How did we get to the point where certain singing voices are racialized? Everyone I’ve spoken to (and me too) was surprised to discover (a few years ago) that Adelle was not black. Now it’s happening all over again with Meghan Trainor and “All about that Bass”. I’d heard the song at the gym and looked for the music video, when Ms Trainor appeared I was shocked. As was my wife when she walked into the living room. I’ve polled a bunch of others in the office and they were all shocked as well.

I don’t know if this is above average, normal, or below average for a 2.5 year old, but the following exchange left me impressed yesterday:

Me: I am married to your mom. So, your maternal grandmother is my mother-in-law. Who is my father-in-law?

Scarlett: Maternal grandfather!

I also heard that while she was in NYC she correctly surmised that my wife’s grandfather was my mother-in-law’s father.

A guy in a wheelchair with a hook for a hand is in a bad spot.

-D.D. from work (who is wheelchair bound, but does not have hooks for hands)

Interviewed for MyLinuxRig.com about my desktop setup and Linux history. Press Coverage of Baltimore Comic-Con 2014

And working on my graduate degree.

April:

Civilization V (7 hrs): Met Dan in Mesa Bros; Waiting in Lefties Game

May:

Civilization V (11 hrs): More of the multiplayer games.

June:

Civ V (3 hrs): More multiplayer games.

Super Meat Boy (30 min): I played a few levels until it began to get too hard for me. It is a very well-designed game, but I was never that good at platformers. Really, I just stuck to Mario and Sonic growing up. The others were often too hard for me; at times even Mario and Sonic were too much. I don’t think I ever beat a Sonic game although with one of them (3 or S&K) I used to always get to the final Robotnick.

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

More Scarlett at the beach! This time in NYC!

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

Scarlett at the Beach in Florida and my dinner at Universal Studios.

Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve listened to somewhere between four and five dozen audiobooks (used to be an Audible subscriber) and the voice acting/narration on this book is definitely in my top three, if not in the top spot itself. Although the narrator slipped a bit in the last chapter with Garcia sounding a bit like Chad, it was otherwise an amazing performance. The narrator did something like 15 different, distinct voices. It’s not always necessary and it’s distracting if done poorly, but for this book it really brought something special. I’ve been a huge opponent of those who have used ebook DRM to prevent book readers from autoreading books to the sight-impaired. This book is a perfect example of why they shouldn’t prevent sight-impaired people from having a machine read a book. That’s just someone reading a book. It’s nothing special. But a performance, like in this recording of Striptease, that’s something worth paying for and something MANY years away when it comes to machine reading.

From Hell by Alan Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There’s something to be said for the rough style of this graphic novel. It goes quite well with the subject matter. There’s also a bit of - “oh, the gore’s it’s not so bad if it’s in black and white” like Hitchcock’s Psycho. And, like Psycho, there’s the added benefit of us being able to suspend more disbelief because it’s in black and white. Hitchcock used syrup or chocolate, I can’t remember, for the blood. Similarly, we can get caught up in the story and the gore without being taken out of it with the blood being the wrong color. Also, as I’ve mentioned on some of my reviews here and on www.comicpow.com , color affects the way you interpret the comic - is it more cartoony or realistic. I remember a few years back hearing someone having issues with a sci-fi comic because the palette was all wrong. All that said, the lack of color and the rough drawings sometimes made it hard for me to keep track of who was who.

How Music Works by David Byrne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is not a book about how the mind interprets music or why we make music from an evolutionary point of view (although the topic is explored in the last chapter). It is probably more suitably titled How Music is Made - although I can see why they didn’t pick that title - people might expect a set of steps for making music on their own.