Category: Blog

Building the Archive

Today I went back and added my blog posts from somjuan.com/old. So now my posts from February 2005 to June 2006 are on this blog. They’ve all been dated correctly, and I’m slowly adding the original comments to those posts.

Bonnaroo, an Introduction

All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07

Parts 1-5 were written while I was on the road, on paper. I’m pretty happy I was able to do that. Not only because I was able to write things down while they were still fresh, but just writing on paper was a refreshing experience. I wrote in pen, so unless something was really not what I had wanted to write down, I left it and built off it. I like being able to write like that, because when I type, I constantly edit myself as I type, and sentences rarely turn out the way I intended them to.

Most of these entries, like most things on this blog, are meant for me. I’m happy if you can take something away from it, but I am normally the audience I have in mind when I write these things. Because of this some things have been left out, and will probably be forgotten in time. Whether intentional or not, what has been written down is likely all I’ll remember. I’ll try to add more things as I recall them.

Bonnaroo was a very fun experience, but I doubt I will go back. If I got a chance to go back, for very cheap or free, I probably would. The festival is too big, with a crowd too diverse for my liking. I don’t regret going, but once is probably enough for me.

Odds and Ends

All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07

This is where I’m going to throw little things that wouldn’t fit in any other space.

I saw the lowest gas price all trip in Virginia: $2.73/gallon. A good $0.50 less than up here.

The whole trip cost me $402:
– $220 Bonnaroo Ticket
– $120 Greyhound Ticket
– $20 Food/Toiletries
– $15 Iced Lemonades
– $10 T-Shirt
– $8 Pizza
– $6 Waffle House
– $3 Bonnaroo Sticker
Pretty sure those are all my expenses.

On the way down, I saw a huge sign on an apartment complex that read: “If you lived here, you’d be home now.”

At some point (I think it was on the way down, leaving Baltimore) I wrote a poem. It popped into my head, and stayed there, so I wrote it down:

In the back of the bus there is no rain
I can see that it is wet outside,
I can see the lightning,
I can see the windshield wipers going,
But I wouldn’t know it was raining outside
Unless you told me.

I like it because of all the social and various deeper meanings that can be taken from it, but I like it most because I wrote it about none of those things.

I took two disposable camera’s worth of photos. I’ll upload them to Flickr once I get them developed.

If you plan on traveling Greyhound, and you’re going to an event, give yourself some wiggle room by leaving earlier than you need to. You’ll need it.

I’d recommend not traveling Peter Pan if at all possible. The first bus I got on was a Peter Pan bus, and we were 10 minutes late, which made me over a day late. On the way back, the last bus I was on was also a Peter Pan bus (driven by Bus Nazi) and that bus was over 15 minutes late. I’m only happy I had no connecting bus to catch.

That is one thing I can say for Greyhound buses. None that I was on were ever late. If anything, they were early.

The people at Greyhound are nice, but they generally can’t do much to help you (except Gary).

When traveling by bus, you get what you pay for.

Go!

All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07

Packed, ready to go. One minor concern is that my pack might be too large. I’m sure it will fit on the bus, but they have a limit of 62 inches combined length, width and height. The frame is under that, but all the crap hanging off of it is far over. Maybe they won’t care. I really hope they don’t. If they do I’ll either have to pay more, or ship it through their baggage service (I would really prefer my bags arriving with me in Manchester).

I have to give my parents credit: they didn’t start making sure I had everything or giving me more stuff to bring until tonight. I suppose that’s a good sign of self-restraint that they held off from doing it all last week, but its annoying that it is the night before I leave.

Either way, everything looks good, and I’ll be on my way at 8:20 tomorrow morning, arriving in Manchester Tennessee at 8:50 Thursday morning. I’ll try to write things down so I remember them, and then I’ll try and post as much as I can when I get back (or maybe even when I’m down there, if I can find a computer terminal that isn’t too crowded).

To Bonnaroo!
See you all next week.

