Useful Sites

NPR = Music

Today I’m going to give you the rundown on a great place to hear great music; NPR.

Yep.

And this isn’t your mom’s NPR; loaded with concertos or opera from “The Met”. (Okay, I meant my mom.) This is some great, alternative and even mainstream rock, folk, funk and whatever else is on the circuit these days.

So, where do we start?

How about some full concert performances streamed live and available online after-the-fact? All Songs Considered has that for you. Check out this week’s Raconteurs show from Washington DC’s 9:30 Club here. Other sets that I’ve personally enjoyed include: Dead Confederate, Wilco, Black Mountain, Doc Watson, & a terrific set from Arcade Fire.

WXPN streams a weekly concert each Friday. Check out the archived shows here. They also have their show, World Cafe.

So get on and check it out. And don’t forget, NPR is made possible by listeners like you.

Critical Apps

So I have spent some time over the past few days building a new(ish) machine for myself and I thought that I’d take a few moments to get techy on you guys and talk about the apps that I need to survive. these are programs that I install on any machine that I will use for any purpose. Even on this machine will will not be my primary internet and entertainment box, there are certain tools that I never want to be without.

Bear in mind, people, that I’m a PC user… I haven’t gone Apple yet. (Sorry, Mr. Jobs!)

1) Firefox: Yep. I use it and I love it. Of course it’s not the same without a couple critical addons:
a) Adblock Plus: It’s a must.
b) Tab Mix Plus: Tab browsing on steroids, people. This helps you make the most of the tabbed interface.

2) Open Office: Documents of any format that I’ll have to worry about; All of the features that I need from an office suite; PDF creation; Free…

3) Acrobat Reader: Did someone say “PDF”? Gotta have it.

gimp

4) Gimp: You can do anything with this product. Why buy Photoshop?

5) Foobar2000: Plays any audio file. Handles conversions and so much more… Oh! It has a tiny memory footprint, taboot. Free.

6) VideoLan Player (VLC): Also plays most audio files and most video files… for free. I only use it for video, though (see #5)

7) WinRar: This app will compress/uncompress pretty much any file (.zip, .rar, .tar, .cab, etc…)

Seriously. These apps are my life’s blood. What’d I miss?

Catching Up

Warned you that I wasn’t likely to keep up the updates… Two days in a row was a lot to ask, it seemed. Fear not, however, here I am, back within a week.It’s Monday so, don’t forget to check out The Dead.Net Tapers Section. It’s a nice looking update with some 80s and 90s material.

Over the weekend, I scored some tickets to the Washington Wizards game on Sunday. I went with my eldest daughter and we were treated to a helluva game. Bogus call or not (I’m no expert) that was one of the more exciting finishes to a game I’ve seen in a long time.

Check out the write-ups at the Washington Post:
A Last-Second Reprieve – washingtonpost.com
Warriors Are Left With a Bad Taste – washingtonpost.com

For the sake of fairness, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s take on things:
Sudden loss fits Warriors to a ‘T’


Also, for the record, I still think they should never have changed their name from “The Bullets”. (Yeah, that’s Moses Malone.)

101 days until Bonnaroo 2007

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Tuesday!

It’s Tuesday and that makes this the second post in as many days. Don’t get your hopes up, folks, I’ll probably get bored with this again before long.Anyway, one of my frequent stops on the web nowadays is:

Woot.com is a simple site; each day, they sell one product until either midnight or they sell all of their stock. Two-For-Tuesdays is the exception, of course. The ‘deal’ is not always great and sometimes the product they’re trying to move is old but, if you keep your eyes peeled and know what you’re getting into, you can get some cool things for a good price once in a while. You have to be quick, though. The experienced ‘wooters’ check the page right at midnight and a hot deal can sell out before 1am.

No. I didn’t get paid to tell you about that.

-rowjimmy

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Long Time No Blog

It’s been nigh onto forever since I updated this thing so, here goes.I thought I’d start by giving you a peek into what I look at day-to-day online and, as today is Monday we’ll start with my favorite Monday update:

Tapers Section @ the Official Site of the Grateful Dead.

Every Monday, the Grateful Dead’s archivist, David Lemieux, posts a blog that’s loaded with free, downloadable mp3’s from the band’s archive. Usually they relate to the current week (this week, for example there are tracks from 1970-02-28 and 1970-03-01,) and they are always worth the bandwidth. Check it out!

More tomorrow. (I hope.)

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