Sent from My Nokia Flip Phone, Part 2

[alert type=”info” close=”false” heading=”Read Part One First”]This is part two of a multi-part post. Check out Part one here. [/alert]

I think the thing I was attracted to in music — that shout-at-the-top-of-your-lungs music where you lose consciousness and become pure energy — the thing that attracted me was telling a story, manipulating emotion, lifting people in a way that perhaps only art can. Terence McKenna said, “Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” I think maybe that’s what we reach with some art, especially music, a level of chaos that is overwhelming in the best way.

[pullquote cite=”Terence McKenna” type=”left”]Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with.[/pullquote]At the best moments a DJ or musician is connecting directly with the emotional core of the listener. Perhaps that’s what the best art does, but just does it in different ways. So fiction was the sensible next step. It was the other thing that I grew up with aside from music. It is possibly the one kind of art that I can be better at than music. It is the creation of something out of nothing. Absolutely nothing but letters. And it creates worlds.

I went back to school. I was always okay in school. When I left school, grades were not a problem — it was time and money. A finite amount of time exists in the day and priorities had veered away from school.

So I got my ass into a literary program even though I’m a former electronic music musician (slash) book store clerk (slash) web designer. Obviously. If there’s a knowledge base that can launch technical job prospects into the stratosphere, it certainly centers around Nabokov, Icelandic Sagas, or Charles Brockden Brown.

A few years later I sat in the first session of my last class, a class I probably didn’t deserve to be in, waiting for our esteemed visiting professor, who just happened to be Roxane Gay. (Who is more awesome than you probably imagine sitting there shaking your fist in quickly escalating jealousy.) I was waiting there thinking, “I got this. I got 3 years worth of wicked short story ideas. I’m going to rock a couple short stories in this class.”

And then Dr. Gay walked in and said we’re going to write a novel for the class. I scan my memory real quickly for any short story ideas that might be expandable to novel length. Nothing. Unless I get really creative with the mash-ups. We needed to have a pretty good idea of what we were going to write by the following week. That big announcement was appropriately made the first class to give people the opportunity to drop. Plenty of other classes were open. Should I do that? Do the safe thing? Hell no. The cliche goes: if you want to learn to write, write.

I think part of that was the whole point to Dr. Gay’s assignment, and maybe the greatest gift she could have given to us, to force us to sink or swim, to force us to write, and in the process find out whether we were writers. Granted, it was only 40,000 words, and it was a three-month time span rather than 50,000 words in one month like NaNoWriMo.

So I stayed in the class, to prove it to myself as much as to Dr. Gay. And I was writing a hell of a lot better at word 40,000 than I was at word one. I think what I’ve written is pretty good, and I will probably release it someday once I’ve written around 20,000 more and revised a fuck-ton. (Side question: is fuck-ton hyphenated or should it be a compound word?)

Other Notes:

• My name is dead boring and I can’t see using it on the cover of a book. And adding my middle name sounds like I’m either trying to sound like David Foster Wallace or a three-named serial killer.
• When I was in a nihilistic industrial dance aggro-pop band I was called Kelly D. And when I produced music and DJ’d later on I often used Kelly Dallen (which is a clever mash-up of my real names).
• I have/own kellyd.com, kellydallen.com, and @kellydallen on Twitter.
• So probably by default anything I release may well be under the name Kelly Dallen. It’s not necessarily what I would choose if I were just making something up out of nowhere (in that case, I would clearly use Mr. Pablo Bottlethwait Smoot), but it just seems to make a certain amount of lazy sense.

[alert heading=”NEXT TIME BUT NOT ON KELLY D’S FLIP PHONE” type=”danger”]MAKING FAUX PAS AT A WRITER CONFERENCE (but i’m probably so insignificant they weren’t really faux pas) (p.s. yes roxane gay really is that awesome.)[/alert]

Here’s a rando song I stumbled on while doing what passes for writing above.