Set

All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07

Pay The Snucka by Umphrey’s McGee
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/um2006-06-16.lateshow.neumann.flacf/um2006-06-16d1t08_64kb.mp3]

This is very cool: I got a large lcd screen to use for my projector. The screen cost me $200, the lenses were free thanks to some clever recycling, the wood will probably be free if we have enough scrap around (if not it’ll still be cheap). That leaves $100 from my initial budget to buy a lamp and something to keep it cool. The screen should arrive before I get back from Bonnaroo, so with some luck it will be done by the end of the month.
I’m pretty happy about this, and I’ll try to keep a buildlog in case anyone wants to replicate it.

Ready

All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07

Thirsty in the Rain by The Keller Williams Incident
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/kwi2002-06-21.shnf/kwi2002-06-21d1t06_64kb.mp3]

I packed for Bonnaroo today. Since I’ll be working the next two days, and leaving early Wednesday morning, today was the best time. I’m throwing everything I need in my framed pack. I’ll need to keep it all under 55lbs if I want to keep myself from getting charged extra by Greyhound. That’s alright though, because with all my clothes, food, tent and sleeping bag, it is all still under 40lbs. Which is pretty cool considering the pack weighs 10 alone. I’ll probably add a little extra just because I can; a roll of duct tape to round things off.

I’m still not completely sure who I’ll be seeing, but I’m fine with that. I’ll probably post a more specific followup to this tomorrow night when I’m less distracted.

GUpdate

After Midnight by moe. w/ John Medeski, Trey Anastasio, Sam Bush, and Jennifer Hartswick
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/moe2005-02-10.DPA4021s-splt.v3.flac16/moe2005-02-10d3t06_64kb.mp3]

Follow up to Don’t Be Evil

So for about a week now I’ve been using Gmail for all of my email (5 addresses, one place to get em all), Google Reader for my RSS feeds (34 of them), Google Calendar for events (there isn’t much happening, so there is very little there), and Google’s startpage as one stop for all of that. Google has some other nifty services, but either I already used them or I don’t need them (like Google Earth and Maps, which I’ve used since they came out).

As a startpage, Google works pretty well. I’ve got semi useful widgets and links to places I want to go. One cool little thing they’ve added is page themes, which actually change with the time of day. I like that.

Gmail is incredible. I don’t know what more I can say about it. That’s untrue: I recieve email from 5 different email addresses (three of which Google checks and recieves via POP3, the other two are fowarded), automatically sort them with filters, and can search through them easily. I can also send email from each one of those email addresses, including my uconn address. And all this is available to me anywhere with an internet connection. I only wish I had done this earlier.

Reader is another story. Google Reader needs more work before I can sing its praises. It does adequately replace Sage (the firefox extention I had previously used to view RSS feeds), lets me organize feeds into folders and allows me to read more posts quicker than before. But it is in sore need of some features. I’d like to see a search, so I could find specific things in my feeds quickly. Maybe even a smart folder feature (a la OSX).

But my main complaint about Reader is one that I’ve already complained about before. I feel even more distant from the sites I’m reading. Even more so than when I was using Sage. As a result I read my feeds less. I don’t know what Google could do to help this, or if there is anything they can do. But that doesn’t make it any less of an issue.

Google Calendar seems nice, but I haven’t had too much of an opportunity to play with it, being summer and all. It will be tested more in the fall.

As for the other services Google offers, they mostly don’t do anything for me. I don’t use blogger because I’ve got a blog that I can hack here, I don’t much like Picasa (viva Flickr!), and although SketchUp is fun, I have no use for it.

I’ll make new posts concerning this as things change.

I’ve also tussled a little bit with the Google Apps Suite. Since that is a bit more niche, you’ll have to check the extended to read about that.

Continue reading “GUpdate”

FOMO

Better Change Your Mind by Apollo Sunshine
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/apollosun2007-04-22.nak300.flac16f/apollosun2007-04-22t01_64kb.mp3]

So the schedule for Bonnaroo 2007 is up, and it gives me a pretty different impression than what I got from just looking at the artist lineup.

