape of the chords, or anything else about music. But I knew I loved that guitar. I enjoyed holding it. I enjoyed looking at it. And most of all it inspired me to learn how to play it.

To be honest, most everyone who has ever offered me advice on not becoming enamored of guitars has a rather large collection of the things themselves. I guess they're trying to save me from going down the same path they did. But I wonder why. If it's so self evident that the instruments inspire people even before they are played, why try and derail the natural attachment? I doubt it's the cost.

Perhaps it's just them trying to focus the new player's energies where it will pay the most dividend. That makes some sense, but it's sort of disingenuous. Guitars are beautiful and inspiring. That's reason enough to want to own more than one.

I know, it's a circuitous and pointless post, but hey, I needed to say something.

Record Store Day at Mill No. 5

2014-04-21T13:47:00.000-05:00

I find the resurgence of vinyl recordings a little bewildering. Honestly, I don't remember my turntable all that fondly. You could only play one side of an album before you had to get up and flip it over, the records got damaged very easily and the clicks and pops of the needle always annoyed me. I still have my turntable and my record collection but more for the emotional attachment than any great love for the format.

However, I went to a Record Store day event yesterday at Mill No. 5 in Lowell and it was fun and the people were very cool. But it was also a bit sad because I don't see how getting nostalgic for an out-of-date technology will work in the long run to rebuilding the musical communities that were the local-record-store.

The digital genie is out of the bottle. If it's not Spotify or other existing service, it will be a new one that is future of music delivery.. Hopefully both compensation for the artists and audio quality will improve over time, both are needed, but regardless as a delivery mechanism and a way for exploring music, digital deliver cannot be beat.

The funny thing is, I think places like Mill No. 5 itself are the real solution to recapturing the community feeling that everyone misses from the demise of the record store. Mill No. 5 is a great multifunction space that supports all kinds of artistic ventures. It's been pretty exciting watching it grow over the past few months.

Learning guitar, two years later.

2014-01-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

It's been an amazing couple of years.

I say this without hyperbole, learning guitar has been the best thing I've done for myself in decades.   Not only have I learned to play a cool instrument, the process has forced me to develop new ways of listening to music; both in developing an ear for pitch and understanding the way music is constructed. I've also discovered that the discipline of practicing with a metronome has very similar effects to what I've experienced with meditation. The repetitive click-click-click and the concentration on small hand movements has been wonderful for stress relief and developing focus. Finally, leaning to play guitar has also expanded my circle of friends to include some wonderful new folks.

Guitars have always excited me. When I was a teen I wanted to be Jimmy Page or Neil Young. I was just too afraid to actually try. Sure, I had other excuses too but it really boils down to fear. I was afraid it would be too hard, I was afraid I would suck, I was afraid I was starting too late. Can you believe that a sixteen year old kid would think it's too late to learn guitar? Well, those fears didn't fade. In subsequent years I'd watch someone play or I'd get to hold a friends guitar and the desire to learn the instrument would start to take hold, but the fear inevitably would creep in and I'd do nothing about it.

I'd love to tell you how I overcame the fear and went out and bought a guitar, but that's not what happened. Like a lot of adventures, this one didn't start out with a plan. My first guitar was lent to me by my sister after I made an off-hand comment.   Sure, once I had it in my hands, the love was near instantaneous, but I needed that push.   It wasn't a great guitar. It was a bit out of sorts (poorly setup, in guitar parlance) so it was a difficult to play, but it was good enough and I stayed with it.

Finding your first guitar is a tricky thing for most everyone who doesn't have one thrust at them. Here's my advice. Don't buy the really cheap stuff. Sure, it's tough spending money on something that realistically could end up collecting dust in the corner, but don't set yourself up for failure. In the $300-$400 range you can get a decent guitar, be it acoustic or electric.

The gear I have is not bottom-of-the-barrel but I think most people would categorizes it as fairly entry-level stuff. Here's the rundown.

My acoustic guitar is a Seagull Entourage Mini Jumbo that sells for around $379 + $100 for the case. My electric is an Agile 3210, a Korean import you can get mail order from Rondo Music for $659 with case. My amp is a Yamaha THR10 that generally sells for $299. Add in straps, guitar stands, cables, picks, capo, tuners for another $200. Together that's $1637.   You don't need all of this to start but if you want both an acoustic and an electric and you want stuff that will last, this is the ballpark cost.

