Ian Varley

Drool, drool ....

2007-01-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard the phrase "game changing"? That's what TechCrunch said about the new iPhone that was announced this morning. And they are so right. GPF and I sat around the kitchen table watching it unfold in stilted real-time text messages & photos from the convention center.

It's everything the blackberry is, plus a super-intuitive and slick input method (multi-touch), plus GPS (instant maps if you're lost!) AND an iPod (oh yeah, that old thing?) AND a cell phone. The holy grail of integration, done right like only Apple could. Just watch the videos.

It's also brilliant how they announced it - not available till June, but announced now because the FCC needs time to approve it, and they'd rather it come out this way than in an FCC filing (though I'm sure those are a barrel of laughs). What they didn't mention is that that also gives 6 months to a) work out the bugs & glitches, and b) get 3rd parties to develop iPhone-targeted apps (which they can start doing immediately because the thing runs full fledged OSX!)

As Slashdot said, this is basically a printing press for cash for Apple.

Will the money equation work out for consumers? $499 / $599 isn't cheap for a phone. But - it's also an iPod, and a GPS, and a blackberry, and a 2-year phone contract is included in that price (though presumably you'll need to "upgrade" that to get a decent amount of talk-time). I'm thinking the answer for me will be a "yes" because I already pay for SMS and a bunch of minutes via Sprint (whose customer service really stinks), AND I'll be due for a new phone this summer anyway. I guess the devil's in the details. But even if it's more money than we're currently paying ... it's so cool, I may get one anyway.

After I get my Wii, of course. :)

My Day In Photos

2006-12-17T22:53:00.000-08:00

I've been bringing the camera along for the ride a lot more lately. Witness today.

Sunrise on Mopac while driving to buy a Wii (failed again, BTW):

Trip to the dog park with Mister Emmet (who chased squirrels the whole time):

Brunch at the Magnolia (24 hour breakfasty goodness):

Afternoon nap, until somebody stole my pillow:

Sunset on the way to JPM's for dinner:

Watching the Resentments at the Saxon Pub:

Looking back on it (literally), I'd say it was a pretty good day.

Boing!

2006-12-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

So, David Pogue weighed in today on the classic airplane on a treadmill story today, and started a firestorm in the comments. It was picked up by BoingBoing, and Mark Frauenfelder published my comment on the topic:

A plane doesn't increase velocity by pushing off the ground; it does so by pushing off the air. The ground is just there to keep the plane from falling into the center of the earth. (Think of seaplanes ... they can still take off despite lack of significant friction with the ground). Since the air in this example is no different from a usual takeoff, the plane would push off it and move forward as usual. The difference, however, is that as the plane started to move, the wheels of the plane would turn, and the fictional treadmill would increase in speed to match ... which would cause the wheels to turn faster, thus causing the treadmill to move faster, etc ... a mutually reinforcing system, until the wheels and the treadmill both turned to molten lava (and how fast that happens depends on how closely the treadmill could match wheel speed). Meanwhile, the body of the plane would be busy taking off as usual, unaware of the drama happening below (except, perhaps, for the smell of melting rubber).

So there you have it - the definitive word on the subject. Except for my lack of any advanced degrees in the physical sciences. Anybody want to weight in?

Trail Of Funnel Cake

2006-12-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Last night, Uberjam ran the Trail Of Lights 5k at Zilker park. I, in my infinite wisdom, did NOT run the Trail of Lights 5k.

However, I did get to go a) eat a funnel cake, and b) twirl around under the Zilker Park "Christmas Tree" (not really a tree, just a huge tower with lights on it). Here's what it looks like underneath when you're not spinning around:

Here's what it looks like when you are spinning around:

Whoa. Anyway, I managed not to fall over or get sick, despite just having eating said funnel cake (for my fellow yankees, "funnel cake" ~= "fried dough").

Anyway, here are the rest of the photos from the run.

