Gabo works at Boulette’s Larder and makes food photography look good. He should be on Comet…

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in April 2006.

It’s April, and time for new music. A total impulse buy based solely on the cover, I found the new heavy rotation for springtime: Visioneers: Dirty Old Hip Hop. The opening track featuring Voice rhyming about mixtapes and ghetto WalkMans sets the tone, which is good good good.

My rating: eleven.

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in April 2006.

Last night a few of us went out for Lisa’s birthday. We ran into Maile at Skylark right after the doorman and I had this very creepy exchange:

Doorman: Can I see your ID sir?

Me: Sure, here you go.

Doorman, after looking at the ID: Enjoy the weather yesterday?

Definitely.

Take any pictures of the sun?

Huh, yeah. Several actually.

To which he replied, his voice dropping an octave: Good, because you’ll never see it again.

As of 2:00 PM today, I have yet to see the sun…

Later on, we ran into an acquaintance of mine and his wife on the street as they were parking to conincidentally go to the same party we were headed to. He was walking with a cane, and later on he told me the story: He’d fallen 30 feet and crushed a vertebrae and for a while was partially paralyzed. I’m happy he can walk again…

Tangentially, his wife’s cousin is Panasonic’s patent & trademark lawyer. This fact was divulged after a discussion about the merits of various band names such as Rolls Royce. I brought up Panasonic (now Pan Sonic) as an example of a well-known brand name that happened to be a good band name.

There is no point to this post.

SFist mentions one of my favorite books and blogs about food in the same post. We are happy.

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in April 2006.

Erosion and a plastic cameraphone lens have a wonderful effect on what is normally a right-angled subject.

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in March 2006.

Looks like it’s possible with some registry hacking. Enjoy.

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in March 2006.

Had some chanterelles waiting to be eaten, so I decided to make breakfast. Used all organic ingredients, save for the dill. Preperation time: 7 minutes. Verdict: tasty. The goods:

• 3 eggs
• 1/3 large red onion
• 1/2 clove garlic
• handful medium chanterelles
• pinch dillweed
• coarse sea salt
• pepper
• butter (or alternative)

Slice the garlic and onion into coarse pieces and chop the chanterelles into thirds. The mushrooms should be approximately 1/2 again as large as the pieces of onion, and the onion should be 1/2 again as large as the chopped garlic. Set aside.

Whisk 3 eggs with a splash of water, set aside.

On medium heat, melt butter in a large sautee pan. When it starts to make noise, throw in the vegetables. Wait about a minute, then shake the pan to evenly distribute the contents.

Add the whisked eggs to the mixture. Add pepper and salt. Sprinkle about half the pinch of dillweed over the eggs as they cook down. Reduce heat and fold or chop the eggs occasionally to introduce air and prevent them from burning.

Just as the last bit of liquid egg disappears, immediately remove from heat. Sprinkle remaining dill on plate and serve.

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in March 2006.

After almost 10 years in limbo, I have finally secured the one true domain. Again. Dear Internet: I promise not to let it lapse this time.

Happy fun dance!

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in March 2006.

With a large enough library of music, I’ve found that it’s simply not possible to mentally keep track of everything I like listening to. Simply put, there are huge swaths of tracks that are unlistened-to-recently. In the absence of time to better organize my iTunes library, I resort to using the shuffle feature. Just point iTunes at my library, hit the little X button and Play. If a track isn’t appealing (or it’s an iTrip station), I just hit next, like a reflex.

Pro: Lots of library coverage, and I’ll end up listening to things I wouldn’t otherwise remember I had. Con: No continuity. However sophisticated the shuffling algorithm ends up being, it’s not the same (not the same being equivalent here to never gonna be anywhere near) as a back-to-back listen of a well-produced album or mix set.

Music helps me concentrate. Once I get going down some mental path on task X, the continuity of a record helps keep me on track. A library-wide shuffle doesn’t. My mind might settle into a pattern after a few minutes, but by then most tracks are over. Then it’s a subtle shift (depending on the set of music being shuffled) to another record, and a mental reset.

Navel gazing moment: Found the inexplicable appeal of minimal repetitive electronic music? Bass tastes good.

It’s official. Not only am I old, [1] the state of California has seen fit to commemorate this occasion by describing the color of my hair on my driver’s license as gray.

I will refrain from going into detail why this is awesome.

[1] 29

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in March 2006.