For Bob

As a little bit of background, a good friend of mine for a long time had misinterpreted the phrase "Pulitzer Prize" as "Pulit Surprise."  While both sound enormously exciting, I let forth a significant giggle when I heard the second one.  So when I saw this illustration on a website that I follow, I immediately thought of Bob.  The elephant's name can only be Pulit.

Big Trouble for Little Bradley

Image from Listicles

So I got a DMCA takedown notice [the most relevant info is about 1/3 of the way through the article] this past week for one of my songs of the moment.  I never expected that little old me would be a recipient of such a thing.  While I understand the desire of content owners to control said content, internally I chafe a little at not being able to share my music with my friends.  So for now, song of the moment takes a hiatus.

In other news, the big move is only two weeks away and the time is flying.  Anything we're wanting to do here in Utah (restaurants, sites to see, fun things with family, etc) needs to happen quick.  We've had a few get-togethers with some of Jess's friends, I finally went to lunch and a movie with my brother yesterday (his Christmas gift from us), next week I'll go on a hike with my sister, and we're planning a few dinners up the canyon.  It's turning out to be busier than expected.

The show my bro and I saw was Prince of Persia, and it was an entertaining summer movie.  Lots of exciting action and parkour, magic, mystery, betrayal, backstabbing, humor and even some romance.  It's made by Disney, but is rated PG-13 and probably too intense for those younger than teens.  End thoughts: I recommend it.

King's English Bookshop

At a work retreat a few weeks ago, Jess won a couple of gift cards.  One was for Red Hanger, so we dry cleaned two of my ties that were really needing it.  The other (significantly more exciting one) was for the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.  It sits at about 1500 East and 1500 South, and is a quaint little independent book seller.

Last weekend we wandered around the store for a couple hours and loved it!  The shop is in what was probably once a private home, and the whole place is filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves of books.  Heaven!  I felt little happy tingles as I sauntered past shelves and handled some of the wares.  We ended up buying Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (which I'm saving for our road trip and after) and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

Check this place out--as an independent local business, they could use the support.  Too bad we're leaving in a couple weeks.




SotM: Sarah McLachlin - Blackbird

SotM change

New song up, Sarah McLachlin covering the Beatles' Blackbird.  Absolutely beautiful version of a very nice song.  Give it a listen.

Fathers Day

First off, happy fathers day to all of the excellent men out there.  Thanks for your examples and help in the little things and in the big things.  I hope to be a good one, too, someday.

Second, Jess got me some very cool presents for FD today (FYI, this isn't an announcement--we like to give each other gifts on FD and MD just because).  Remember that soap I blogged about the other day?  The stuff that looks like bacteria?  Yeah, she got me some of that.  It smells like grapefruit.

The second gift is sort of a joint gift with one that we got for my little brother.  We're going to have a scuba diving lesson!  Scuba diving is another item from the bucket list, and this will be a good way to get a taste.  I'm very much stoked.


SotM: Band of Skulls - I Know What I Am

Return of the SotM!

After some research and a little bit of blog tweaking, song of the moment has returned.  Currently it is a song by Band of Skulls called I Know What I Am.  It reminds me a bit of the White Stripes, but with a fuller sound.  Nice, driving bass line.  It is rock, but not metal.

Also, I am trying to establish a blogging pattern, and so far Sunday nights and Wednesday nights are my plan and I've held to it for two weeks.  I'm thinking that I'll probably just do a new post each time the SotM changes, outside of schedule.  Any RSS readers who have a preference for how they are advised of the change?

Another Nedroid!

I love this guy's stuff.  It always makes me happy!  Go to his site and read the backlogs--it's easily worth an afternoon of your time.

Three mostly unrelated things

1:  I don't recall whether or not I shared this on the blog (and couldn't see after a cursory search), but I set a goal in January to read 100 books this year.  It has been a perfect year to attempt this with long bus rides during my last semester of school and a pretty laid back summer.  We'll see how fall goes...

So the good new is that today I finished book number 50--that's right, halfway through my challenge, and there are still three more weeks before the year is half over.  I'm ahead of schedule, which is probably a good thing.  I calculated a pace of two books per week to meet my goal, and that will be harder to keep up once medical school starts.  More med school in a moment.  Book 50 was a good one: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians.  You can see my review here (this goes to my goodreads profile, you'll need to scroll down once you get there).

2:  Thanks for all of your thoughts about the song of the moment.  I'm glad that those who commented are in favor of it ('cept you, Kel. I have my eye on you and your different music tastes...).  I think I'm going to try to get it back up by next Wednesday.  I appreciate the RSS issue being brought up.  I'm thinking of leaving the player at the top of the blog like before (optional, as always), but need a good way to let those who read the blog through Google Reader or other feed readers to know when the song has changed and what it is.  My proposed solution: indicate the current song of the moment at the end of each post that I put up.  Those who care to hear it can then visit the blog to listen, and won't need to bother checking in vain if it hasn't been updated.  Thoughts?

3:  Way back in item number one, I promised more med school stuff.  Here it is.  I'm wanting to chronicle the medical school experience, and want to do it with a blog.  However, because of patient confidentiality issues I probably either need a privacy barrier or to blog anonymously.  I like having my blog public.  I also don't think I would be able to maintain a personal blog and a medical school blog--I don't want to spread myself too thin.  But maybe if I compromise and just do one post per week on each?  Dunno.  Once again, I request your thoughts.  What would you like to see?  We'll probably revisit this topic later after I have cogitated more on it.

Music Question

Well, Google changed the way their webhosting works--instead of Google pages, they have developed Google sites.  Still easy to make a webpage for oneself, but I haven't been able to find a way to host some of my files there like I had done before.  This is relevant because this was how I provided the song of the moment on my blog (before the redesign).  It stopped working with the Google transition, and so there has been no song of the moment for some time now.

So here's the question: does anyone care?  Is that a feature that anyone enjoyed (or would have if it had been updated more frequently)?  I have a couple of ideas brewing for how to re-institute it (Dropbox or gDocs being the two biggies), though it wouldn't look any different than before.  Would any particular change(s) make it better / more user-friendly / cooler / more used?

Leave me your thoughts in the comments.  I may even bring it back if no-one ever used it, as I enjoy spreading a little music love (even if it's just to myself).

Best Soap Ever!

Saw this on one of the blogs that I follow.  How could I not love it?  It's soap that looks like a culture plate!  Too cool!

(h/t to Gizmodo, one of my favorite tech blogs)