The Oracle of Apollo
Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Wow, I really didn’t do anything in May. There were goals and ideas about what I’d like to accomplish—technically, athletically, and musically. I have accomplished nothing, primarily because of laziness, but also because I got sick twice during May.

Number of constructive musical practice sessions: 0
Workouts: 0
Chapters covered (Javascript review, Ruby on Rails, PHP review): 0

On Sunday, I’m going to come up with a set of goals for June and for the rest of the year. This marking time is getting old. I’m still 20 pounds heavier than my target weight. I’m not improving on any of my instruments. I’m not scrubbing the rust off of some of my most confident technical skill. Like I said before, I must get moving. I’m bored and tired and life is too short to tread water.

CBS Corporation has purchased Last.fm. $280 million? Wow. (<nod target=”Metafilter” />).

I’m a last.fm subscriber and have been for quite some time. Many of my friends are there, but I don’t interact much with last.fm. I primarily just listen to music in my local iTunes Library and check out my charts on Last.fm. I wish last.fm was more feature rich, including on-the-fly updates of the Weekly Top Artists list. I am dubious as to whether AudioScrobbler/last.fm is worth $280 million.

I’m starting to get flashbacks of 2000. And I’m worried about 2008. Are we in for another implosion, like we had at the end of the dot.com bubble? The difference this time around is that IPO doesn’t seem to be a business model, but neither is profitability.

1. Start social networking site.
2. Raise venture capital money.
3. Garner large user base.
4. Get purchased by big player (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft)

Time to get busy upgrading my skills, just in case.

Group, attenTION.

Present ARMS.

<salute><music song=”Taps” /> Order ARMS.</salute>

Dismissed.

(In memory of American soldiers, past and present, who fought, bled, and died.)

Cory Doctorow tells of his experience with Fox Rent-A-Car in Oakland. I’ve had pretty good luck with Fox. It’s generally the only rental car place at the San Jose airport that will take my debit card (I also don’t carry a major non-debit credit card). That must have changed recently.

But, when I read Cory’s account, it felt like I was reading my own account of the way I was handled by Alamo Car Rentals in Boise, Idaho. I flew in to rent a car in March to take some of my family on a road trip around Oregon. On landing at Boise, I discovered that the rental agency was more than a click away on South Vista Avenue.

“Oh, we don’t take debit cards.”
“I just flew in here and have a car reserved.”
“We need an itinerary, sir.”

I opened the gmail application on my Pearl, showed the email to the guy at the counter.

“No,” he sneered. “We need a printed return ticket. We’re not renting any cars to you on a debit card unless you have an airline-issued return ticket.”
“When’s the last time you flew and had a printed plane ticket?”
“Do you have a place to print one off?”

Eventually, after an extended argument that involved my explaining that Alamo really should list the requirement on their website, they finally shuttled me over to the airport, where I got the counter attendant at Alaska/Horizon to print me off a return itinerary. Thankfully, it wasn’t in Oakland, where I’d have had to wait in line for an hour.

I will never rent a car at Alamo again. They could have done something for me to relax that bullshit requirement (the counter attendant must inspect … yadda yadda) or at least list such a policy online. I just don’t have the time to waste explaining stuff like this to someone who considers himself powerful because he wears a badge that says “Assistant Manager.” Customer service should trump the power trip.

My friend, Mace, is moving to San Francisco and had a yard sale at her house in San Jose. I went this afternoon to hang out, crack jokes, and sift through her stuff. I got some nifty nifty.

1. Jayne Cobb action figure.
2. Stuffed black kitten.
3. Brightly colored bubble gun.
4. Hello Kitty bobblehead pin.
5. Truth-or-dare party card game.

Yay for kitsch. Thanks for the invite, Mace.

Ozreiuosn came by this evening to hang out, play video games, and eat some food. After snooping around on Yelp (on which I am behind on my reviews from a road trip and the time since), we found an Italian joint called Luigi’s Pizza and Pasta, which has 4½ stars. So, off we went.

Holy overhyped, Batman. The pizza tasted like the sauce came from a can at Safeway. Ugh. Usually yelp reviews are pretty insightful.

