So I’m hoping to warm up and revive the blog again in a little bit. It was never my intention to abandon the blog, though it may seem that way. Especially since the microblogging stuff is pretty convenient these days, I have spent most of the year doing regular – though smaller – updates on Twitter/MySpace/Facebook (oh yeah, I’m on Facebook now). The main thing was I felt like I needed to sort myself out since being let go from Cisco earlier in the year. Things are starting to ramp up again as I am now involved in a new venture, and I can start making more solid plans for the near future.

So the first order of business for this thing is – what else – to think about the music that came out this year and talk a little bit about my favorite albums. And if I find the time, maybe I’ll put together something about my favorite albums from the last 10 years.

And then, perhaps, in honor of the new year/decade, I’ll do a little relaunch of the site…

The team was a truly special team. We never lost our start-up spirit even after we were acquired and grew in size. We did things very differently from the rest of Cisco, which drew both good and bad attention to us. We had some ridiculously creative and intelligent people on the team. We were a team of about 25 people doing the work of about 35. Managers were also developers. Developers were also customer support. Customer support was also IT. We worked on a platform-independent process messaging system and then we open-sourced it, which was unheard of in Cisco. We proved we could do things with our platform with one guy in a couple weeks what took other teams in the company months to just plan. We were mavericks and trailblazers, and we had fun while doing things our way. On top of all of that, we were close like friends, and not just coworkers. The sudden dissolution of the group was even harder to take because of that.

Between my time with the startup and Cisco, I had put in nearly five years into the team. The things I have learned in those five years as both an engineer and as a person have been innumerable. I’ll continue to have many fond memories of those times in spite of the way it all ended.

I had an extended employment with Cisco for a month (which ended earlier this week) to help with the transition. I’m currently in a period of a couple months where my primary goal is to find another job, although Cisco will keep me on the payroll. This is all part of a rather generous severance package, which is easily the one thing in this whole ordeal they are handling well. In all honesty, though, Cisco was one of the best companies of its ilk to work for, and it seems that it also one of the best companies from which to get laid off. Unfortunately, it still could not escape the typical trappings and politics of a being a large technology company and stuff like this still happens.

I also have a fair amount of free time on my hands now…which, granted, already seems to be taken up by other things. However, I do plan to take some time very soon to get around Texas to spend time with the usual suspects and some people I haven’t really made time to see. Aside from the larger cities, I’ll probably try to hit up some other places I normally don’t stop in like Ft. Worth and College Station. Some e-mails will be sent out soon.

ANYWAYS, I said all that to say this: here is a neat little video explaining Twitter in Plain English. I think it’s part of a series of videos that explain web phenomenons to regular people (which, clearly us internet people are NOT).

That is my thought on the changes we face as a nation as of January 20, 2008.

If I fly from Austin to X with a nearly three hour layover in Dallas, it could cost me $y. However, if I want to simply drive to Dallas and take the plane from there to X, they want to charge me $y + 100. How does that make any business sense for them to charge me more for using their service less?

Also, if I take the flight with the one stop, is there something against the rules about just going to Dallas and boarding the second flight without taking the first one?

Apple will soon allow record companies more flexible pricing of songs on their iTunes music store. Songs may be priced at 69 cents, 99 cents, or $1.29. In exchange for that, however, iTunes will make every available song completely DRM-free.

This essentially heralds the death of digital music purchases with DRM. While no doubt Amazon has been a big player in that (and in turn, they have received a lot of my business), this definitively puts the nail in the coffin. Since iTunes is the leader in digital music sales, all other stores will have no choice but to follow suit to remain even remotely competitive. This is great news for music lovers/tech geeks everywhere.

There are other possible ramifications for this move. I imagine more music players will start supporting AAC files, the format that iTunes uses, now that the songs will no longer require specially configured players (iPods) to play them. Also, with DRM gone, Apple has almost no good reason to keep their firmware locked down like they have with the past couple generations of iPods, so maybe future models will be more RockBox-friendly.

I originally had not envisioned that I would actually stay around long enough to be here when the New Year comes, but now it seems more likely that it will happen. I think I have been feeling particularly worn down this year and, as usual, coming back and seeing everyone…even if it hasn’t been everyone…was exactly what I needed. The “usual crowd” may not be quite the same, but it all still feels very much the way I remember it to be. Maybe even better.

Look, it’s my old house. The interesting thing to note is that they actually didn’t go any further south down the road.

And look, it’s everyone’s favorite hang out spot.

Pretty neat.

Even though it is Tuesday, which is the usual day for new music releases, the new Rush DVD actually came out in stores yesterday. The latest release is a full concert recording of Rush on the first leg of their Snaked & Arrows tour. The “soundtrack” was released as a live album earlier this year, but the DVD documents the whole spectacle that is a Rush concert, and includes some extra footage that was left out of the R30 tour DVD and the songs they added on the second leg of the tour.

I saw them on this tour no less than three times. The first time was during the first leg of the tour, and I got to see the show from the front row. It was easily the most thrilling concert experience I ever had. Almost every track they played was a surprise to me, and I got to rock out with other Rush fanatics. I got to see them two more times on the second leg, and while I wasn’t so close either time, I got to share the experience with various friends.

Having already done the “greatest hits and classics” tour for their 30th anniversary tour, on this one they pulled out several tracks that they had not played in a long time (and in the case of one song, never played). They also played nine tracks off the stellar new album, which speaks volumes about the quality of their current output.

The concert is out on Blu-Ray as well as plain ol’ DVD, thereby making it the first thing to come out to truly tempt me into buying a Blu-Ray player.

You can find YouTube videos of some of the tracks from this fan blog posting.

