I’m sick. Though, I’m recovering. It’s nothing, really. Just a cold. I’m pretty sure I’m over the worst of it. Yeah, I know. There’s been a lot in the news lately about a certain kind of flu. But I’ve got no reason to think I have that. It’s just a bug that’ll pass soon enough. The real unfortunate thing is that I may have passed it on to Jen. I guess that kinda thing happens, though.

I don’t like being sick. Who does, right? The biggest annoyance for me is just the inability to do anything useful. I tend to get depressed when I feel like I’m not getting anything done. I’m not really the kind of person who spends a lot of time just “vegging.” That doesn’t mean that all of my time is task-mastered to the last second. But I like to stay busy. So being sick affords me a rare opportunity to just… do… nothing. And I’ve used this opportunity to get caught up on some DVD viewing. Specifically, I tore through the “Robotech” Legacy Box 6 set. “Robotech” is probably the only franchise in the world to which I would claim true Fan Boy status. I’ve been obsessed with it since I first saw it as a kid. I even started a “Robotech” fanzine in the late 80′s as an attempt to connect with other fans.

The thing about “Robotech” is, it’s a tough franchise to love. The whole thing is pretty much one big mess. And Legacy Box 6 covers what is probably the most confounding and least-popular part of the series. But I still love it. The bad dialog, the plot holes, the inconsistencies. All of it. And I can’t even really tell you why. It could just be that “Robotech’ flipped a switch in my brain at an impressionable age, and that switch was never flipped back. Thing is, I got into A LOT of these kinds of things as a kid. And after “Robotech,” the only other one that’s really stuck with me is “Star Trek” (and to a much lesser extent “Star Wars.”) It may just be the haphazard nature of the series that’s kept me coming back. If it were polished and perfect, maybe I’d feel differently. But it seems like every time I re-watch the episodes, I catch something that I had missed before. And now that I’ve finished Box 6, I’d really like to get hold of Box 7 (there are either eight or nine box sets total).

Anyway, here’s the intro to the show, if you’ve never seen it before:

UPDATE: It’s actually Legacy Box 5 that I was watching. See, told you I’m sick.

Tags: health, Robotech, YouTube
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Last week, I put up our track light. We’ve had the light for a long time, and we did have it up at our old place in Illinois. But, for whatever reason, I never got ’round to installing it here. So, for the last three + years, this has been the scene over the kitchen sink:

A few weeks back, I went out to the shed to try and find the part that connects the track light to power, but I was unsuccessful. It wasn’t until last week that I got out to the hardware store and picked up a new one.

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Tags: Flickr, track light
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I spent the day at the Strawberry Festival in Santa Maria and took a lot of pictures. I’m not going to post any here, ’cause there’s just too many. But you can still see all of them here.

Tags: California, Flickr, food, Santa Maria
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There’s been a lot of coverage lately of the proposed merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. And generally speaking, it doesn’t look good. If the two companies are able to merge, the combination would create the world’s largest and most powerful entertainment conglomerate. Of course, neither of these two companies were very popular prior to the merger talks. And recent events haven’t done much to alter that opinion. The biggest complaint is that the Live Nation/Ticketmaster conglomerate would operate as a monopoly, having almost complete control over the concert industry.

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Tags: Flickr, Live Nation, music, Ticketmaster
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Today is Record Store Day, a kind of quasi-celebration of independently owned music shops. Record Store Day is just one attempt in a growing list of ideas to try and Save The Music Industry. As a member of the dwindling minority of consumers who not only pay for music but actually enjoy owing it in physical formats, I don’t really need an official day to go to a record store. Regardless, Jen and I ventured out to a local music shop to participate in the festivities.

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Tags: Bad Assets, California, Carnies, Cheap Thrills Records, Flickr, Morrissey, music, Record Store Day, San Luis Obispo
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Last year, I posted the first-ever music recording done under The Sidebars brand. Today, I’m posting the first-ever remix of a Sidebars track. This remix was created by Colin G. of the Ourobouros podcast. It’s completely different from the original, which is exactly what a remix should be. Big thanks to Colin for taking the time to create the new mix.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:34 — 4.1MB)

Tags: music, Ourobouros, podcast, The Sidebars
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Tuesday night, Jen and I ventured out to The Clubhouse, a restaurant/bar on the north side of San Luis Obispo. Our main reason for going was to attend the weekly singer/songwriter showcase. We arrived a little after the showcase had started to find the bar area completely packed. Standing room only. We hung out and caught a few songs, then we decided to duck in to the restaurant side of The Clubhouse to get some food. We would’ve liked to have stayed in the bar, but it was clear that it was gonna be awhile before we’d be able to get a table. And you know how Jen gets when her blood sugar starts to run low…

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Tags: California, Flickr, food, San Luis Obispo, The Clubhouse
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Our Australian friend Erk is taking a two-month long trip across the U.S. Last week, he stopped in San Luis Obispo for a few days to visit. Erk produces several podcasts, one of which is called Erk Pod. During Erk’s second day here, we drove around in his rental Jeep and recorded an episode of Erk Pod. Normally, I don’t like to syndicate other peoples’ content. But given my history of doing mobile recordings (and the fact that Shawnogram grew out of my old audio blog which was all mobile recordings), I’ve decided to add this episode of Erk Pod to the Shawnogram feed. Here’s a few pictures I took during Erk’s time here:

Erk searching the Internet at Best Buy, using an Apple laptop.

Erk and Jen at Mother’s Tavern during karaoke.

You can see a couple more pictures here and many more at the entries linked above. The original entry for this Erk Pod episode can be found here. Also, we recorded an epic podcast of our own with Erk which can be found here.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:23:13 — 57.2MB)

Tags: Apple Computer, Best Buy, California, Channel Erk, Flickr, Mother's Tavern, San Luis Obispo
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It was almost a month ago when I first wrote about my idea for the ghetto iPhone, Since then, I’ve done A LOT of research. And what I’ve found is that, it pretty much can’t be done. At least, not right now. The fundamental problem always comes down to wireless broadband access. The reason that the original ghetto iPhone idea (iPod Touch + Boost Mobile wireless broadband service) held some water is because of the low cost of Boost Mobile’s service. But I haven’t found any reliable way to access Boost Mobile’s data network and share it with another device. A similar idea I researched was to use an iPod Touch with the soon-to-be released Novatel MiFi 2200. But the problem with this setup is the cost of wireless data for the MiFi. Savings over a basic iPhone plan would be nominal at best. I found some information about swapping an iPhone’s SIM card with the SIM card from an AT&T GoPhone. Apparently, people have done this with ease. But last fall, AT&T stopped offering unlimited 3G data plans for GoPhones. And that’d make the cost of operating an iPhone in this way to be prohibitive. Based on an e-mail and a Twitter conversation I had with David, I looked into the possibility of using an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile actually has the most reasonably-priced wireless data plan of all of the carriers in my area. But there seem to be conflicting reports as to how well iPhones actually work with T-Mobile’s network. Apparently, T-Mobile’s network and AT&T’s network (the network the iPhone is designed to work with) work off of different frequencies. So it’s more likely that a T-Mobile-ready iPhone would only ever get EDGE service instead of the faster 3G. And I’m a bit squeamish over this unlocking business. So, the T-Mobile route isn’t really any good, either.

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Tags: iPhone
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