Category: Culture

Personal Responsibility

Walletsworth by Umphrey’s McGee
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/um2007-04-11.flac/UM2007-04-11Set2T03_64kb.mp3]

So its Spring Weekend again here at UConn, which always confuses me. I don’t understand it. At all. Thousands upon thousands of college students from all over arrive to talk, get drunk, and stand around. And maybe pass out.

It could be the whole being on your own, independent for the first time thing that fuels this, but it still confuses me. At its highest point, there were probably ten thousand students in a single location, most of them drunk, some of them high (why must spring weekend correspond with 4/20?). Many, many, many people were falling down or passing out. I suppose they still don’t know their limit, which is funny, because they do this every weekend, you think they would have figured it out by now. Despite that, the majority that were still standing were doing so…but nothing else. There is no real reason to go to this place, except to be in the company of others who are just as drunk. There isn’t any music, there isn’t any dancing, there isn’t much of anything except for standing around and drinking and smoking.
I just can’t understand it.

Anywise, there were lots of police and EMTs around to keep things in order and keep people from dying. And I’m usually all for that. This is one time where I can’t say I feel that way. I can’t help but think that all of this takes away from personal responsibility. It isn’t like the EMTs are saving people from a natural disaster, they’re saving them from something they did to themselves. There is something tremendously wrong with this.

I do understand that it isn’t meant to be enjoyable if you’re sober. Don’t bother correcting me on that. Maybe its something I would need to be drunk to understand. But that would bring me down a long road which leads very far away from this train of thought. I’ll touch on that someday though.

Also, a sidenote: as someone who doesn’t drink or smoke, I think events like this are an excellent example of why pot should be legal. The folks who were drunk were vomiting or pissing on themselves or in the woods. The folks who were high were not. Can someone explain to me why one is legal but not the other?

As I walked back to my dorm, I heard a helicopter in the sky above me, and thought that was strange, because usually helicopters don’t pass overhead at one in the morning. So I thought it was likely a news chopper, because it was very likely that the crowd could be seen from very high up. And when I look up, I see the flashing lights of LifeStar, the helicopter that airlifts people to hospitals because they’re so bad off that an ambulance would be too slow. That means someone drank enough so that they were nearly dead, or someone got into a drunken brawl, and was near dead. Either way, this was a situation they voluntarily put themselves in. I have zero pity. None.
However, as much as I’d like to say, “don’t bother keeping EMTs on call, let those students on the ground be an example to others” I know that college students aren’t smart enough to get the message.

How can the sight of ten thousand people having the time of their lives be so depressing?

Bravo Geraldo

So, I never thought I’d see myself agreeing or even applauding Geraldo Rivera,
but here I am doing just that. Why?
Well, maybe it takes someone like Bill O’Reilly to make Geraldo look good,
but it did the trick, and I’m actually proud of Geraldo.

The 300

Truckin > Cassidy by Phil Lesh & Friends
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/2001-07-21.paf.mbho-ehrsam.vernon.5053.sbeok.flacf/phil01-07-21d1t05truckin_64kb.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/2001-07-21.paf.mbho-ehrsam.vernon.5053.sbeok.flacf/phil01-07-21d1t06jam_64kb.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/2001-07-21.paf.mbho-ehrsam.vernon.5053.sbeok.flacf/phil01-07-21d1t07cassidy_64kb.mp3]
I went to see 300 in iMax in the wee hours of this morning, and it was tasty. I think that is the best word to describe this movie. Tasty. The visuals are fantastic, the plot is simple, and the fighting is unreal. I’ve never seen a feature film in iMax before (I’ve seen other things) and it is really fantastic. There is a difference. It is undeniable. Not only is the screen far far larger than the average screen, the picture is much clearer as well. If the difference between normal movies and iMax is the difference between normal definition and HD tvs, then I’m going to have to seriously consider upgading.
What may stand out more than anything else is the battle scenes. I don’t even know how they could choreograph fights like this. Charcters are moving so quickly and accurately, and in slightly slow-mo, so we can see everything. This as opposed to other large scale fight scenes (Braveheart comes to mind). If you don’t remember the fight scenes in Braveheart, let maddox refresh you memory,

a portly Mel Gibson stumbles around in poorly choreographed battle scenes in which the camera men can’t hold their cameras still long enough for you to realize the extras in the background are standing around with their dicks in their hands.

