Birth month

I was out at dinner with B the other night, celebrating my birthday, and I mentioned how I wasn’t following my old tradition of posting a note about the birthday of my blog (because I started breathing room on my 33rd birthday and briefly considered calling it “Outliving Christ”) because, as with so many things in this past year, I had no time for the grace notes of life and have had to take my satisfaction from the things I can do.

To take some of the anxious pressure off of birthdays and their proper celebration in our family, we’ve adopted the notion of a “birth month,” loosely defined as the month containing the birthday (especially for dates early in the month), or about a month starting on the day of the birthday (especially for dates late in the month).

The birth month is full of win. I recommend it. If I were technical about it, mine will stretch till November 29 this year, coincidentally the proposed birth date of another project of mine.

So here I am, posting not on the (fifteenth!) anniversary of my now somewhat anemic blogging career, which was two days ago (Tuesday), but somewhere in the midst of my blog’s birth month, and mine, and – as it happens – on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death.

It hasn’t been an easy year. It has been a year of wrenching changes, of transformation, and of sorrow, fear, grief, and worry. Thank goodness it’s also been a year of creation, renewal, opportunity, and bold adventure. I wish I could tell Dad all about it. I miss him so.

Death Don’t Have No Mercy

The above link should play my brother, “xourmas,” and I – aka The Power & Mighty – doing an impromptu rendition of the Rev. Gary Davis (?) spiritual blues, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” from a few days after Dad’s death last year.

Probably time to break out the Edirol

I love the spontaneity of recording the band on the phone, and the quality is really not bad, but I’ve got a nice compact digital recorder and I should be using it.

(Here Comes) The Reuben Kincaid!

So sometime back in the previous millennium a bunch of us technical-publishing bohemians were sitting around wasting time as we were wont to do, coming up with band names, which reminds me of xian’s law: “There are more good band names than there are good bands.”

One of the ones that I suggested that our gang really liked was The Reuben Kincaid (we weren’t sure how to spell it though). It has that ’70s pop-culture thing and of course the classic ’60s-era “The” prefix (as in “The Pink Floyd”). Then time passed and we drifted around.

Five or so years ago when I started teaching myself ukulele and posting my baby steps on my blog, I decided that I was going to form a “virtual band” out of myself and anyone I could get to overdub on my tracks. I called that band The Reuben Kincaid.

More time passed and I renamed it Layers of Meta, which is its name today. I also play in a duo with my brother Arthur (aka “xourmas”) as The Power & Mighty.

But when myself and Cecil Vortex and so-called Bill and “the B is silent” Ryan got together last fall, at first to work on our still-very-underground radio show, Podcast Gold, we sort of evolved into a quartet, with Cecil on guitar, songwriting, arrangement, keyboards, production, and general fabulousness, Bill on bass, Ryan on bongoes (and sound recording-ism), and myself on ukulele.

And now, at last, the Reuben Kincaid has its first single! Enjoy…

play “Single-Cell Critter”

Resisting the baroque temptation and design is harder than it looks, at BayCHI in February

This coming February 9 is approximately my one-year anniversary as co-chair of BayCHI’s monthly program and so far I’m enjoying the responsibility a great deal, even with the occasional panic that sets in when each new cycle rolls around.

The BayCHI Program for February features Elaine Wherry from Meebo and Jeff Green from EA. Elaine will discuss What Web Application Design Can Learn from the Harpsichord and Jeff will share some painful but revealing experiences crossing over from journalism to game design in Easier Said Than Done: One Critic’s Painful Transition to Interface Design.

As an aficionado of both music and games, I’m really looking forward to the analogies and lessons these two will share. Elaine is one of the founders of Meebo and she and I have had some really interesting conversations about the history and philosophy and pragmatics of digital product design.

Jeff is something of a famous wit, dating from his days writing the back-page humor column for Computer Gaming World (later Games for Windows Magazine), his various podcast escapades, his Greenspeak blog and of course on on the twitters. He has recently transitioned to a new role at EA, as editor-in-chief (and podcaster) for the EA.com website, and he may still be licking his wounds from his “if you’re so smart” encounter with the challenging realities and tradeoffs of interface design on a deadline.

Should be a great evening!

BT intent on his monitor

BT intent, originally uploaded by xian.

A snapshot of the evening entertainment last night at Yahoo! for the kickoff of the iPhoneDevCamp 3.

Girl Talk at Yahoo!

Girl Talk at Yahoo!

Originally uploaded by kentbrew

I do the white man’s overbite. Please @kentbrew, point that camera over at @cynk. ah. better. thnaks!

Seaside Jazz Fest 2007

Seaside Jazz Fest 2007

Originally uploaded by andytnisbet.

B’s brother Andy took this really nice picture of my sweetie and me. We spent Sunday down in Seaside (right next door to Monterey). Good food, great people, fantastic music (with a rotating cast of players), not too many speeches, birthday wishes to B’s sister Peg, anniversary memories of B’s mom, cold weather, no sunburn, fine beverages, did I mention the good food?
UPDATE: Andy’s photo above links to all of his photos from the party at Flickr. You can also see B’s photos from the same event there.

I'm stuck

My first article at a new music blogzine called Stuck Between Stations went live today. It’s called Goodbye, Ruby Grapefruit. Joe Bob says check it out.

My vocal debut

Been meaning to do some recording at Vortex Studios and last weekend I finally got the chance. Cecil played me his song, “Styrofoam,” and then recorded me singing it with his backing tracks in my ears to guide me.

So far, so good. then Cecil added harmony vocals, additional guitars and keyboards and drums ‘n’ stuff and just generally whipped it up into a beautiful little track. Suddenly my plaintive reedy voice is fronting the Cecil Vortex Experience, an experience I heartily recommend.

Go listen to Styrofoam now. It’s just over two minutes, just over two megs. What have you got to lose?

Overall it was a musical week for me, as I got a chance to sit in with the Gloria Monday‘s farewell SF show at Ireland’s 32 on Tuesday night. I have footage of that as well, but it will stay firmly in the vault as a reminder that I need to rehearse my uke licks bigtime.

Feinstein can pry my MP3's from my cold dead fingers

Adina Levin sent me a head’s up (discussed on her blog: BookBlog: Dianne Feinstein wants to ban mp3) about the resurrection of the PERFORM act (why am I not surprised Lieberman is a co-sponsor?):

Hi, all. Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Senator Feinstein has just re-introduced the PERFORM act, a bill that makes it illegal to record music from the internet and bans the use of mp3 by online music services (!).
The EFF has information and a handy action alert. Please sign it, pass it on, and blog it.

I did it. It’s kind of funny sending Feinstein a letter asking her to oppose her own bill! But it also got sent automatically to Boxer too, who may be somewhat less likely to ignore it. I may mail it as well as I hear emails are often ignored. (EFF also faxes your letter for you.)
In the past I’d have blogged this at Edgewise so here’s an example of the sort of blog-consolidation I was talking about earlier.