Various and Sundry: Now Everything But Photography

Just discovered this band and think they’re interesting, so I thought I’d pass along this Video-Made-To-Go-Viral:

They have an album or two up on iTunes that I’ve seen so far.  Listened to a couple of the previews there and I like what I hear so far.

On NBC

Pentatonix is going to win. It’s easy to see that right now. Barring a pair of horribly out-of-sync and out of tune performances in the same night, they’re your winners. Let’s break this down:

Afro-Blue: Confused group. Great at doing jazzy reimaginings, but often overthink it or get too complicated. They’re up and then they’re down over and over again. Some of this is the judges’ fault. In true Idol fashion, one week they tell the group to cut back on the jazz stuff, then the next they complain they’ve lost their jazz identity. Afro-Blue is confused.

Vocal Point: Some minor pitch issues, too distracted by school, not quite strong enough. What is their sound? They don’t have the lead man everyone will identify with. Nice guys, but not different enough from the pack to stand out as something that will win.

Urban Method: There’s still a problem with the women in the group. Even when the judges praise them — see the country song this week — they still sound a little insecure to me. And that weakness has plagued them throughout. They can’t rely on the rapper to carry them, but he’s their strongest part. He’s energetic, comfident, comfortable on stage, and one of those rare things — a rapper who can smile. I hate rap, but I enjoy watching him work.

Dartmouth Aires: Traditional college group. Will probably make it to Top 2 or 3. But they’re just too big, and their sound often gets lost in a chorus of voices. They have a couple of amazing leads to give them a character to hook onto and an identity (which is what doomed other groups like the Yellow Jackets), but the rest of the group is just sorta there. If you dropped four people, you probably wouldn’t hear the difference.

And, realistically, in setting up a tour in support of an album,bnobody wants to fund 15 band members for a road trip. Brian Setzer can only do it with his orchestra by going to Japan.

Pentatonix: The future of a capella. Small group makes them financially feasible to produce. They have a cohesive sound. They’re not a band slapped together for this show that hasn’t gelled. These guys are for real. Every person is strong and can handle the spotlight. They have the most charismatic, energetic, and creative vocal percussionist on the show. Their creativity is wild, and even when they pull it back – see country week, again – they make it a better song.

Pentatonix will win. They’re the group this show was created for, and the group Sony would be most happy to have.

At this point, if I had to guess, I’d say the eliminations will go in this order: Afro-Blue, Vocal Point, Urban Method, Dartmouth Aires. There’s lot of wiggle room in there, though. The judges are just looking for a reason to bounce groups at this point. They’re all great groups, but if they give the judges a reason to kick them off the show at the end of an episode, the judges will jump all over it. So, one
bad performance each week will doom a group.

And it’ll be a lot of fun to watch, because it’s some of the most creative singing television has ever seen, week after week.

When it’s all done, I plan on buying the first season of the show (which I’ve never seen) just to see more of Delilah’s Amy Lynn Whitcomb. She had a very poor choice of hairdo back then, but it’ll still be worth it. Please note that the safest Delilah ever was on this show were the weeks Whitcomb held the lead vocal. The second they let her sink into the background, the group had immediate issues.

I haven’t watched the whole thing in years. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 was even better than I remembered. You can see Steve Jobs almost doing a victory lap on stage there. But you also see why he’s so good on stage: You believe everything he says because it doesn’t sound like a script, and he’s not reading off cue cards. He’s sure of himself. He’s a little cocky. He’s not afraid to throw a barb. He’s clear spoken. He doesn’t mince words. He doesn’t use corporate doublespeak blather. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, and see how far we’ve come in the last four years.

And, on a personal note, here’s my first blog post from my first Mac in September 2004. That computer still sits under this desk, though it’s been replaced by a late model iMac.

Here’s a great video from a guy who has both an insulin pump AND a continuous glucose monitor. Here he goest through his routine of changing out his pump and monitor sets.

I admit that there’s a moment about 9 minutes into this video that got me a little emotional. This being a father thing softens you up…

You can read his full story here, and I definitely recognize parallels to my own situation, though I was only 11 when mine was diagnosed.

I found all this while following a story about hackers killing diabetics from a half mile away that is more than half-hogwash. Don’t worry, it’s not true. And since I don’t use a pump, I wouldn’t be affected, anyway.