Beware, though that once you get into this hobby, if you don't have willpower, it can drain your wallet quickly   Guitarists refer to this as GAS: Guitar, Acquisition Syndrome. It's easy to find guitars costing well over $2000. Nice acoustics made from fancy woods can go for double or triple that. Tube amplifiers are expensive too. Pedals are a little cheaper individually, but once you build a whole board, you're easily over a thousand there too. There's an oft repeated joke that goes something like, "My one fear is that after I'm dead my wife will sell my guitars for what I told her I paid for them". So far, I've been good and resisted most urges. I keep reminding myself that fancy equipment wont make me a better guitar player.

One of the best piece of advice I heard when I was first starting out was this: "play for a year and you'll play for life."   The good news is that it doesn't actually take a full year for you to be able to play something on the guitar.   The secret to really sticking with guitar is realizing that you never stop learning to play. It's rinse and repeat. Every month you practice and expand your know-how. I was blown away when I found out my incredibly talented guitar teacher has a guitar teacher. But that's how it goes. There's always something you can't do and can work on. After two years I can do so much more than I could at the beginning, but it's no where near where I want to be.

Another best piece of advice I received was "get a teacher". Besides being great sources of motivation and encouragement they do the one thing that the on-line resources for learning guitar can't, they provide feedback. In fact I think guitar teacher is the wrong name. They are more guitar mentors. They help you navigate the process of learning guitar more than teach you guitar. Like a mentor, they also find you opportunities and make introductions. My teacher has set up parties for her students to perform at and she has introduced me to people I can jam with, not just other students either, these are seriously talented amateur and professional musicians I've got to play with. These are things you can't get on-line.   (My awesome teacher is Liz Lawrence of Root Note Studio, Lowell MA).

One of the surprising aspects of learning guitar was all the side benefits. I've found I really exercise my brain in ways that help me in all aspects of life. Both emotionally and intellectually. I get the emotional satisfaction of learning a new skill and the confidence that comes with it. There's also great camaraderie with the musicians I've met. Everyone I've met is supportive, friendly and willing to share their know-how.   They are just great people and being a part of the whole scene feels good.

At the intellectual level I use parts of my brain I've never used before. My biggest challenge with learning to play has been 'ear training'. My brain has a difficult time processing and putting a name to a pitch. I'm not tone deaf. I can hear the differences, I just struggle trying to identify the specific tone. For example, I can hear that a minor 3rd is different than a major 2nd but when hearing both intervals I can't always say which one is which. Developing this skill feels like I'm opening up areas of my brain that have never been used.

But it also simpler than that. The concentration required to master a difficult song, the memorization of various musical scales, and relationship of various other musical elements just does my 50 year old brain a lot of good. The end benefit is improved creativity and focus both for more music study and at work.

So if anyone out there is thinking about learning guitar feels that they can't do it, or feels they're too old, or has any other excuse that keeping them from following a dream to learn to play music, let my experience serve as motivation. It's never too late and you may surprise yourself and find a new passion.

I Guess I'm Sticking Around

2013-09-19T13:25:00.000-05:00

I received notice from my hosting service, a while back, that it was time to renew the domain for developingstorm.com. I let it sit unaddressed for a bit and seriously considered letting it lapse. Obviously, I don't blog much. But for some reason I renewed. So I'm here to stay for at least another couple of years.

Turquoise Corncob

2013-05-04T08:54:00.001-05:00

I made this recording of some improvisation I did the other day. It's a short guitar instrumental piece. It's three layers: a chord progression, a solo over that and then finished with a little bit of slide/noise on top for texture. I think it has a psychedelic vibe. Hence the name, Turquoise Corncob. The name doesn't mean anything, it was just a free-association of words that came to mind when it came time to put a name to it.

Ten Years

2013-04-27T15:00:00.001-05:00

The highlighted text below was my first blog post from April 28, 2003.

My name is Pete Lyons and I’m a software developer. My current employer is IBM but this log isn’t about that. I’ve been writing software professionally since 1984. I spent a lot of time as a ‘UI guy’ but I now find myself parsing protocols and working on transactional backend system more. I intend this log to deal with thoughts and ideas about software development that I don’t see other places. I hope this won’t become a nepotistic link fest like so many web logs I’ve seen. But then again, I’m not a writer so lack of things to say or the time to write the content could lead to that. Let’s hope not.

