Archive for February, 2005

I’m well past the half way point of importing all my CD’s back onto my computer, after starting fresh a little over a week ago. Over 1130 songs (not that impressive, I know.) That converts to 4.2Gb or 3.2 days worth of music, but I haven’t been importing CD’s non-stop the way I was the fist couple of days. In fact, I’ve been quite selective the last few—importing only worthy songs from rarely listened to discs.

I’ve been quite dilligent at rating the music that’s coming in too. As of this writting (keeping in mind my rating system that requires at least three stars for a song to get any air-time,) only 437 tunes rank high enough to get played—that’s only 39%. Just 10% of those songs were ranked high enough that I would pay money just for the song and only two songs have five stars (U2′s One being the other.)

As far as artists go the following are of note, having the highest number of three star or higher tunes (keep in mind that this is only representative of my music collection and I don’t have everything I want:) Vigilantes of Love 10, Barenaked Ladies and Sting have 12, The Police with 13, The Tragically Hip have 14, Elvis Costello has 15, U2 has 17, The Beatles and Neil Young with 19, The Choir have 29, Midnight Oil 47. Of those, the Choir, Oils and U2 each have four four star songs, accounting for over a quarter of the “Excellent” music in my collection.

And now that you have the statistics, go ahead and distort them for your own purposes.

Last night Jenn and I went to see Finding Neverland. I was warned that this film wasn’t so much a romance, but a story of adultery—but I don’t think that is true. I will admit that Mr. Barrie, despite his love for the Davies children, did a horrible job of taking care of his own marriage and through his inattention was responsible for it’s breakup. Never the less, it wasn’t adultery.

Finding Neverland did make me think about how “true romance” is sometimes inaccurately portrayed—I don’t know if this is a recent thing and suspect that it’s been happening in entertainment for millennia. In some movies, perhaps this one, maybe in The Notebook (which I haven’t seen) and others, satisfying love is not found by being faithful and nurturing ones chosen love, but by keeping your heart open to wooing (and being wooed by) people at the theatre, in the park, riding that horse, from your past, etc.

Now, my point isn’t to pass judgment on this kind of practice—you probably know where I stand—but I wanted to make a connection to serial monogamy and why this type of film is so popular. Could it be as simple as these films reflect and justify what’s already going on in so many exclusive relationships? I would estimate that a greater percentage of the western population has forsaken a chosen love (be it through marriage, civil union, going steady, whatever) for a potential new love (or “true love”) than those who have been true to a chosen love. Include me in the stats, I’ve broken up with a serious (at the time) girlfriend—though, not for another, but the potential of another.

Right, well, I don’t like to get moralistic here, just a thought I had. By the way, that Johnny Depp is quite the versatile actor. I saw him in Pirates of the Caribbean a few weeks ago. He’s rising the ranks of my admired Hollywood actors. And who tops that list? Maybe Sean Penn.

Professional Music Reviewer: now, there’s an easy job, right? Well, maybe not? Now that I’ve got a couple of gigs of my music ripped, I’m starting to shuffle through it and I’m attempting to give a rating to each song that I listen to. It’s harder than I was expecting, becuase I know that I like certain songs more or less depending on when I listen to them. When I hear If I Had $100,000 as I work away in my office I like it less than I would if I was driving down the highway on a sunny day with the moonroof open singing it with friends. So, do I rate it as “good” or “excellent?” For your approval, and critique, I present my meager rating system with the sparse criteria that I use along with a song that received this rating…

★★★★★ Best of the Best: This song deserves to be on an essentials list somewhere. (Dire Straights, Money For Nothing)
★★★★ Excellent: I would pay money to own this song. (U2, Even Better than the Real Thing)
★★★ Good: This song is worth listening to, but I wouldn’t buy a CD just for it. (Barenaked Ladies, Alternative Girlfriend)
★★ Indifferent: It’s not like I don’t like this song, I just don’t like it. Skip it, but don’t delete it. (Beatles, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer)
★ Awful: This song is only here because the rest of the album is.
· Not Yet Rated

In an attempt to bring order to chaos, I’ve pulled a musical Genesis 6. I do this kind of thing from time to time—wipe everything out and start fresh. So, as I’m working away, I’m ripping my music collection one CD at a time. It’s great fun, I’ve got stacks of all my stuff around me and all of Jenn’s stuff too!