The albums featured are Trespass (1970), Nursery Cryme (1971), Foxtrot (1972), Selling England By The Pound (1973), and their hallmark double-concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974). A bonus disc is included in the box set with a couple of B-sides and rarities, including never heard before early recordings of a soundtrack the band was working on for a documentary that never saw the light of day.

Each album in the boxset comes with a remixed and remastered stereo mix on CD and a DVD with the new surround sound mixes. The European version (like what I bought) have a SACD hybrid disc that also contains the surround sound mixes. Unfortunately, the rumor is that when the individual albums get released (tentatively for January ‘09), they will only be the CDs and will not include the DVDs. I don’t know why they are doing this. It’s totally inconsistent with the other released sets, but supposedly it has to do with the sales of the individual albums in the past. Supposedly the box sets have generally been selling much better as it mostly have been the fans buying them. So if you’re interested in the surround mixes, buying the box set is the only way to go.

I ordered my set from then-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett’s website, so I had to wait a little over a week from the US release date to get my set. I finally got it now, and of course it has been worth the wait. The surround mixes suit many of these songs very well, as a lot of these early songs were very atmospheric and complex. Also, by pre-ordering from Hackett’s website, I got the man himself to put his John Hancock on it.

All together now!

So far, my experience with it has been very positive. It’s a surprisingly sturdy, fast, and easy to use machine for its size and weight. I actually bought my old notebook used a couple years back and had added more RAM to it, and this little machine actually feels faster. It comes with Windows XP Home, but currently I am dual-booting with Ubuntu Eee , which I’m primarily using. I’ll probably put up more impressions later.

The album’s two parts will be available as single volumes as well, so you can purchase only one disc if you so desire. If you’re all about instant gratification, low price and no shipping costs, they also have the album available as high quality MP3s (~$10 per “disc”).

Update: The album is out in the US now as well. I saw a few copies at Fry’s the other day, and you can buy the CDs or download MP3s from good ol’ American online retailers like Amazon.com.

Volume 1: Essence – CD, MP3s
Volume 2: The Hard Shoulder – CD, MP3s

So apparently Amazon’s MP3 store is doing a “daily deal” thing in which they sell old and classic albums for really cheap, and that seems to be how I caught Steely Dan’s “Aja” that way. Today, they are selling a classic album from one of my very favorite bands, Rush. Permanent Waves is regarded as one of Rush’s best albums and is considered to be in the same league as the classics Moving Pictures and 2112. And you can buy it today for only 99 cents + tax from Amazon.com. There is no cheaper (legal) way to get some Rush music into your library, and I would highly recommend getting it.

Coupon code for 15% off good until end of month: USPIDEAPAD15

(You may want to wait for the announcement of the new Dell netbooks, which should be any day now…)

Recently, they have collaborated again to make an album where the two strictly stayed in defined realms of the songwriting partnership: Eno would write the music, and Byrne would write the lyrics and vocal melodies. The result is their new album “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” The best thing is you can listen to the whole album, right now, in the little Flash widget down below. Then you can go to their website and purchase the album in pure digitial format (in either MP3 or lossless FLAC) with the option to receive a physical disc later. How can you lose?

Since I last mentioned, the DVD for last year’s reunion tour has come out. It’s a three disc set with the concert on the first two discs and well-done documentary on the third. Needless to say, it rocks so hard that it makes me soil myself. Sadly, you can only find it in Wal-Mart and, even more sadly, they barely keep any in stock. Your best bet is to order it online from Wal-Mart or the Genesis official store. Below is a trailer for the documentary, which is an excellent behind the scenes look at the tour and how the band operates:

The Genesis hit “That’s All” was also recently covered by a country artist named Doc Walker. It was also covered live no too long ago by Allison Kraus with Union Station and Vince Gill.

This past month in particular have been really busy.  I’ve been traveling a lot and probably having the most active summer I’ve had in a while.  I’ve been taking baby steps to polish some of the stuff I have going on the web.  I put up a news/blog for the Splatt site to at least maintain some sense of relevance and keep people updated on it.  On that note, I’ve put a couple of notable photo sets: the recent camping/rafting trip and Adam & Kasey’s wedding.

And then, like 10 minutes after getting to work, I was actually feeling a little jittery. Since I’m not a coffee drinker, I wasn’t used to having so much caffeine coursing through my veins that early in the day. It was only one cup (or maybe two, a grande size?). I guess most people’s bodies are used to it, but it was a very odd feeling for me. It was like I should’ve been nervous about something. It wouldn’t go away until I had something for lunch, and even then I probably couldn’t bring myself to get a soda until about 3pm.

I mentioned that I thought I heard somewhere that a soda had as much caffeine as coffee, so I was a little confused, to which one of my coworkers replied that that was a load of crock. He also said that Starbucks coffee has about twice the caffeine as most coffee, so it was like I guzzled about four or five cups of Folgers.

Honestly, kids, I don’t see how you do it, but I guess it goes the other way around, too.

I will also be out and about a lot in the month of April.  I’m due for a visit to Houston, Nacogdoches, and Dallas (possibly twice) starting next weekend.  Unfortunately, I will probably be in and out of Dallas both times, so I won’t have enough time outside of doing what I’m going to do there and perhaps seeing my brother and sister-in-law, so I can’t promise to see any of you Dallas folk (maybe on some other random weekend).

As usual, work and life is busy, and I hope all is well with you guys.

On the upside, getting a PS3 seems to become a likely path for me now that Blu-Ray is more or less the de-facto standard for hi-definition discs. That, and the new live Genesis release will be available on Blu-Ray as well. So maybe I’ll hold out and get Rock Band for that instead. Except that my TV doesn’t handle HDMI, and I don’t know if a DVI adapter will solve the issue…

Minor update: my connection is HDCP enabled, so an adapter WILL work. Woohoo!