My Photographs - Bistro Blues

We were eating at a local Italian bistro the other day, and a man was sitting outside playing an electric guitar. I took a few shots, but felt the cars parked on the near side of the street detracted from the scene. A couple shots had stray pedestrians looking in right at the camera. Later after we ate the nearby cars had driven off and I got up and moved over a bit to get this shot. It was the last shot I could get for the day as my memory card was full. Fortunately it was pretty much the shot I was hoping for.

It's a bit modified, obviously. I cropped the top down a bit to deemphasize the cars across the street, edited out the soft drink logo on the cup, adjusted the contrast a bit, and colored it a low-saturation blue. Came out nice, I think. I tipped him on the way out.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Bistro Blues Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
Bistro Blues Prints and Greeting Cards at redbubble.com

Willie Nelson Follow-Up

Well, I'd like to be able to tell you that Willie Nelson saw my previous blog and was amused, but I haven't heard anything from him or his people and seriously doubt he's even aware if it.

Instead I'll just share this song that's been going through my head since posting about the dream. It brings back some memories for me besides the obvious.





If you like it and don't have the CD yet, I encourage you to go out and buy it right now. (Hopefully if Mr. Nelson stops by he won't make me take this down now. :) )

Last Night's Dream

I had an unusually extended dream last night. It started with my wife and I driving home. On our way along the main road we take an airliner swooped down overhead and landed ahead of us on the road, but I guess it hit too big of a bump because one wing broke and fell down, sparking an explosion of the fuel that was in it. I recognized the plane as belonging to Willie Nelson, and was distraught at the prospect of the world losing his music. I called 911 and told them that Willie Nelson's plane had gone down near us and asked them to send help quickly to save the music. After that I grabbed a laptop out the back seat and sat by the side of the road, intending to blog about what was happening and get a scoop on everyone. The first thing that came up, though, when I booted up was a chat site dedicated to Willie Nelson, on which he himself had just posted that his plane was going down. I was even more upset by losing the scoop than him crashing.

At that point my wife woke me up with a snuggle, and our real day began.

I'm not what you'd call a Willie Nelson fan, but I don't dislike him and I have enjoyed his songs when they play. All in all I'm glad he's not dead. If the events in the dream were to happen in real life, it would probably go about like I described, except I would post with my phone, and I would be much more freaked out and saddened by his post than upset about losing the scoop. (If you're reading this, Mr. Nelson, may all your landings be happy and safe.)

A Note On Using A 2Gig MicroSD In An LG VX8300 Phone

I just got a pair of SanDisk 2-gig MicroSD cards for my and my wife's LG VX8300 phones. I had some misgivings about buying them, since I had read a review somewhere on the interweb that noted that the phone only can read up to 1 gig. I had also read that they will format a 2-gig to 1 gig and use that. That was okay, since CompUSA had (and maybe still has, as of this writing) 2-gig SanDisks on sale for less than the same brand of 1-gig card, so I was still getting at least the same storage for less money.

Later I read in another review that it will actually format the card with two 1-gig partitions, but that if you format it with another device that supports 2 gig partitions and create certain directories (folders for those of you with no pre-Windows95 experience) it will use the full space with no problem.

When the cards came in I decided to see for myself what the phone would do with them if I didn't format them. Well, lo and behold it just created the needed directories on the existing 2-gig partition and used them without complaint. I checked the card memory through the phone's menu and it's seeing and reporting the full 2 gig. I have all my new pix, flix, and sounds bing recorded to it now, and have switched the camera resolution to its full 1280x960.

Another thing I saw in reviews was that Verizon had disabled playing MP3s on the phone, but that a menu trick would let you switch it on. You then had to create a specially-named directory just for MP3s for the phone to see them. Then others said that later versions of the firmware had disabled that trick. Still others noted that the latest version played any MP3 you care to place in the normal music directory. I am happy to report that on our phones the news is good: they will in fact play MP3s placed in that directory. I'm now listening to a shuffle of the several I've initially loaded on it. (With no headphone and on the lowest volume - decent little speakers for their size. Now playing: Lithium by Nirvana.) The headphone jack takes a smaller size plug than normal, but I should be able to find adapters at Radio Shack or somewhere so I don't have to limit my choice of headphones.

One additional caveat about playing music: if you are playing music and pause it the phone's battery will, for some reason, keep draining as if you were still playing music. Hopefully that's something Verizon can fix in a future firmware update, but meanwhile if you have one of these phones be sure to exit the music player altogether if you're done listening for a while.

400th Design On Cafepress - and Another Gratifying Sale

My 400th design - Will Work For The Weekend just came online yesterday in the Cafepress Marketplace. The inspiration for it should be fairly obvious.

I also got my first sale of Untimely Ripp'd, on a toddler shirt. I knew someone out there would get it.

Thanks to everyone for your support!

A Favorite Movie

I watched this (not for the first time) on IFC this weekend. I'm not a gospel type of guy, to be sure, but good music is good music. It's based on The Odyssey, in case you hadn't heard.



This is one of those songs that make me wish I could play guitar and sing.

Happy Birthday Bill Danoff

Official Bill Danoff Site

Don Ho Dead At Age 76

I remember watching "The Don Ho Show" when I was a kid. It wasn't on long, but I enjoyed it and it's one of those fond little memories that bubble up (so to speak) in my mind from time to time. And yeah, I liked his appearance on The Brady Bunch.

AP story: 'Tiny Bubbles' Singer Don Ho Dies at 76

The Song In My Head Today

Just thought I'd share.



It seems to have Japanese subtitles.

Dedicated to my wife...

We danced to this at our wedding. And after the employees left we danced to a video of it at work.

Here's to my brown eyed girl.

2nd Entry for February 27, 2007 - "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" +

This song was going through my head today.

Does it get any better?

This one's been going in and out of my head lately too, probably because some car commercial is using the opening instrumental.

Not bad at all, I say.

And, of course, you can't have 90s rock videos without including this one.


And there you have it.

A-Rockin' And A-Geekin'

I feel like simultaneously rockin' out and geekin' out, so...

More Music In My Mind

Another song that's been going through my head lately. Wawa plays it, interrupted by little promos, on the speakers over the gas pumps. Ever since we filled up the other day it's been wafting in and out of my mind.

Bob Marley - Is This Love

I'm In A Bee Gees Mood

I was going to just copy & paste the lyrics, but I lucked into a karaoke video. Sing along!

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Here's a couple more entries for the links...

WWOZ FM New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Station A little taste of home. This and NPR were pretty much what I was listening to on the radio in my last years in New Orleans. WWOZ is a community-run and supported radio station that features local, regional, carribean, on out to global music. It's great stuff you may never hear elsewhere. Very much worth a listen, which you can do online! (Great even for locals in offices with bad radio reception.) Search Amazon.com Music for wwoz

Google Image Labeler Help Google give better image search results by playing a game. They give you a series of images and you start entering words that fit what's pictured. Another player randomly matched up with you gives words too. As soon as you've come up with a word in common you move on to the next word. Score points by getting as many matches as possible within the time limit. See your partner's guesses after the round is done. Sign up for a Google account and see your accumulated points.

Dang I'm up late! G'nite!