Mumford & Sons is the new SotM

These guys are currently my favorite band out there, and this (the song of the moment) is one of my favorite songs by them.  It builds very nicely and deserves a few minutes of your time.  Give it a listen!

In other news, I have finished my first year of medical school.  This is a happy thing.  The summer involves enjoying time with Jess, playing video games, catching up on tv shows and movies, and doing research at the children's hospital.  I don't know that it will involve much blogging (beyond the Chick-fil-a post that I promised everyone), but we'll see.

Happy Monday!

The Hush Sound!

Surprise, school is busy.  Due to preparing for an exam remediation and a bit of rejiggering of priorities (still working on that), the blog has taken a bit of a back seat.  But here's some music to enjoy!

All three tracks are by one of my current favorite bands, The Hush Sound.  I have to thank my sister, Mandy, for introducing me to this group.  Heavy use of piano, male and female vocalists, and a very peppy sound--what's not to love?  The female lead is Greta Salpeter, and I love her semi-smoky voice, which is why these particular three tracks made it in.  Break the Sky, the 3rd track, is probably the best of the bunch--if you just listen to one of the songs, make it that one.

Sadly, the group is currently on hiatus while Greta and the male lead (Bob Morris) pursue their own solo projects: Gold Motel and Debate Team.  I will investigate them both to see what I think.  Rumor has it that there will be one last reunion show in Chicago in December.  Seeing as Illinois is no longer as far away as it used to be, do I smell a road trip?

New SotM!

Just recently, one of my favorite bands released a new album--that's right, Guster has a new release after four years! The album is called Easy Wonderful, and the new SotM is called Do You Love Me (track 2, for those interested).  Check it out, and revel is their returned glory!

Sad to say, Guster was here in Columbus last weekend, just across the street from campus.  Because we had previously-made plans I was unable to attend.  I hope this is not the case next time they come 'round.

Catchall

So, first exam is finished.  I learned a lesson the hard way that if you fall behind in medical school, there is no catching up.  The few days leading up to the exam were pretty awful, full of study, study, and more study.  Despite these efforts, I was still not as prepared as I should have been for the test.  Fortunately, at my school there is no official class rank, and all tests are simply pass / fail.  This means that I just had to clear 70% in order to pass.  The exam had two parts, a written portion that we took on our computers in the lecture hall (this was multiple choice and covered anatomy, histology (tissue biology--mostly pictures of cells), and embryology), and the lab practical, which involved going to the cadaver lab and identifying structures on the bodies that had been pinned by the professor and TAs.  I got 75% on the written portion, which means I could miss up to 20 of the 50 practical questions.  I'll get those results later this week.  While normally I would be disappointed with this kind of performance, I did learn a valuable lesson, and the clock essentially resets after each exam.  As long as I pass, I'll be pleased.  And then I'll do better on the next exams.  But enough of that.

In other news, I discovered a way to bring back the song of the moment.  Grooveshark, a very cool music-streaming service, can make widgets for you for free.  They host the music file, and I get to share it on my blog.  And if anyone has concerns about copyright issues, they speak to Grooveshark instead of me.  This is a good thing.  So song of the moment is back from hiatus, and it's back with a song by The Black Keys.  Turns out these guys are from Ohio, which is cool.  It's just two guys, one on guitar and one on drums.  They sound kinda like the White Stripes, and I really like this song.  It probably helps that I found the video entertaining.  Here's the link.

What else... Still on track for 100 books this year.  I'm excited to reach this goal, but don't foresee a specific numerical goal for the next couple of years.  I think this will help me be more willing to read some of the lengthier tomes I've been wanting to get to (Rough Stone Rolling and The Lady in White come to mind).

Also, we played a game last night called "Killer Bunnies", and while it was pretty strange, I thought it was a lot of fun.  Jess even played, which is a pretty big deal.

EDIT: Jess so gently reminded me that she in fact not only played Killer Bunnies (a pretty big feat in and of itself), she also won Killer Bunnies.  Congrats to her, and hopefully this helps her be more excited about playing in the future. :)

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.

SotM change

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

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?

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).