music

For months, whenever I’ve gone to see a show at Belltown’s venerable music venue The Crocodile Cafe, I’ve looked around longingly and said “You know, in 5 years this will be a sushi bar or some yuppie’s f*cking condo.” Little did I know that it would all too soon turn out to be true.

Yesterday the buzz started hitting the Seattle blogs about the possibility that the Croc was shutting down shop for good. It seems that completely out of nowhere, in the midst of a rush to book their spring lineup, the owners simply decided to call it quits. Even the employees were shocked, finding out just over a week before Christmas that they were out of a job.

Read the rest of this entry »

Weeks later, I’ve finally started going through the nearly 1000 pictures I took at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s annual three-day music and arts festival. I had an incredible t

The Shins need almost no introduction.

Click through the image for more pictures from the show.

Awesome show. I’ve seen The Shins before, at a free concert at Carnegie Mellon a couple of years ago, but this show may actually have been better.

Welcome Lifehackers! Looks like another one of my posts has been lucky enough to be featured on Lifehacker! Very cool. I hope you enjoy my how-to.

About a year ago I picked up a pair of Shure E2C headphones. Well worth their somewhat expensive price, I use them all the time. They provide a ton of isolation, so they’re great on the bus and when flying.

But, in my experience, the actual headphone plug leaves a lot to be desired. Within about 8 months of regular use, I started getting the traditional crappy connection problems you get with cheaper headphones. After a few months of constantly trying to tweak the connector in order to get a good connection, I finally decided to replace the connector myself.

The final product was quite impressive. For more details, read on.

Read the rest of this entry »

So a week or so ago I discovered lala. It may just be the simplest and best dotcom idea I’ve seen in a long time.

I have CDs. You have CDs. In all honesty, I’m sick of most of my CDs. And you probably are too. I might not have listened to my Nirvana “In Utero” CD in 8 years, but maybe you’ve recently suffered a bit of nostalgia and you want to listen to them again. So why don’t we trade?

Within a half hour or so of me having my beta account I loaded a bunch of the CD’s that I knew I had into my “I Have” section and I’d added a bunch of CD’s I wanted to my “I Want” section. About an hour or two later I discovered that I’d had my first match and that somebody wanted my copy of The Clash’s “London Calling” (an excellent CD by the way). And simultaneously somebody was shipping me Jurassic 5’s “Quality Control”. And I was only out $1.

Too cool.

Update: If anybody wants lala invites, add a comment below and leave the email address you want it sent to. I have a bunch.

The Mountain Goats new EP, Dilaudid, is available for digital download in DRM-free AAC or MP3 format for about $5.72 (3 GBP).

A great album for a great price. We really should encourage this method of distribution, so I encourage you to go check it out.

It also includes “This Year,” which is a freaking awesome song. Go get it. Now.