Hell's Half Acre

m-slice takes manhattan

my friend Meattooth

I love Meattoth because he sends me things like this.

all systems are go

the international peace talks have commenced and I am embarking on my mission to become an ambassador for America. I will spread the word that the majority of people I know did NOT vote for Bush. I will try not to be obnoxious but there are no guarantees.

I have been grilling my colleagues overseas about neighborhoods.  I like diversity. I can commute. I don't have to live in the center of the city. My only concerns are safety and having some kind of local community that I can feel comfortable in. For example, I love Jackson Heights. A lot. I love the diversity. I love the restaurant. I love the fact that english is not the lingua franca of the neighborhood.

The Jolly, and by the jolly I am only referring to a specific city, Dickensville, seems diverse. Well Dickensville seems diverse anyway. My preconception is that the rest of the land may be a little homogeneous. I guess I will have the opportunity to discover all of this. I am looking forward to having my preconceptions knocked on their asses.

MM, I am ready to get Guitar Hero and I WILL be going to Stonehenge. 

what are the pros and cons of. . .

relocating to another country?

Unsolicicited offer came from beige. Beige would handle all the paperwork and expenses. Move means a promotion and a move to the international team which handles everything outside of North Am.

Must know which way I am leaning by next week.

okay people time to rock and roll

I need a Sven to help me with today's training sessions. Butterflies, even though I know this stuff out of my ass. yar.

kung fu today!

m-Slice and aunt take Manhattan

itinerary so far for M-slice:

campus tours @ Barnard, NYU, and Princeton

Museum of Natural History

Empire State Building and Times Square

Wicked

and. . . I thought this would be cool for aunt krix. .  .a Tour of the U.N.

Maybe we will see some art but that is more J-Rock's passion. I'll offer it up and see what she thinks. . .Maybe the Whitney since I've never been there either. There is also the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian which is having this exhibit

http://www.nmai.si.edu/listening/

Maybe I'll freak her world and tell her that it's more a part of her heritage then she realizes. 

i cannot lie to myself any longer

I've hit the middle ages. Fie.

 

HELLO WORLD!!!

mixfort it up

we at Hell's Half Acre are sad that J-Rock will not be able to make the "mixfort spring break new york extravaganza of excellence" but we are very excited to announce the impending arrival of M-Slice pictured here

.

J-Rock's trip is postponed until the fall when 81st Street Productions can put him to work as a PA. Because of the change in plans, changes to itineraries have been made.

M-Slice is now signed up for three college campus tours, one of which is Princeton. She has always talked of going there for reasons unbeknownst to me (I didn't think she was old enough to know what Princeton was.) Did you know that Princeton claims to have one of the strongest need based financial aid programs in the country? It seems as though, if you're good enough to get in, they will bend over backward to keep you there. I had a friend who went to Smith and she said it was similar there as well. Well, in any case, I am looking forward to going down there and checking it out myself.

In case you were worried, I'm not going to ONLY take M-Slice to Universities. We have some funz planned too. Besides, when I casually asked her if she'd like to check out some schools she said yeah. So I'm just saying. . .be careful when you ask Auntie krix to get involved with this stuff. She's a little obsessive.

today's imaginary band name

my imaginary band name for today is:

Mr. McFeely and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe

Here is a review of MMNMB.

The inscrutable Mr. McFeely and the Neighborhood of Make Believe returns with an uncontainable genre bending sophmore album which defies expectations at every turn. This sonically complex record - although organically created 25 years ago - contextualizes much of today's psych-pop zeitgeist. A visceral take on the art of modern beatmaking and a must have for all audio-dilletantes.

social networking based on musical tastes

I happened across this website that is out of the jolly, http://www.last.fm/music/. It's one of the most fun ideas for a social networking site that I have seen -- I've seen a lot because of work - not because I'm a geek. With this site I will allow myself to be a complete geek.

It took me awhile to figure out the core concept for this site becasue the website's description can be vague. I had to do a little bit of research on their site and their technology site, Audioscrobbler.net I finally found a tour in the About Us section that lays it out.

Here's a brief description stolen from their about page. Since it's Sunday, I am too lazy to write my own synopsis.

Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler music engine. More than ten million times a day, Last.fm users "scrobble" their tracks to our servers, helping to collectively build the world's largest social music platform.
Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.
Founded by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones, we are a JOLLY-based company with a music-obsessed team of developers and creative professionals from around the world.
It's never been this easy to share your taste and discover new music. Welcome to the social music revolution. 

Basically it's Facebook with music at the center which is ultimately more cool and has way more application potential than Facebook could ever have.

In order to participate, youare required to download a piece of their software which I guess contains the "scrobbler" that plugs in to whatever it is you use to play tunes on your system, i.e. iTunes, Winamp, WMP, etc. Once it's installed and you create an account on their site, you can start databasing what you listen to. Based on that, you can create playlist rss feeds, recently listened to rss feeds, and things such as that to share with people. Conversely, Last.fm will create suggestions for you via their site. You can find people based on similar musical tstes, location, etc. You can invite friends and share your music. I think that you can also listen to other's playlists but I'm not sure how that all works yet. Oh yeah, and you can start a journal (read blog) on the site. It's all there.   

These features are really only the tip of the iceberg. Last.fm has actively recruits bands to upload and participate in their site. Unlike looking for musicians on MySpace, you have none of the crappy clutter and can't get lost in MySpace's mayhem.

With the exception of a few usability issues I have with their site, I think this is one of the smartest applications of the social networking model that I've seen. My words are not doing it justice.