A wii bit disappointed

2006-12-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

Last night, Uberjam and I tried to go get a Wii at Walmart. When we got there at 10:30, there was already a line of people (waiting outside in the cold, for some reason I don't understand) to get a Wii at 8am the next morning. We gave it a moment's thought, then decided that we'd be OK waiting a bit longer. So instead, we went to get some food at the Magnolia:

And I'm going to sign up with NintendoFinder.com to see if I can get any better info on where to get one. I'll let you know if it's worth the $6.50.

NoWriMo

2006-12-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

So, you may remember that I started out November participating in NaNoWriMo. Well ... I didn't make it. I got about 15,000 words in (towards a goal of 50,000) before realizing I was absolutely bat-guano crazy.

BUT ... I did make 15,000 words, which is pretty good. I actually like a lot of what I wrote, and I think some of the characters really had promise. But as it turns out, writing a cohesive novel with no idea about the plot or purpose when you start is ... well, tricky.

So, goodbye novel. Maybe I'll see you again next year.

Mojo

2006-11-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

My review of the Santomojo festival is up at Houston Calling, David Cobb's local music blog. Check it out.

Photo via Flickr, courtesy of The Portal & Friends.

Bloglines Freedbacking

2006-11-23T17:02:00.000-08:00

(If you don't use the feed reader Bloglines, this post will be a snoozer. Consider yourself warned.)

I've got a little freedbacking for Bloglines. OK, well, actually, a lot ... this is software I use every day, so any of these little improvements would go a long way with me. In order of importance:

1) Show the sub name. When I click "j" to go to the next item, and I'm viewing a folder where I have several feeds, it's often difficult or impossible to tell what feed I'm looking at (which makes all the difference in the world, in terms of my rapid understanding of the content). I find myself clicking the mouse on the whitespace of the page and pressing the "up" arrow a few times to see it, which is extremely inefficient. I'd like it either to a) stop where you can see the folder title when you press "j", or b) float a little div with the sub name somewhere on the right side of the screen where it won't interrupt me.

2) Filters. Build Feedrinse-style filters in so I can reduce the number of posts I get. Feedrinse works great for that, but a) after a certain number of feeds, they make you pay, and b) it seems like logical functionality to have right in Bloglines. Plus, I'd love to still be able to see the real number of subscribers on my feed, even though I'm reading a filtered version.

3) Improve email subscriptions. I use email subscriptions a lot (I have over 200 of them), but I'd really love some more management tools for them. Searching, sorting, dead feed warnings (i.e. "You've never gotten anything for this email feed"). And I know it's unlikely, but I'd really especially appreciate it if you guys gave open RSS feeds to me for the email subscriptions (even if that requires me to pay, which would make sense). My lock-in to Bloglines should be because you guys have the best service, not because you host all of my email subscriptions. (Now, of course, the best way to do it is use mail forwarding at your mail host to redirect to bloglines, instead of giving out bloglines addresses to the lists you subscribe to directly ... but I didn't figure that out until I already had over a hundred of them. Whoops.)

4) View all items from last view. Sometimes I accidentally click a feed / folder link while I'm in the middle of reading a long list of items. I want a way to go back and see exactly what I was looking at before; the droplist option that lets you show all items from this session doesn't cut it, because it might show many more (if I've had the session open all day). I just want to see the exact items I was viewing before.

5) Pause. I want the ability to "pause" a subscription without removing it - it would stop showing up in my active feeds, but would show up instead in some kind of parking lot page. I could set myself a "reminder date", at which point Bloglines would ask if I want to a) dump it, b) reactivate it, or c) keep it paused.

6) Feed search. I'd love the ability to search the Names & descriptions of all my feeds. I have over 400 feeds, in several folders, and when I can't find the one I'm looking for by name, it takes forever. This search could be an advanced option, not shown in the regular view so as not to clutter things.

