Tag Archives: HD

Things I Learned this Week

Among the things I learned this week:

* Despite the Beastie Boys’ suggestion, Jamaica is not a significant producer of mangoes. (Courtesy: FAOSTAT, nicely displayed on Mongabay.com, and University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences)

* Physiocracy. (Courtesy: Car Talk reference; Wikipedia)

* “Package store” is Northern slang for liquor store. (Courtesy: HD)

* Bitrates of various streaming services:
– Spotify: Vorbis 160kbps with some at 320kbps if a Premium subscriber
– Amazon Cloud Player: MP3 at the rate the file was saved
– Pandora: AAC 64kbps and up to 192kbps, depending on subscription
– Google Music: play back at the quality of the file, except for FLAC, which is played back as mp3 320kpbs

* Lord of the Rings is “fundamentally religious and Catholic work”, according to Tolkien. (Courtesy: Wikipedia and follow up readings).

Things I Learned this Week

Among the things I learned this week:

* The US Open is fun, as are any of these events-as-parties-if-you-have-the-correct-ticket things such as the Preakness (alternatively, I just like wearing seersucker). Also, Congressional Country Club members intensely dislike Tiger Woods, all the while being super kind hosts. (Courtesy: Congressional Country Club)

* Social sites are mined by background check companies, the records of which may be kept for seven years according to the Federal Trade Commission based on the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This is neither surprising nor unexpected and fits nicely with my counter to people who say that they post nothing on social networking sites that matter: But how do you know it won’t matter in the future? In any event, I could not find any articles that clearly explained and explored the FTC decision, but this Wall Street Journal blog post is more or less all that is out there. (Courtesy: WSJ)

* I am surprisingly excited to play putt-putt golf this weekend as part of a friend’s birthday festivities. I haven’t played in years. (Courtesy: HD)

* Collabtive, at least on first install and play around, is a nice albeit basic project management tool. I’m using it for a specific set of projects I’m working. (Courtesy: Collabtive)

Me At My Music Snobbiest

This week, I saw two incredible shows: Preservation Hall Jazz Band at The Barns at Wolftrap and Gil Scott-Heron at 930 Club. The weird part of these shows is that I did not see any of you there (Note: HD was at PHJB and out of town for the second show). I think everything is possible, but it is as close to impossible as possible for me to respect someone’s thoughts on music if they did not attend these shows. So consider yourself dismissed.

So who was there? Aging baby boomers. It’s a sad state of affairs when the sell outs, people too busy driving their kids back and forth from college, and those who have been scared into regular blood-pressure checks have better music taste then your peers.