ResurrectionSong

The Mark Lanegan - Duke Garwood Album is Coming. And I’m a Little Nervous

2013-02-22T07:14:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Culture, Music

My love of Lanegan is well known throughout the world. Or, at least, throughout my little group of friends. Lanegan has a new album coming out soon with a gentleman named Duke Garwood. It sounds like it could be a bit of continuing embrace of the kind of Americana that Lanegan has often touched on, but there might also be a more “brave” aspect to the music.

And that makes me nervous.

Music, movies, literature that tries too hard to be brave-- to push boundaries too self-consciously-- tends to be the kind of music that I don’t much listen to. I like my music to be lacking in pretension; I prefer it to be straight-forward and honest in its emotions. So, what will this new duo bring? Well, here’s a taste:

New Site for the Ruminations of Zombyboy

2012-06-23T05:22:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com General

I’ve moved.

I’ve moved because the spammers are trying to take over this site. Because I wanted something a little bit new. Because I wanted to break from these hundreds of posts and thousands of comments and do exactly the same thing somewhere else.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I hope that you’ll visit the new site and take part in all the new conversations.

Welcome to PolicyZ.

(Oh, and you can comment over there. Which is nice for everyone.

Receiving Friendly Fire

2011-04-22T15:36:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Politics

As much as I look forward to the day that President Obama becomes former President Obama, I can’t help but feel a little sympathy. It’s not for him, precisely, it’s for anyone who occupies that seat and has to deal with the constant drone of noise coming from people absolutely demanding that their pet cause become the administration’s main priority. I’m sure it’s bad enough when it comes from the opposition party, but the truth is that much of the needling comes from supposedly friendly corners.

When I read some of this stuff, I can’t help but think we’ve become a nation of children who no longer understand what actually constitutes an important issue. For all of my complaints about the current administration, for example, their speed in dealing with the urgent 1915 Armenian genocide problem doesn’t really rank as one of the truly important bits.

Hundreds of protesters, mostly Hispanics demanding immigration reform, gathered to vent their disappointment with US President Barack Obama as he visited California.

Many of the activists said they were Obama supporters but felt let down by the slow pace of the change he promised in his 2008 White House run. The president is currently ramping up his campaign for another term.

Around 200 protesters waved signs and chanted: “Obama, keep your promise!” outside the Sony Pictures studio in Culver City, west of Los Angeles, where Obama attended a fundraising dinner.

“Where’s our change? We need money for housing, not for war! We need money for health care, not for war!” they chanted.

Some protesters reproached Obama for not doing enough to recognize the 1915 Armenian Genocide, while other activists demonstrated against scientific testing on animals and pacifists called for an end to war.

Just sayin’.

Read the rest.

Charlie Sheen Can’t Even Fail Well

2011-04-03T07:03:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Culture, Television, General

According to Fox, some people weren’t impressed with the first show in Charlie Sheen’s “Torpedo of Dumb” tour. I just can’t figure out why.

What did they expect? Did they expect a better class of failure? A more fun kind of public self-destruction? Or perhaps they hoped for some life-changing wisdom from the colossal ego and his porn star/actress “goddesses.” I know that when I want guidance, the first place I look is a hack actor who probably should have been jailed a number of times over for assaulting and threatening the women in his life. Maybe we can all learn something from a man who has managed to skate through all of his most disastrously dumb decisions and increasingly crazy behavior without having to pay anything resembling a real cost. Except, apparently, in his dental hygiene.

If they are really lucky, maybe he will share his way through the mound of cocaine that just has to be part of his rider.

Fans who gathered outside the theater before the doors opened Saturday—some who had to fly in for the show—said they were hoping to see the increasingly eccentric actor deliver some of the colorful rants that have made him an Internet star since his ugly falling out with CBS and the producers of “Two and a Half Men.”

They got the ranting. It just wasn’t funny.

“I expected him to at least entertainment a little bit. It was just a bunch of ranting,” said Rodney Gagnon, 34, of Windsor, Ontario.