7) Stats. I'd like a page that shows statistics about your feed (number of items over time, etc.) - especially for the email feeds, some of those get hard to handle. Statistics showing how many you read over time, broken out by folder and / or feed, etc, would also be nice.

8) I'd really like to have nested folders.

9) Tab integration. I'd love to have better integration with Firefox tabs. Maybe a default that lets you open new folders / feeds in a separate tab rather than the reading pane of the same tab.

10) Non-BL popularity. It'd be super cool if bloglines had a way to show the general popularity (based on a 3rd party system) of a feed, not just the number of subs on bloglines. (Like: "351 Bloglines Subscribers (4,500 total)").

Oh, is that all?

S'Moore

2006-11-26T01:46:00.000-08:00

I've never been a big one for Michael Moore. His films have the hallmarks of the same propaganda style I decry when it represents views I don't agree with; and so, I find it hard to get behind him, even though I usually find my views (at least basically) aligned with his.

But in the past couple weeks, he's written two pieces that really deserve to be read, even if just to spark conversations.

First, a few days after the election, he wrote this piece: A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives.

It's a set of promises that we (as progressive democrats) should make to our conservative brethren. While many of the "promises" are really just unhelpful (and boorish) attacks on legitimately held conservative views, there are at least a few of them that I'd be proud to say I support, and I'd wish to see everyone of political integrity get behind.

"We will never, ever, call you 'unpatriotic' simply because you disagree with us."

"We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world."

"We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST."

That's great stuff. As for the balance, let me just emphasize my caveat above: I think many of these "promises" are just "nyah nyah" style flamebait, particularly the bits about handguns, stem cells, and counting age from birth. I may agree with him on many of them (don't worry, my Texas neighbors: not the handguns part) ... but I think that's a particularly unhelpful way to change the minds of conservatives, which is ostensibly his goal here. A dialog may change minds; a diatribe won't.

In any event, I think the list is worth reading.

Second, just today he published this letter advising America to "Cut & Run" in Iraq.

As most people have, I've been of the opinion that an immediate troop withdrawal would plunge things into chaos. But he makes a few stark points about how the operations there have, ultimately, already failed - the war of ideas has been decisively lost, even if the war of bullets is still suffering a slow burn. Many of these things I agree with strongly - most importantly, that for a people to be "liberated", they have to make it happen themselves. After impugned motives on the way in (oil? revenge? popularity ratings?) and seriously compromised execution (rising violence? massive civilian deaths? rapes?? Gitmo???), there is now no way that anyone in Iraq can view the Americans' actions with the same gratitude that we were viewed with at the end of WWII. They (collectively) look at us and want us either out or dead.

What I like about this piece isn't the bullying tone, but more the perspective he ends with:

"A majority of us were upset and angry after 9/11 and we lost our minds. We didn't think straight and we never looked at a map. [...] We didn't know what a Sunni or a Shiite was, never even heard the words. Eighty percent of our young adults (according to National Geographic) were not able to find Iraq on the map. [...]

But at our core we are a good people. We may be slow learners, but that "Mission Accomplished" banner struck us as odd, and soon we began to ask some questions. [...] The majority now feel a deep sadness and guilt and a hope that somehow we can make make it all right again."

Well said, sir.

I'm glad there's a Michael Moore to take these ideas and galvanize them. I'm also glad he's not running things at the top, because I don't think he leads from a place of quiet wisdom like truly admirable leaders do. But for heavens' sake, these pieces should be read and digested, and argued about - and, perhaps, answered by conservatives with equally compelling arguments (and a minimum of FUD slinging).

Any takers?

Airport Tour: Stop #2

2006-11-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

Nametag
Originally uploaded by Ian Varley.

So, I've now played in two airports in Texas. The first was last month with Drop Trio, at the Dallas / Ft. Worth Airport, for a private party.

The second was yesterday, with my bud Ed Jurdi. Ed's a phenominal singer / songwriter, and we played two sets of his tunes. I was a bit under the weather (worse today) but managed OK, for not knowing the songs at all. :)

Next up: the Houston airport? Or maybe Lubbock?

