You probably know this about me already, but I am a gadget person. And I recently got my hands on a few shiny things I’d been lusting after for awhile. I thought, now that I’ve lived with them for some time, I should do a little writeup on how they’re working out for me. My preciouses are: the Amazon Kindle electronic reader; the Roth Motorboard electric scooter, and the Eee PC mini-laptop. I’ll start with the Kindle and then maybe write about the others in another post. Or not, who cares? Google is your friend. And they’re all great products, I recommend them all. :-)

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I just started (again) using the TwitterTools plugin for WordPress to post individual tweets directly to my blog. Problem is, I wasn’t happy with the way the tweets were being displayed — raw and unstyled, and with no linkback to the status page on Twitter. When you use the post-to-digest feature it does have the linkback, and it’s easy to style because you can target the enclosing list element. So I wanted to copy those two features over for the individual tweet-to-blog posts. So I hacked that plugin into shape! I’ll post the steps I took in case it comes in handy for someone else.

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I found this bookmark in an old book I bought in the early 90s when I lived in New York. So funny. I’m using it now for the CSS book I’m reading… he’s definitely encouraging me to BE COOL and keep at it. I’m 3/4 of the way through now! That’s about the farthest I’ve ever gotten in any computer book. I’m learning so much so fast, and with this dude’s help I’m determined to make it to the end!

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Awhile back I started thinking I ought to sharpen my skills in web design. At first I thought I should learn PHP, so I started a book on that, but abandoned it when I realized I really needed to backtrack a bit. So I started one on Javascript and guess what, I abandoned that one too for being just an eensy bit over my head. I knew I had to shore up my knowledge of HTML and CSS, which sucks because that’s supposedly what I know best! I’ve been using HTML for frickin’ 15 years but I’m self-taught, and only ever really learned what I had to.

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Update: I’ve decided to move this conversation to a new place on Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/group/scintillating-scotoma. Any future comments should be placed in the new group rather than here… anyone can post, you don’t have to be a member. The reasons behind the move are explained over here if you’re interested.

I haven’t had a migraine aura in about three years, knock on wood. But we’re up to almost 200 comments on the last post so I reckon it’s time to refresh this thread. I do that every once in awhile so it’ll be less taxing on the system.

Here’s a roundup of previous posts, where you’ll find approximately one bazillion comments from other migraine-aura-havers: Part 0, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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Awhile back in Chicago, Leroy Bach asked me to join in on a song he was recording.  I was to be singing in a girly trio type thing along with my good pals, the divas of the barroom, Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor.  It was for a project he was producing for his friend Sonny Smith.  Sonny is awesome.  He’s a San Francisco native, a traveling-troubadour type dude, the kind of guy who always wears a hat.  He’s toured around and recorded with some of my most esteemed musical contemporaries, like Jolie Holland and Neko Case.  So anyway, this record’s been out for a few months now. It’s called FRUITVALE and it’s very very good.  I’ve been negligent about posting it to my discography — got my copy last week though, so here it is.

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Hi friends!  I know, it’s been almost a year since I moved to California and I’ve barely posted anything in my blog other than show announcements and other self-promotion.  Truth is I’m sick of my website, I want to wreck it and start over with a different layout.  I want to make it less confusing and more user-friendly for first-time visitors.  I want to simplify the front page, make my basic info and discography a lot more front-n-center, and provide more-noticeable links to my pages at MySpace, Drag City etc.  I want to move the messy blog stuff to its own set of sub-pages so I won’t feel like I’m cluttering everything up with my drivel.  I want to figure out a way to better integrate all the content I’m making elsewhere on the web — Flickr photos, Twitter postings, del.icio.us links etc.  So this is what’s going through my head in regards to my website.  Sick of it!!

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Happy New Year!!!  Finally got confirmation on some shows in Australia and New Zealand this spring…

Tue Apr 17 - Auckland NZ @ The Schooner Tavern
Wed Apr 18 - Wellington NZ @ SFBH
Thu Apr 19 - Brisbane AU @ The Troubadour
Fri Apr 20 - Sydney AU @ The Basement Club
Sat Apr 21 - Melbourne AU @ Corner Hotel

Update: All the aforementioned shows are with Richard Buckner!  Yay.

I just experienced my first California earthquake.  Scared the living shit outta me.  It sounded like a big explosion from the back of the house, I didn’t know what the fuck was goin’ on!  I thought the water heater had exploded, or, like, a giant meteor had smashed down in the backyard.  But it was none of those things, just a little quake and everything seems to be okay.

A few years ago I blogged about an earthquake I felt in Chicago.  The one tonight one was scarier though.  It was just a jolt, but a pretty strong jolt compared to the Chicago one, which I only noticed because the floor-lamp was trembling.

Herschel got me the nicest early Christmas present!  A new (old) amp.  I love it.  It’s a ~1975 silverface Princeton Reverb, modded up somewhat… it’s got a 12" speaker instead of 10", and they got rid of the vibrato tube, so the speed and intensity knobs now control presence and master volume instead.  It sounds sooo tasty with my 335… all I have to do is turn every single knob up to 10 except the last one, master volume.  I plug in and start to play and the thing just jams, like it wants to jump up and hug me!  I think it makes you play a lot better when the amp isn’t just sitting there staring at you, looking bored.  My old amp (which I still have) is like that, just too much amp for me I guess.  Too loud and too many knobs, I can never get the same sound twice.  The Princeton gives me just 2 or 3 great sounds that are super easy for me to find… you got the clean sound, the reverbed one, the chimey one with presence turned up, the slightly dirty overdriven one.  Also it’s about 3/4 or 4/5 the size of the Hotrod, so it’s a whole lot lighter and easier for me to carry.

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I got back to California late Monday night… had a great time touring Europe with Espers, but ohhhh it’s so good to be back home again!!  I never got much sleep on the road so I’m trying to make up for it now, but I’m totally hammered with jetlag and can only sleep 4 or 5 hours at a stretch.  Seems a lot worse on this side than it was going over to Europe… I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way but whatever!

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