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Sent from My Nokia Flip Phone

I’ve had this blog since 2002. I was browsing through archives the other day when thinking about re-booting it. Thirteen years now, and no post more recent than five years. I suppose all told I average a post or two a year. And most of them really don’t say anything.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, but I’ve always had a problem with focus. It’s not hard to see that when you look through the subject matter of the blog. It began in the thick of my days producing dance music. It was a thing that I really wasn’t bad at, but I rarely could focus on it. Life and responsibilities get in the way (/cliche). In all my years working on music (which starts back in — ahem — 1986), I’m sure I didn’t come close to breaking even after the amount I spent on records and music equipment. But, I did some things that were pretty amazing, things that many people would be jealous over. I had records played on BBC Radio 1 and other terrestrial stations. I imagine at least a couple records were played worldwide. I DJ’ed in front of at least 3000 people several times. Richie Hawtin came up and asked me the name of a record I was playing once. I DJ’d outdoors at an illegal rave in San Francisco while it was raining so badly that the needle on the record formed a wake as it cut through the standing water on the vinyl.

There was something important in some of what we were doing in the rave scene of the 90s and (less so) the 2000s. It’s not something that people would recognize in relation to the word “rave” today. It was mostly a genderless thing, something where nobody was meant to feel judged. It was one of the driving forces in fashion of the 1990s. And, yeah, some of it was silly, but it was an attempt at evolution of a kind. It makes me think of a quote from one of my favorite movies from the early 90s, Pump Up the Volume: “All the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks.”

[pullquote cite=”Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) in Pump Up the Volume” type=”left”]All the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks.[/pullquote] That’s unfortunately what happens sometimes (most of the time). Someone took it and turned it into a theme park. That’s not bitterness. It’s just perhaps a narcissistic distancing of myself from a particular modern scene.

At the point where my releases were taking off, I quit music. There always felt like something was missing. I was really intellectual for a musician and a DJ (as you shout oxymoron at your computer screens). There was meant to be a concept. But in the end, the concept ended up being something about a moment. A moment that you always remember, but can never quite feel again in the same way you felt it that time. I imagine it’s like drug use. You feel something in that moment of time, and then spend the rest of your life attempting to recreate those fleeting moments of time. When you get close to that feeling again, there’s nothing like it, but then you wake up the next morning and it’s gone. You feel a few ripples like on water, but they fade quickly and, in the end, you feel like you have gained nothing and lost nothing. You’re back at square one mentally and spiritually.

So in Act 2, I turn to fiction. I turn to words. There’s something more permanent in that kind of art. Ovid said, “I shall have life” and he was right. Words have a deeper way of communicating, a deeper and more permanent way of affecting others, affecting the world. [pullquote cite=”Ovid, a sexy Roman fucker who also wrote about the art of seduction. ” type=”right”]I shall have life.[/pullquote]

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, Shakespeare, Gibson, Wallace, Morrison, Saunders. They’ve all affected me more permanently and more meaningfully than even Felix’s seminal “Don’t You Want Me.” And yet, those moments — the moments of perfection in the lights and sounds and crowds in clubs, warehouses, or hilly fields by a bay — those moments are a part of me too, and I think that somehow those moments come through in the words I now write.

This is the relaunch of the blog. This is the continuing refocus. Things may happen here, consistently or sporadically, but, more importantly things are happening in other places too. Things I hope to show you someday.

[alert heading=”NEXT TIME ON KELLY D’S FLIP PHONE” type=”danger”]HOW I GOT A DEGREE, WAS TUTORED BY A BURNING BRIGHT LIGHT OF MODERN LITERATURE, AND SOMEHOW KEPT MY DJ NAME.[/alert]

Heck. Felix says it better than me.

[x_video_embed type=”16:9″ no_container=”true”][/x_video_embed]

Libraries, the Singularity & You

The following is a post I recently wrote for our staff newsletter thingamajig. It isn’t supposed to be ultra-techy but just introduce some emerging technologies to people that aren’t regularly exposed to such things.