I thought that I’d want to have everything I own on my computer, but I’m finding that I’m being selective. Certain albums and certain artist get popped in and ripped in their entirety, but others (more often Jenn’s stuff, but I’m building a pile of my own too) just don’t seem up to snuff right now. Want some examples? Lost and Found, Kim Mitchell and A Charlie Brown Christmas! Crazy, eh? I imagine that I’ll get these albums (or select songs from them) on my second pass—but for now, no more I am a Wild Party.

PS: The Police weren’t that great live in 1979, just in case you were wondering.

On Saturday mornings I watch a program on PBS called Tracks Ahead. It’s all about trains: old tains, new trains, model trains, garden trains, people who paint trains, everything. Today they had a segment on a real train and I decided that the next time I got to Europe I’ve got to go to Wuppertal, in Germany, to see the monorail.

This monorail is beautiful. It’s one of the first hanging monorails, built over 100 years ago. It was originally designed to serve two small towns (that grew into one large town) along the Wupper River. As such, it travels right above the river with steel supports on each side of the river. I imagine it would feel like your were flying right along the river. Wuppertal is right between Köln and Gelsenkirchen, just east of Düsseldorf and west of Kassel—why don’t I just show you the map? So, who’s up for a trip? We can catch an FC Schalke 04 match while we’re there!

Thanks to Robin for digging out this gem from the archives…

Speed Ball Official Rules – Edition 1.10 – May 30, 1993
What is Speed Ball?

Speed Ball was invented in May of 1992 by a group of young men from Thunder Bay, Ontario. It is a fast, no contact, game played on in-line skates on large paved areas. The object of the game is to score as many points as possible by tossing a speed ball into one of two baskets located at either end of the playing field.

Who Can Play Speed Ball?

Anyone who is up to the challenge of hard, fast skating can play Speed Ball. Idealy, teams are made up of five players, and should include players with talents of speed, manuverability, passing, catching, and goal scoring skills. The ability to think fast and adapt stratagies in mid-play are good qualities in a player, but most of all, it is important that everyone playing has a good play-fair-have-fun additude.

• Speed Ball Rules Full Text

Well, as a disclaimer, it was either an NHL post tonight, or nothing at all… So, no NHL season this year. Meh, no biggie. It’s not like I could afford tickets to the Ottawa vs. Colorado game anyway. Some folks were talking today that fans may become so disenfranchised with the NHL that there may be room for some other league to sneak in there and become a real rival league. Now, there’s nothing that I’d like better (as far as pro-hockey goes) than to see an all Canadian pro hockey league on par with the NHL. I don’t think I should be holding my breath though—I figure as long as the NHL can get going again either next season or the following that they’ll still dominate. A guy (who’s only a moderate hockey fan) can dream though.

Maybe I’ve been watching the wrong TV shows the past few years, but there aren’t near enough good nukes on TV. I’ve been watching the second season of 24 on DVD for the past few weeks and (not to give anything away) just watched the episode where the nuke went off in the middle of the continental US. Now, that’s great TV!

In fact, I can’t remember watching a TV show that handled an exploding nuke as well as 24 did. It kind of makes me crave more nukes on TV. And why not? It’s not like it’s going to give anyone any ideas that they probably haven’t thought of before. I regret not watching this new season of 24 from the beginning. I hope the bad guys are still trying to nuke the US!

Hmm, I wonder if this blog entry will cause any flags to be raised on the international terror watch scene? Just in case though—I’m only talking about TV.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. As my special gift to show you how much I love you all, I’ve brought back the blurt. I’ve also added Carla’s excellent “Desparate Housewife Blog” to the blogroll (I’ll just wait for the comments on that one) changed some colours and added a little javascript to the footer.

So, if I set up a voluntary login widget on my webpage would you login? I been thinking about that for a little while — partly because I want to try to do it, partly because I think it would kind of be fun and partly because I’m curious to know who’s visiting. (Yeah, I’d want to keep stats on who visits how often, I guess.)

I started thinking about this again when Jenn was reading through the last month of post and reading the comments. She pointed out a few old (like week or so old) comments that I didn’t notice from folks I didn’t know were visiting. I also know that there are some people who visit who never comment, so I don’t know who they are and this probably wouldn’t help me find out either.

Anyway, would you login? (And remember, it’s just me, I’m not going to sell my friends’ email addresses to spammers — but if you want to make me an offer for the list…)