You can send me a mesage by email: jim at i-rant.org
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But don't forget to leave a comment on a particular post.
JimmyC
Sweet new service from Google. I’m still not sold on Google’s relevancy algorithm with regard to links to sites, especially as the web gets bigger and bigger. But they are doing a fantastic job integrating specific information into “fuzzy search”. I worked in document imaging and information management from its beginning and the organization of unstructured data into a structured view is always the challenge. The new music search is great because it takes what’s out there and organizes it. It plays well with others too. You type in Peter Gabriel and you get a page of hits for websites about or that mention him but at the top, like they do with addresses on maps, you get a specific link to his music and albums. The key is that it uses sites and sources like epinions and the Apple music store not a proprietary database or store. Article on it:
Schmidt’s Google Has New Ear for Music - Forbes.com
Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) says it is adding links to songs, lyrics and fan sites at the top of a results page for a musical artist, thus “addressing a deficiency” in its Web search, according to an Associated Press report. The new section, which debuts today, isn’t meant to become a separate online library, rather like Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people )’s venture. Type a name like “Coldplay” into the latter’s search engine and you’re greeted with Yahoo!’s version of bios and photos in Yahoo! Music, itself a vendor from which you can purchase music and even concert tickets, via Yahoo! Tickets. Microsoft’s (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) MSN also has a similar feature.
No special instructions - just use the same old google search button, but you can search only music by putting musicsearch in the URL:
Google Search - musicsearch
The Kids jam to Joe Spatarella’s new CD
( Press > to play, and turn up the sound!)
Buy the CD: Not What You Say
Not What You Say – A new album from my friend Joe. Go have a listen.
An independent release, Not What You Say is a collection of 5 original songs performed by Joe Spatarella and produced by Richard Walton, featuring a band of incredible musicians: Richard Walton, Drew Davidsen, Tom Alonso, Joey D’Amico and Jacob Yoffee.
Check it out… someothersoul
Joe is preoccupied with helping his friend Dan start yet another software company. Lets hope he doesn’t forget to keep writing music.
Hope this link gets to you joe.
Here is a cool website - on peter gabriel. They found my forums.
Is there anyone out there that is a fan. yes. Are you a fan. Do you get fanatical.
I’m a Gabriel fan. We wait so long for songs, Gabriel fans. I just watched the Gabriel Growing UP video on RAVE HDTV. Anyway - what a memory.
I went to see him in Chicago - the first weekend. I flew by myself. It was new and had been 10 years since US. I cannot describe the feeling. I was on the floor. Many people on the floor didn’t know what to expect, many were like me. I was alone, but I wasn’t. I was one of the only ones dancing, really. You know, kinda Grateful Dead dancing - who gives a shit kinda dancing. Because it felt so good.
So most of the concert there was a slowly growing thing from the ceiling. It started out as an upside down balloon and turned into an upside down flower bud kinda thing. Eventually it dropped down and out came this giant Zygote looking ball - like a ball made out of bubble plastic. He was inside. Peter was standing there. Then he started to roll, like a hamster. It was to Growing Up and it was slow and steady. Then it got faster and then - he started bouncing. Perfectly timed, perfectly rocking! I felt myself lift off of the ground. I was bouncing as was everyone around me. It was fantastic.
That’s gabriel. like the first time I saw him SHOCK the monkey. Painted face, monkey bars on stage - swinging and singing. Nothing like him.
JimmyC
P.S. there is a cool website - some artist was into the ball, literally.
Great website. I need to post some Genesis stuff here, since I’m a big fan. Saw them in Syracuse back in 1980 but my fav’s are with Peter Gabriel.
Top 10 Most played iTunes.
Keep in mind, I play for the kids and for me so you will see an intersting
mix:
Least
Complicated by Indigo Girls
Clocks by Coldplay
Growing
Up by Peter Gabriel
Victims
of Comfort by Keb’Mo’
Wont
Get Fooled Again by The Who
Smells
Llike Teen Spirit by Nirvana
One
Week by Barenaked Ladies
Kid A by Radiohead (not on iTunes)
Beautiful
Day by U2
So I’m on my way home from Raleigh - stopped at Clemson/Anderson, SC. I’m leaving to get on the road and decided to have some classic breakfast food. And there is a southern rock band playing in the parkinglot:
I don’t know the name or why they were there. It was kind of funny, but I must admit, not unusual for a southern college town.