My favorite technical topics to read about are Java programming, Scripting Languages (especially Ruby), and Patterns. My favorite non-technical topics include off-beat movies, books, dogs, food, spirits (the kind you drink), current events and football (the American kind). Whether this log has anything to do with these things, time will tell.

Did you notice I called it a 'log'? It was so long ago that 'blog' wasn't a common term.

It's been a fun ten years but I had higher hopes for it when I started. The blog never really found a footing and I certainly never wrote much about software development. With the advent of social sites like Facebook, it's function as a tool for sharing thoughts or interesting finds with my friends diminished as well.

My most popular posts are as esoteric as my blog. The post that gets the most hits is one I wrote about my confusion around the words roughshod and ripshod, another that gets a lot of hits is about the genesis of my love for saltines. I'm rather proud of that last one. Unfortunately, some of my best posts (IMHO) were lost when I abandoned my home-grown blogging software back in 2008.

If anything else, it's an interesting personal record of the evolution of my interests. My philosophical and political meanderings, my poetry phase, my general desire to learn to write better, learning to play the guitar, all have been captured for anyone to read about. I amuse myself by pondering the possibility that some future sociologist's research AI will scan these these pages on a web archive and find some tiny shred of information about the human condition.

This isn't the end. The blog will lives on. What will the next ten years bring? Well, I'm still a fan of books and movies, so there's a good chance they'll show up. Also, guitar and music. Count on them. And beer. Got to have beer.

The Chaw

2013-03-22T12:26:00.000-05:00

Honestly, I started listening to this album because I loved the cover. Besides being a big dog fan the band's name strikes me funny. Are they named after a wad of chewing tobacco or a dog's chew toy. That sort of dichotomy is in my humor wheelhouse.

As for the music, imagine if Dick Dale made an album with the Doors and you'll have an idea of what the music sounds like. Lots of surf sounding guitar along with deep moody vocals and an overall seedy vibe. The sort of music that would be used as a soundtrack to movie about a outlaw motorcycle gang.

I flirted with another somewhat similar sounding band called The Black Angles but I grew tired of them pretty quickly. The Chaw in contract has had some staying power on my frequent play list. Even if you don't enjoy them as much as I do you have to appreciate a bunch of musicians who aren't making music that sounds just like everything else. And if my initial chuckle about the band name was intentional perhaps they even have a sense of humor about themselves.

New Music #3: Blood and Burger

2013-02-20T17:00:00.001-05:00

James 'Blood' Ulmer has been around a long time. Rodolphe Burger's been around for a while too. It wasn't until recently that I ever heard of either of them. They made an album together back in 2004 that contains the recording from this session along with a lot of cool studio work. At first this was a bit too chaotic to grab me but after multiple listens, I'm hooked. It works really well played LOUD. Ulmer's Fusion Jazz stuff and Blues works are worth seeking out.

Thirsty Moose Taphouse Bummer

2013-02-17T19:37:00.000-05:00

I had been meaning to try the new Thirsty Moose Taphouse in Porstmouth NH ever since it opened. I finally got a chance today when my sister in-law and her husband asked Jayne and I to meet them there. The beer list was good, the space is nice, the food was decent but damn was our bartender unfriendly to us.

It was worse than having a barkeep in a bad mood; there must have been something we did or said that set her off on the wrong foot but it was clear she did not like us. We didn't send things back or make her life hard in way I can imagine but every friendly word we offered was met with curt service to our face and scowls and eye rolls as she walked away. We did get beers when we wanted them but it was not a pleasant experience. I don't recall ever feeling less welcome at a place.

My wife Jayne and I sat at opposite ends of our group so we didn't get a chance to talk about it at the bar but the first thing she mentioned when we got back to the car was how unpleasant that had been. So it wasn't just me.

Ning Chi Spicy Pot Sauce

2013-01-14T21:16:00.000-05:00

I've had this jar in the cupboard for a while and never knew what to do with it. I originally picked it up at the local Chinese market when I was feeling adventurous. But after tonight It's going to be a go-to ingredient.