I’m sure that what they really want is just the big drama and unhinged rants that made him even more famous than the exquisitely bad excuse for a comedy whose only redeeming value is that I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for Ducky. They want the car crash and he just didn’t manage to deliver enough blood.

Suckers.

There’s something sad about a man who can’t even fail with enough panache to keep the mob happy.

Read the rest.

The iPad Gap: Pure Speculation

2011-04-01T15:52:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Politics, Technology

I find myself wondering how long it will be before someone starts complaining that the poor in America don’t have access to iPads and that iPads are somehow key to their future opportunities for success. How long will it be before some government agency is asking tablet manufacturers to make special programs for the poor and carriers are bullied into some kind of subsidized plan for 3G network access?

What I find most intriguing is that if the government can’t pay for something it deems desirable, it will search for opportunities to make companies pay for them. Those companies are often quite willing to acquiesce, but the cost of providing a good or service at below its actual value isn’t a cost that the company will pay. It’s a cost that we, who aren’t subsidized, will pay.

Of course, all of this is done in the name of helping. Which is why so many of us wish the government would, maybe, help less.

Consider credit card reform. The changes made to protect consumers from the card companies had what I would consider to be an entirely predictable set of results: prior to implementation, cardholders saw rate increases and credit lines lowered. People on the lower end of the spectrum will have a harder time getting any credit (even though these are the folks that most needed “protection” and it will probably end up benefiting the high-cost payday lending outfits) and more cards will charge you an annual fee. So your over limit fees are capped at what the government considers a reasonable amount, but you’ll pay the difference in some other fee or in those interest rate hikes that the card companies pushed out before the new protections went into effect.

I’m sure that there will be a few more rounds of government protection to card holders that are meant to deal with those nasty side-effects of the reform--and that there will be more surprises in store for consumers.

Which, again, is why so many of us wish the government would, maybe, help less.

Making it harder or more expensive for a company to do business isn’t always the best way to protect a consumer. Ultimately, if that company wants to stay in business, it will simply pass on new costs to consumers. When Comcast is forced to provide services below cost, it won’t just sit there dumbly wondering why the bottom line doesn’t look as good as it used to; it will raise rates where it can to compensate. Some small percentage of their customers will get a service below its real value and the rest of its customers will pay more than they should.

So, when will we first see the call for free or cheap tablet computers for the poor? It will probably come from an education advocacy group and it will probably provide yet another distortion on what I wish were a much freer market.

What’s my point? My point is that I am tired of a government that has such an overwhelming need to protect and help me. All those protections and all that help comes at yet another cost--and I’m already feeling overburdened.

Bashing Bloggers?

2011-03-31T05:39:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Rocky Mountain Bloggers

I’m down with that.

Give your thoughts here and pass it on to all your loved ones. They probably want to bash some bloggers, too.

Little Zomby Abroad: Zombyboy Goes to School Edition

2011-01-07T06:28:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Personal

Make the Little Zomby bigger.

Here’s another scan for the masses.

The young gentleman on the left would be me walking from school. At the time, we lived in Bulawayo and I was phenomenally happy.

I’m also pretty sure that I never quite grew out of that same shade of pallid.

Grandpa, Salida Park, 1980

2010-12-29T09:10:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Art Snob, Personal

Click for full size.

I took about a dozen trays of 35mm slides home with me from Arkansas. These date all the way back to the mid-70’s.

I purchased a flatbed scanner with a slide attachment last night and tonight got around to trying the scanner. The film seems to be deteriorating. The clarity has suffered, the color seems to have shifted heavily toward red, and, of course, there are a good number of marks and scratches. This is the first one that I scanned and saved, so I’m still in the learning stage, but I’m worried that some of the older slides might be beyond saving.

I worked the curves on this to reduce red and introduce a bit more blue back into the mix and I’m reasonably happy with the results. It is still far too red in some areas, though, and I’ll need to establish a decent workflow if I want these to be done before 2012.

