While it may seem weird to some, I do say that anything with girls and robots in the same song/sentance must be amazing. This song lives up to the high standards I have for songs with the two involved. This track was included in a past radio show.

[audio:mp3s/vector_lovers-girl_plus_robot.mp3] vector-lovers – girl + robot

And… BONUS! Surprised, aren’t you?

[audio:mp3s/vector_lovers-night_train_memories.mp3] vector-lovers – night train memories

It’s 5:40am and I’m getting a lot of good solid programming done. Do I (a) keep going in my productive, awake, but possibly drone state until I can go no longer and possibly skipping a night of sleep or (b) sleep now, later than I should have, kill my productivity, and promise to get up and running quickly when I re-awaken in the morning (by which I mean the time that I wake from sleep)?

I’m going to go to sleep (after I finish this blog entry) because I want to be cautious about the possible side effects of skipping even one night of sleep. In fact, after reading I may be causing more damage than I think by maintaining a volatile sleep schedule.

I’ve recently become more and more self-conscious about my mental health and progressively adjusting my lifestyle and decisions to help my body and mind stay as fit and problem-free as possible. There are so many other things in this life that can and will stand as external, unavoidable speed bumps causing me to lose time, concentration, and emotional stability that it only makes sense to work hard preserving my body as best as I personally can.

I say this as a person who does not live anywhere near an optimal lifestyle in terms of health. I do not do drugs or over consume foods with large quantities of unhealthy ingredients nor do I exercise really at all. I don’t consider myself an unhealthy person, but rather an “average” person that has a lot to improve upon.

I’ve never done well jumping into new responsibilities or habits without a considerable transition period. I find it difficult to go cold turkey or make sudden changes in my life so I take it easy and change slowly, but in the right direction.

Here’s to a (post new years) resolution to every day make at least a some amount of progress towards a better physical, mental, and emotional health.

I just returned from a panel with several media collections librarians and would like to reflect.

When I think of libraries, I think of vast stores of knowledge that can only be had at a library. When I think of library media (audio or video) collections, I think of a place I can easily obtain copyrightable material to copy for my own uses without worrying about being caught. As bad as that may be, that’s how I perceive library media collections. While both provide the same type of resource and are both just as valid of mediums to collect, they are generally used for very different purposes by the majority of the population.

Books will always have their place. You can’t really replace the utility of a book. Products like the kindle try to be books, but they aren’t and never — knock on wood — replace books. Assuming it’s not possible (at least in the foreseeable future) to inject knowledge into the brain, books will always be the most efficient medium for reading text.

Music and video, on the other hand, is a much more flexible type of information/property that has continued to evolve by leaps and bounds in the ways that people consume, own, and distribute it. There may be evolutions in paper or archival materials for books, but music has evolution of physical mediums far more evolutionary — from sheet music to wax records to tape to compact disc to now digital files that can be created, transfered, and consumed in more ways than we can accurately predict today. Advances in listening/viewing technology, storage technology, distribution technology, and licensing technology are changing so rapidly that it’s hard for even the most successful of players in the business to keep a sustained hold on a piece of the market. Things just move too fast.

Libraries don’t have the financial and human capital required to keep up with the evolution of media. While I realize that libraries are doing great things and are working really hard to adopt a lot of these new “web 2.0″ technologies (cough. I think that’s the first time I’ve resorted to using that term in writing. I can’t avoid it any longer, i succumb to the power of the buzzword.) in their systems and vision, corporations are popping up like wildflowers with new, innovative, and extremely accessible ways for people to gain access to media of all kinds. Libraries are trying to keep up with what has already been done, but without a surge of innovation in industries providing public access to materials (including libraries) companies will soon easily far surpass what libraries can provide as a unique and valuable resource for the majority of users. I say the majority of users because physical archives of multimedia content will still hold some value forever for niche users, researchers, and historians, access to what most regular people (which seems to be the largest audience and reason for the existence of public libraries) need and want is for many people (and increasing exponentially) already far more than any library can provide as well as they already have through commercial and non-library resources.

Being a student in the Information School where the largest percentage of students in the school are studying library and information sciences, this hurts a little but is the fact of the state of the world and our society.

During the week I spent at my parents’ place this last holiday season I spent some time going through old boxes of papers from high school (I have a difficulty throwing away completed work so I had lots of boxes of past schoolwork) and kept finding pieces of paper folded in 1/8ths with random notes written inside and out all over the sheets. It surprised me to recollect this habit I used to have because in my transition into college a few years ago I stopped relying on traditional ruled notebooks and went mostly digital. My ad-hoc habit of taking notes and carrying a note sheet with me was inadvertently broken as an externality of no longer using notebook sheets all the time.

I never really thought about it until just this last break. Only about 9 months ago did I realize I wasn’t taking notes in my everyday activities and start to condition myself to do so (Now I carry a blank, brown Moleskine cahier notebook at all times which I love). I didn’t, however, put two and two together to realize why I stopped taking notes but just that I didn’t.

