State of the Dave
February 24th, 2008 adminGot something of a ramble for you today; got several things I would like to mention.
First of all, I broke down and bought an�iPhone.�I figured I would eventually have one when they first went on sale last summer, but I had held off until now. My previous phone, a Moto Razr had been getting progressively flakier; once I started missing calls for no apparent reason, I figured it was time to upgrade. Over all, I like the iPhone, and I would recommend it to others except for a few big caveats:
- Mobile Safari crashes. Often. And for no apparent reason.
- Don’t believe the commercials, EDGE is painfully slow for web browsing.
The iPhone is wonderful for email. EDGE may be too slow for today’s web pages, but it works very smoothly when it doesn’t need to pull down so much data. Personally, this thing will be a killer device for me once there is a solid RSS reader. Not a monkey-ass web app, but a full application.
Secondly, I bought�Heretic Pride,�the latest from The Mountain Goats, the day it was released (through Amazon’s Digital Download service, which I will talk about momentarily). It is a decent album. Not my favorite TMG, but pretty solid. This album isn’t as quiet as�Get Lonely,�the last one, but it is still a bit subdued in comparison to much of the earlier work. Personally, I like John Darnielle’s singing best when it is at its most manic, like in this album’s first single, Sax Rohmer #1. That said, this album is much more accessible than much of the earlier stuff, and I will be recommending it to just about everyone I know.
Thirdly, I love Amazon’s digital download service. I’ve purchased three albums from them, and honestly, I will probably never buy another song from iTunes. The service is very streamlined for existing Amazon customers, from One-Click buying to importing the songs directly into iTunes. There is a little downloader app that you must use to buy whole albums, but it keeps things nice and simple, and just works (unlike the eMusic downloader, which will no longer work on my machine).
Fourthly and finally, the reason I sat down to write this post: I may have mentioned this before, but I am getting married this June. I (foolishly) volunteered to pick all the reception music, and I am having some difficulties figuring out exactly what to play. So I’m putting out the call: what should I be sure to include in the music. Any standout tracks that worked well at weddings you’ve attended?
Right now, I’m planning on using a lot of the ‘classics’ — Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, maybe some Thelonious Monk (if I can sneak it in) with a few diversions into some modern indie rock. I will be creating a separate�page�for the list of songs.