When I was growing up in the 1980’s I was a fan of a lot of the same things as any South Florida guy: the Miami Dolphins, baseball, “The A-Team,” and Terri Nunn from the music group Berlin. On the other hand, if I had an idol, someone I wanted to be when I grew up, it would have been “Case” from William Gibson’s 1984 classic Neuromancer.

I have been thinking about Neuromancer lately because I have been reflecting on how we’re suddenly living in this pseudo-amalgamation of Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and Accelerando. Most of us would agree that technology is growing exponentially. In other words, not only is technology accelerating but the acceleration is accelerating.

How often have you heard someone say, “I can’t keep up with it all?” Well, you know what? That’s okay. I can’t keep up with it either and I don’t think I’ve gone a day without being on the Internet since 1994. As I see it, the art is not to know everything, but to know the right things. As we speed toward technological singularity, the art of information is not always about how much you know, but rather how good are you at filtering out what you don’t need to know?

In some senses, we’re all a little bit more like Gibson’s Henry Dorsett Case navigating the virtual reality “cyberspace” of Neuromancer than we realize.

With that said, here are some trends I’ve come across over the past year accompanied with some thoughts of mine that are opinion and not meant to be taken as gospel:

• The iPad – Yes, it is basically an oversized iPod Touch. For some reason it uses the antiquated 4X3 aspect ratio instead of widescreen. But, could you imagine being in college, storing all of your textbooks in it, searching all of those textbooks in seconds, recording audio of your professor’s lectures, linking up related internet articles, and even taking class notes in it? All in one place? It’s just one example of many possible revolutions this could precipitate. Not so fast, though: many other companies are developing tablet style computers that operate similarly to the iPad, so Apple doesn’t have nearly the same head start they had with the iPhone. In addition, the other companies will probably feature a more open operating system. Apple’s closed system of applications could come back to haunt them here.
• Instapaper – How often have you seen an interesting article on the Internet but wanted to save it to read later? This free site allows you to click a bookmark to save any web page to read later, from any computer connected to the Internet. Wait, did I say computer? I should have also said the iPhone, Kindle, Nook, and other readers. Instapaper is so big it is already becoming a verb as in, “If you see me in line at the grocery store reading about the Prometheus tree, it’s because I instapapered it.”
• Tumblr/Posterous – These are a little bit like Twitter, Facebook, and blogging all rolled into one. You can follow people like Twitter, but you can also post videos and pictures directly on your personal feed for your friends to see. You can also write full-fledged blog posts right in the stream as well.
• QR Codes – Credit goes to @librariantom for introducing me to this one. A QR code is a funny square barcode that many mobile phones can read. How is this useful? They operate like real-world hyperlinks. Imagine a library book tagged with a QR code. Scan it with your smartphone and you could immediately see other books by that author in our system, their availability, or their Goodreads.com page. What if I come up with my own QR code and post it at my office entrance? It could link to my current schedule or calendar so you know where I am if I’m not there.
• Barcode Readers on Phones – This directly relates to QR codes, but it can go even deeper. With the county’s fitness program in full swing, did you know you can watch your weight with your phone? Scan the barcode on the food box or wrapper and Daily Burn’s “Food Scanner” can automatically add the calories up for you. Want to comparison shop? Scan an item in stores with the “RedLaser” app and your phone looks up the competitors’ pricing.
• eBooks, Piracy, and DRM – Currently, anyone that can use Google can find easy ways to un-protect eBooks with DRM protection. This includes Kindle, Nook, and the Adobe Epub DRM that our Overdrive Digital Library uses. What does this mean? If someone wanted to, they could give their friends copies of eBooks they bought or even check out an eBook from our Digital Library, duplicate it and keep it forever. On the other hand, sales of eBooks have increased at some publishers that dropped all DRM protection. Apple’s iTunes store had this issue a while ago and guess what happened! They eventually dropped all DRM protection. The problem with DRM has always been this: it punishes those who get things legally and rewards those that get it illegally (if you download an eBook illegally, you’re getting it DRM-free). That’s not really a strategy that makes sense to me.
• Dropbox – There are several of these kinds of backup/file synchronization apps, but none of them seem as fluid and seamless as Dropbox. Imagine having a “Dropbox” folder on every computer you use. The small Dropbox app keeps that folder synchronized across every computer you use. You get 2 gigs of storage completely free.
• Google Buzz – This is a late update that has emerged just since I wrote the original version of this article. What is it? It’s one of those things that is easier to understand if you just use it. Imagine a central location that automatically aggregates much of your online activity. It is a bit like Twitter except it allows images, blogs, videos and other online sites to automatically publish information to your “Buzz” stream. In a sense it is actually most similar to Tumblr or Posterous, except it allows external sites to automatically publish to your stream more easily. There have been serious privacy issues with Buzz thus far but Google is already modifying how Buzz works based on these concerns.