I can’t help but wonder if there are other good habits I had before college that I inadvertently stopped doing.

There are bands out there that are overly predictable and embrace the cheesiest of pop hooks and I can’t stand them. Elias and The Wizzkids (myspace) take the great parts of pop music and infuse it reasonably well (there are parts where they get a little close to being over the top) with the singer’s awkwardly comfortable singing style, upbeat indie rock, and wonderfully depressing and negative-outlook-on-life lyrics into something great.

You’ve got to give it to them just for being from Stockholm.

[audio:mp3s/elias_and_the_wizzkids-i_wish.mp3] Elias and the Wizzkids – I Wish

[audio:mp3s/elias_and_the_wizzkids-the_dance.mp3] Elias and the Wizzkids – The Dance

I must have heard this while watching Heroes a few days ago (that show is far too addiciting. stay away.). I’ve never really been a big Rogue Wave fan but they come up every few months and I’m never dissapointed with them. They aren’t the most revolutionary band in the world but they do produce nice comfortable music. This track gets to me the same way Nada Surf does — it’s simple.

[audio:mp3s/rogue_wave-eyes.mp3] Rogue Wave – Eyes

I do not classify myself as a sports fan. That is, I don’t actively seek out sporting events. I do not know all the rules. I don’t even recognize famous players on our local teams. I do, however, enjoy an occasional opportunity to watch and experience sporting events with friends and to see from a new perspective what a large portion of america does.

Maybe I just don’t get it or maybe I have somehow “matured” past what it is that people see in football (the american type). By in large, fan involvement with football seems more often than not over the top and mind-numbingly superficial. People go crazy for their team, whichever that may be. The team receiving fan support is so often not because they are the “best” team in any concrete way but because the person decided at some point that they would whole-heartedly support a professional group of athletes for no reason other than their friends or family traditionally supports it. I have a hard time grasping these types of actions. People walk down the street wearing team paraphernalia (expensive stuff, I should add) all over their body, their cars, and their home — and for what? To pronounce their allegiance to make them feel somehow more closely associated with a team? To feel as one with this group of high paid athletes as they work their way through a ladder of games against competitors where they play widely televised and commercialized games against other groups of people? It seems so. At least from my perspective, it seems a little crazy.

This sort of behavior is visible in other situations such as when people choose to wear clothing that is designed to primarily advertise for a private brand or enterprise. I imagine most of the time people wear it because they want to associate with certain ideals — with an “image”. It helps people offload an amount of their need to express themselves uniquely by associating with something that people can easily draw from their preconceived notions about a brand/concept to make assumptions about a person’s ideals and place in society.

I don’t mean to over-emphasize the image aspect of associating with sports, though. It’s also a highly socially accepted way to spend “off” time without requiring a great deal of investment or experience. People can gather and live through this alternate universe that is the football system where nobody is (or can be, for that matter) held responsible for their actions on behalf of “their team”. Millions of people greatly enjoy football (and sports in general) for these very reasons and embrace that fact.

Football (and sports in general) is not a bad thing, but I just don’t see how I could legitimately get involved in such a tradition without feeling at least a little bit foolish and detached from reality. That being said, I’m in no way innocent from spending my time and associating with similar type phenomenons. I just feel there are so many more interesting and enriching things to spend time and money on than football that I would rather get involved with. For example debating, making things (anything), exploring music, contemplating ideas and theories, learning about interesting people and things going on around the world, or so many other things that bright people get involved with. I would rather obsess over something that I can grow from and learn from than pitter away in support of a corporate sports team.

Ah, here we go again. To another domain name! I had second thoughts hosting my blog/journal on the home page of zachhale.com so I moved it and my tumblelog over here.

Welcoming Bleep

I’ve also set up a new site! I finally broke down and set up a dedicated music blog. It will be a place that I can write about the new music I’m listening to, rant about things happening around the music scene, and whatever else seems appropriate. I think I’ll primarily use it to post mp3s of new interesting tracks, but it will also now be the home of my radio archives and mixtapes as previously hosted at poorleno.

I’ve named it Bleep so as to make the url bleep.blipbloop.net. It’s funky!

Check out Bleep!

And there we have it — a new site. I hope to rant here more often with smaller posts than was happening on zachhale.com. When it comes time I may put together a “featured” section of popular content (if that happens. ;)).

Enjoy!

With the move to a new domain, blipbloop.net, I’ve decided to finally make a music blog. I will probably scatter mp3 reviews, album reviews, random music news, new music websites and other similar tidbits. We will see!

To get this party started I’m going to post what I recently claimed would likely be my personal theme song if I were to choose one.

[audio:mp3s/hot_butter-popcorn.mp3] Hot Butter – Popcorn