Just like I wrote about Apple and the FBI, it's rare in today's world to see someone truly stand up for what they believe is right. Kudos to you Bruce.
I Am An American Aquarium Drinker
The Sad and Lonely Ruins of Starwood Amphitheater
Took a trip to south Nashville today and decided to do some urban exploring. A jumped barricade and a mile or so hike later I was there, at the scene of some of my fondest memories:
The main parking lot of off of Murfreesboro Road.
Entrance to the pavilion looking up at the grass/general admission area.
Looking down at the stage from the walkway between the grass and pavilion.
The view of the stage from right behind the soundboard.
Steps leading to the stage from the pit in front of the first row.
On top of the world! - AKA the view from the dead center of the stage.
It's been 9 years since the last show took place here, and all that's happened is a once amazing venue been left to rot. None of the promised luxury condos or mixed use shops. Just concrete, weeds, trash and rubble.
R.I.P. Starwood, those of us who knew you in better days will never forget.
Best Albums of 2016 (So Far / Q1)
WIth the year now a quarter of the way over I realized there's already been a ridiculous amount of great music put out in the first part of 2016. I think I'll do this every 3 months and see where all these end up at the end of the year.
7 Cheap Trick - Bang, Zoom, Crazy...Hello
6 Loretta Lynn - Full Circle
5 Primal Scream - Chaosmosis
4 Lucinda Williams - The Ghosts of Highway 20
3 David Bowie - Blackstar
2 Hey! Hello! - Hey! Hello! Too!
1 Various Artists - Southern Family
Oh Indeed
BOOM!
60 days of at least 30 minutes of exercise (average is 56 minutes), at least 10,000 steps (averaging over 15k) and 650 active calories burned. Every single day.
Let's push this shit to 365, then I'll really celebrate.
Todd Rundgren on Marc Maron's Podcast
I've never been that familiar with Todd Rundgren's music, but I know enough about him to have a passing interest. In particularly his work with recording technology and as a producer.
His interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast this week was a revelation.
Finally, a musician over the age of 40 who actually gets it. His thoughts on music streaming, the future of recording/distribution and why clinging to an outdated business model hurts everybody were incredibly refreshing in an age where so many want to scream about "the good old days".
If you're at all interested in hearing how a musician who made his biggest mark 40 years ago has both adapted and thrived in 2016 it's a must listen.
How Much Is Your Privacy Worth?
I've been an AT&T Fiber customer for a few months. For pure speed I'd recommend it to anyone. You'll never have to deal with a buffering video again. I routinely get download speeds of 900 Mbps. It's ridiculous.
That said, yesterday I was contacted by an AT&T rep about a way to have "substantial savings" on my internet plan. The catch? Give up any and all notion of privacy.
For a $25 a month discount all I had to do was opt in to AT&T Internet Preferences Program. Long story short, they analyze every single thing I do on the internet to serve better targeted advertisements. Every search term, every website visit, every click. Wow.
As for the title of this post, mine's worth a helluva lot more than $25.
iOS 10 Wishlist
Although Apple's next operating system won't be unveiled until early June, and it'll go through multiple changes before it's released in September - it's never too early to start daydreaming about what might be.
All of these are things I personally want that would make the OS a lot better, but I also realize quite a few are long shots. So I'm giving each wish a likelihood score on a scale of 1 to 10, with the higher the score the more likely. So with that out of the way...