Are you there, say a prayer for the pretender. Who started out so young andstrong, only to surrender.
Driving in my car, listening to this song and becoming overwhelmed. I sometimes get emotional over movies and songs - it usually has nothing to do with the song or movie, just my mood and a memory or personal opinion of myself that does the damage.
…gonna pack my lunch in the morning and go to work each day; and when the evening rolls around I go on home and lay my body down; and when the morning light comes streaming in I’ll get up and do it again, amen.
So I’m thinking about these days as I approach 40 years old. I have sold out against my dreams. Or how I started out so strong ahead of the game. Always "the youngest" in the group. Always the 10% that does 90% of the work. Last thing I remember I was excited to be making big bucks at 26 years old. I had around me worn-out middle-aged guys in auto-pilot, thirty somethings worried about paying the bills - I was a young turk, newly married, in love and living the dream. That was like.. yesterday.
What happend? So, I took off and went to a small software vendor that was on the edge of an IPO - Micro Dynamics. Well - it was really on the edge of being packaged up for sale. So after I helped them do that, I left and went
after the money again - down to Atlanta. Chasing the dollar. New family, new house, Stephanie a stay-at-home mom.
I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring, were they only the fit full dreams of some greater awakening? I’ve been aware of the time going by, they say in the end its the wink of an eye..
But that wasn’t enough - making good money again, back on top at Mobius; bang - I take the risk and joined some friends at a small start-up company called Magnet. I was to be the rainmaker. We were to build a company we could all work at for years of happy times and growth.
But again - caught up in the IPO dream, fast, big money. We took investors, had to compete. We took more money and more and more. We hit the streets sold sold sold and right out from under us our investors took over. So now I work..
…caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.. where the junk man pounds his fender, where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light, and the children silently wait for the ice cream vendor..
Then company to company - applying what I know. Management experience? I don’t know what that experience prepared me for. I’m certainly thicker skinned. I can sell anything. Now, I sort of feel like those middle aged guys on auto-pilot. I am unconsciously competent at this job. I know what has to be done. Not always sure how to do it here because things are so dynamic but I believe we are as capable as any other company. Back to it - have I sold out? Where is the passion?
…out into the cool of the evening strolls the pretender., he knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.
It’s the buck! How do I get out of that trap? We used to be proud of our low cost life. Now I’m not up to my ears in debt but I’m up to my ears in cash-flow needs. Private school, Bar/Bat-mitzvah’s coming, college, camp, home improvements, clothing, food, argh! Even as I write this it sound stupid. People living on blue collar incomes, in trailer park homes will say I’m a whiner - and I am. But this is my Rant.. Why can’t I dream? - no point in the distance, no path to get there without one.
…Ah the lovers who stay right through the night, even nothing but to choose off and fight, and tear at the world with all their might, while the ships bearing their dreams sail out of sight..
Doing everything for my family? Am I sacrificing? Is that an illusion, a self torturing martyrdom approach to life? Am I putting myself on the cross? Are the vampires sucking my blood? Do I need too much - want too much? Why do these things seem so important? Why do I get so caught up in the money - where did that come from?
I’m gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender.. and believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, where true love may have been a contender.
There is too much personal background to really rant on this here. For all the world to see. I was an only child until I was 17 when Mom and Pop brought Marissa into my life. I wish I had that younger. As my kids do. To see value in people rather then the things in my life.
Is chasing the dream selfish, or so important for my family? Do I lower my expectations or change my value system to recognize what so many others see as more valuable then anything in the world? Stephanie, Maia, Daniel and Sophie. There is the value. I know it but I live in this world of discontent. I have an insatiable personality.
So how to work with that and build on my life to keep that front and center. Its not enough to provide for them but I need to enjoy them and they need me to be there. Its not enough to work each day pretending, that’s just not me.
Say a prayer for the pretender, are you there for the pretender?