Goodbye, old friend

2006-11-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

This is terrible, terrible news: Eatzi's is closing in Houston. Guess it's good that I moved to Austin, because if I were still working out of my Houston office (which was a block from Eatzi's), this news would probably have led me to jump off a bridge.

The Monster Mash

2006-11-15T19:13:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of mashups? If you haven't, you will. The term originated with musical examples (like the Grey Album), but now the term is being applied to technological examples, like this cool little calendar widget from 30 Boxes:

This shows a) my blog posts, b) my flickr shots, and c) Drop Trio's show calendar all in one single live calendar (you can scroll forward and back, too).

This kind of cool stuff is possible because of an age-old programming concept that's only now coming into its adolescence: the separation of content and presentation. Keep your data logically separated from how that data looks or where it goes, and you've got all kinds of magic powers. Programmers have been talking about it for the longest time, but only now, I think, is it starting to sink in to our shared consciousness.

By the way, there were a couple others mentioned by TechCrunch today, including a Google Maps one that looks pretty cool.

We have a winner

2006-11-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

So, the 40,000th email in my saved mail folder was this email:

Subject: Beyond the keytar?

http://www.csiro.au/csiro/content/standard/ps2gl,,.html

The funniest part was, two other people have since forwarded that to me. Is this everyone's way of telling me I play a lot of air guitar?

Or is it a call to arms that I need to get one of those and use it in my stage show?

I'll assume the latter.

Shifting Sands

2006-11-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

Wow, the ~~house of reps~~ congress and Rumsfeld in one day? The times they are a changin'. Now we can get down to the business of destroying the country with this handy 25 point plan.

But seriously. At least we got to go to a rad bake sale while we voted. I think some people would have had a better day if they'd gone to a bake sale, too, like the guy who self-immolated in protest of the Iraq war. Doh.

40K

2006-11-09T18:41:00.000-08:00

So, my count of saved email stands at 39,953 as I type this. Who's gonna put # 40,000 through the goal posts?

I'll do something really cool for whoever it is. Like, send them an email or something. Ready? Set? Go!

Happy Birthday, Emmet

2006-11-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's Emmet's birthday! He's one year old today. To celebrate, he mangled a sock.

Good boy.

To celebrate for him, I upgraded to a flickr pro account, so now I can upload hella photos all the time. Cuz I gotta do something to more effectively procrastinate on my novel.

Besides, you know ... my marriage, job, 6 bands, 3 composition projects, music mixer series, and pilates class.

Yeah, that's right, I said pilates class.

NaNoWriMo

2006-11-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

Hey, anybody else out there doing National Novel Writing Month? It's where you try to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of one month.

I'm doing it, and I've already got my first 5 pages (1600 words) written.

Because I so totally have time to write a novel this month. I just ... well, I have more energy than time, put it that way. Wo0t!

I'm the cutest!

2006-10-31T05:58:00.000-08:00

Hey, check it out - my first public notice as a photographer: my photo of a kid playing drums made it to the top 10 photos of the 2006 ACL Festival.

The photo credit is a little misleading (implying that the kid is named Ian Varley, instead of the photographer) but, well, what can you do? (For starters you can email the ACL festival asking them to change it and get thoroughly ignored. Doh.)

Happy Halloween!

Accountability

2006-10-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

OK, so here's a conundrum.

I love playing music - practicing, playing live, writing, recording, etc. And the more I listen to inspiring players like Brad Mehldau, the more I realize that I need all the practice I can get. :)

Of course, I'm also a pretty driven guy in other areas of life - work, friendships, learning, etc. So very often, my healthy protestant work ethic ends up trumping my playing time, because practice isn't as "important" in the list of short term things.

But ultimately, music is very important to me - more so than whatever happens to be on BoingBoing, Homestar Runner, etc. So how do I hold myself accountable to that?

