Moving on

Blogger has been good (mostly) but the time has come to take the training wheels of and set out into the real world.

I've migrated my blog to a new location jonsmith.greykitty.net

Please update your links and RSS feeds as I will no longer be publishing here.

See you soon!!!

Continuum Fingerboard

Imagine a keyboard that plays like a slide guitar. That's what the Continuum is. Jordan Rudess has a video clip up on his site of him playing the instrument. It is way cool.

Check it out.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

I apologize for the lack of posts recently. Grease has taken up most of my time, and when I haven't been busy with that, I've been building the new website. I did settle on Wordpress to be my new blog publishing software. I've done the install (which was very easy), transferred my Blogger posts (which was a pain), and it is nearly ready to launch.

I'll provide more details later, probably when the new blog is ready.

Porcupine Tree - Deadwing

Porcupine Tree's new album Deadwing is due out on April 26. Pre-orders for the Limited Edition are being accepted. The Limited Edition includes a DVD with a 5.1 mix of the album, a regular stereo CD and a hard-bound 72-page booklet with lyrics, photography by Lasse Hoile and artwork. I realize this may seem extreme to some, but I own a copy of the 5.1 mix of In Absentia, and it sounds incredible. I’ve already placed my order.

The only single being released is for the song Lazarus. It is being released in Germany. I placed an order the day it went live, good thing too as they have already sold out.

The most exciting news, of course, is the 2005 tour. They’ll be kicking off the U.S. leg in Washington, D.C. at the 9:30 Club, and I’ll be there! I only hope that Blackfield will be opening for them.

Visit the newly redesigned site porcupinetree.com for tour dates and more info.

PhD Blogging

Mathemagenic is the blog of a PhD student who is blogging her research. Her research topic is "Personal productivity in a knowledge intensive environment: A weblog case". In a nutshell, she is blogging about blogging! This is actually a very interesting idea to me. Although I don’t use my blog as a work or research tool, I certainly see how it could be used as one. Perhaps after I get involved in my graduate work I will begin doing just that. The idea of a hyper-linked notebook that is searchable makes perfect sense to me. The more I use the internet and related technologies, the less I think in a linear fashion. Too bad term papers still have to be written on physical paper instead of in a hyper-linked document!

Mathemagenic discovered via Christina’s LIS Rant.

Idris H. His wrote an article in 2002 called "Things New PhDs Should Start Doing". In summary the points made:

1. Keep a Research Diary
2. Maintain an Electronic Bibliography
3. Know Your Search Engines
4. An Archiving System for Useful Info
5. Learn The Composition of your Research Community
6. Document Useful Learning Experiences
7. Keep a Professional Home Page
8. Maintain an Updated CV
9. Get Involved Early On
10. Develop Research Meta-awareness

With databases and content management systems we have wonderful tools to record information and organize it in many different fashions. Number One, Keep a Research Diary just screams blog. The blog doesn't have to be a public one, but the sharing of information can certainly be useful, especially if you connect with others doing similar research.

New Web Host

I've setup an account with the webhosting service Catalyst2. They have some good deals and meet all of the requirements I have.

I've also settled on blog publishing software: WordPress. While there were a couple others that provided the same features that I wanted, WordPress appears to be the easiest to install and maintain. It also has an active and sizeable support community. Moveable Type on the other hand, is notorious for being difficult to set up and modify.

I am looking for one other piece of software for my new site, an image sharing program. My wife and I like to share our pictures with our family and friends on our personal site, but right now we're just creating static HTML pages with images on them. I'd like something that she could log in to and upload photos without doing any programming... and depending on bandwidth, perhaps I will even let some family members create accounts to share their photos as well. There are two programs I am looking at right now, Coppermine Photo Gallery and Gallery.

As eager as I am to get the new site up and running, it may be a few weeks yet. As a favor to a friend I'm playing bass in a musical stage production of "Grease" and that has me booked pretty solid. Patience, young jedi.

Blackfield Concert

I attended a Blackfield concert at Iota Club back on March 14th. I won't give you a blow by blow (unless you want me to!) account of the concert... it is suffice to say that it was awesome. In a word, intimate. You can see from the following photograph just how close we were:



Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) on the left, Aviv Geffen in the middle, and Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) on the right.

Steven opened with some PT songs, I don't remember which exactly. I'm sure a setlist is on the net somewhere. I do remember that he covered Abba, which was quite a suprise and sounded great! During the Blackfield set both Steven and Aviv had a strings break during seperate songs but recovered very nicely and the crowd was very understanding. After Steven's string broke in the opening of the first song (!) I yelled at Jordan and asked him to solo. After a few others in the crowd joined in he acquiesced and entertained us with a virtuosic keyboard solo while the guitar was taken care of.

Ok, enough talk, more pictures.



Taking a bow.

I actually did not get many pictures since they didn't turn out with the flash off, and we didn't start using the flash until the encore.



Steven and I. The man is pure genius.



Steven's shoes. My wife got a 'kick' out of them.



Jordan and I. The Wizard also has a blog of sorts.



Me and Bert. Who is Bert, you ask? Bert (aka the fifth Beatle) played keyboards for Neal Morse on the Testimony tour. He was at the Blackfield concert as Jordan's tech, and I recognized him. What a great guy! I hope I run into him again sometime.