Family, music, photos and other stuff I care about.

I came across this site the other day. I forget where I found it … I think on tumblr.

Stefan Bucher draws a monster a day and shows a video of the drawing. Fascinating to watch and beautiful drawings at the end. My kids love it.

Check out the Daily Monster for more (there are currently 175 videos up).

My Twitter lyric-of-the-day:

What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

From Elvis Costello’s Peace, Love and Understanding.

This is a great Final Four rap by Paul Brogan. Funny stuff.

Found on LiveJamie’s tumblr page.

Here’s a video of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James playing Chinese Translation with M. Ward at SXSW. The video actually starts with M. Ward playing Rollercoaster on his own.

I love this. M. Ward is such a great guitar player! And Jim James is a leading god in my rock pantheon.

Found at Aquarium Drunkard.

Larry Lessig just posted a brilliant Lessig-style video endorsement of Barack Obama. Hopefully this will change a few minds on the morning of Super Tuesday.

Big snowstorm in Toronto today. Hopefully everyone will make it through.

Thanks to Rob, via Twitter.

Here’s a great video of Wilco performing Impossible Germany on Austin City Limits. The song is from Sky Blue Sky, Wilco’s most recent album and one of my faves. One of the highlights of the album is the addition of free-jazz guitarist Nels Cline to the lineup. The video is a great example of what he adds to the band.

Apparently this show aired on PBS a few nights ago. However, due to the frustration that is PBS, its affiliates and how they carry and schedule shows, it doesn’t appear to be offered by our affiliate, WGBH in Boston. I guess I’ll have to track it down on BitTorrent instead.

Thanks to Aquarium Drunkard for the video.

Peyton Manning and Tom Brady may have had good weekends … again. But this is undoubtedly the play of the week.

Found at Daring Fireball.

Alex, Abby & Jonathan bringing in the harvest after a day of apple picking up in Montague.

George is the newest member of our family. He’s a six month old “Goldendoodle” (a Golden Retriever / Poodle mix).

We met him on Saturday, October 20, and took him home the next day.

A few more pictures here.

Alex and Jonathan at Brackley Beach.

Another brilliant video by Michael Wesch, the man who brought us The Machine is Us/ing Us. This one is called Information R/Evolution and it’s basically David Weinberger’s great Everything is Miscellaneous put to video.

Thanks to Rob for the pointer.

And if you haven’t seen The Machine is Us/ing Us, here it is:

This is hilarious, though not quite safe for work.

Thanks to Scott for the pointer.

I love Apple’s simple homepage tribute to Al Gore and today’s news that he’s been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tom Petty resides high in my personal rock canon. Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises were formative, seminal albums for me; albums I’ve listened to hundreds of times.

So I was very excited to learn this morning, via a post by John Gruber, that he’s releasing a rock-doc this month called Running Down the Dream. The DVD will be released on October 16. I’ve pre-ordered mine.

Here’s the trailer:

And here’s a great video about The Waiting (I love Tom playing the guitar intro over and over):

Just ordered myself one of the new 15″ MacBook Pros that were announced this morning. Santa Rosa chipset, LED backlit display and all sorts of other geek candy.

I’m really looking forward to switching my main work over to Mac. Windows has been driving me crazier than usual and Vista is making the problem worse, not better. I wish it was a full switch, but we still have the workhorse PC at home that manages all of our photos and music. One of these days that thing will get replaced with an iMac or Mac Pro. I’ll also have to maintain a Windows environment for work. I’m hoping I can accomplish this in Parallels or Boot Camp.

Seems I’m in good company.

Thanks to the beauty of podcasts, I listened to this live concert (iTunes link) of Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard on NPR’s All Songs Considered on the rainy commute into work this morning.

This made the rounds a while back and was sent to me by my cousin, Rob.

The Best Band Email EVER.

Valley Lodge/Thurs., January 18/10:30pm/Mercury Lounge (217 E. Houston St. at the corner of Avenue A)

Attention People Of New York City:

Hi. How are you? Super, I hope. Anyway, I was just writing to totally remind you about how my incredible rock band Valley Lodge will be rocking like a four-headed motherf&%ker TOMORROW night (Thurs., Jan. 18, dammit) at the Mercury Lounge (right over there on Houston Street, near all the shops) at the rock-sanctioned time of 10:30pm. We shall arrive on horseback, brandishing torches and drinking the blood of priests as the screams of the undead echo in the distance. Actually, now that I think about it, we will probably just rent a mini-van or something. But it shall be an awesome mini-van that will haunt your dreams. Anyway, I really hope you can make it. It is good to rock and one day we will all be dead and we will not be able to rock as much anymore. And then I shall see you in Hades and you will be all like I wish I had done more rocking in life and then I will be all like Well, I totally sent you that e-mail. Then I will ride off on the horse with the blood and the torch and stuff. It is easier to get that stuff in Hades. In fact, you kind of look like an a-hole if you do not have that stuff in Hades. Anyway, we can talk more about all this tomorrow at the rock show.

Godspeed,
Dave Hill
www.valleylodgemusic.com
www.myspace.com/valleylodge
www.davehillonline.com

Congratulations to Mark Fraser, a good friend and co-worker, on being named to Canada’s Top 40 Under 40!!

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Mark at T4G for almost five years. This couldn’t happen to a nicer and more deserving guy.

Way to go, Mark!

How does he do it?

I met my cousin Rob last Thursday for one of our attempting-to-be-regular breakfast get-togethers and recommend to him a book I’m reading: Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. Only four days later, there is an article in the Globe and Mail titled, The $2,000 executive assistant. It’s an article about outsourcing admin work, as espoused in the Ferriss book. And Rob is cited as an example, including a big picture of Rob sitting at his desk (in the act of outsourcing some work?).

“It’s a great way to delegate to other people parts of your job that you really don’t enjoy doing,” says Rob Hyndman, a one-man Toronto law firm. “I can simply parcel out individual tasks to individual providers. It makes me faster. It makes me more nimble.”

Last year, Mr. Hyndman paid nearly $2,000 for a “virtual administrative assistant” to schedule his meetings, organize his contacts and do all the other office work that once kept him behind his desk until late. As the personal offshoring business evolves, he’s finding more and more tasks he can farm out to India.

Four months into 2007, I have a list of music in heavy rotation that I’m enjoying as much as any batch of music in a long time:

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Bright Eyes - Cassadaga

Dinosaur Jr - Beyond

Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

The National - Alligator

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971

All of the links above are to Amazon.com (US). Unfortunately, of these albums only the Dinosaur Jr and The National are available from eMusic, my preferred source for music.

Happy listening.

I’m still on my first pass through this album, but it’s fantastic. I’ve always known of Dinosaur Jr. but have never actually listened to them. Great stuff!! Favourite track so far is We’re Not Alone.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs

This is too funny:

I met the Smithereens 15 years ago, with the release of their brilliant Especially for You, featuring their somewhat hit, Blood & Roses. After a long hiatus they’re back with a fun album of Beatles covers. This is a collection of familiar pop songs covered by a great band. My only complaint is that it’s a little too note-for-note for my covers tastes. It definitely sounds like the Smithereens but I wish it sounded a little more like the Simthereens. Still … this one is highly recommended.

And it’s available at eMusic.