Geekin Weekend

Heard about the Rhapsody App and decided to give it a try. Glitchy and processor intense on my version 2 Touch. The interface is very like the Music App. Now Rhapsody allows you to download and store the audio files on your iPod, which is cool. I liked Rhapsody when I tried it before. I used it with a Sansa Clip, and it was cool to nail almost any music I wanted. I just got to the point that I didn't have any time to listen, so what was the point?

Rhapsody is really good if you are into music that is indie based - I am very into Punch Brothers, Po' Girl, and other newgrass - roots - acoustic - whatever... I like being able to roll through new music on a whim, and as long as I keep paying for the subscription service, the tunes keep coming. It will be so much better if they can stabilize the App, though. If it stays shakey, I might just dust off the Sansa Clip again.

Went to the North Carolina State Fair this past weekend. It was ok - lots of livestock and folk art and the like. Deep fried whatever, roasted corn, etc... just lots of food. I don't do rides anymore, so they were a nogo, but I did ride the shuttle bus. We got there early, so it was good - and we left early, too. Only so many cows and intricately carved walking sticks you can see. They did have a ventriloquist and a hula-hoop act called HoopDrum which were cool to watch.

And after we left I went to my favorite pizza place - Primo - and got a large cheeze & half jalapeno (and they were HOT).

Today has been all about mellow. I tried to record some Bruce covers, but I need a harmonica, the ability to play said harmonica, and enough musical ability to get all the way through all 6 minutes of his long-@ss tunes. Would have been cool. Maybe one day.

Weave Tea - this is my tea recipe - try it if you dare:

Boil a pan of water, kill the heat and add 6 family sized tea bags and let steep 10 or 15 minutes. Add a bunch of ice to a 1 gallon pitcher, add 1/2 cup sugar (or Splenda or whatever) and pinch of baking soda, pour tea over and fill the rest of the way with water, stirring. Big, dark tea flavor. A big quanta of caffeine, too.

Hilo

Found a Ron Jon surf shop, and they had this! $15 - and then I tuned it and the frets are not even close to where they need to be so to play in tune. It will be a wall ornament in the ManCave. Awhile back I had an opportunity to buy a Makala Dolphin Uke - it was beautiful, with a orange-yellow burst finnish. Played ok - it was a cheap uke, but you can tune it. I should have nailed it - it would have been an excellent travel uke.




I also got another mini flashlight. A Streamlight Nano Light - here it is next to the Key-Mate I posted about earlier. I like - the Nano has white light. 10 lumens. Cool!




Was at a KISS coffee place and had tea. Bought the most expensive guitar pick - $1.75.

Fun

I bought a new mini flashlight today. The suck part is that the beam is green instead of white, which is what I actually wanted. Oh well - this thing is small and fairly bright. Takes button batteries, but I guess I can deal.

Wish I had my uke with me.

Had the world's worst pizza at some place called East of Chicago - it was one of those places that does the pizza buffet and games with tickets and prizes and the like. I thought it was Chicago style deep dish. I have wanted a Chicago deep ever since seeing some on Man vs Food.

Nap time.

From my Touch

Writing this with the Bloglines app, just to re-try the app. I bought it way back, but no pic post in previous versions put me off. Let's see how it does.

Weekend Wanderer

Ham and Tomatoes on Pumpernickel with salt and pepper! Yumm! I love varietal breads - Jewish Rye and Pumpernickel are my favorites. I don't get them very often, though. Need to correct that.

Twitpic has a new widget out, so I replaced the one I used to have on the sidebar on the right. I don't really Twitpic much, but its there anyway.

Had a good weekend with the Wife, The Oldest, and the Grand-kids. Had some Empanadas and they were good - The Oldest had made the meat stuffing earlier, and then filled and fried the wrapper thing when it was time. Good stuff, although when you fill you have to be careful not to get the stuffing on the edges of the wrapper, or you will never be able to pinch the suckers shut.

Ate at The Waffle House - and it is fast becoming my favorite traveling breakfast. I like their sweet tea, too. Might need to try and crack their recipe. I have been using 6 family sized tea bags and 1/2 cup of sugar in a one gallon jug for mine lately - I don't like mine too sweet and I got into making it dark for added flavor and caffeine.

Winding down the last little bit of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Lots of excitement, at the moment.

Cool Formatting Tricks

My Blu-Ray Player has a USB port on the back and I discovered that I can play MP4 video from a flash drive here. I tried increase capacity by using a HUGE 250 GB USB hard drive - but I couldn't get it to recognize. I suspected that the reason was the HD was formatted NTFS instead of FAT32, like the flash drive. Windows won't FAT32 a hard drive greater than 32 GB, so I found a utility that will allow a USB drive greater than 32 gigs to be formatted FAT32.

IT WORKED! I can now use my big honking USB HD to roll MP4 video on my Blu-Ray Player.

Cool Beans!

As always, if you try this and zorch your stuff, it's on you. I took a chance and it worked. Might not for you.

Webisodes

Up to Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica and about to rip through the 10 Webisodes that they had of Cylon Occupation on New Caprica. The first few disks in Season 3 are extremely hard hitting. I don't wat to spoil it for anyone who might want to look at it later, so I'll leave it at that.

A Tale Of Webcams

In an effort to make my video music more watchable, I decided that I needed to get a new cam. The 320 X whatever cheezocam jammed into the lid of my netbook - well, sux. I bought a Microsoft LifeCam (or something like that) that had an auto focus and would go hi-def. Unfortunately, I had no hardware that could handle it in hi-def, so I had to drop it to 420 X whatever and then the auto focus deal would keep adjusting LARGE if you moved in the slightest while recording. The sound was AWESOME, but this over-focus thing made it a deal breaker. Took it back today and got a Logitech Cam. Cheaper, not as many "features" and the sound is ok (better than the netbook's, but not as good as the Microsoft one). A good trade off. Took this pic with it. Had to play with lighting, and then some manual focusing and then playing with the sensitivity on the mic, but now I think we are looking good.

Watching "The Big Bang Theory" and had some AWESOME BBQ that RON brought by yesterday - embellished with Big Moe's BBQ Sauce, as RON left it plain, although it was good au natural, as well.

Looking for some good tunes to record and trying to organize my digital life right now. Backups and cleaning out the hard drive of "digital crap".

Liking the ukulele more and more, although most of what I have been playing lately has been guitar. Got a few more video's on the YouTube channel - mainly from testing webcams.