The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Oxygen 8

This afternoon after work, I went down to Guitar Center in San José to get a small MIDI controller with assignable knobs that I can take with me tomorrow to Idaho — something that will let me write some beats on the plane or at Grandma’s house.

I was considering the Korg microKONTOL, which was significantly too wide to fit in my carryon satchel, the E-MU Xboard 25, which comes with Ableton Live Lite 4 (but only for Windows), and the M-Audio Oxygen 8, which I ultimately bought.

The fact that the sales clerk at Guitar Center slashed the price on the unit down to $109 convinced me that it was a good buy. The unit works spectacularly with Reason 3.0. Soon, I shall learn how to use Ableton Live well (this Lite version has an upgrade path to the newest full version for pretty cheap).

Yay, new toys!

Serenity DVD

Well, the day finally came. I bought Serenity after work today. First, I went to Fry’s, who sold out of it. Then, I headed to the Borders near my house. Borders has 50 of them or so. $19.99 with a coupon on it for $10 off Battlestar Galactica series DVDs.

There are lots of extras on the DVD, including lots of deleted scenes, a making of feature, Joss Whedon’s little video introduction for the pre-release screenings, a Future History of Earth-That-Was, a funny bloopers reel, and a director’s commentary. I recommend it unreservedly.

Besides, if I saw it five times in the theaters, did you think for a moment I wouldn’t buy it on DVD release day?

Way to Go, Seth

Update: now that I’ve caught up on all of my stats, I see this ride put me over 5,000 miles for the year! That’s my third and final goal for the year (lowest weight since I started tracking it a few years ago, 100+ rides, and 5000+ miles).

Congratulations, Seth. Well done!

What’s in your iPod?

I recently bought me a 60 gig video iPod to replace my old first-generation 5 gig iPod (which I got at 50% off when I worked at Apple). I posted another list most of a year ago on my web site.

Thought I’d post the current iPod list here, categorized by genre for your amusement.

[Read more →]

Salted

Quite a downpour in Northern California this evening! After I overslept my disco nap by about half an hour, I headed up to San Francisco along the 101 running much later than I had hoped. A 20 minute snarl up trying to get on the freeway was caused by the police DUI checkpoint. It was slow going on the way north, especially with an inch of standing water on the road and more than 15 crashes on the side of the freeway between my house and the club.

Tonight’s party was, of course, House of Om at Salted at Mighty. The place was packed to the rafters—a throng of sexy strangers writhing to the mouthwatering grooves of Miguel Migs. Miguel played a deep funky set and handed a mike over to Lisa Shaw, who belted out a set of five or six songs and had the crowd screaming for more. Marques Wyatt stormed the turntables at 2 and closed us out with a deliciously jazzy, rhythmic, sassy set of deep house. What a delight.

It has been too long since I’ve been to this party. Must come more often.

Dentistry Dilemma

So, after a meeting with my surgeon on December 7, I received an okay to go visit a dentist, to begin trying to figure out the extend of work I’ll require after my crash. So far as I can tell, I broke at least three of my undamaged teeth and cracked a molar crown in half. I’ve also probably shifted a bunch of stuff. My surgeon felt that there was a chance I’d require some orthodonture or bite correction jaw surgery.

So, I picked, almost at random, a dentist who practices in an office building about a third of a mile from my house. I explained things to his assistant and we set an appointment for me to visit the good doctor and get his prognosis.

Today, I got a call from same assistant. They have referred me to another dentist in Los Altos, about seven miles from my house. Once again, I have been told that my injuries are beyond the expertise of some doctor.

In an astonishing bit of on-the-ballness, the assistant of the new dentist called me out of the blue just a little while after the other dentist’s assistant gave me the word. So, I guess I’ll have a dental appointment a week from today, just two days before my Holiday Vacation.

Yay!

Body Electric

My friend, DJ Adnan, hit me with the info about a big underground party at the funky Gingerbread Warehouse. It’s been a while since I went to an underground shindig. Once again, after an extended disco nap, I headed up to the city, found a parking space a moderate distance away, and jumped down into the party at about 12:15.