There are a few things that I’ve been watching lately. There are things closer to that bleeding edge, but that’ll be for a later date.

Incidentally, I should mention I originally planned this article to be more conceptual, and about the possible responsibilities of a library in a world where technology is accelerating with such speed, but I realized quickly that our staff newsletter wasn’t really the medium. At some point I may revisit that conceptual analysis of the singularity and libraries.

Drupal & Twitter Update

Hi guys! Thanks for the comments and interest on the first Twitter article. I’m planning to write more at some point, but I’m balancing my creative writing and creating the new Drupal site for pbclibrary.org as well. So I may be an example of a bad tweeter on the @pbclibrary account for a while.

I think the next article will probably be about some of the tools you can use to get more out of Twitter. Many people already use them, but it might be a good starting point for some. I’ve also been brainstorming some ideas about possible future uses of Twitter, maybe even some bleeding edge theoretical stuff. (Hint: I don’t know if Twitter will exist in its current form in 10 years. I *do* think we’re on a collision course for data interaction like what Charles Stross fictionalizes in Accelerando. Keep in mind, I stress *in its current form*. Something will certainly exist that will be some sort of evolution of RSS/Twitter/Facebook/Friendfeed/etc. where everything continues to meld together into one stream. With the addition of social aspects, Google Reader is certainly walking down that path.)

I also may write more about the Drupal development. There is a lot of info on Drupal online (for anyone interested), and even a lot of library specific stuff. But a sort of “case study” may help some, especially since we’re doing this as a one-person job (me!) and it is a conversion of a massive behemoth of a site with somewhere around a thousand static HTML pages.

In the meantime, enjoy some music that keeps me going when working on regular expression queries for four hours in a row.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

Hometown Glory (High Contrast …

How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should

I’ve been doing some workshops recently on social networking (especially Twitter) for our library system and thought I would collect some of this information here because I usually can’t cover everything I would like and it may also be useful information for other libraries.

Background

Plenty has been said about the banality of many Twitter messages. Enough of you probably realize there’s more going on than meets the eye if you are willing to dig. Hash tags, twitter search, and a true global chat (uh, yes, it is basically, in essence, a “chat”) open up entirely new ways to reach out and touch people.

Libraries have always been about books, but what is it about books that you’re there for? Essentially information and/or entertainment. The library does this while functioning as something of a community center. Twitter enables the library to reach people on all those levels and do so much easier, cheaper and more regularly than ever before.

What Do We Tweet?

When we decided to start a Twitter feed in mid 2008 we started experimenting with different techniques. We’re still experimenting and probably always will be but we’ve found some things that we like, and our customers seem to as well.

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list but just a jumping-off point for any libraries trying to get some ideas. If you feel pretty comfortable with Twitter and don’t need to experience my scintillating writing (ha ha), I would suggest jumping down to “Tweet 5” at the bottom since this is the biggest way I think most libraries are probably not taking advantage of Twitter.

Tweet Style 1, or “The Average Library Tweet”

There is nothing groundbreaking here but it still makes sense to promote events. Don’t overpromote because people will get tired of multiple tweets about the same thing, but put the information out there.