Well, as of right now, I'm going to start tracking how many hours of playing I do every day, publicly, via Joe's Goals (a great little web site):

That shows the number of hours of actual playing I'm engaged in on any given day (including gigs). My hope is that with other people watching, I'll have impetus to do it more. If you see me slacking off, tell me to get back to it! :)

Sundaystuff

2006-10-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

Found a great new Austin events site that's very "web-two-point-oh" - it's called Do512.com, and it seems to already have a pretty fair number of events. Users vote on the ones they're going to, which makes rise to the top of the list. I've put in my next event - throw it a vote. :)

I'd love to be more megagaltastic. I think watching zefrank is a good way to do that.

And sometimes things speak for themselves.

Enjoy your weekend.

Friday the 13th

2006-10-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

Gosh, where to start today?

- Who schedules dental work on Friday the 13th? Me, apparently. It's OK, though, I'm now back in tip top dental shape, and only a little bit sore. And who knew that laughing gas was so, well, funny?

- Who wants a Wii? Me! I want one! Me!!

- Eat out or dine in? This thread I started last night on Ask Metafilter got a ton of responses, and got picked up by Get Rich Slowly and LifeHacker. Cool. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get some tacos. Or maybe go shopping. ??

- Just rediscovered Digg today. Talk about time suck!

- Ok, no really: talk about time suck.

- Anyone want to take a trip to the Houston Center for Photography ... uh, Center?

OK, that's all I got. Back to my regularly scheduled email.

for when life gets you down

2006-10-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Lakewood Barre and Gril

2006-09-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

Or is it Bahr and griln? Whatever. It's in Dallas and I played there on Saturday night with the Lowdown. Fun show - I always enjoy getting to do some Left Hand Bass (tm). Plus, Mr. GPF showed his ~~ugly mug~~ shining face, and sat in on a couple tunes. Rad.

I don't have any pics of the Lowdown, unfortunately, because, well, I was playing. But next up was Moving Matter, of whom I took copious photos, because they had a kick-awesome light show. Here are a couple gooduns:

After a few songs, the gents called me up ("Fireball to wardrobe ...") and I played a couple Scofield tunes, plus a couple MM originals as well. Here's me in action:

More pics here.

Thanks for a good weekend, Ari & co. Looking forward to some more travels this weekend. But it'll be a long week first.

Austin City

2006-09-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

So, this weekend, Uberjam and I are off to the Austin City Limits festival, with a few friends. I'm usually not a big festival goer, but this particular festival is so well done, and has such a great lineup, it's hard to turn it down.

One of the main conflicts of the festival lineup, for us, was that Aimee Mann and Calexico were playing at the same time. However, thanks to my friend Shred, Uberjam and I managed to see the Calexico Austin City Limits taping on Thursday night. I'd share pics of that, but you're not allowed to bring in cameras.

But I will be taking photos of the festival this weekend, so stay tuned for that. Off we go ...

is broken! is no work!

2006-08-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

FYI - to anybody who's trying to contact me today, my email service provider is out, and tells me they won't be back up until tomorrow. This sucks, but they also tell me all the mail will get through eventually. If you need something right away, give me a ring.

UPDATE: As of 9:30 this morning, fastmail is saying it'll be another 30 hours. Doh! They've been rock solid for the 3+ years I've been using them for my IMAP provider, but I guess everybody has a bad couple days now and then. In any event, I've put a rollover system in place using my gmail account, so for all intents and purposes, my email is functional and seamless again ... but if you've sent me anything in the past 24 hours, I didn't get it, so please resend it.

Unless you're that guy who keeps trying to get me to buy stock ... I'm telling you dude, try ninjas.

UPDATE: As of Sunday evening, it's back, and I think I got all the email that was pending. As of right now, my inbox is empty and I've replied to everything that needs replyin'. If you didn't get one you expected, as always, please to follow up. Gracias.