Dhyan started out with a set that didn’t grab me and a couple of train wrecks on some mixes induced me to go upstairs and check out DJ Garth. He was working it with an eclectic mix of old school house, techno, and some downtempo breaks. The crowd was sparse and it was cool, until some retard started puffing cigarettes in front of the big fan.

East Coast Boogiemen got on all four turntables at 2 and began ripping the place apart with an absolutely blistering house set—tech house stuff mainly—that got the crowd fired up. After a couple of ours, Adnan came on and started the noise with some gronkiness and Brazilian tinged house.

The only down parts for me tonight were the almost total lack of lights on any of the dancefloors, the weird ticketing system for beverage purchase, and all the smokers puffing away in front of the fans. At least I didn’t end up stinking like I did at the unventilated basement parties at Capp Street. Whew!

The Loft

My second party at the loft was definitely not one to be missed. My friends, UNEAQ, were featured headliners at tonight’s UltraSoundsMusic party. The Loft is the upstairs lounge at a Bistro in downtown San José. The crowd tonight was much bigger and excited than the last time I went. It was also my opportunity to give big love to all my friends, none of whom have seen me since my accident. Big hugs from all the people made my whole day.

Jaime Gonzalez opened it up with a solid set of South Bay house grooves to get the crowd ready. Then, it was time. UNEAQ played their asses off. Jessica’s vocals get better every time I hear them. Joshua has an astonishing ability on that guitar (along with about nine billion pedals) and showed us all how it’s done. Andrew hauled that mean, vicious bass guitar out and exploded with the funk. No wonder Om is interested in UNEAQ, who just landed on a compilation and are working on some other stuff.

After the party, we all headed over to a really posh pad next door for a little after party. It seems everyone in tonight’s crowd all went to school together down in the South Bay. “Did you go to X school, Apollo?” “No. I’m from Welfaristan.” heh.

Thanks for the invite, guys. Can’t wait for the next one.

“Oboe” Ditigal music service

Xeni Jardin over at BoingBoing posted about a brand-new digital music service, by the former CEO of MP3.com. I’ve seen a few posts by people who are breathless with anticipation of this hot new thing.

Except it’s not really a new concept. In 2000, when MP3.com was getting sued by the RIAA, another company had already gone live with a digital music Locker service. That company avoided the lawsuits that plagued my.mp3.com, because they gave each user 3 gigs of individual storage space for their MP3s at a time when most people didn’t have hard drives much bigger than that. This competitor of MP3.com who beat Michael Robertson to the punch, launched a Locker, put in a playlist feature, and avoided getting sued at all? It was a company called myplay.

Sadly, the original digital music Locker company, myplay, was gobbled up by Bertelsmann, like Napster, and eventually was shut down by the parent company after the bubble burst. Myplay’s Locker service was finally shut down on December 13, 2002. I spent that night backing up my own myplay Locker in anticipation of the shutdown.

As a member of the original myplay launch team and someone who holds fond memories of my time there, I am excited to see the success of iTunes, the iPod, the proliferation of independent music sites, and the dizzying array of music available online. As far as the “Oboe” service goes, it just looks to me like another five-years-newer knockoff of the vision of Doug Camplejohn and David Pakman—a place where you could store your music collection and listen to it from anywhere. It just can’t be a Locker without the word myplay in front of it. This weekend, I’ll give the new thing a test spin and see if it measures up.

I guess it’s the time to dig the old ideas out (even those of former competitors) and find some way to bring them back. Good luck with that.

Thanks, Palm

On Friday, I scrambled around looking for the charger for my Palm Tungsten E2 and, after looking for it for hours, I gave up.

In the middle of the day on Monday, I called Palm’s technical support line and talked to someone who decided to send me a replacement charging cable. Today, the cable came. I plugged my trusty Tungsten into the US adaptor and nothing happened. I did a soft reset and the unit charged up.

So, instead of a replacement cable, the nice person at Palm shipped me an international charging cable with four different connectors. Next time I travel overseas, I have already sorted out powering up my PDA.

Thanks, Palm!