Photographs from a Bloy in Wisconsin
Here are my picks for best music of the year, including samples of key tracks.
Richard Ashcroft – Keys to the World
The former lead singer of The Verve, Richard Ashcroft pulled from a variety of styles to make an outstanding CD. The Motown flavored “Music is Power,” the brit-pop “Break the Night with Colour” and the Paul Westerburg-like ballad “Sweet Brother Malcolm” are all excellent songs. The title track is another superb brit-pop song.
Look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see… a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom… But that’s what makes all this interesting.
Bravo. Excellent choice. It really is amazing how the power of the collaborative web has changed things. Here’s the article and links to related coverage.
I spent a great deal of yesterday evening writing up Christmas cards to send out. As I got to a lot of the names on the list I start to wonder… Why do I have contact with some of these people only once a year? Some I intended to visit, or correspond with a lot more than I have. Where does the time go? It seems like it was just a few months ago when I was writing out my Christmas cards last year.
I spent most of last weekend removing the last traces of wallpaper from my condo, when I stripped it from the downstairs bathroom. Yes, my home is now wallpaper free!
If I were ruler of the kingdom, I would require anyone installing wallpaper to be responsible for its removal. The installers would be required to do that when any future owner of said wallpaper wishes it to be removed. As much as I dislike removing wallpaper, after removing it from my kitchen, and now the bathroom, I’ve become quite good at it. Although I probably shouldn’t admit to that (no, I am not available for outside jobs).
Yesterday I spent a few hours spackling the bathroom walls, and today I painted the primer on. Hopefully I’ll get the final coat of paint on in the next few days.
As I was cleaning the paint brush today, it hit me that I’ve have spent more of my free time fixing up or improving this condo than any other home I’ve lived in. One thing I have come to realize: I would most certainly rather be doing something else. If money were no object…