I worked a little late tonight and when I got home I didn't feel like spending a lot of time cooking. So, I chopped up an onion, a half a head of cabbage and threw it into a fry pan. After it wilted a little I added in some left over roast pork and a little water and a few heaping spoonfuls of this magic elixir. It's thick, red spicy-deliciousness.

Once I tasted it, I knew I'd had it before in spicy dumpling soup at a Szechuan restaurant in town but I never knew what the stuff was. It has great depth of flavor. I can't wait to try it in more recipes.

New Music Files #2

2013-01-07T08:55:00.003-05:00

I can distinctly recall walking into the old Newbury Comics in Burlington, back in the 1992, to buy some new CDs and hearing the Pixies for the first time. I was really into the Grateful Dead at that time so the Pixies sounds wasn't in my sweet spot but the store was playing Surfa Rosa/Come on Pilgram and it was so full of new energy and sounds that I bought a copy then and there.

I had the same experience in reverse yesterday, though sadly not in a cool record store. I discovered the Vermont duo MV & EE. I got the lead from a music blogger Aquarium Drunkard (great name by the way) via the HypeMachine plugin for Spotify. If you've not used HypeMachine you should give it a shot. They supply curated playlists created by various music geeks. It's well worth checking out.

The MV & EE bio on Spotify describes them as a "Vermont-based neo-psychedelic lo-fi experimental rock collective". That doesn't exactly describe my current musical sweet spot but as soon as I heard them I became a fan. I've not heard anything quite like them before. It's raw and lives on a the edge of musicality, probably too closely for a lot of people, but I found it really invigorating. If you like hearing new things give them a listen.

Hex Empire

2012-11-28T08:29:00.000-05:00

Ever since I was a little kid and found my older brother's abandoned Avalon Hill Tactics II game in our basement closet I've had a fondness for strategy war games. I couldn't tell you the number of hours I spent playing Walter Bright's classic cursor based Empire on my old Leading Edge PC. When I finally got a color monitor I even wrote a DOS TSR that would color the screen cells so water was blue and land was green.

The turn based strategy genre has fallen out favor with mainstream gamers but I still occasionally find flash games that scratch that old itch. Here's a really fun little game with a lot of strategic depth of play.

The games's not really playable at the size I could embed it and keep the formatting of the blog, so I'll just provide you a picture and a link.

Play Online Strategy Games

New Music Files #1

2012-10-30T20:31:00.000-05:00

The other days I was surfing around in Spotify looking for cool bands I didn't know about when I hit the mother-load and found a couple of new bands that have since been dominating my playlists. The first band I hit upon was the defunct "Ass Ponys" from Cincinnati. Their catchy guitar riffs and dark and funny lyrics (See: Ball Peen) are great. Then when looking at what the band members were doing now I found "Wussy" another Cincinnati band featuring Chuck Cleaver, guitarist and song writer from "Ass Ponys". Here's Wussy playing one of their songs, "Pizzza King". Chuck is my new favorite guitarist of the moment.

Last Resort

2012-10-23T11:25:00.000-05:00

I cannot recall a TV show as schizophrenic feeling as ABC's military/political/corporate intrigue, love story, science-fiction, mystical island adventure series Last Resort. It took Lost a long time to get as tangled as Last Resort is after only a couple of episodes. It's only missing vampires or zombies and I wouldn't be surprised if they show up at some point.

It's been reasonably engaging but I'll need to find a thread to hang on to if I'm going to stick with it and so far none of the story lines have my full attention. And for all the uniqueness of its premise it feels a bit too much like Lost.

Other than Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Sea Lab 2021 I can't think of any other sub shows. Am I missing any?

Root Note Studio

2012-10-22T13:57:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post to plug my awesome guitar teacher Liz Lawrence of Root Note Studio in Lowell. I've been taking lessons from Liz now for around 6 months and I've had a lot of fun and I've learned so much. I'm just a beginner so I can't comment on her musical abilities much beyond that they seem magical to me but I can tell you she's a great teacher who makes learning fun and who constantly challenges me in ways that invariably improve my playing.

I take lessons once a week down at her teaching space in Whitesett Guitar Works on Market Street. It's a cool and funky old industrial space that defies description. Parking is easy enough, just make sure you have some change for the meters.