While I’m at it and I’m feeling complainy (to coin a word), I have a feature request for Safari. Safari is fast and it’s standards compliant, but there’s one little behavior that it exhibits that will keep me from using it on a regular basis for real, productive browsing.

In Firefox, speaking of tabs, if I have lots of tabs open and I’m at the keyboard, I can use a key command to switch tabs. I can also do this in Safari, but the difference is quite noticeable.

Firefox Tab Switching Key Commands:

1. Close tab: Cmd-W (⌘W)
2. New tab: Cmd-T (⌘T)
3. Next tab: Ctrl-tab (^[tab])
4. Previous tab: Ctrl-shift-tab (^-Shift-[tab])
5. ⌘-number: Goes to tab number (e.g.: ⌘1 goes to the leftmost tab) — THIS IS EXTREMELY INTUITIVE.

Safari Tab Switching Key Commands:

1. Close tab: Cmd-W (⌘W)
2. New tab: Cmd-T (⌘T)
3. Next tab: Cmd-shift-right arrow
4. Previous tab: Cmd-shift-left arrow
5. ⌘-number: Goes to the corresponding item number in the Bookmarks toolbar (e.g.: ⌘1 goes to the first link, in my case, craigslist) — This always messes me up when I’m working on something.

There should be an option in Safari where I can modify that behavior to mimic the Mozilla-based browsers. Having a keyboard shortcut to pick a specific tab would make me be more interested in using Safari.

One of my primary browsers is Flock. I’ve met a couple of people who were at the forefront of the browser development personally. In fact, after a get together in San Francisco, I gave two of them a ride back to hotels in the Valley.

Every once in a while, I load down Flock with a whole bunch of tabs, thanks to Flock’s nifty built-in RSS reader, which I think is a step above Sage, although not a huge one. When I do something similar in Firefox 2+, and the application bogs down or crashes, I’m greeted with a choice — I can start a fresh new session or “Restore Session”, after which Firefox will load all of the tabs from before the crash. This is enormously useful.

Flock lacks this functionality. A few minutes ago, with a couple of dozen tabs open, Flock crashed and came back up with the splash page. Five hours worth of browsing, reading, noting, and preparing to file — gone. Attempting to browse my history (not the search history) led me to the conclusion that it’s impossible. There’s no menu item for Browser History and Firefox’s CMD-Shift-H doesn’t work. This is a serious feature lack. What would it take for the Flock team to add this functionality? If it’s in Firefox, why isn’t it included with Flock?

A few days ago, I was noodling around the web, looking for cool new software for my Pearl and I somehow stumbled across JaikuBerry, by Richard Todd. I downloaded it to try it out on my little black device.

It didn’t work. I read the FAQ, tried to figure out how to make it work, and failed miserably. So, I posted the error message on my Jaiku account, hoping that one of my five contacts would have some idea about what was awry.

Today, the programmer himself came to my assistance. I just made my first post to Jaiku from my BlackBerry Pearl about half an hour ago, thanks to him. That Richard took the time to address my concerns speaks very highly of him—especially since his software is freeware.

Thanks for your help, sir. I really appreciate it.

About 7 months ago, Tower Records went bankrupt. The nearby store in Mountain View closed its doors. I’ve been an eMusic subscriber for a few years and, between Amazon, Amoeba Records in San Francisco, and eMusic, I hadn’t been to Tower in quite some time.

A couple of months ago, Rasputin Music bought the Tower Records location in Mountain View. Rasputin is well-known for their gargantuan selection of the full gamut of music and their staggeringly large used CD and vinyl shelves. The new (and still in the process of setting up) location in Mountain View is by no means an exception.

Ozreiuosn and I wandered over there this evening. She was looking for Björk CDs and I was looking for jazz. I tried to keep my purchase under $50. With sales tax, I was slightly over, but I got some choice old remastered jazz recordings for $8 a pop. I just have to remind myself not to go there very often.

Otherwise, that crazy Russian mystic will make off with all of my rubles.

Wow. I just realized that Jay Def and I walked a girl named Carolyn in pomp and circumstance on this day eighteen years ago. Am I old yet?

