Top 10 Songs of 2009
1) ”1901″ – Phoenix
2) ”Stillness Is The Move” – Dirty Projectors
3) ”Two Weeks” – Grizzly Bear
4) ”Little Secrets” – Passion Pit
5) ”My Girls” – Animal Collective
6) ”My Life Would Suck Without You” – Kelly Clarkson
7) ”The Rake’s Songs” – The Decemberists
”Hellhole Retrace” – Girls9) ”my love” – jj
10) “Islands” – The xx
1. ”1901″ – Phoenix
2. ”Stillness Is The Move” – Dirty Projectors
3. ”Two Weeks” – Grizzly Bear
4. ”Little Secrets” – Passion Pit
5. ”My Girls” – Animal Collective
6. ”My Life Would Suck Without You” – Kelly Clarkson
7. ”The Rake’s Song” – The Decemberists
8. ”Hellhole Retrace” – Girls
9. ”my love” – jj
10. “Islands” – The xx
Grammy Nominations Predictions
Tomorrow night the nominations for the 2010 Grammy awards will be announced. The Grammy awards are notoriously tricky to pick, especially the nominees. I’m going to give it my best shot, though …
Album of the Year
Taylor Swift, Fearless
Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown
Maxwell, BLACKsummers’night
Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreaks
Lady Gaga, The Fame
- Who should be nominated?
Allen Toussaint, The Bright Mississippi
Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King
Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz
Record of the Year
Beyonce, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
Lady Gaga, Poker Face
Taylor Swift, You Belong With Me
Kings of Leon, Use Somebody
Green Day, 21 Guns
Song of the Year
Beyonce, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
Lady Gaga, Poker Face
Maxwell, Pretty Wings
Kanye West, Heartless
U2, If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
Good Job, Microsoft
So apparently, Microsoft CAN make a great operating system.
Although I’ve been using the Windows 7 Release Candidate for a couple of months now, I’ve found myself using Microsoft’s latest OS more and more over the last couple of days. First, because of some last minute testing before it was deployed to the two Windows users in the office. Second, because I needed to check the ODBC functionality for our on-going FileMaker/MySQL project in the office.
What’s really surprised me so far, is my willingness to use Windows 7 vs.. Apple’s Snow Leopard. Given, some of the desire is simply a result of Windows 7 being the “new” thing. But, so far, I’ve really found Windows 7 to be the equal to Snow Leopard.
I really hope Microsoft is able to counter some of the attacks it’s gotten (mostly from the Apple community, I would say). Some of the things they’ve mentioned so far:
- The “transition” from XP to 7 isn’t nearly as awful as some people (and the “Get A Mac” Ads) are trying to make it. The app provided by Microsoft, Easy Transfer, really does a great job of taking the user step-by-step through the transition process. All you really need is an external hard drive and the ability to read directions. Given, it took a little while (~ 45 min.), but that was nearly 20 GB of files each way. Moreover, everything was exactly where it needed to be. Documents were in the documents folder, media carried over correctly, bookmarks were saved in Internet Explorer, even generic folders on the hard drive were carried over correctly. Sure applications don’t transfer, but guess what? They’re not going to do that in the transition to a Mac either, and in fact, some programs might not even exist in Snow Leopard.
- Speaking of application transitions, Windows 7 does a great job of using “XP Compatibility Mode” for those legacy applications people might have. I sure would’ve liked something similar for the programs that simply refused to work after my Snow Leopard upgrade.
- One other thing that occurred to me while using Windows 7 was Apple’s selling point of Snow Leopard having Exchange support out of the box. Well, that’s fantastic, and the implementation Apple’s Mail and iCal is fairly seamless. However, just like Entourage, the Mail/iCal combo still isn’t Outlook. Nothing ever well be, even Microsoft’s upcoming Outlook for Mac. Why would Microsoft worry about building in Exchange support for Windows Mail (or similar software solution)? Besides, from all accounts, Exchange Server 2010 looks to offer full Outlook Web Access across all major web browsers. And seriously, I’d like to know who’s using Exchange e-mail and doesn’t have access to a copy of Outlook? Even the poorest of college students are probably offered a free copy on their campus. The lack of intelligence and diligence to take advantage of the available technology isn’t Microsoft’s fault.
Now I should mention I don’t plan on completely switching from Snow Leopard anytime soon, the applications I use the most (Coda, Transmit, Sequel Pro, TextEdit) don’t have a good equal in Windows. But that goes both ways. I plan on doing all blogging exclusively under Windows thanks to Windows Live Writer (the best blogging software I’ve ever used). More software like that, and the excellent Windows 7 should put a little more pressure on Apple’s development teams. Now if Microsoft could just make a decent cell phone …
ACL Week: Top 5 Songs I Hope To Hear (but probably won’t)
Before I post of list of the things I’m excited about ACL, I decided to post a list of a couple of songs I PROBABLY won’t get to hear (they’ve only made it on these artists’ setlist a couple of times in 2009) … but here’s hoping …
5. “Kingfish” – Levon Helm
Hands-down my favorite track off of ‘Electric Dirt’
4. “Zombie” – State Radio
Cover of The Cranberries … but pretty rare …
3. “The Privateers” – Andrew Bird
Just to hear the bass line that closes the song!
2. “The Real Me” – Pearl Jam
Sure it’s another cover … but who cares?
1. “Warehouse” – Dave Matthews Band
More on Dave later … but this is by far my favorite DMB live.
Santiago’s Father and fighting the good fight
Well, already nine pages into The Alchemist, and Paulo is already brining up one of the key idea from The Pilgrimage. On page 9, Santiago details the exchange between with his father when Santiago tells his father of his desire to travel, which will mean Santiago will become a shepherd. Santiago’s father tries to warn Santiago about the futility of his desires. Thought Santiago notes, “The boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world — a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life.”
The description of Santiago’s father directly draw from The Pilgrimage where Paulo is told by Petrus about fighting the good fight. Santiago’s father has lost the will to go into combat.
Re-reading ‘The Alchemist’
I finished The Pilgrimage about a week ago. I just couldn’t keep up my blog notes while reading the book (I was that into it!) My next book is going to be The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It is the follow-up novel to The Pilgrimage, during which he was actually inspired to write The Alchemist. As such, and also because I’ve already read The Alchemist, I plan to write much more frequently on here about my thoughts as a read with both books mind.
From ‘The Pilgrimage’
“Fans who lack the faith can make a team lose a game it is already winning.”
From ‘The Pilgrimage’
So, I’m reading The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, and rather than keep personal notes to myself, I thought I’d keep track of quotes and thoughts I had on my blog as I read. Here is the first:
“The good fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we’re young and our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result of our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the good fight.”
- The Pilgrimage, page 57