Tweet Style 1b, or “Uhm, Ya Know You Can Be a Little Creative Though, Right?”

Sometimes it’s good to have a little fun with your tweets. Chances are, more people clicked on the link to this tweet by saying “Shoo bop shoo wadda wadda yippity boom sha boom” than if I said “Grease Sing-A-Long Cinema.”

Tweet Style 2, or “Promote Some Materials”

People were talking a lot about the Iranian election. When people are talking a lot about something they often like to learn more about it. Who better to turn to than a library for learning more about something? We’re killing three birds with one tweet here (apologies for the pun). (1) We are staying relevant in a quickly changing world where news is immediate and constant. (2) We’re promoting a book that has been relatively overlooked in our system. (3) We’re promoting a current DVD and many people still don’t realize how good our DVD section is. All in 140 characters.

We’re even making it easy with a direct catalog link where a patron can place a hold on materials.

On top of all that I didn’t even personally come up with the idea for this tweet. It came from a collection development librarian (submitted via Twitter from the incomparable @Gamecouch) who thought it might be an interesting thing to link.

It doesn’t have to be traditional news events either. The day after the Academy Awards we might post links to winners, and the day after the National Book Awards we will link to those. Tweet a Lance Armstrong book during the Tour de France. Tweet a link to a book that is being made into a movie. Chances are if something is in the news or people are talking about it, they wouldn’t mind knowing that the library has something to offer in relation, and a direct catalog link is a bonus. (Now if the common library OPACs would get more mobile-phone friendly, then we’d really be getting somewhere.)

Tweet Style 3, or “Promote Things As They Happen”

We talked about promoting events, and that’s a no-brainer, but if you have access to an iPhone or something similar Twitpic some stuff as it happens! Authors enjoy coming to libraries but they like the promotion too! If authors see your library will go the extra mile, and see they are not only being promoted to your own customers but across the entire Internet, they appreciate it. They come back. They tell their peers and their publishers. The authors *deserve* you to go the extra mile.

At this event we also featured Brad Meltzer. I took a Twitpic of him as well. Using an iPhone and Twitpic you can take a picture and post a tweet linking that picture just using a phone.

Before the event was over we had direct Twitter messages from at least three other well-known authors basically saying, “Hey, why didn’t you guys get me to do this? Keep me in mind for the next one!”

Tweet Style 4, or “It Doesn’t Have to Require a Library Visit”

Sometimes I’m surprised when it seems like libraries only talk about events or other things that require a visit to the library. Remember, what we do is generally information and entertainment. That doesn’t mean it has to be in person. In fact, libraries will probably increasingly be fulfilling these needs in a setting that is entirely online. I love finding quirky and odd links like this that might bring a smile to someone’s day, and they might even check out a Philip Roth book while they’re thinking about it.

We will even occasionally post a link to an interesting or artsy video like this one. Question: how many people have said it’s inappropriate to link to a video like that (on YouTube, the horror!)? Answer: zero. It’s not book-related, not really informational, but it’s artsy, creative and probably will make people smile while brightening their day a little bit. Oh, and they also might think, “Gosh, maybe I should stop by the library on the way home today and check out a book or a DVD.” When we post tweets like that we’re solidifying our image as a hip, entertaining, vibrant, and fun place. It isn’t just about selling your materials and services, but creating your image as well!

I make heavy use of categorized RSS feeds. I follow some obvious ones and some that are like dynamic searches, including Twitter search. More on that below.

Tweet Style 5, or “Interact!”

I admit I can’t constantly interact on Twitter, but I try to make it work as efficiently as possible. There is a secret weapon in the world of Twitter and people are still finding new ways to use it: Twitter Search.

For those that haven’t used it, Twitter Search allows you to do very detailed and specific searches. It allows me to search within a certain location’s radius for a word like, uhm, perhaps “library?” Then you can even subscribe to an RSS feed for that particular search!