iCloud Account Merging: I think this has been on everyone's list for years, at least since iCloud was announced in 2011. Many people have multiple accounts they've set up over the years and while family sharing is a kludgy workaround, it's not a full stop solution. I want to be able to access the music and apps I bought from 2006 to 2011 alongside everything I've purchased since. It shouldn't be hard. (5)
Multiple AirPlay Speaker Support: I know Apple's got a new partnership with Sonos, but why turn your back on your own built in technology? It's possible with iTunes, doing it in the Apple Music app is a no brainer. I've got 4 AirPlay capable speakers throughout my house. Being able to stream music to one, all or any combination of them in iOS should've happened years ago. (6)
Mail.app Overhaul: Why is there no share sheet in Mail? It's probably the most likely place people would want to share something from. It makes no sense. On the same front, improved gestures are now a must. Snoozing messages, grouping them by priority, etc are all necessary in 2016. Third party apps are leaving Mail in the dust. (9)
Better HealthKit Integration: Apple's done a great job of letting apps have access to the Health app, but getting anything out of it to somewhere else is next to impossible. Take a cue from Fitbit and make Health more social. Let us challenge people on step count, compare workouts with our friends. Apple's failed with almost every social networking platform they've created (Ping anyone?), this could be the first success. (5)
Apple Music Overhaul: Yikes. Where to begin? The service and catalog behind Apple Music is fantastic, the app itself is a train wreck. Much like my gripes about Health above, there's no social component at all. Spotify absolutely slays Apple in this department. You can't share playlists or make them collaborative, you can't send a track or album to anyone else, you can't see what someone else is listening to. It's a joke. You can't even bookmark playlists. Sure, you can add them to your own playlists, but that adds every track to your "My Music" section. I like to keep my actual music library pristine, I don't want random songs added to it. Right now though that's the only option to get back to a playlist later. I've come across a ton of great playlists with no real idea how I found them, and had to resort to sharing the URL of the playlist in an iMessage to myself. You should be able to save or subscribe to a playlist without it adding its tracks to your library. I've got more complaints about the Music app, but that may deserve a later post of it's own. (8)
Third Party Siri Integration: I'd love to be able to tell Siri to create a note in Evernote, or a task in OmniFocus, or play a podcast in Overcast or start a movie in Netflix. The new Apple TV Siri is a step in the right direction, but there needs to be an API for developers to take full advantage of everything Siri can do. Again, just like with Spotify in music and all the multiple third party mail apps, Amazon is killing Apple when it comes to a true digital voice assistant. (6)
Homekit Finally Starts Working: HomeKit was unveiled 2 years ago and still almost nothing works with it. The idea of a connected home is amazing, but right now very few pieces actually talk to one another, and there's no central hub for doing all of it. Multiple manufacturers with proprietary software are killing the whole premise. Once again, release a true HomeKit API so companies can make products built to work with it (similar to the "Designed For iPod/iPhone" certification badge) and then make a HomeKit app that controls everything. (7)
IFTTT Integration: Anyone who's used If This Then That knows the endless possibilities of tying services together. Apple dipped it's toe in 2 years ago, but full integration would be a godsend. Having emails automatically sent to Notes, receipts funneled into Dropbox, etc. Please make this happen. (3)
I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but none of these are
impossible or too outrageous. If Apple wants to continue to lead the pack when it comes to mobile innovation all of these will go a long way to making sure that happens.
I'll make a follow up post in 3 months to see how many of my thoughts were shared by Apple engineers.
I'd Say I Had A Pretty Good Week
Link: Apple Employees May Quit Rather Than Comply With FBI Order →
Another great article from the New York Times detailing what many Apple engineers are planning if the court decision doesn't rule in their favor.
They're going to quit.
The only people capable of creating this backdoor into their encryption are the same people who designed it in the first place. If they all resign that's a whole other can of worms.
Fuckin' A. Standing up for what you believe in is a concept too many have forgotten.
Cheers to you guys.
What Were You Doing 10 Years Ago Tonight?
Whatever it was, I doubt it was awesome as this...
Taken from the archives of lovetheloft.com, it's my Road Diary from SXSW 2006.
Enjoy!