There are a number of conflicting sets, so I’ll either need to miss some or all of a large number of artists. Which is probably ok. I knew it would happen, coming to a festival as large as Bonnaroo, but I’d rather see entire sets. There are a few bands who I’ll see no matter what. But otherwise, it looks like I’ll be doing a lot of tent-hopping.

Here is what I’m planning on seeing, but I’m going to try and be as flexible as possible.

A few comments:
– I will see The String Cheese Incident and Keller Williams (WMD’s) no matter what. This is SCI’s last year touring with Bill Nershi, so I want to see them while I still can. And Keller is touring with his ‘dream band’ so I’m not going to miss that either.
– The first conflict on my list is The Black Keys vs. an acoustic Tea Leaf Green set. I’m leaning towards TLG, because the tent is going to be packed, so showing up half way into it isn’t a great option.
– The next conflict isn’t one that I’m debating, just one I’m upset about. String Cheese vs. STS9 vs. TBD (superjam?) vs. Mago featuring Billy Martin & John Medeski. I’ll stay for the whole SCI set, because its likely that STS9 will still be playing. If that other set is indeed the superjam, then I shall be sad. But not too sad, because SCI, Martin and Medeski will be on stage at that same time, so the superjam won’t be too amazing. I’ll keep telling myself that.
– Next is Hot Tuna and Ziggy Marley vs. Railroad Earth and acoustic Warren Haynes. I’m thinking I’ll end up at the later, because they’re both in the same tent, and Railroad will be good, but Warren Haynes will absolutely pack that tent. It would be good to be there early.
– Keller Williams vs. Spoon vs. Ween vs. Ben Harper vs. Franz Ferdinand. I’ll see Keller but I’m sad about the bands I’ll miss.
– The Flaming Lips vs. Gov’t Mule vs. Galactic w/lots of guests. Fuck. These were three bands I really wanted to see. Odds are I’ll make TFL my priority, and check in on Mule once its over. They’ll still be jammin, I’m pretty sure of that. I’d like to see Galactic, but I just don’t think it’ll happen.
– Wolfmother vs. T-Bone Burnett vs. Flight of The Conchords plus Demetri Martin. This one is really damn hard. I have no idea what I’m going to do here.

I think those are the big ones. Otherwise its just overlap, and I’ll probably just catch a little of this, and a little of that. All in all, if it works out well, I’ll be seeing over 30 artists over the course of 4 days. :D

Don’t Be Evil

I spend a lot of time on the internet. That’s no secret.
I like to think that I’ve optimized and streamlined everything as much as possible. I’ve fiddled with Firefox and gotten it to do exactly what I want and need it to do, to the point where it is the most important application on my computer.

Backtrack, it is July 2004 and I’ve just registered for GMail. I’m really pumped about this, because I’m a huge nerd. I use it frequently until the end of highschool, and for that time it is a great tool. Then I stop using it. I honestly don’t know why, maybe I forgot about it, maybe something else, whatever the case, I didn’t use it anymore.

Now some two years later, I logged in to one of my GMail accounts. I’ve used my Google ID for a couple of their other web apps like docs.google.com (which I used to write a couple papers this last semester), but I hadn’t actually signed in to GMail. So I did that today.

No, this isn’t about the messages I found from years ago (which were pretty fun to read) or the spam that somehow got in there. What drove me to write this post is how incredibly tight Google has tied together all of its apps. I’ve paid attention over time as Google churns out nifty web app after web app, but I hadn’t taken the time to see how they worked together, and that’s what makes them valuable. Lets move back to my original point.

I’m considering a massive shift in the way I use computers. I can do this with Google Apps. Google Reader replacing Sage (Firefox plugin for RSS feeds). GMail replacing Thunderbird. Google Calender replacing 30boxes (I like 30boxes well enough, but the integration with Google is so handy). Hell, even iGoogle replacing my homepage. I’m not sure about Picasa replacing Flickr, but I’ll play around with it.

Yes, I’m a bit apprehensive about putting all of my information in the hands of one company. But their privacy policy and terms of service are solid, so I think it should be alright.

I think I’m going to try and go through with this. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.