300 is a movie very worth seeing, and if you get the chance, see it in iMax. It is very rare that movies come along that are better in theaters than anywhere else, and I’d imagine even more rare that a movie is worth seeing in iMax (its expensive). This is one of those movies.

Zodiac

Sinister Minister by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bfft2006-04-22.flac16/bfft2006-04-22d2t09_64kb.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/bfft2006-04-22.flac16/bfft2006-04-22d2t10_64kb.mp3]

Zodiac is David Fincher(Fight Club, SE7EN)’s latest film.
First thing you ought to know: it is 158 minutes long. Maybe it is just because I haven’t seen many movies of this length in a long time, but it seemed longer than it needed to be. However, since the story stretches over decades, there is no wasted time.

The movie is good. I liked it, until the end. This is based on a real story, so naturally the ending sucks. I really believe that if they had abandoned truth and gone for the hollywood ending, they would have had a much better story, and film as a whole.

See this movie. Maybe not in theaters (because of the length) but this movie is well worth your two hours and thirty-eight minutes. I’m gonna keep this review simple, and leave it at that.

Keller Williams at the Webster

Celebrate Your Youth (w/Dark Star tease) by Keller Williams
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/kw2007-02-25.oktava.flac16f/kw2007-02-25d3t02_64kb.mp3]

So I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, but I’ve waiting in the hope that recordings of the show will make it online. But it seems the tapers that night weren’t going to be sharing (at least not on the sites I frequent).

In any case, I saw Keller at the Webster last Saturday (2/24/07), and it was incredible. I’ve been listening to Keller for over a year now, but I hadn’t actually seen him live until then. He puts on a really good show, which ran for about three hours in total.
I hope to see a lot of him in the future, and I’ll be sure to let folks know when he’s in the area again.

Also, the Webster is a really dumpy venue, but that didn’t take anything away from the show, which I am thankful for.

I think the best way to describe the show is the following story:
When I got home around 1am, and I looked in the bathroom mirror, I realized I was still smiling, even though I wasn’t conscious of it. So I tried to relax the muscles around my mouth as much as I could, and I still had a big grin on my face. I must have been smiling all night. :)

Austin City Limits

In a Colorful Night, The Clover Show, and In the Basement, all by the Wild Band of Snee
[audio:http://www.rushadeggleston.com/music/ColorfulNight.mp3,http://www.rushadeggleston.com/music/CloverShow.mp3,http://www.rushadeggleston.com/music/inthebasement.mp3]

So this is more of a PSA than anything else, but this weekend is the Austin City Limits music festival.  If you’re not lucky enough to be there, AT&T is streaming the show in their blue room.

I’ve gotta say, if you have a good internet connection, and are at least curious about the bands playing this weekend, the blue room is a great service.  I was lucky enough to catch most of this years Bonnaroo on there, and it was a great experience, even if I couldn’t actually be there. 

The fest starts on Friday and lasts through Sunday, so theres no excuse to not catch at least one group.

The bands that jump out at me are:
For Friday, Guster at 2:30PM, Nickel Creek at 4:30, Thievery Corporation at 6:30, and John Mayer at 8:15.
For Saturday, Ben Kweller at 2:30PM, The Secret Machines at 3:30, Los Lobos at 4:30, String Cheese Incident at 6:30, and Los Lonely Boys at 9:00.
For Sunday, KT Tunstall at 2:30PM, Calexico at 4:30, the Flaming Lips at 6:30, Ben Harper at 7:00, Muse and then Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers wrapping up the night.
By the way, all those times are central, so adjust accordingly, or you might miss whoever you wanted to see…if you live on the west coast.

Yes, I know listed more than half the bands for almost every day.  I’ll probably be watching the ones I didn’t list as well, if I’m free.  Thankfully, the festival format introduces fans to bands they aren’t really familliar with. 

So, watch these great performances, if you can.  That is all.

On Web 2.0…

Crossroads, by moe. with Sam Bush and Trey Anastasio
[audio:http://ia310130.us.archive.org/1/items/moe2005-02-10.DPA4021s-splt.v3.flac16/moe2005-02-10d2t01_64kb.mp3]
This whole show is incredible, if you’re interested, archive has it.

So if you look around my blog today, you’ll notice some changes.  I’ve gone and fully embraced Web 2.0.
What is Web 2.0?  Well, thats not exactly easy to say, but by the end of this entry, I’ll have covered the concept.
I’ll detail the recent changes, in the order they appear on my sidebar.