Still, I like this picture. It was likely taken by my grandmother (or perhaps my Uncle Billy) and my grandpa is seen walking their little poodle. Sadly, they are all gone and no one is there to tell me about this trip. He passed away back in 2005 and I still miss him.

Hateful Things: Acura’s Holiday Advertising

2010-12-29T02:50:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com General

If you haven’t seen Acura’s holiday advertising--the “season of reason sales event"--you should watch this video. The ads dare to suggest that all of the overly ostentatious commercialism of the holiday season can be combatted by buying or leasing a new Acura. The logic, apparently, is that springing for a rental reindeer is a symbol of excess and buying a new car is a symbol of “over saving.”

I have nothing against Acura, but these ads make me cranky every time I see them.

(Edited for clarity.)

Arkansas Christmas Miscellany

2010-12-28T05:53:00-07:00 zombyboy zombyboy@resurrectionsong.com http://www.resurrectionsong.com Personal, Technology

Merry Christmas to you all just a little bit late. I hope you’ll forgive my tardiness.

Darling girl and I spent Christmas in Hot Springs with my parents. It’s the second time we’ve made the trip, although it was complicated a bit this year by the awkward (for us) placement of the holidays. The trip home was done in one, long fifteen hour drive yesterday so I wouldn’t miss any work after we decided that it wouldn’t make much sense to leave late on Christmas to start the drive home. It wouldn’t have been fair to my parents since they only see me once every few years.

This is a series of notes about the trip.

Firstly, Hot Springs is a fun little town. It reminds me of Colorado’s own Manitou Springs only, perhaps, a little bit nicer.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites and it was absolutely wonderful. I used to work at an Embassy Suites and have stayed at a few here and there across the country, but this really was one of the nicest I’ve seen. The rooms were great, the setting beautiful, and the staff was uniformly warm, friendly, and helpful. I had chosen the Embassy Suites because I needed a place with a desk, enough room, and high speed Internet access so I could work for the first few days that we were in town. I wasn’t much disappointed.

Not much but just a little. See, the hotel was wonderful, the free breakfast in the morning was perfect, the bar with some of my favorite vodkas didn’t hurt matters, but I did have an issue with the “high speed Internet” service. Two issues, really. The first is that most hotels (like the Hampton hotels that I normally choose) offer free high speed Internet, but the Embassy Suites charged for daily access. At the price of the room, I’m surprised that the service isn’t included in the deal. I won’t complain too loudly on that front, though: I made the reservations knowing I had to pay extra but decided that it would probably be worth it since I was also able to make spa reservations for my wife on premises, there was more than enough space for my needs, and it the location was good for us.

But, having chosen to pay for something that I normally get for free, I was surprised at the flaky, slow connection that I got. The service was slow, when I logged in daily it offered an extra paid upgrade for faster download speeds, and it dropped connections somewhat regularly. The work that i was doing required me to be sending 70+ meg files to a printer and I ended up missing a few soft deadlines. Luckily I was working with a friend (if you ever need a printer in Denver, Bob at RM Printing is the most reliable and hardest working man that I know in the business--I can’t recommend him enough) who was more patient with me than I deserved. I did end up getting the work done, but it was much harder than it should have been.

The kicker was that the wireless connection was so bad and so inconsistent that I ended up going old-school: wired connection to a data port in the wall. While my reliability went up, the speed didn’t see much improvement.

If the network service hadn’t been so flaky, it would have been the perfect place for the first half of our stay.

Secondly, I got my mom a Kindle for Christmas. I got her one because, largely, I couldn’t afford to get her an iPad but I knew that the Kindle would be something she would really love. That meant helping her with the set-up and showing her a bit how to use the thing.

I like the Kindle. It’s responsive, it works well, and it is really nicely priced--I think that my mom will love it.

