If you haven't discovered Fluxblog, go now, and take in some tunes. Great stuff! The last several entries have made a 1 hour playlist for me that is of notable interest and FUN. In particular, make sure you grab Supa GFK by Ghostface, Pumpkin Soup by Kate Nash, and two tracks from the I'm Not There soundtrack - a disc I'm clearly going to have to pick up.

So anyway... Do it. Now. Really. GO! (AFelus, this means you, especially.)

Which also reminds me... everyone who isn't already, be very aware: the release of I'm Not There was cause for a soundtrack featuring many to lend their voices to Dylan covers, including, say, Cat Power, Sonic Youth, and the honorable Mr. Malkmus. I, not knowing this, was getting on the highway the other day when _Stuck Inside Of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" comes on the radio. Except, it's not. Or rather, it is, but it's Cat Power. And I'm sitting there, trying to understand what the hell is going on. During the five critical seconds that it took me to figure it out, I failed to pull across the requisite 3 lanes of traffic necessary to take the "go through campus" part of I35 instead of the "go over campus" version of I35. Oh sure, I figured out an alternate path and got there eventually. No big deal. But still- I was dumbstruck for a good 4-5 seconds, and the consequences for you may be far greater. I don't know WHY it struck me as so strange, but, it did, so now... you've been warned.

YES, that IS Cat Power, on KUT, singing Stuck Inside of Mobile, and it's perfectly normal. Now as you were.

(note: was linking to the improper URL for Fluxblog at time of posting... this has been resolved. Special thanks to A for pointing it out.)

As a quick check of my last.fm profile will show, I've been loving iTunes "Party Shuffle" option the last 24 hours or so. It's uncovered all sorts of gems and dogs from my library to be enjoyed and/or deleted.

For my former roommate, brendan … a little bit of Austin in the Pacific Northwest at Austin Cantina.

This is a test of audio within posts. The selection is "Brudmarsch Fra Osta", from Kronos Quartet's "Early Music".

Could we stop with the PDF-only menus already? COME ON. I realize in some cases this allowed you to use the same files you were given from whoever did your actual, printed-matter menus; but It doesn't take that long for a professional to mark-up your menu in HTML and stick it on your site, and a little longer to really well integrate it into the look and feel of your site. And what are the benefits? Well, hmmm....

• Less waiting. Your customers at the very least are waiting for a new document to load, and at worst, waiting for a crappy plugin to finish firing up before they see what delectable delights you have to offer.
• Search, Findability, & Accessibility. Yes, yes, "the google" can indeed index PDF's as well, but unless you are tagging your PDF's, it's not going to be well structured in a way that really helps search engines and accessibility tools like screen readers make good sense of what you are offering. Done right, a web version will cover this in spades. Don't you want raise your chances of being a top hit for "Austin, TX" and "Mexican Martini"?
• User Experience. Pulling me out of your website to view a PDF with no links back into it makes it that much harder for me to get back to your contact info, maps, or hours. In many cases, the browser-back-button will save you on this, but not always, and regardless, definitely less intuitive or elegant.

IN FACT... If you are in the Austin area, give me a call. For the right meal(s), I'll come sit at your bar and will do the honors for you. While you wait. (or you know...while you wait on me. Whatever.)

sincerely,
Hungry & Tired (of downloading your PDFs!)

This is documented elsewhere, but since it took me a little bit of work to find a workable solution, and the chosen solution for me amongst many comments in various Apple Discussions threads, I thought I'd put a mention here.

The Issue:

For certain folders within my personal user folder, most notable my users sites folder (~/Sites) and various subfolders thereof, I no longer could save over my files. Coda offered me the option of authenticating with my admin password or replacing the files; finder mostly wouldn't allow me to rename or otherwise alter these files, short of deleting and replacing.

A quick trip to "get info" revealed that while I was the rightful owner of these files, the GROUP was set to "unknown" and had read-only access (sorry, I didn't have the foresight to take a screenshot before I fixed the problem). "Everyone" was set to have write access, but that part didn't seem to matter. From prior experience in Tiger, generally files of this nature are assigned to the group "staff", and would have write privileges. A solution after the jump...

For those who mourn the death of Ze Frank's The Show, I bear good news: on his site there's a one off episode of ze-style goodness talking about the writers guild strike and other current events. Funny, smart, fabulous, and totally made my day.

Some good stuff going on around here, so hopefully I'll have plenty to post about and some other content coming shortly, but today marks the soft re-launch of BB.com. Yes, the first new post was several months ago, but a lot has changed here since then, and it's finally going public. This has been very much a side project as of late, but finally took a couple of hours and finished wacking together the frame and slapping on some drywall.

Comments work, but go through a trashed out screen after being submitted- if you are so inclined, just follow the link back to the main post, and hopefully we'll have that sorted out later today. About and Contact pages will be following in short order. Most links (besides the sidebar links and actual posts) don't go anywhere yet (i.e. resources and schedules), but that will be changing soon too.

If you run into any other rough edges, drop me a note. Thanks!

And now, I think I best jump in the shower and make some lunch!

Leslie Feist on Letterman with backup from members of Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers, The National, Grizzly Bear, and Mates of State.

Last week, our friend Dan hosted a screening of Rize at the Wells Branch Community Library here in Austin. What the film lacked in depth of information and inquiry it made up for in sheer energy and interesting (and previously unknown to any of us) subject matter. Whether you tend more towards music videos, drama, or documentaries, this in (in some ways) all of those things. Check it out.

An on a separate note... a while back I heard an interview with Anoushka Shankar on NPR, and while I found the snippets of her music interesting and her approach even moreso, but didn''t follow up on it. Then, today, I heard her on the All Songs Considered Podcast, and picked up her 2005 release, Rise. I am really liking it, and very curious about her newest release with Karsh Kale, Breathing Under Water .

UPDATE: Just found a recent live performance by Anoushka along with Joshua Bell from the Verbier Festival. Click on August 2nd on the interface on the home page, and enjoy.