WireWorld

Cyclists do run red lights. And, as if I'm some duly elected representative of cyclists everywhere, people will point this out to me and suggest that they'd actually feel bad for all those cyclists who get killed by motorists every year and support my cause if we'd all just behave and start obeying stop signs, all the time without realizing how incredibly stupid they sound. On the scale of stupid-and-annoying, it's only slightly less annoying, but possessing the same tone, as if you were to tell a woman with an abusive boyfriend that everything will be fine if you just don't piss him off so frequently.

When you start to have a group of musicians, you really need some way to keep all of them together in synch. In classical music, you tended to use a conductor to keep everybody on time, such that the drums are used as an accent. But jazz, rock, and blues all come from a different root and all of these bands really need a proper drummer to keep time...

So... a little over a month ago, I was at a friend's place, and was vaguely asked to play a song for people. And I vaguely responded with a line about being at a weird transitory period of my playing and being without a song to play for people...

One of my coworkers had a bit of a bike accident. Pretty much exactly the same one I had a few years prior. Riding along, front wheel stops instantly, bike pivots around your front axle, and any residual energy is dissipated between the rider's head and the ground. So he walked in with a scraped up face. And one of my coworkers mentions that he's suddenly a lot less interested in biking. And so I told him that if biking scares you, you can always die on your couch of a massive heart attack at age 40 instead...

I hear this frequently: "I can't wait for the weather to get better so I can cycle outside". And, as somebody who lives in California, it's hard for me to give an answer without relying on the experience of others because our weather is fairly nice out here... although most people think of San Diego weather when I talk about living in California.. and Silicon Valley is very much not like that. Furthermore, I was hoping that my awesome coworker Chris who is at least as insane as I in many ways wouldn't have broken his ribs at the beginning of winter. Because he got a Surly Pugsley to bike in all winter but he's presently laid up.

So, if you've been reading along, you probably know about the MDR-V6 headphones that I have. And I like them even more since I replaced the stock headphones with the velour replacement pads intended for the Beyerdynamic DT250 headphones once the pleather ones started to fall apart.

I took some classes on experimental electronic music and such when I was in college and did some reading on my own since then... and so I've been exposed to some ideas in music that are way way way distant from the popular music norm. And I'm still not entirely sure what I really think about them so I'll write some thoughts up instead...