white nøise

May

18

Colin Hay

Like most people in the 80s I dug Men At Work. I wasn’t a big fan, but I’m pretty sure I had Business As Usual on cassette, and I certainly wouldn’t change the station when they were on. But thanks to Zach Braff placing former frontman, Colin Hay in a couple episodes of Scrubs, I grew a deeper appreciation for his songwriting. Colin keeps up a pretty regular touring schedule, playing acoustic sets in small clubs. Finally last night I had a chance to catch one.

His opening act, also solo on acoustic guitar was Chris Trapper. He was a solid opener – of a similar style and laid-back mood. He played an entertaining collection of songs from light to melancholy, with some nice banter along the way. His last song however, really hit us off guard. It was a funeral sendoff, as sung from the recently deceased, with a bit of the feel of an Irish drinking song. The line “Don’t waste time praying, cus I’m never coming back. Just throw a party in my name” got us. Nige would’ve loved that.

Well, on to Colin then. Watching his set feels about like spending an evening hanging out at his house. The years of traveling and performing, especially solo, have really given him an ease with it all. He treats you to stories – maybe about a lost friend (sigh), or about a Beatle doing his dishes (poorly), or even just about Thursday nights (solid, they are). And they aren’t just a couple clever sentences segueing songs, but real unrushed sit-back-with-a-beer stories. At times the songs seem like transitions between stories. But his songs were of course the star. His voice filled the room with his unique, part Australian / part Scottish accent, and we were instantly transported 30 (!) years with “Who could it be Now” and “Overkill”.

Filed under Music

May

11

Flying Pig 2012

The Flying Pig Marathon weekend rolled around once again, but things really got kicked up a notch this time. Last year I had hoped to run the 10k (my first), but knee pain set me back and I had to switch to (and struggle with) the 5k. Going into this year I resumed that goal and took more care in my training – ramping up my running more gradually from December onwards. I even managed to talk Mark and Justin into training to run their first 10k with me, too.

The 10k was tough. Not twice as hard as the 5ks I’m used to, but certainly harder. I had forgotten about the inclines that go along with crossing the bridges over the Ohio – not steep, but long and steady. It was also a notch warmer and more humid than the Pig’s usual. But hey, at least the rain held off! I finished just above my goal of an hour, and just over a 10 minute mile pace. I was happy with this (and especially with not finishing the race in pain), but it was a bit frustrating. But then I looked back at my 5k times over the past two years and realized this was a close second to my best pace, and at twice the distance. No complaints!

Time	Pace (per Mile)	overall place	men’s place	division place (M 40-44)
1:02:47	10:08	820 / 2,598	468 / 891	58 / 101

Of course all this paled in comparison to D’s goal to run her first full marathon – and with the hills of Cinci, a tough one at that. After our race us boys relaxed, enjoyed a few beers, and made a few signs to support D and her running mates the following morning.

Chasing around the marathon as a spectator proved to be a lot harder than planned. Getting across town with all the streets closures was tough, then we got confused and hung out on the half marathon route a while. When we finally caught up with them around mile 13 D’s knee was in full blown revolt and we sped off to get pills. We caught them again again a couple miles later, and it was clear they were going the distance. Getting to a spectator spot at around mile 20 was impossible, so we took up position near the finish. We had fun cheering on strangers for about an hour. At around 5 hours 30 the ladies came rolling in with a final spring in their step. Imagining that they had just run slightly over 4 of our 10Ks back to back to back, was mind boggling and awesome.

Filed under Sports

Feb

26

Oscarpalooza 2012

Yes, that time of year again. This time when the 9 nominees for Best Picture were announced I hadn’t seen any of them, and now that the award’s are here I’ve still only seen one. A pretty dismal year of movie viewing for me I must say.

Hugo

Of them all, I was most looking forward to this film based on the award winning children’s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”. The cast anchored by Ben Kingsly was pretty solid, but they are largely overshadowed by the visuals in the movie. The vast scenescapes of Paris, the dense commotion of the train station, and the complex compositions of whirling gears were striking enough, but set in 3D they were really awesome. This was Scorsese’s first 3D movie and it’s easy to see him embracing it and re-imaging himself as the same illusionist “maker of dreams” as Georges Méliès. I also was intrigued to learn of the historical basis behind the movie. As it turns out, not only are the details of Méliès’ career and decline fairly accurate, but Scorsese really portrayed the era well in details and even included shots of notably figures in the station.

The story itself was interesting, but the telling of it was somehow more labored than you’d expect; especially surprisingly so for a “family movie”. In particular, the scenes away from the visual stimulation and off-beat characters of the train station tended to drag along. And this left me feeling that Hugo was simply a good movie, with some really great animations and camera shots. So, while Hugo may not grab Best Picture, it has an excellent shot with Cinematography and Visual Effects.

Rooney Mara

About the only other nomination I can comment on is for Rooney Mara as Best Actress from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Fincher’s movie (like the book, and of course the original film) is an intriguing, dark and complex story, and those same attributes are true for Mara’s Lisbeth. She’s remarkably vulnerable, but fearless; cunning, and yet caring. I was surprised to learn this was the same actress who volleyed dialog with Eisenberg in the opening scene of The Social Network. In the Dragon Tattoo Mara has really shown her depth, and I look forward to seeing her in the squeals.

Filed under Movies

Jan

20

Computer updates to close 2011

As 2011 wound down, I did a little work to the Big Red Machine. Since its i7 (1366 socket) platform is still holding up well against Intel’s SandyBridge (v1 and 2), there’s no need to do a clean sweep for another year or even more. But as it gets close to it’s third birthday, a few updates were in order.

First up was a graphics card update. The overclocked gtx 260 has been holding up well, but is starting to show its age by not supporting DX11 for the latest releases. With Radeon cards outperforming their Nvidia counterparts dollar to dollar, I jumped over to team red and picked up a beefy Asus 6950 with 2GB ram. The card hits a good price point (right about what I spent for the 260) and matches up well with Nvidia’s gtx570. Even if it’s not the baddest boy around, this thing is a monster.

It sets up shop over three expansion slots and is about a foot long. Just a couple years ago I thought the 260 was huge, but now it looks modest. The 6950 also has a total of 6 outputs, for running more displays at once (with AMD Eyefinity) than I’ll ever need.

This particular 6950 excels at staying cool. It has a huge heatsink under that metal cover with several “direct contact” heat pipes, and two 100mm fans. I can definitely push this hard without cooking the box. New benchmarks for the graphics card will be posted soon.

After the gfx upgrade only one other thing was bothering me – the SSDs that were still sitting loose in the case. So, I finally popped for a 5.25 bay device to house up to 4 drives. Ok, I may have paid a bit more for one that matched my case perfectly, but it is a nice dock. Each drive can easily be swapped and locked, has it’s own activity LEDs, and has a direct backplane connection. I had to rearrange the other drives in my case a little to make it fit, but it’s so much cleaner now. My two RAID 0 SSDs are in there now, and I’ve got two more slots already connected up should I want to drop in a couple more.