May 042012
 
Rare supermoon rising over lake in Central Flo...

Rare supermoon rising over lake in Central Florida. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Get ready for it! Saturday night presents: THE RETURN OF THE SUPERMOON!

If the skies clear on Saturday, we could get a glimpse of the “super moon” The moon will be at its closest to Earth at the time it turns full, making it appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a normal full moon. According to NASA, the scientific term for the phenomenon is “perigee moon”.

(via that homie Bhatti Bytes)

and I’m sure we’ll all be experiencing the same reaction Sunday morning…

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Apr 272012
 
SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 24:  Actor Charlie Day sp...

Dayman Fighter of the Nightman Champion of the sun You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone! Dayman (Auhhhaahhh) Fighter of the Nightman  (Auhhhaahhh) Champion of the sun  (Auhhhaahhh) You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone! Dayman, Dayman  (Auhhhaahhh) Fighter of the Nightman Champion of the sun

(Lyrics to Dayman vs. Nightman by Charlie in Always Sunny in Philadelphia)

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Mar 282012
 
Android Robot. Français : le logo d'android 日本...

Android Robot. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yeah, I know that I’ve been gone for a while, and no, this post won’t have anything to do with music, except to tell you that if you’re in Ljubljana tonight and missing Nils Frahm at Menza pri Koritu then I don’t know what to tell you.

No, today’s post is about finishing and what that means. I was going to start with a dictionary definition, but I think you all know what “finish” means. It means bringing a task or activity to an end; completing something that you started.

In truth, I don’t finish many of the things I start. When I was a kid I quit hockey. In middle school, The Boy Scouts. In high school I quit the swim team after one year. I started a company in college that we disbanded a few years later – in that time (Facebook‘s early days, when there was still space there) we built an entire social network that we never launched to more than a few hundred people. I remember when Facebook first opened their platform, and some of the proofs of concept Facebook apps that I came up with. I was also there with a handful of ideas and prototypes when Foursquare launched their API. Several years ago now, I wrote an entire autonomous Twitter bot platform that I’ve never officially done anything with. Before I moved to Slovenia I spent a few months screwing around with an Arduino, never to actually build anything long-standing or useful. In the last year and a half, I wrote the meat of a brilliant and complex social/gaming web application, working with an excellent UX person who is plugged into New York City’s thriving tech scene (she has friends at TechCrunch, in several influential tech startups, etc.), yet we still haven’t brought it across the finish line. When Android first came out I switched to TMobile and bought the G1. I was at all of the NYC Android meetups. In the last few years, I’ve written seven or eight interesting Android apps that are in a half-finished state sitting in my Eclipse workspace and/or on only my phone. I have all the excuses in the world (hockey got rough, boy scouts got boring, swimming wasn’t fun, no time, lost interest, etc.), but when all is said and done, what it boils down to is that I don’t finish things.

As a side note to any employers who think that they hired/are hiring/will hire a dud, I’m speaking strictly about things that I do/build in my free time; when it comes to a job and being professional, yes I do finish all of the tasks required of me. It is in my code of ethics to uphold my contractual obligations.

But why don’t I uphold that same code of ethics for things that I don’t get paid for? Why don’t I finish things?

I think that the answer lies in the fact that I love making a good proof of concept. I love mock ups. I love the kind of instant gratification that a prototype offers. I love spending enough time with a technology to learn about how it works, grasp it, and build something with it. Maybe my quest for knowledge is breadth-first? Back when I was a junior dev in my first startup, our chief architect (also a good friend) used to compare me and my colleague, saying that I’m like a sponge, soaking up all of the knowledge that I can about everything that I work on, while my colleague strived to finish each assignment as quickly as possible without needing to know why things worked, just that they did. I guess it’s good to have both types on your team. The yin and the yang.

Fast-forward to yesterday in the office: I was about to show off an Android app that I built this past weekend to a few coworkers, when my friend Drazen asked if it was the same app that I showed a few weeks before. I replied that it was something new that I cooked up from my bed this past Sunday morning. Drazen laughed and (rightfully) pointed out the fact that I don’t finish anything. At the time I was like “yeah, yeah” and shook it off, but his words stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. Last night at around midnight I fired up Eclipse, determined to finish what I started. At around 02:30 I had a fully working implementation of my gag app with basic functionality. I quickly read the release docs for the Android Market (now “Google Play”), registered for a developer account, paid the $25, signed my .apk file, posted a couple of shitty screen grabs and descriptions, and by 03:30 I officially had a finished product sitting on the Android Market, available to the masses!

I now present to you, Talking James! A proof of concept of finishing.

