I figured with such an accomplished head start, Apple could flip a music streaming service in no time. They had the people who created the ideal, just do more of that? Not so fast mister, this is Apple we are talking about and nothing at Apple gets released without being perfect.

Cut-to more than a year later

Last week Amazon released 2 free products, Amazon Cloud Player & Amazon Cloud Drive. The basic gist of both is storage online for all your media — in the cloud. Cloud Player is all about audio (at the moment) and Cloud Drive is all about all other files. Confused? Maybe this video will help.

Sounds pretty incredible right? So how does it stack up against all the other cloud based storage systems out there? For files it is pretty good, it is definitely not as easy to use as DropBox, but that may change rapidly as Amazon figures out what they have. The major advantage of DropBox over Cloud Drive is finder integration on both Mac & Win computers. Not having to keep a web browser window open or download some strange “uploader” is a real advantage.

For music, the service is basically unmatched at the time of this writing. Being able to upload mp3s and have them instantly available for playing online or to be downloaded on another computer is wonderful. The Amazon Cloud Player itself is relatively simple in its design. It has a big yellow play button and does a fantastic job at streaming audio files smoothly. The sound quality is the same as you would expect from a desktop application.

But what about all us people who have bought lots of songs from iTunes? We’re out in the cold, right? Amazon Cloud Player uploads and plays those flawlessly too! What?! You heard me. As long as the AAC track isn’t copy protected (ie – not a 128kbps .m4a file you downloaded from iTunes 2 years ago or earlier) it will upload, play, and have all its tags. This is wonderful functionality for all the folks like me who drift from one music service to another. Amazon has smartly not excluded its competitors users.

Unfortunately if you rip your music into FLAC, APE, Apple Lossless, OGG, or any other formats; you are going to have to convert them to MP3 or M4A if you want to listen to them online. If you just want to upload them, they can be uploaded and accessed through Cloud Drive, but Amazon Cloud Player will not recognize them as audio.

Time to give up on Apple?

So is Apple so late to the party that it will be impossible to catch up? Far from it. Apple will release their cloud music service soon and it will be a game changer, of that I have no doubt. For all of us iPhone and iPod users, the service will also be compatible with our devices (Amazon’s Mobile Cloud Player is not yet available for Apple products). But what Amazon’s service does do, is offer a glimpse in to the future of cloud based services. It may not be perfect yet, but it does change how we store and consume media. Best of all this gives Apple a high bar to jump over — competition is never a bad thing.

The song is available now at iTunes. The full album Turtleneck & Chain comes out 5/10 via Universal Republic.

PS – This is NOT safe for blaring on your speakers at work — but it does feature CGI Garfield.

Last month I tried something called Sober February to see how it made me feel to cut out alcohol and meat. At the end of the shortest month, I admitted that it really didn’t make me feel any better health-wise. Sure I felt a bit lighter, but it didn’t make a huge impact on my wellbeing. I still had aches and pains. Still felt gross sometimes.

This is normal right?

It was then I said “I think I might make April the day I go to the gym every day and see how that affects my health”.

April is here and I have decided to make it The Month of Gym. Every day I will exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes, but I plan to work out more than that most days. During this time I’m going to be measuring my weight and see if I feel better with some old-fashioned physical labor. I’ll keep an updated page with all my stats and how I’m doing with it — if you want pictures of my guns that’ll cost extra!

I’m hoping that after the month it will have become a habit and I will continue to go to the gym after my challenge is over.

Any words of encouragement would most defiantly be appreciated.

When I first heard True Blue from Dirty Beaches’ Sweet 16 EP, I have to say I was impressed. The romantic tone and undulating guitars made me want to sit by a fire on a beach at dusk, wrapped in a musty blanket with my best-girl, listening to the waves crash. It was just this over-romanticized vision of 1950s sound that got me hooked. As a sound, it was fresh and really got me interested.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTch7g_gkfU]

The Badlands album, however, suffers from too much of a good thing. While an EP of fuzzed out rockabilly guitars is fun, a full albums worth of difficult to decipher eclectic low-fi is a little hard on the ears. Sure there are some interesting moments on Badlands, but after about 4 songs — you get it. You get the whole thing. You think, I hope this changes a little from the predictability of the “dadada-dada-dadada-dada” and it doesn’t. It holds tight — to a fault.