(p.s. - click the link above to read about the whole trip, not just one night)
Friday 3/17/06
For those not familiar with the South By Southwest Festival (or SXSW as it's commonly written), it's a 7 day music festival that takes place literally all over downtown Austin. 10 to 12 bands a day, all day for 7 days, in over 30 clubs. Everything from garage bands who've never played live before this week to Beastie Boys to Willie Nelson to Slayer were playing. Oh yeah, also pretty much EVERY record company exec, A&R person, producer, MTV, etc. is there too. Every year a dozen or so of bands get signed solely on their SXSW appearance. Dave Matthews Band? Played SXSW in 1992 - first major label album in 1993. White Stripes? Played SXSW in 2000 - first major label album in 2001. The list goes on and on and on...
We got into Austin just before noon, checked into our hotel, and split up to find lunch. Burke, Phil, Todd, Biggs, and Boots went to a steakhouse while me, John Banzhoff, and Nathan hit a Mexican Restaurant. I can't speak for the other guys, but our lunch was great (a common theme for this trip - those Texans like to cook and cook well). I do know there was a large field full of cows just outside the steakhouse. Does anyone else find this a bit weird? I imagined a bloody Texas version of Red Lobster ("Shoot Your Own Lunch").
Around 5 PM we headed downtown. Getting off the bus onto 6th street was like those scenes in the movies where the ray of light shines down and the classical music starts...pure heaven. Burke summed it up best: "DisneyLand For Rockers". It was better than I could've imagined. Wall to wall music, 4 blocks long and 3 blocks wide. True sensory overload. Metal bands playing next to Salsa bands playing across the street from Emo bands who were next to hip hop bands.
The Loft was playing Darwin's Pub, a cozy little room right there on 6th in the heart of everything. The band that played before us "The Brian Schram Band" was one of the highlights of the weekend. Kickass garage punk from Detroit. Great bunch of guys too. Phone numbers and email addresses were exchanged quickly, look for these guys in Nashville soon...and The Loft's Detroit debut sometime soon as well.
Taking the stage a little after 8, the eneregy was palpable. What started out as an audience of maybe 20 grew VERY quickly. It was amazing watching the scene going on outside Darwin's. People would walk up, hear a little bit of music, start dancing, and the next thing I knew they were there in the crowd. By the third song the size of the crowd had more than tripled. By the end of the set the place was absolutely packed.
Afterwards it was almost Loft Appreciation Night in Austin. Lines at the merch table, lines of people wanting autographs, very very cool. Everyone seemed to have been blown away by what they just saw. Even me, Todd, and Boots who between the 3 of us have seen practically every Loft show ever. It was obvious the band knew how important this show could end up being and brought their "A Game".
Once the scene at Darwin's died down and the gear was loaded up, we hit Austin with a vengeance. After going bar to bar to bar for a couple of hours, we found what would double as our homebase for the next 2 days - Cheers. $2 drafts, $2 wells, and $2 shots. Yeah, we were home.
For those not familiar with a Kamikaze, it's a shot of Vodka, a shot of Triple Sec, and a shot of lime juice. Now the name "kamikaze" brings up visions of incredible violence, yet those ingredients seem, well, a bit girly. Combine the 2 and you become a zombie. No place on earth should sell $2 kamikazes. This was one of those places hardcore alcoholics would go the night before they check into rehab. This would quickly become the Official Drink Of SXSW 2006. While there Todd met Bailey - you'll have to ask him to explain, but it's a great story with pictures to go along.
After several hours of carousing we met back at the bus and left for the hotel.
Link: Apple To The FBI "Go Fuck Yourselves" →
Great Boing Boing article breaking down the latest legal briefs filed in Apple's upcoming case against the FBI.
Long story short, Apple's lawyers have made the FBI's look like first year law students.
Glenn Fleishman sums it up nicely:
"Apple’s brief was interesting reading. They make the FBI sound like they are 8 year olds with a too-high Adderall dosage."
Or as none other than Edward Snowden puts it:
"Today I learned that Apple has way better lawyers than the DOJ."
This Scares The Hell Out Of Me
Seriously? What have we become as a nation?
"Wasn't acting like an American"?
I've been planning a long post on my thoughts about this whole Trump lunacy, but every day the story takes a darker and uglier turn.
It's a tragic comedy that was never very funny to begin with.