The Fix

I’ve always had a fondness for early organs and synths. Visits to my Uncle Ken were made even more magical when I got to play his Casio, with its multiple stops, rhythms and choruses. More recently, I spent a magical afternoon with Mark Mothersbaugh as he demoed his crazy keyboard collection.

Now a new documentary looks at the Mellotron, an early analogue synthesizer. Hope I get the chance to see it! In the meantime, here’s the trailer, which includes a brief appearance by Jon Brion.

I hope to have actual content, soon.  In the meantime, I’m testing out the technical aspects of podcasting. Click it! Play it! and let me know how it worked for you.

 

 Hello out there! [00:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Aeroplan website is endlessly frustrating. Just when you think you’ve got what you want, they yank the carpet out from under you– ha! You’ve got your flight all picked out? Well, in the 2 minutes that you took to make sure it was the right one, it vaporized!

Today when I’d done battle and emerged, bloody but somewhat victorious, I saw this farewell graphic and realized how ridiculous it is, and yet how much it explains…

In this exhibitionist Web2.0 world, it’s de rigeur to flash your tastes, your occupations, your creative output, and your personal statistics in various areas.

For the music obsessed, LastFM is the perfect stage. It’s a hub for analyzing your musical listening habits, linking you up with like-minded consumers, and best of all, for discovering new music. But it also tabulates your weekly statistics and presents them to you in tables, charts, and colourful charts, which you can post on your other Web2.0 social networks.

That way, people will be aware of your musical tastes as they peruse your photography, read your prose, see who your friends are and…. sigh.

Here are the artists I listened to a lot over the past week:

I have to reluctantly admit reluctantly that I spend more time than is healthy reading a bunch of websites that really aren’t all that important. It’s become compulsive, honed through years of habit. In itself it’s not destructive, but right now, it’s not where I need to be. I’m not the only one to experience this internet overload situation. In fact, we both came to this conclusion at about the same time, and she started a blog to track her progress in shaking the habit. Sites that I visit daily, many many times: 

- work e-mail account
- another e-mail account (don’t ask, groan)
- old Hotmail account (for poeple who forget I’ve switched)
- Fairfax-Avenue.com (Jon Brion)
- Flickr
- MySpace
- digg
- LastFM
- CBC.ca

There are more than I go to  more sporadically, but a few times a week nonetheless:
- Emusic
- 43 Things
- Lifehacker
- YouTube
- a few Blogs of people I don’t know or rarely talk to
- music critics’ columns

I know that I’m an incredibly efficient worker when I want to be. I just need a reason to work! So for now I will pretend to have that reason, and try to curb my fruitless online activity. First victims: Flickr, MySpace and yankeeracers.  Next up… the blogs.  Stay tuned!