It’s rather self-explanatory, don’t you think? Here’s Aidan, my 3-year old:

I picked up The Legend of Johnny Cash the other day and have been listening to it ever since.
Very simple, Johnny Cash was a genius.
His song Hurt is absolutely incredible - it blows me away. The honesty and stripped-down baring-his-soul nakedness is out of this world authentic, emotionally true.
Wow.
(Teresa and I recenty watched Walk the […]

Last Sunday Teresa and I had dinner with her family … including her uncle Cal Koat, who is the creative spark behind Worldbeat Canada, “Canada’s home for contemporary global music.”
Cal does a weekly radio show on Vancouver radio station CJVB, does the Celt in a Twist top 10 list of Celtic music, and interviews world […]

I just picked up Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome (the Pete Seeger Sessions) on the weekend and I’m listening to it now.
Awesome!
If you like folk/world/bluegrass/roots music, don’t pass this up. (And if you live in Canada, like me, you’ll have to buy it in plastic and paper, since it’s not available off the Canadian iTunes […]

One of the things I did on my recent trip to San Antonio was to visit (quite accidently) the largest Starbucks in North America.
The entire first floor of this Starbucks on San Antonio’s riverwalk is what they call Hear Music. You get your java (or not), sit down at a computer station (stylish flat-screen monitors: […]

OK, just first impressions. Kinda ugly, isn’t it?

Teresa and I took the kids to see the Watoto Children’s Choir tonight … wow!
The choir is amazing - loud, happy, energetic, and infectiously enthusiastic. It’s made up of about 20 kids from the Watoto children’s home in Uganda, Africa, all from 8 to 11 years old.
They’re all orphans, having lost one or both […]

I haven’t been able to find great/proper/fitting furniture for my stereo equipment, so I’m wondering about building my own.
This has me inspired:

It’s by Manhattan design firm hiveminddesign. You can get a look at it here too if you aren’t up to the pain of navigating hivemind’s oh-so-cool-but-very-90’s all-Flash site.
The feet, which aren’t visible in this […]

Crazy Apple Rumors has a great - and just slightly tongue-in-cheek - article about the recent iPod hearing-loss lawsuits:

“We did a cost/benefit analysis,” said Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, “And it clearly is not cost effective to continue to have stupid people as our customers.”

That about sums up my opinion regarding silly class action lawsuits […]

OK, I’ve done it with my iPod, as have thousands of others.
Why not with my Harmon/Kardon AVR 240? Here’s about a 3-second exposure with the camera on a tripod.

For companies that still don’t get it: aesthetics are important. Aesthetics are important. Aesthetics are important.
At least, if you want anyone to love your product. If you […]

Today was almost unbearable … the stereo equipment that I’ve been waiting for for over 9 years (OK, at least 9 days now) finally arrived at my office in Bellingham in the morning, and I had to wait all day to take it back over the border, get it home, and set it all up:

I […]

If you haven’t seen these two Chinese kids lip-synching yet, it’s a fairly enjoyable way to burn 3 minutes … and reaffirm that kids are kids are kids, no matter where they happen to live.

Teresa and I (and the kids) just came back from a Michael Card concert.
It was sponsored by WorldServe, and featured Pastor Elisha, the leader of something like 2000 house churches in Vietnam.
It’s illegal to for Christians to evangelize in Vietnam, so Pastor Elisha has spent many years in prison - 4 prisons, actually - which […]

When those guys at Ars Technica stress-test something, they really, really, really stress-test it.
(They took an iPod Nano and did unmentionable things to it.)
PS 1: It’s amazing what the Nano can withstand.
PS 2: That’s two Seinfeld references in two posts. Uh oh.

I picked up a couple CDs at House of James yesterday, one of which is a really, really, really good album, Starfield.
It’s a debut album; the group’s also called Starfield. They’re Canadian, and some of their music is similar to Kutless. It’s basically Christian rock with some softer stuff, some hard beats, and a lot […]

The beauty of simplicity, by Telecast, and City on a Hill (various artists) …
[update Aug 7 ]
OK, correction. Music I did buy yesterday:
The beauty of simplicity, by Telecast
Try, by Bebo Norman
and Strong Tower, by Kutless
Pod-licious!

I just set up a The Linguist podcast and published it to the iTunes music store.
iTunes RSS is funky, to say the least. Sure, it adds a whole bunch of categories, some of them of dubious value. But others have covered that exhaustively.
What bugs me is that my RSS feed was accepted just fine the […]

Ok, I’m aware that there are a million iPods out there. Actually, some 16 odd million.
But this one is mine. My precious …

In spite of being as tough to open as a circa 1800’s chastity belt, the packaging is very svelte:

I ordered an iPod 3 days ago. Today I received notification that it was shipped.
Since I was interested to know where exactly it was being shipped from, and where it is right now, I checked the FedEx site and plunked in the tracking number.
Apparently, my iPod is now in FedEx’s Shanghai depot. Or in the […]