Highly recommended.

Android Libraries - When a Little Knowledge Kills

2012-10-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

First post in a while but I thought this was worth dusting off the blog for. So, I've been working on Android for nearly the last year and I've been enjoying applying my overall experience with Java and Eclipse to accelerate my team's productivity on the platform. It's fun to know things. But as the title of this post says sometimes it doesn't work out so well either. Case in point, Android Libraries. If you've worked with Java and Eclipse before I'm sure you're familiar with creating sub-projects for shared code. It's easy, you create a jar project, add in the projects tab of the Classpath dialog of the project preferences. Easy-Peazzy-Lemon-Squeezy. You can still do this with Android Library projects and things will compile and but you'll run into class loading issues when you run your code. The solution is not use the standard Eclipse way of associating the library and instead go the Android tab of the project and add a reference to the Library project there. That's easy too but if you're like me and think you know how to use Java and Eclipse it can take way too long to figure out.

TLDR: Don't use Eclipse standard methods for connecting libraries projects. Use the Libraries list on the Android specific properties screen.

Update in Pictures and Words

2012-06-17T10:24:00.000-05:00

Well, lots of stuff has been going on but blogging hasn't been one of them. Here's a little collage of recent photos. I've been hiking a lot and gone on a couple of beer exploration adventures. I've also been helping out with my new buddy 'The Fonz', my sister in-law Karen's new dog. Jayne and I went and saw a Red Sox game recently too.

Not pictured, I've been playing a lot of guitar and working a lot on some cool Nuance technology for Android phones. I actually start taking real guitar lessons next week; that should be a lot of fun.

Best movie I've seen recently: Let the Right One In.
Best book I've read recently: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Wild Rover

2012-03-18T08:44:00.000-05:00

The guitar playing is sloppy, the rhythm is bad and the singing would send a dog scurrying for cover but considering I'm a complete beginner I'm pretty excited by it. It took me a few takes to get through even this single verse and chorus so it's still a work in progress but I really wanted to get this working for St. Patrick's day.

I used these chords and lyrics. A big thanks to FlynnerFolkSongs for his great tutorial on YouTube.

Learning Guitar at 50: #1

2012-03-14T15:18:00.002-05:00

Setting out to learn something new is always interesting. It challenges you in ways you can't begin to predict before you start. Inevitably things you thought would be hard turn out to be easy and things you thought would be easy are harder than they look. This is a post about the preconceived notions I held prior to starting my journey to learn guitar and my take on things now.

Notions #1: There would be plenty of internet resources to learn guitar.

Reality: There is so much information out there it's absolutely insane. But if you simply search for 'Easy guitar songs' or some such thing you're going to get swamped with stuff of wildly differing quality and much of it geared toward players with a couple of months or more of experience.

What you really want is a structured method of learning the basics. Luckily there are options here as well. The program I discovered and am using is the beginner's series hosted at justinguitar.com.
The lessons are comprised of YouTube videos and accompanying web pages that cover everything your need to get started. The lessons are run on a honor-system so no upfront payment is required. There are accompanying materials you can purchase as well. I recently purchased Justin's Beginner Songbook and am having a great time with it. There are videos for some of the songs on the web but having the chord progressions and lyrics written out is a big help.

Notion #2: The hard part would be learning the chords.

The basic chords certainly require work to get a handle on but they're not that hard. It turns out that the hard part is putting all the individual pieces together. Music is a flow that doesn't wait for your old nervous system to communicate with your creaky joints. In the end, it's not the stretchy hand positions that are the problem it fluid movement from one position to another. The good news it's still a lot of fun to make poorly flowing and unmelodious music.

Notion #3: If you just practice you'll get results.

This is mostly a true notion. I'm sure there are certain hurdles ahead of me that may challenge this notion but so far it has been true. What I have learned so far though is that even with a lot of practice progress is slow enough that you can't often observe it directly. I like to think of it as watching a watch.   We all wish progress would be like the quick sweep of the second hand but in reality it's more like the slow progress of the hour hand.   You can't see it but if you track its progress you'll see it always advances.