That also means that our high school reunion (twenty year) is the summer after next. I skipped my tenth, because I moved to California a month before the reunion party. Should I go to the next one?

Yesterday, a gunman killed three and wounded two in my college town of Moscow, Idaho. The gunman killed a Moscow Police Department officer, Lee Newbill, and an elderly church caretaker, Paul Bauer, before turning the gun on himself.

Having lived on the Palouse while attending the University of Idaho from 1992 until 1999, a tragedy like this seems even more real to me than other tragedies. I know this community. Moscow was the first city that I ever loved. I miss many things about living in Northern Idaho, particularly my college radio station, my favorite food co-op, and the jazz festival. Moscow is the kind of sleepy, liberal college town where safety is nearly taken for granted–where many people don’t always lock their front doors or cars. Most of the crime that happens in Moscow is limited to bicycle thefts and snatched bookbags at that time of the semester when students are selling their textbooks back to the bookstore.

My heart goes out to the dead and wounded. I’m also thinking about my old friends who still live in Moscow, whose sense of peace is shattered in an abrupt and real way today. Every one of these shootings is a monumental tragedy. This one speaks a little closer to me, because I know and love this wonderful community that I once proudly called home.

I haven’t been going to very many parties lately, focusing my musical efforts on jazz, instead of house music. But, I knew that after missing a few of their events, I couldn’t miss Uneaq’s birthday bash tonight at San Jose Bar and Grill in downtown San Jose. Paranoid I was going to miss the party, I showed up in time to help out a little with the sound check, grab a pita nearby, and hang out in the mostly dead bar, listening to some really strange mashups.

Uneaq were on fire tonight. Jessica’s vocals just keep getting better and better. Josh’s guitar solos were right on the money, even when he was using a violin bow to wrangle the notes. Andrew’s big meaty bass guitar brought up the bottom end. Many of their new songs are significant departures from standard house music fare, including a couple of songs that are more downtempo with beautiful melodies and a little Prince influence.

The crowd was a little thin and the acoustics in the room were a little dead, but it’s always a pleasure to hang out with three talented musicians plying their craft in a genre dominated by DJs. Such a talented group. I can’t wait to hear them again.

Today, I went to Maker Faire at the San Mateo Exhibition Center in San Mateo. After walking around the sprawling event for over three hours, I was quite exhausted. There were a huge number of activities, from arts and crafts to robots to flame throwers to smart cars, there. As I entered the first of the buildings, I ran into my old friend, Craig, who was showing off his new invention, a MIDI controller he built while finishing his mechanical engineering degree at UC Davis. His device, which he used to control Ableton Live, has four knobs, two sliders, eight buttons, and a joystick. It’s basically a guitar-shaped controller. I can’t wait to play around with one.

I almost staggered into Steve Wozniak as he was being interviewed by a television crew (I did get a picture from afar having noticed the line of equipment at nearly the last moment). After following his Twitter posts, I encountered my good friend, Eric Rice, who was escorting his son to the giant nose-picking contraption. I hung out for a little bit with the good folks at the Creative Commons booth and chatted up the EFF folks, acquiring some really great schwag. After wandering around, checking out Sony’s eBook Reader, a myriad of electric commuter cars (including George Clooney’s electric car) and plug-in hybrids, I finally found my way to the FirstGiving booth, talked about bicycle tours and fund-raising with Thos, and played around with a Monome for a few seconds.

Friends of mine were trying to get me to go out to a party in San Francisco tonight, but I’m exhausted. I can’t wait for the next Maker Faire. Wow. So much fun.

Yeah, I saw Tony Snow playing the flute with some band on Countdown. One of my housemates was commenting on how the CBS News Anchor was really painful because of cringeworthy lyrics. I found Tony’s performance far more difficult to watch. He really is a terrible flute player and has no improvisational skills to speak of, judging simply from the video shown.

Keith Olbermann described the debacle as “Tony Snow picked up his jazz flute and…” This is the sound of me shaking my head.

