Category: Music

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My iPod ran down its charge over the weekend, and I had to plug in the car charger this morning and start over at the beginning of a playlist. I usually leave it on shuffle on a reaaaaaally long list so I get lots of different songs.

It started up with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bohemian Polka,” which was a fun, off-kilter start to the week. When it followed up with “Jurassic Park,” I didn’t think much of it. Twofers by artist, and even by album, aren’t that uncommon.

When “Living in the Fridge” started up, I got a little suspicious.

Sure enough, when I stopped the car and checked, shuffle was set to “off.” I figure the playlist must have been sorted by album the last time I synced, with Alapalooza the first on the list.

I’m still not sure whether it switched off shuffle when the battery ran down, or I just had it off before and didn’t notice because the last playlist I was listening to was pre-shuffled. Still, it was — appropriately — weird.

The Weird Al/T-Rex silhouette from Alapalooza.

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A few minutes ago I was trying to fix sound on my Linux box. Nothing would play, until Katie heard it beep to notify me of a new Twitter message. I closed Twhirl and suddenly my music player worked. The song lined up? Vertical Horizon’s “All is Said and Done.” The first line of the song? “I need you to hear me.” That gave us both a good laugh.

I thought a major point of PulseAudio was to let applications share the sound card cleanly. *grumble* Sound worked fine before Fedora switched. I can’t even blame it on a bleeding-edge distribution, since from what I hear, Ubuntu has similar problems.

At least now I know (sort of) why it stopped again after applying the Complete guide to fix PulseAudio and video/audio VLC Media Player issues.

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Vienna Teng: Inland Territory.

  • Hard disks should not sound like buzz saws.
  • Slashdot article “FOSS Sexism Claims Met With Ire & Denial”…gets met with ire & denial. *headdesk*
  • Listening to lightsaber sounds from across the office. I think my coworker w/ the new Android phone found an app for that.
  • Vertical Horizon’s Burning the Days is growing on me, but I think Vienna Teng‘s Inland Territory is my favorite new album this year

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The Paper Raincoat opened for Vienna Teng when we saw her at the Roxy back in April. I liked them enough to not only buy their EP, Safe in the Sound, at the concert, but sign up for their mailing list. “Brooklyn Blues” kind of reminds me of Fountains of Wayne in their quieter moments, like “Valley Winter Song,” and “Sympathetic Vibrations” gets stuck in my head on a regular basis. I’m not sure how to classify the style (modern folk rock?), but Katie compares them to Guster.

Now the band has a full album coming out.

Better yet, the preorder page is offering a free song, “Right Angles,” in MP3 format. I’ve only listened to it once (I’ve been playing the new Vertical Horizon album), but I like the sound and there’s some nice wordplay in there. (There’s some nice wordplay in Burning the Days, too, actually.)

And hey, it’s free!