Over the last three days I've been going through my boxes of dust-covered tapes. Alannah Miles through When in Rome.

One box of legal resellable tapes: off to the MCC thrift store!

1.45GB of music: purchased from itunes or in a few cases skimmed from youtube or elsewhere. (In passing I will say: that video is a LOT of fun. It took me about an hour to find the right version of the song. And there it is, complete with video. Vicky, where ever you are, thanks for introducing me to it, half our lifetimes ago.)

15 or so mix tapes, prodded, googled, sorted, and reconstituted as playlists or summarily dragged behind the barn and shot. (Warrant! Winger! Aerosmith! Paging 1990, paging 1990; your hair metal must be removed now from the waiting area.)

Two boxes of digested mix tapes, recordings from the radio, and illegal copies: set to go out with the trash.

And 14 irreplaceable tapes: a few bootlegs, a few recordings of the folk music coffee-house I was involved with in Ithaca, and suchlike, are set to be digitized by fuzzpsych who's got the right equipment for that job.

I'm excited to be rid of the clutter [1] and some of the rediscoveries did make me smile (I'm sure I hadn't given a thought to The Hooters or Black 47 in most of a decade.)

I'm amused there were as many rediscoveries; the "good stuff" I hadn't realized I was sitting on, and hadn't previously run across elsewhere.

I'm very pleased to be in a position where I can do a bit of googling and listening on iTunes and youtube and successfully end up with the proper versions of all these songs.

And hey, you can play along with my last.fm page. Or give a shout if you want to come on over for a listen. (We can trade mixes and do homework and read out our angst-ridden poetry... Bring your beanbag chair.)

[1] Next up: my 20-year old stereo and 30-year-old speakers, still functional but utterly useless to me. And the furniture it sits in, which has felt like clutter for the last few years. But that's a post for another day.

Tags: friends, justify my bourgeois lifestyle, music, video
Current Music: Black 47 - Funky Ceili (Bridie's Song) | Powered by Last.fm

Wouldn't it be funny if I went off to a New Year's Eve party tonight and forgot to do a blog entry, and thus messed up my perfect record of at least one entry every day for the past two years?

Oh.

I doubt I'll have time to do anything tomorrow here, so...

( Recap of the last few weeks... short and sweet. )

Happy New Year to all of my friends and family here on Facebook. I mean, LiveJournal. :) Seriously, though, I still read daily, and I thank you for allowing me into your lives. Be well in 2010!

Tags: life

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/eSY7Kabt4cY/Ten-Gadgets-That-Defined-the-Decade

Corpuscavernosa writes "As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts and show them off in chronological order. It's arguable that if this wasn't the decade of gadgets, it was certainly a decade shaped by gadgets — one which saw the birth of a new kind of connectedness. In just ten years time, gadgets have touched almost every aspect of our daily lives, and personal technology has come into its own in a way never before seen. It's a decade that's been marked the ubiquity of the internet, the downfall of the desktop, and the series finale of Friends, but we've boiled it down to the ten devices we've loved the most and worked the hardest over the past ten years. We even had some of our friends in the tech community chime in with their picks on what they thought was the gadget or tech of the decade."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DUDES. DUDES. What is THIS? Ianto as Watson? Malcolm Reed as SPRING-HEELED JACK? A Sherlock Holmes movie where the bad guy is SPRING-HEELED JACK??? And some dude as Holmes. (Srsly, said dude has NO other credits to his...credit.) I cannot WAIT to acquire this movie.

(I feel that I must explain my Spring-Heeled Jack obsession - my dad had a National Geographic book of Amazing Stories and soforth and my favorite story - Anastasia Romanov - was right before Jack the Ripper, which didn't scare me at all, and Spring-Heeled Jack. The story of Spring-Heeled Jack kept me awake for like, three years straight. I had to make ridiculous deals with myself about how he couldn't get me after midnight and he couldn't get me while I was awake so as long as I stayed awake until midnight, I'd be okay. The story did not support this supposition in the least but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?)

I did go see Sherlock Holmes again today and I continue to have much glee. However, is there no movie novelization? What is up with that? RDJ talks way too fast and the plot is way too sketchy for there not to be a novelization. Also, Carole Nelson Douglas's Irene Adler books are next to impossible to find. They've put the first up on the "New Mysteries" shelf as if it's not 20 years old and have stopped stocking the rest. I can't even find new copies of #5 and #7 on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com. (I like used books just fine but a) gift card and b) principle of the thing.)

I hope I didn't have anything else to post about tonight because I have no idea what it would have been. :P

Tags: books, sherlock holmes

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/021298.html

Woman to man she just met: I live in Brooklyn, and I'm on my way to see my man in the Bronx. My mother said to me, "must be some kinda love if you travel all the way to the Bronx for a man!"
Man: Uh-huh! That's right! It's got to be good lovin', too!
Woman: You know what I'm saying? Don't talk to me 'bout no headache, 'cause I can't do this everyday!

--1 Train

http://www.asofterworld.com

So, any guesses? Eldritch horror from beyond space? Rare sea creature, lost since the age of the dinosaurs? Rats? Rats in the walls?

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/Philadelphia__PA/*http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USPA1276_f.html

Current Conditions:
Cloudy, 30 F

Forecast:
Wed - Cloudy. High: 35 Low: 28
Thu - Rain/Snow. High: 38 Low: 34

Full Forecast at Yahoo! Weather

(provided by The Weather Channel)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091230.html

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PBzQbzl_LJI/emBRINKem-Interview-With-Richard-Ham-and-Edward-Stern

unknown_gamer writes "BRINK turns out to be a lot more than just a regular shooter. The research behind the game — yes, there was research — turns out to actually be valid. Richard Ham and Edward Stern talk to Snezana about the actual scientific methods behind BRINK, the motivations behind the game, and about the game itself." A video up at Destructoid sums up the game briefly, and two others show an extended gameplay sequence. A preview from back in September at Rock, Paper, Shotgun explains BRINK in more detail. The game is due out Fall 2010. The developer, Splash Damage, seems willing to do a Linux port if the publisher, Bethesda, gives them the green light.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.