So get this: if someone within 25 miles uses the word “library” in a tweet, it is in my RSS feed! It’s not as much as you might think, anywhere from 15-30 a day usually. Some may be talking about their “iTunes library” or one of the city libraries (our county system is separate), but it is very easy to skip past the irrelevant results.

While it may seem a bit “Big Brother”-ish, Twitter is a public platform and anyone wanting to protect their updates can do so. People don’t even have to be following the library or even know we have a Twitter account. I see someone mention the library and if it is something I can help with, <zing> I arrive and interact. Sometimes I can help and sometimes I can’t. Often the person in question didn’t even know we had a Twitter account but will follow us. They also know they can reach us if need be.

This is one of the most useful ways libraries can use Twitter but don’t.

Take the concept a bit further. You’re running a yoga program and not getting exceptional turnout. You think: “Oh well, might as well post something about it on Twitter and see if that helps.”

But wait! Is there something else you can do? How about a Twitter search with a 25 mile radius of the library branch for the word “yoga.” Remember something important here: many of the people that already follow your library tweets are probably library regulars and know about what is going on. But how about those people that would never think to come to a library for yoga? There’s probably a lot of them. Reaching out in this way with a perfectly targeted local search is invaluable. Send them an @ tweet with some details. Twitter is such that it can easily be ignored if they aren’t interested. You reach some people based on a specific interest, they become new patrons, and they may even have friends of similar interest that come along as well.

Did I mention something briefly about being a “community center?” You’ve just used an online community center (Twitter) to bring people to your real-life community center, and it was all a non-invasive experience and focused directly on their interest. Facebook is useful, but even it can’t do this. In their system, you have to trust that the target audience “becomes your fan” and then you can reach them.

Where Do You Find the Time?

I admit it is tough to find the time to do all of this. At some point I’m sure we could have a full-time person just doing Twitter and other social networks. I just do what I can when I’m not knee deep in Drupal for the new site or some other required routine.

Learn to become friends with RSS. Have some other people that you can RT occasionally (RT is short for “re-tweet”, i.e. repost). Don’t feel like you have to do a ton. It is certainly fun to get tweets more often about the random or unique things (@scott_douglas is a great example) that happen in a library setting, but we just can’t do that in our specific circumstances yet. Don’t go several days without saying anything either, though.

Conclusiony Stuff

This certainly isn’t meant to be some exhaustive list or dictionary of library tweets. I just thought I’d throw together some ideas and hit some high points. At some point I will probably do “Part 2: Revenge of the Tweets” even if solely to have a better outline for future workshops. There is a lot more that can be covered.

I get questions like:

• Who do you follow back?
• How do you gain followers?
• What kinds of online tools make Twitter easier/more useful?
• How do you convince a hesitant administration that Twitter is a viable and/or important way to dedicate time?
• Where do you see Twitter (or some similar tool) in 5 years? 10 years? etc.

I certainly don’t have the perfect answer to all of these, but I can offer what I’ve found to be the case for us. If there is a demand and others may find it useful, I will certainly write more, perhaps in the form of a screenplay, epic poem, or a series of haikus.

Until next time.

• @pbclibrary feed
• My personal @kellydallen feed

Classic MP3 Mix

Adam Singer and I were recently chatting about a mix I did a while back – we generally agreed that it was probably the best mix I ever released on the net and still sounds good today.

I thought I’d make it available again. I will see if I can dig up a tracklisting for it. It is two hours long and moves from a dreamy and atmospheric beginning to some techy stuff, through the world of house, gets a bit frantic towards the end before settling into a nice smooth final 20 minutes.

Grab it here!

Update: I found the tracklisting ..