QR code for Talking James on the Android Market

QR code for "Talking James" on the Android Market

 

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Feb 132012
 

It’s a snowy wonderland outside my window in Ljubljana. It has been snowing basically pretty nonstop all weekend, and with all the things going on between work and shuffling around for this commitment  or that commitment, it was a real pleasure to spend most of this weekend in the house just relaxing in PJs. While I did get a bit of sleep Friday night and make it to the market on Saturday, I spent most of the weekend actually developing a prototype for a secret side project – more details later – which leads me to my next thought – it’s kind of depressing being a backend developer because you don’t get to see any of the fruits of your labor until you have a frontend guy swoop in and spend two seconds coding up some pretty design and HTML/CSS to go with it. In my case, after about 36 hours of straight coding on a Django API and a functional Android app that calls that API, I’m still waiting for that frontend guy to show up (looking at you @pronebird and @SlovenianSteve!) – G-d bless frontend guys everywhere and the magic you do!

The Shining (J Dilla album)

Image via Wikipedia

Anyway, enough of my nonsense – onto the music news!

Whew, that was a lot!

Out tomorrow:

Punch Brothers – Who’s Feeling Young (Nonesuch) Tennis – Young and Old Shearwater – Animal Joy (Sup Pop)

See you next time…

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Jan 292012
 
Midnight in Paris

Image via Wikipedia

Now Playing: Brad Mehldau – Live in Marciac (in particular, “Goodbye Storyteller” -> “Exit Music (for a Film)”, “Things Behind The Sun” -> “Lithium”. Fuck… music!

 

Just watched Midnight in Paris with the sleepybones on the couch on my left. Absolutely amazing, see it if you haven’t. Just be careful, you might end up moving to Paris in real life. I’d know.

With love,

-27-year-old Sam

PS. music news coming soon

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Jan 202012
 
March of the Zapotec/Holland EP

Image via Wikipedia

Now playing: Beirut – March of the Zapotec & Realpeople: Holland

Here I am, sitting on my apartment couch on a gray and rainy Friday afternoon in Ljubljana, working from home today due to a cough that has lingered for almost two weeks now. Went to the medical center near my apartment this morning to try and see a doctor about it, and what a trip that was. It felt like there was no organization at all compared to what I’m used to. There’s one large waiting area with no reception desk or even a person organizing appointments or patients. Basically you need to know which door belongs to the doctor that you need to see, knock on that door (even if there is a patient in there already, which you may or may not know based on how long you’ve been sitting in the waiting area debating what to do), and then wait some more until they’re ready to see you. Luckily I got up the courage to ask a stranger for some help and she asked one of the nurses some things in Slovenian, which led to me finding the right door to wait in front of, and a few minutes later I was speaking with a doctor! He checked my breathing, my lungs, my heart, and my throat and said that I sound clear, and that a cough for 2-3 weeks is common after a cold. He told me to get some Prospan from the Lekarna and that if I don’t feel better in a week to see another doctor.

That about brings us up to date. I just ate lunch and figured I might as well do a bit of blogging before getting back to work, so onto the new music news since last time…

mp3: Julianna Barwick – “Never Change” (via gorillavsbear.net) mp3: new Lower Dens – “Brains” (via gorillavsbear.net) Album Stream: Laura Gibson – La Grande (via Paste Magazine) Watch St. Vincent’s Nod to Elvis Costello on Conan (via Paste Magazine) Sharon Van Etten (currently streaming live on WNYC) adds ANOTHER NYC show (via brooklynvegan) Shearwater – “You As You Were” (via Stereogum) listen: Daniel Rossen of Grizzy Bear – “Saint Nothing” (via gorillavsbear.net) Local Natives Working On New Album (via Paste Magazine) Listen: Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore: “SteviePink Javascript” (via Pitchfork: Latest News) Fleet Foxes Side-Project Poor Moon: Tour, Debut LP (via JamBase) Trust – “Sulk” (via Stereogum) [new]: Bruce Springsteen – We Take Care Of Our Own (via We All Want Someone To Shout For)

What to do Friday night in Ljubljana: Check out Oh! Pears at Menza pri Koritu, duh!

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Jan 142012
 

Now playing: Beirut – The Flying Cup Club

Hello blogosphere, it’s 2012 and I’m back to try this blogging thing again, this time under a new premise: from here on out I’m going to try blogging from a mostly content curation perspective, targeting music blogging specifically. More specifically, I read a lot of music blogs and I’m going to try and extract the most interesting news in the music blogosphere and paste the links into here as often as I can. Sure, there will be other tidbits here and there, but I’ll try to keep somewhat of a focus.

A few ideas/thoughts – I’d like to somehow keep track of what I’m listening to and what shows I’m trying to see. Maybe there are plugins for that sort of thing, or maybe I’ll have to write some of my own. Either way, that’s the basis, let’s go for a stroll…

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