Notion #4: It would be work

Maybe I'm just lucky but the time I spend practicing never feels like work.   I certainly dedicate a lot of time to practice but it's not a chore. I do it because it's fun. It's not uncommon that I 'finish' practice and put on some music only to be so inspired by the playing that I have to pick up the guitar again to practice some more. I someone had told me it would be this way I would not have believed them.

New Guitar Day

2012-03-05T09:35:00.002-05:00

I've been learning to play on a borrowed instrument so this is my first guitar. I'm pretty excited actually.

It's a Seagull Entourage Mini-Jumbo, manufactured in Canada, It sounds great and feels awesome.

Rhythm Guitar Meditation

2012-02-24T09:11:00.001-05:00

Rhythm. I don't have it. Yet, anyway. At times it feels like my inner clock has sprung a spring. I'm not dissuaded however. I'm working under the assumption that the rhythm guiding part of brain just needs some exercise and that, like anything else, it will come with practice.

It's the practice that I really wanted to post about. Or rather how it so much it reminds me of meditation. I don't recall whether I've posted about meditation in the past but I use it for stress relief. The meditation technique I've used calls for you to focus your mind on your breathing and then work to remain focused on that and that alone. When a random thought intrudes you notice it, categorize it and then go back to focusing on your breathing. It's one of the many things in life that takes only minutes to learn but you can spend a lifetime trying to master.

Guitar rhythm practice is very similar. Rather, instead of breathing, the focus is on the tick of the metronome and the count of the strum pattern. If your concentration wavers and you get off beat you need to recognize how you've diverged and get back in time. They require a very similar world-detaching inner focus.

It will be interesting to see if the later has the same stress relieving benefits. Luckily, life's already been pretty mellow lately but it certainly can't hurt and in the process I might develop some rhythm.

Learning Guitar

2012-02-15T11:18:00.004-05:00

Why so few blog updates lately?

It was family game day at my sister's house. The question was tossed around, what have you always wanted to do but never done? I blurted out, "play the guitar". My sister was rather surprised I'd never mentioned that before but she said they had a guitar I could use.

Fast forward four weeks and I'm a man obsessed.

A little history: I took a few Clarinet lessons in grammar school but never liked the instrument. Later after college I dabbled with the Harmonica but other than that I've never been musical.

For some reason the guitar has really grabbed hold of me. I'm still a complete beginner who can't even play all the open chords but I love practicing and I'm getting better slowly. There are tons of on-line lessons on everything from the basics through advanced jazz. There's lots of information on music theory as well. So much to learn!

Anyway, I'm sure I'll start to blog more about my progress.

Chili with Peanuts

2012-02-01T13:14:00.001-05:00

I made a big batch of Chili for the AFC title game. It was made with a lot of beef, a mix of roasted and dried chilies and a whole head of roast garlic. It was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. As fate would have it however, not a lot of it got eaten so I had leftovers. Since then I've had it over rice, in tortillas, I added some beans, I've had it a bunch of different ways. All good, but today I tried something different. I added a handful of dry roasted peanuts to my bowl along with a heavy does of Habanero hot sauce. That simple combination really transformed the chili into something different. The added spice and the new textural element transformed it into something more reminiscent of an Asian dish. Adding some stir-fried veggies would have made the transformation complete. I've got to keep this in mind. It was really tasty and different way to use up leftover chili..

I Just Watched: Thor

2012-01-02T12:45:00.001-05:00

I almost want to take everything I said, in my last post about modern movies, back. Almost. Thor was actually a pretty good movie. The visuals did service to the story. Due to his experience with the classics, Kenneth Branaghs selection as director seems particularly inspired. The story itself was properly mythic and, although it leaned a little too heavily on a well worn cliche, it was very entertaining.

[Spoilers to follow]. I'm not a comic book guy, so I don't know Marvel cannon, but the treatment of the Loki plot thread took the movie down a peg on my board. Whereas Thor's metamorphosis rung true, Loki's felt hollow. It's one thing to be mischievous but quite another to be evil. Jealously could explain Loki's treatment of Thor but didn't justify the extent of his actions.

After having enjoyed Thor, I'm really looking forward to The Avengers now. I like Joss Whedon enough that the film was already on my radar but seeing how the makers of Thor handled S.H.E.I.L.D. and how there was continuity with the The Avengers, it tells me the franchise people know what their doing and love the materiel enough to sweat the details. The casting seems inspired as well, so hopefully it lives up to the hype.