I can’t love it, though. I can like it, but not only is it too limited in comparison to my iPad, but even on its own terms it has some design compromises that really bug me. For instance, the tiny keyboard is hideous. The sub-chiclet sized keys are ridiculous and I can’t understand why they didn’t have room for not only larger buttons but more buttons. Why doesn’t it have a set of number buttons? Why do I have to use an odd, on-screen pop-up for numbers and the alt-keyboard? I also, stupidly, mistook the “back” button for the “delete” button a number of times while I was setting up her account information--my fault, certainly, but it still bugged me.

Much of what I didn’t like about it came down to unfavorable comparison to the iPad, though. While it was responsive and it had a very nice screen, while it was light and very nicely sized, it didn’t have the same mix of size, convenience, and incredible breadth of capabilities of the iPad. I know it isn’t a fair comparison (the Kindle is built for reading and nothing more), but I couldn’t stop myself from making it. The same way that I judge netbooks negatively in comparison to my MacBook Pro, I can’t help but judge the Kindle a little negatively in comparison to my iPad.

This has lead me to wonder, though, that with an iPad in my life, do I really need my iPhone? I might actually downgrade to a phone when my current contract is up.

That also brings me to my thirdly, too: the iPad played a big part in this trip, too. Instead of using my dedicated GPS, I used MotionX-GPS Drive HD. It provided a larger screen with bigger maps and instruction, a great set of extra features (a few button clicks to find a list of the nearest coffee shops), voice directions, basic iPod controls, and the option to pre-cache all of the maps that I would need for the trip. I bought a mount for it (that proved useless) and ended up with what I will term a field expedient method of mounting that involved a design feature of my 2008 Ford Taurus X and the particular case that held the iPad. It worked shockingly well.

Since it was hooked up to the car stereo, the music volume dropped every time the voice instructions came along to tell me where to turn. That was a nice change from the stand-alone GPS where the directions would sometimes get lost against the music.

There were a few negatives, though. We ended up a little confused in Hot Springs when we missed a turn and it couldn’t find a new path for us against the quick turns we made to try to get back on track, for instance, and had a few other situations where it had a hard time finding a new route when we went off script. The stand-alone unit seems to be quicker in mapping new routes when necessary. Like the stand-alone unit, though, the MotionX app found some imaginary roads near where my parents live. Apparently the maps for the roads near Hot Springs Village have a few glitches.

The biggest issue came when the app crashed, though. About eight or nine hours into the trip home, the application froze. It came some 80 miles before my next turn, so it wasn’t a big issue, but it was a surprise. A quick restart had it back directing us in just a few seconds, so there was no damage done, but it doesn’t inspire the kind of confidence that you want from a GPS system. I’ll be using it again on my trip to Vegas next month and I’ll see how well that works out.

And, still on the subject, fourthly, the iPad makes a better workmate than you’ve heard. I was thrilled that I bought the 3G version on this trip. Whenever the flaky Internet service (and access at my parents’ home was spotty, too) my cell service was fine. I answered emails, I took notes, I sent links to pdfs through the Dropbox application, I used the contact list and the task manager (I use Manage, a great .99 todo application that balances a nice interface and features with simplicity of presentation and some useful export options) to keep me in touch and on task. I won’t be making my next 36 page brochure on the thing, but it’s not just useful for entertainment.

What I found most surprising was that I was only out of cell phone contact a few times during the entire trip. Where 3G wasn’t available, it was rare that I didn’t have EDGE coverage. For all that AT&T is maligned for its network--and that isn’t entirely undeserved--the breadth of coverage for me was still impressive. And for a good chunk of my stay in Hot Springs, the 3G connection was more reliable and faster than the “high speed” Internet connection that plagued me.

It’s hard for me to spend $900 on a non-essential bit of electronic kit without feeling even a little bit of regret, but I can honestly say that I don’t regret the iPad purchase at all. It has done more than I imagined it would and it has really changed the way I view tablet-based computers. It has a few shortcomings that I would like to see addressed, but the overall device is startlingly good.

After all that chatter, here’s what I really wanted to say: it’s good to be home.