– voodoo warriors of love – imagine (em:t)
– gabriel ananda – 2.1 (trapez 017)
– estornel/tutera – one day (sub static)
– sten – anti-establishment 1 untitled (italic)
– eloi brunelle – moch5 (thinner)
– baby ford – after shock (sender)
– jeff samuel – fcote/knob remixes b2 (trapez)
– misc – the magic number (sender)
– 2 dollar egg – tow@.com (i220)
– dj manny groove – back 2 face u (bambossa)
– monolake – static (monolake)
– adjd – believe (poker flat)
– the flaws feat mc chick-a-boo – freek [ewan pearson remix] (bitches brew)
– gabriel ananda – espresso (karmarouge)
– joris voorn – take off (sound architecture)
– hakan lidbo – televinken (poker flat)
– robag wruhme – jena makks (milner modern)
– hakan lidbo – give me your disease (poker flat)
– misc – flow control (sender)
– adam kroll & riley reinhold – static people (traum schallplatten)
– jeff bennett – markings (sensei)
– selffish – why (thinner)
– agoria – stereolove [paul kalkbrenner remix] (different)
– baier and box – duck dub [taho remix] (thinner)
– ada – …and more (areal)
– plaid – zeal (warp)
– boy robot – when broken consider it sold (city centre offices)

Libraries and the Web

Image via Wikipedia

A lot of you guys may know I’ve been with the Palm Beach County Library System for a while now working on some new technologies for the system. I may occasionally use this blog to discuss some things I’ve learned that may help others, or may light a new path that some might not have envisioned.

Briefly, the standard disclaimer, my opinions don’t necessarily reflect the PBC Library System.

Currently I’m working on a total site redesign using the Drupal CMS which is growing exponentially and is gonna be giant, or at least more giant than it already is. The first library tech post will be relating to Twitter though because it is a bit of a misunderstood technology that enables some techniques that aren’t apparent right from the start.

iTunes

So I hear the entire Pure Music Recordings catalog is now on iTunes. Very cool.

I’m not necessarily suggesting people go back and buy my previous music because much dance music is such a fleeting, transient thing but it’s cool to have stuff on there.

Blip.fm

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve been using this blip.fm service lately.  It’s a little like a cross between twitter and internet radio but it becomes increasingly addictive as you make more friends and everything starts integrating.  Highly suggested! Become one of my listeners here. (Which is the same thing as “following” in Twitterspeak or “friending” in other social services.)

I actually play some rare stuff that I no longer even own, but that exist someplace in the internet ether.

Oh, and follow me on twitter here.

38 Day Anniversary Party

While we very much hope no one comes, if some should endeavor to show up we hope you will keep these things in mind:

• The party will feature none of the bands on the flyer. If some should show up, we will not be held responsible.
• We don’t know exactly when this event will start but it will likely be a rolling party that will peak between 9 and 11pm. Some will arrive early, some will arrive late. If you are an “early” arriver, we would suggest around 7pm. If you wish to be fashionably late, we suggest around 9pm.
• Parking is available but not in overabundance. Arrive by carpool, or, if possible, parachute.
• While some alcohol will be provided, the amount per person will depend on how many people show up. If possible, encourage your friends to stay home so there is more to drink for everyone else. Failing that, bring something you like to drink to supplement the officially-sanctioned provisions.
• Likewise, some food will be provided but you may want to eat something before coming because we don’t know how long it will last. Some of our friends are big fans of free food and we support them in this tendency.
• Dress-code will be what we call “island casual”.  In essence, this means you should preferably be dressed in at least a shirt and shorts. If you can only wear one of the aforementioned, we would prefer shorts.
• The party will likely be primarily outdoors in a covered area. It could be somewhat chilly. Or at least what Floridians and Trinis call chilly. Which means, not very.
• If you choose to bring a gift, which we do not encourage, do not bring dishes. In fact, we may force people to take dishes with them when they leave.

If you want a google map to the location, click here.

If you prefer old-fashioned directions given to you from a human:

(For some reason I originally posted the correct turn was the 3rd stop sign – it should have read the 2nd one. The street is 17th Ave N.)

1. Take I-95 to 10th ave. N exit and go east (toward the ocean!).
2. Turn left at A Street which is the first light after the I-95 area.
3. Turn left at the 2nd stop sign. (at 17th Ave. N.)
4. Pass under the I-95 overpass and the location is the northwest corner of the first intersection: 1818 17th ave. N.