Lost In GroVont

the fork ran away with the spoon

Last time Britt Daniel played a solo show in San Francisco, I was still working overnights and disappointed that I would be unable to attend. The next time Spoon came through town, they played the overpriced Fillmore and there was no way I was going to go. Fortunately, Britt decided to grace us with his presence at the charming Swedish American Hall during Noise Pop.

Armed with a toy box filled beats, like the evening's earlier performer Laura Veirs, and an electric guitar, Britt charmed us all with messed up hair and a modest "I don't know if I can play that" persona. He did play that. He played "Fitted Shirt" during the encore, although reluctantly. It was a great rendition of a song I've loved since I first heard Girls Can Tell.

He went through the back catalogue hitting a few from Series of Sneaks and, my favorite Spoon album Kill the Moonlight, including "The Way We Get By" which is a great live song.

He also played a new song that has been circling the blogosphere since SXSW, "Make Me A Target" (mp3) which I've uploaded for you to sample.

Tonight, I will be seeing Jason Collett in the dungey little basement called Cafe du Nord.

the fate of Kurt Cobain

Seattle's Laura Veirs took the stage at Swedish American Hall solo but with the help of some recorded beats and a loop pedal she created a macrame of sound that filled the large hall. At first, I was put off by her constant need to spend the last 2-3 minutes of a song building layers of vocals and guitars before a slow fade out, but by the end of her set, it was a really nice to see something other than a few chords strummed on an acoustic guitar.

Although I've spent many a night downstairs at Cafe du Nord, Thursday night's Noise Pop event with Britt Daniel headlining was my first time in the Swedish American Hall. The room is vast, in stark contrast to crowded basement venue below. And, the show was seated! The entire show was short--I was there little more than two hours--so standing would have been okay too.

Laura Veirs took advantage the crowd's orderly seating arrangement and walked through crowd while playing "Spelunking" and called for requests. (Silly me, I forgot to request "Rapture".)

Look for more on Britt Daniel's show tomorrow. It's been so long since I blogged, I thought I should spread the night out over two days worth of posts.

Do puppies like salad?

Learning Quantum Mechanics with Puppies.

So here is our problem: a large box lies before us, and we would like to know whether there is a sleeping puppy inside. Except that, sensitive souls that we are, it’s really important that we don’t wake up the puppy. Furthermore, due to circumstances too complicated to get into right now, we only have one technique at our disposal: the ability to pass an item of food into a small flap in the box.

[insert long explanation here]

So, through the miracle of quantum mechanics, we can detect whether there is a puppy in the box, even though we never disturb its state. Of course there is always some probability that we do wake it up, but by being careful we can make that probability as small as we like.

Why does it bother me more that I have forgotten more math than Spanish since leaving school?

Frakkin' Toaster...

What is so great about this shirt is that only fellow geeks will get it.

Multi-purpose streetlights coming to a city near you!

MuniWireless » Blog Archive » Dutch suburb to deploy next-generation street lights with built-in Wi-Fi.

Zoetermeer, a suburb of The Hague in the Netherlands, will be getting new street lights that have Wi-Fi and a monitor, to give people instant access to public transport schedules, the weather, city council meetings, etc. Each street light will also act as an access point that provides free Wi-Fi access to anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device in the vicinity.