Some random parting thoughts on Thor:
- I didn't realize Natalie Portman was so tiny. There's a street scene were she passes a mailbox that comes up to her shoulder. Her IMDB bio says she's 5'3" but I wonder if that's not, (cough) stretching the truth.
- I need to watch more movies with Stellan Skarsgård

2011 In Review

2011-12-26T20:25:00.001-05:00

Personally, 2011 was an good year. I had all sorts of new experiences. Most of them were fun and those that weren't I at least found interesting and educational.

Top of my 2011 list had to be my trip to Ireland, with Jayne and our friends the Lizottes. It wasn't a relaxing trip but we saw a lot. Since I'm picking superlatives, I would have to pick getting off the paved roads and exploring the Burren as my favorite activity.

It felt like being on a different planet. The fact that the rock were formed from the limestone sediment of the ocean floor 350 million years ago just made it that much cooler. I also learned a couple of new words: "grikes" and "clints". The "grikes" are the cracks between the rocks while the "clints" are the sections of rock.

I don't know what it says about me that on a green island, with all it's wonderful coastline and it's population of music loving, stout drinkers, I'd pick a lonely, gray terrain of rocks and scrub grass as my favorite place. But I bet if you could stand there and feel the rough, sharp rock beneath your feet and see the expanse of clints and grikes you'd be smitten too.

In terms of the topics I most often write about in the blog: beer, movies and books, 2011 was a real mixed bag.

I didn't like a lot of movies in 2011. I don't know if it's the movies or me but I've just not been as into movies lately. More than ever it seems like movies today are all style and no substance. They are just too pretty and slick. When I watch a modern block-buster I feel like I'm sitting down to a meal prepared by a food photographer. Everything looks delicious but when you actually start to eat you find the golden brown turkey was varnished in shellack and what looks like a balsamic drizzle over the veggies is actually motor oil. I can't recall the last movie I watched where I was more impressed by the story than the visuals.

The indie movies I watched weren't that great either. They've gotten so small - no doubt from budgetary constraints. But, the experience of watching them is almost claustrophobic. Just a few nights ago, I watched "The Trip" staring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. It was a nice movie: very funny, great dialog and beautiful scenery too, but it still left me wanting from lack of a story. There's got to be a middle ground between movies of people sitting around a table talking and giant robot-ninjas with lasers.

In retrospect the best stories I saw this year were told on TV not on film: Justified, Community and Game of Thrones. I'd include Son's of Anarchy too if I could just forget the Dues ex machina ending.

My purchase of an account for the Spotify music service had the biggest impact on my media consumption habits in 2011. In case you don't know about Spotify, it is a subscription service that provides access to nearly all the music in the world. For about ten bucks a month you can listen to anything as much as you want. I went from buying two to four CDs a month to buying only a single one since I opened my account. Spotify could be the most disruptive service the industry has ever seen. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a meeting with the Apple iTune's folks. They can't be happy.

Beyond the spending impact, it's also influenced the music I listen to. Consider the following list of my favorite new artists that I've discovered since I joined Spotify: Port O'Brien, Unbunny, Hala Strana, Phospoherescent, and Calexico. Ever heard of any of them? I hadn't before I joined Spotify either. Because you can listen to anything the whole machine of popular music can be totally avoided. It takes a little work sifting through music you don't like before you discover your personal gems, but the end results are certainly rewarding. Even as I write this I'm listening to a band I've never listened to before: Megafaun. They're pretty good too.

On the book front, I've been reading a lot but not very widely. It's been almost a diet of pure fantasy. The summer was dominated by a re-read of George R.R Martin's first four volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire in preparation for book five, A Dance with Dragons. I don't re-read a lot but this was well worth the time. The books only got better on a second read.

The novel I enjoyed reading the most in 2011 was "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel" by Susanna Clarke. It's the story of two English magicians who manage to bring back magic during the Napoleonic era. Their machinations have a certain amount of success helping Wellington win the war but cause a host of other problems that it takes the novels full 800 pages to resolve. Many people find it a slow read but I loved it. It bridged the gap between pure fantasy and mainstream literature and was full of clever footnotes and dry wit.

So that's my 2011 wrap up. I'll see you in 2012.