My problem is far more serious: my subwoofers don’t kick when they’ve been sitting all night at ~zero Fahrenheit.

My solution last weekend: run a ceramic space heater in my trunk for 15 minutes!

Here’s some evidence of the weather this winter in The Constitution State: 27″ of snow in ~8hrs!

I attended last year’s edition with Carolyn just prior to a return trip which included visits to…

• Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL
• Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA
• UNC Charlotte, NC
• Stony Brook on Long Island, NY

Take a look at the pictures I took at the festival:

These are some photos from the remainder of the trip.

She played most of the material from her new album, Snakeskin, and also a lot of cover material. Highlights included at least three Beatles covers and a favorite of mine – “One More Day” by the Wood Brothers.

• Boulder Coffee Co. – Rochester Wiki

Tessah saves those little dessicant packets from shoeboxes in case she ever drops her cell phone in the toilet.

One of the software tools I’m using to do this is called cdparanoia. It’s a solid little app from the venerable Xiph.org multimedia project with an entertaining but informative console interface. An excerpt from `cdparanoia(1)`:

OUTPUT SMILIES
:-)  Normal operation, low/no jitter
:-|  Normal operation, considerable jitter
:-/  Read drift
:-P  Unreported loss of streaming in atomic read operation
8-|  Finding read problems at same point during reread;
     hard to correct
:-0  SCSI/ATAPI transport error
:-(  Scratch detected
;-(  Gave up trying to perform a correction
8-X  Aborted read due to known, uncorrectable error
:^D  Finished extracting

PROGRESS BAR SYMBOLS

    No corrections needed
-   Jitter correction required
+   Unreported loss of streaming/other error in read
!   Errors  found  after stage 1 correction; the drive is
    making the same error through multiple re-reads, and
    cdparanoia is having trouble detecting them.
e   SCSI/ATAPI transport error (corrected)
V   Uncorrected error/skip

The interface is a testament to the poor reliability of the little plastic discs. I’ve found, however, that I’d rather learn of a fatal scratch on some rare dub reggae disc from it rather than by a Zsh core dump message.

The UI also uses an interesting variation on the throbber/baton: main.c – cdparanoia-3.10+debian~pre0.

Long live the console.

On Thursday at Noon I jumped on a Jet Blue flight bound for JFK. One hour and one hundred dollars later I was waiting at JFK for my bag. When it showed up, I took the $5 “AirTrain” (see “tram”) to Station D (Jamaica Station) where I caught the LIRR for $5 to Penn Station. I walked a few blocks to meet Carolyn at Bryant Park. We shared a sandwich, watched a fight, and then headed to the Times Square Dream Hostel to check in. It’s a nice (new?) little hostel ~5 blocks from (gasp!) Times Square. The owner, Peter, showed us around and we took off to catch the D line to Coney Island.

While we were waiting in line, I nabbed a $30 American Apparel Alive ’07 shirt and a $3 decal which I think will look nice on the Thinkpad.

We got through the gates a bit before 7pm and found a nice spot against the front barrier under the right stack. Forty five minutes later they pulled a tarp away from a table directly in front of us to reveal three CDJs and a mixer. Much to our delight, these belonged to the openers: Sebastian and Kavinsky.

These guys played for ~1/2hr before The Rapture and for another ~45min afterwards. I liked the second set better – more bangin’ hard house beats (esp. from Sebastian), less experimental bleeps and bloops.

Daft Punk’s performance was Perfect. I think maybe too perfect, but that’s another story.

On Friday morning we grabbed a $1 egg sandwich and headed to MOMA where I was told I couldn’t check my pack because it was too big. We walked for a minute into Central Park (real estate trivia) but then gave up because it was pouring rain.

After parting w/ Carolyn, I caught Amtrak from Penn Station to Utica (torture trivia!) to meet up with my Dad. We drove up to the Cabin for some hiking, boating, and good food.

Last year’s critical dub moment came when I was wandering back from a late show and came across Rochester’s own Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad playing at an intersection of two campsite paths. This year, we were heading in to see Galactic when we passed a makeshift soundsystem booming some Black Ark beats across the dusty trail.

The Tool performance produced the loudest music I have ever heard in my life. It was the kind of music that makes your anvil and stirrup kick a hole in your cochlea. “What(!?) Stage” indeed :]

We also saw a “tornado” come near our campsite and throw some poor sod’s tent and tarp ~6 stories into the air. This photo might very well be the one we saw:

Some groovy flute music was floating out from inside the building. It turned out to be from a man who was playing a traditional Japanese flute called a Shakuhachi.

Here are a few reasons why this Summer is going to exceed all previous Summers:

1. Daft Punk’s first North American tour in 9 years is making its final stop at Keyspan Park in Brooklyn on August 9th and I’m gonna be there with Josh, Carolyn, and a mystery person¹.
2. I’ll be at the Rock the Bells Festival NYC (Randall’s Island) event in with Dave on July 28th to see Wu-Tang, Rage Against the Machine, The Roots, Mos Def, EPMD, Jedi Mind, Hi-Tek, et al.
3. Ex-Allman Bros. member and Gov’t Mule frontman Warren Haynes is bringing us another Mountain Jam in Woodstock this year. I’ll be camping at the foot of the ski resort where it’s held for the weekend of June 1st. Looking forward to Ozomatli, Michael Franti, and of course The Mule. This festival knocked my socks off last year.
4. I’m going to Bonnaroo again June 14th-17th in Manchester, TN with Heather, Carolyn, and 80,000 other people. Enough said².
5. The fine continent of Europe will be hosting Heather, Josh, Carolyn, Dave, and me in July. I’m told they have some big clubs over there. Got my fingers crossed for some French dub too.

Bonus: Name the DJ pictured iabove. Cheaters can go here: cet2b7 – Top 10 Countdown – #4 – MOG (My sentiments exactly regarding “The Garden”)

1. Update 8/28/2007 – I blogged about the Daft Punk show
2. Update 8/28/2007 - I blogged about Bonnaroo 2007

Fortunately for us dub fans, Tabone has uploaded 87 of his hour-long shows in MP3 format with track listings. You can find them in the “Audio” section of the show’s website. Unfortunately, the recordings are only 16kbps. They sound a bit poor as you’d expect, but they only weigh in at around 7MiB apiece. I emailed Manwel to express my gratitude for his efforts and to ask about higher-quality recordings of his past shows. It turns out that none exist.

Most shows are a nice mix of roots reggae and dub. There are some dancehall tunes too. He’s even uploaded some tribute shows including a bunch with a Bob Marley theme.

I just got finished listening to show #674 which features “Finger on the Pulse” from The Dub Revolutionaries, a collaboration between Sly and Robbie and The Mad Professor. This track has a hot little sax line in it. So hot, in fact, that I had to go dig out my burned copy and listen to the whole thing!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Wm8DHxW6I