I studied music composition in college, emphasizing jazz and classical composition. My major instrument was the flute. I think a talented musician on the flute can play jazz that isn’t embarrassing or dorky or clowny or rife for ridicule. Some names that spring to mind include the late Herbie Mann, Ali Ryerson, Hubert Laws, Dave Valentin, and numerous other greats who doubled on the instrument, particularly Eric Dolphy and James Moody. I have loved the instrument for more than 15 years. I plan to continue improving on my instruments (flute and reeds) and when I’m ready to not be an embarrassment to myself, play live again.

However, taking the stage someday on the instrument will exponentially inflame any stage nerves when the only two people most people think of when they think of flute players attempting jazz are Tony Snow and Ron Burgundy. At least, there aren’t a rush of half-assed performers lined up to make fun of bass clarinet players.

Since I’ve lived in Sunnyvale, the Sunnyvale Town Center mall, which interrupts downtown with a large shopping center capable of housing 80-odd shops and stores, has stood abandoned, except for Target at one end and Macy’s at the other. This morning, as I headed over to Bean Scene to get coffee before pounding on a project I’m working on, I noticed that the new construction crew has actually begun the task of making this abandoned concrete tumor a memory.

A few years ago, another construction company was hired by the City of Sunnyvale to rebuild the mall, whatever that entailed. They made the abandoned Chevy’s their construction office. Maybe it was a funding shortfall or something else, but that project was abandoned after the parking lot was resurfaced.

Seeing the western face of the mall, the side facing Mathilda Avenue, under the wrecking ball pleases me greatly. I’m really hoping they build a “place worth caring about”, as James Howard Kunstler called it.

As of today, I haven’t been on my bicycle in 198 days. I’m evaluating whether or not I’m a lapsed or former cyclist. I’ve been badly injured by cars and every other day in the local news is information about another cyclist getting mowed down by a motorist in the prime of their lives. Still, I’ve got to do something. Here’s why:

Weigh-in: May 14, 2007:

• Height: 177.8 cm (5’10”)
• Weight: 84.595 kg (186.5 lb)
• BMI: 26.758 (overweight)

Seems like it’s about time to modify the Training Schedule for running around the middle school track and other cycling substitutes.

Recently, I bought a metal clarinet mouthpiece from a seller on eBay. It arrived while I was battling a bacterial throat infection. For some reason, lots of eBay mouthpiece sellers ship “brand new” mouthpieces with moldy old reeds in them. I’m guessing the “brand new” mouthpieces aren’t as brand new as they’re advertised to be. Or, mouthpiece sellers are dumping their old reeds into tested mouthpieces. Or, perhaps, some idiot complained about how they received a mouthpiece that didn’t come with a reed (they’re usually pictured with one) and left the seller negative feedback. But, I digress.

If you buy a woodwind mouthpiece from eBay, you should definitely inform the seller that you don’t want his old moldy reed. You should also heavily disinfect the mouthpiece as soon as you get it.

Today, I tried out my new metal clarinet mouthpiece. It sounds really great. Unfortunately, my embouchure is out of shape enough that I chomp down somewhat on the mouthpiece of all my instruments. The new metal mouthpiece flaked near the rubber pad on the top. This indicates to me that the mouthpiece is brass with a silver plating. Fair enough. I can expect more flaking, unless I’m really careful with where I put my top teeth.

I also realized after blowing for about an hour that I hadn’t disinfected the mouthpiece (because it was sold to me as “new”). It sounds really good, but my throat’s somewhat scratchy now and I’m hoping it’s nothing but a lesson in disinfection.

So, today’s hour of clarinet practice yielded the following lessons:

1. Thoroughly disinfect all mouthpieces on all reed instruments immediately.
2. The clarinet is a responsive instrument. I do not need to hold it in the death grip I’m used to using. My ring finger on the right hand locks up at the middle joint, which is an indication of weak fingers and too tight a grip. My technique will come back to me.
3. More long tones would be good, as well as practice playing through the throat and remembering the notes in the chalumeau register, which are different than in the clarino.
4. After a while, I get bored and start blowing through standards that I’m not focused on.

I don’t think I got much done today, in terms of agility practice, scales, theory work, tune work, or tone practice. After an hour, I needed water and felt scratchy. I attempted practice on the flute and blew through some Cole Porter tunes, but my position on that instrument is weird today.

Tomorrow, flute and bass clarinet practice.