The first is the Links block.  These links come from del.icio.us, which is a social bookmarking site.  Yes, I know, that phrase alone means practically nothing.  The idea behind the site is that as you browse the internet, you can bookmark sites with del.icio.us, and these sites will be added to your del.icio.us account, where you can tag them based on the content of the site.  These bookmarks are shared with the rest of the community, and allows you to see what most people are interested in at any given point.  It can also help you find new websites you may be interested in based on simillar tags.

Next is my calendar from 30 Boxes.  30 Boxes is a beautiful web calendar, which you can share with friends who use the service.  So when you view your calendar online, you can not only view what you are doing, but you can see the events your friends have added as well.  And, you can syndicate your calendar like I have done, so it will display upcoming events within another webpage.

Now, the PagCam isn’t really Web 2.0.  At the moment, it isn’t even Web 1.0…because it isn’t working.  I’m still not sure why, but I honestly haven’t even tried to find out.  But what is worth noting is that I’ve increased the size…so now you know for sure that its broken…whatever.

Moving on, we come to Last.fm, which is a service I love more and more everyday.  With Last.fm, you install a plugin to your music player, and it will upload the details to their website, which aggregates and organizes what you’ve listened to into easy to read stats.  It will also share these stats with other Last.fm users, and recommend artists and songs which you may enjoy, based on other users interests.  This is a service that any music fan would appreciate.  I’m displaying a list of the ten artists who I listened to most in the previous week.

Then there is of course Flickr.  Hopefully, most people know about this service by now, but in case you don’t, Flickr allows you to upload and share photos.  And like del.icio.us, you can tag your photos, so they are searchable by the community.

And the last change, which you will probably not notice is the link to Performancing at the bottom of the page.  Performancing a plugin for firefox which allows you to write blog entries from a seperate window within your browser.  I’m writing this entry from within Performancing right now, and I love it.  And if you add a simple piece of code to your blog, you can get stats from performancing.  It even integrates with del.icio.us, so you can add and tag bookmarks. 

Now, I’ve used most of these services for a little while now (with the exceptions of del.icio.us and Performancing), but I’ve always kept them to their own sites, and never really integrated them together like I have here.  And I like it.  I like it a lot. 

Firefox has extensions for most of these services, which make them incredibly easy to access.  Some industrious coders have tried to integrate these extensions into the browser itself, and released Flock.  In my opinion, Flock doesn’t compare to Firefox with all the correct extensions, but it may be right for some people.

So I don’t think I’ve answered what Web 2.0 is yet. 

The term was coined by O’Reily (see their take in the link far above), and has since been adopted by everyone else to mean slightly different things.  But Web 2.0 is generally more interactive and ‘social’ web applications, allowing people to connect and interact in new ways.  The key word in Web 2.0 is dynamic.  Web 1.0 content was static.  That is the largest difference.

I am going to take all of this into consideration when redesigning somjuan.com, and I plan to make it as accessible as possible. 
SomJuan 3.0 will be Web 2.0 compatible.

On Facebook…

Rebubulah by moe.
[audio:http://cryptical.nugs.net/moe/961003/moe961003_08_Rebubulah.mp3?nid=null]

Facebook has been making a lot of people uneasy recently, and I’m not exactly sure why.
Wait, let me rephrase that.
I understand why Facebook is making people feel uneasy, but this feeling is irrational.

Backstory:
On September 5th, Facebook introduced what they call the News Feed. It displays all of the recent activity of all of your facebook friends. So if one of your friends changes some info in their profile, writes on someone else’s wall, joins a group, etc; this event will be noted in your news feed.

Now, the main complaint from users is that the news feed invades their privacy. The reality is that they never had any ‘privacy’. The news feed only shows the information a user had alerady chosen to show. The only difference is that instead of having to schlep to a person’s user page to search for something new, we don’t even have to leave the main page.

As far as being ‘stalker central’ or ‘creepy’, I have no idea where this is coming from. Facebook has always made it incredibly easy to find information about people, and the news feed does not make this any easier. Unless you are worried about your friends stalking you, things have not changed. And if that is in fact what worries you, just remove that creepy person from your friends and your problem is solved. People who you have not friended on facebook still can’t see any more information than you had allowed them to see in the past.

Update: Facebook responded.

The fact is that if you are on a social networking site of any kind, whether it be facebook, myspace, or any other one of the hundreds of simillar sites, you have freely surrendered some of your privacy. If you’re not comfortable with that, then you may want to rethink joining.

Welcome to the internet, I can see you.