Even wonderful songs like Lord Knows Best begin to grate on your nerves after the repetition of the 5 songs before it. I want to like this album, because I really have been looking forward to it, but as an album it doesn’t hold up. It stubbornly marches to the end without the love or joy you might have expected from the standouts like True Blue or Lord Know Best. By the end, Black Nylon and Hotel gave me distinct impression I was being asked to leave the beach I had so enjoyed hearing snapshots of before.

Rating: 40/100
Released: March 28, 2011

Unfortunately after a night of hardcore talking, which probably involved me telling you an embarrassingly personal story about an ex-girlfriend, people ask me to e-mail them all the things I was talking about. They also ask me to untie them.

Below is a list, in no particular order, of what I’ve been talking about for the month of March 2011.

Comedy Stuff

• Hannibal Buress – Very funny stand-up comic now opening for Letterman

• Kumail Nanjiani – Another great stand-up from Pakistan. Love his bit about Benjamin Button.
• IT Crowd – Super funny BBC comedy about an english IT department.
• Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – Is a total cult classic BBC comedy in the style of old 1980′s tales from the crypt, Stephen King style horror. Probably the best show to convincingly do badly done.
• QI – One of my favorite UK vices after PG Tips, Qi is a quiz show, but a quiz show unlike any you have ever watched before. The point is not to get the answer right, but instead to be interesting. Hosted by the incredibly smart and interesting Stephen Fry.

• Would I lie to you – A hilarious BBC show where british celebs have to lie to get points. Really great and sometimes hilariously funny.
• Nasty Cute – My main squeeze, Eliza Skinner, has a 365 project about cute animals who say terrible things.
  
• Sleepwalk With Me – Funny non-fiction from Mike Birbiglia, talked about it previously on my post about being inspired to write more.

Tech Stuff

• Stacey CMS – This little Content Management system surprised me because of how easy it is to use and install. No Databases, just easy to write templates and text files. Very good for the beginner. Can be completely pimped out as seen in the architecturally inspired theme Assemblage.
  
• TwentyTen Five – Based on an article in Smashing Magazine, this WordPress theme is wonderful for those wanting to dip their toes into HTML5. Based on WordPress’s default theme, it is very easy to work with and style. You can see templates I have built using it here on this website and on ElizaSkinner.com.
  
• Pure Reader – For all of you who use Google Reader to read your RSS, the Pure Reader browser extension makes that experience amazing. Seriously, I cannot recommend it enough.
  
• Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator – I do love me some smooth gradients, especially when I can create them in CSS3.0 ala an Adobe Illustrator style chooser. Found this via 25 Super Web-based HTML & CSS Tools an incredible resource for great web tools.
  
• Calibre – If you own an e-Book, then you must have Calibre. Although the interface is chunky and pretty counter-intuitive, Calibre can convert any eBook format to any other e-book format. It also organizes books and allows you create e-books from a website’s RSS feed.
• Roku Player – Still my favorite video streamer. If you subscribe to Netflix instant watch, you owe it to yourself to get a Roku Player.

So, now you know what it’s like to have drinks with me. Pretty exciting right? My calendar is pretty open if you?… no? You have to?… go? Oh, okay, maybe next time. Here, let me untie you.

And so, I have been writing again. It’s taking a lot longer than expected and also longer than it takes to read Mike’s stories, which seems like a ridiculous thing to measure against, but I do. I think oh this is funny, I can do this too! And I start dictating in my mind, which is a terrible habit because my mind never writes anything I tell it down. And then I’m like PERFECT send it to press and my mind goes, sorry I wasn’t writing ANY of that down. I don’t even have hands, what were you expecting? Also ‘send it to press’? Where are we Citizen Kane, the 40s?

I should really fire my mind and get a real assistant. Keep an eye out for some ridiculously embarrassing stories soon.

Update: You should also check out my new bestie Kimmy Gatewood’s blog My Boyfriend Tolerates Me – very funny and has also been inspiring me to write more.

And by philosophy, I mean snorting cocaine off of a picture of myself, while standing front of a mirror admiring my ‘guns’.

I love it when he looks into the camera.

Nero by Little Tybee

Needed a pick-me-up after the events of last week. Really looking forward to their new album out April 5th on Paper Garden Records.

I’m not religious, but when catastrophe of this magnitude strikes I can’t help but send whatever my closest approximation of prayers are, to the people of Japan. This earthquake is truly horrifying and my thoughts go out to everyone effected.

Please take a moment and give to the Red Cross.