When Christina Perri’s debut album came out a couple months back, I wrote up a song-by-song review. For some inexplicable reason, I never posted it. Here’s one song’s review:

“The Lonely” is a dark song, and the most likely to be used on “So You Think You Can Dance” this season. I haven’t checked her tour schedule for the summer, but I’d bet anything there’s a hole in it sometime in June or July for Perri to be there for a victory lap to perform a song from this album. The blatant reference to “Dancing slowly in an empty room” in this song makes it an easy choreographer target. (Though “Bang Bang Bang” would make a kick-butt Quick Step. ;-) I love the piano progressions in this song. It acts as both piano and percussion in the song, which is a nifty trick.

Guess what song they used on “So You Think You Can Dance?” this week? Perri is out on tour and not available to perform on the show, but I almost nailed that prediction…

My iPhone went in the pool with me last Sunday.

I didn’t get too far into the water when I realized it, but I immediately took it out of my pocket and threw it in a towel in a bag and left it alone. By the time swim time was over with my daugther and we got home, the phone was dead as a doornail.

Well, not completely. Throwing it in airplane mode elicited a vibration. But the screen wouldn’t come on, and there was a white border along the upper corner of the screen. Water droplets were visible on the camera lens.

The phone was a goner. After two years of owning it without ever dunking it in the toilet, and two months before the next generation phone was due out, I had hosed my phone. Granted, Apple had a program letting me buy a new one for $199 one time only without affecting the carrier contract. But that’s still $200 more than I had to spend.

Thankfully, I had read about this kind of thing before, and my wife did a quick Google for it to confirm what I had read. So here’s what I did on Sunday afternoon:

1. Removed the SIM card. There was water on it. Dabbed it dry, laid it aside.

2. Took a blow dryer and blew into every open hole of the iPhone — namely, the spot where the SIM card slid out, the headphone jack, and the connector port at the bottom.

2a. After a couple of minutes of hot air, the camera lens was clear again.

2b. Two minutes later, the camera lens was covered in droplets and had to be blown dry again.

3. Took a sandwich-sized zip-lock bag, filled it with white rice (thankfully, we had some in the kitchen), and put the phone in there, with the wet side sticking most conspicuously into the rice.

4. Waited. A couple hours later, I did a quick round of blow drying. The camera lens was half covered, but that quickly evaporated.

5. Put it back in the bag of rice overnight.

5a. Before going to bed, I turned the phone over.

6. The next morning, plugged the SIM card back in, held down the power button, and — nothing.

7. Plugged the phone in. The battery was drained dry. The phone must have been on the entire time.

8. With enough power in it, the phone responded to the home button and came to life. The screen responded to touches. The camera took perfectly clear pictures. So I turned the phone back off –

9. — No, I didn’t. The power button at the top of the phone didn’t work. The water did its damage there. So anytime I wanted to put the phone to sleep, I had to wait for it. The worst part of that? No screen shots.

10. Also, the phone thought there were headphones plugged in at all times. That’s the way it behaved. So, no sounds, and no phone calls without Blue Tooth or ear buds plugged in.

11. By Monday night, the power button was working again, and the iPhone recognize that there wasn’t anything plugged into the headphone jack.

12. As of Wednesday morning, the only defect on the phone is that the volume up button doesn’t work. I can turn it down, but never back up again. Airplane mode works fine, though.

13. Now, a week later, I’m back to not being able to talk regularly on the handset. It’s back to thinking the headset is plugged in continuously, I guess. So it’s speakerphone, headset, or Blue Tooth for all phone calls now. And the volume up button is still hosed. The camera continues to work perfectly.

I just need it to last another month or two. C’mon, iPhone, you can do it!

Jake Shimabukuro!

Virtuoso Ukulele Player!

Seriously, the guy’s insanely good.  The flamenco song he played would rip anyone else’s tendons right out of their arms. And then there’s the crowd-pleasing covers of “Hallelujah,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that are classics.  Here’s a sample:

8.5 million views on that sucker.  Well deserved.

Check out more of my concert pictures and the stories behind them right now at Augieshoots.com.

(Originally posted at AugieShoots.com)

Making some changes around here. The biggest one is a complete rewrite of my concert portfolio. The new link and design is over here:

http://augieshoots.com/portfolio/

It should be an ever-evolving series of pictures from my concert shooting experience. I am constantly tinkering with it, so check it out from time to time. You can bet each new concert will lead to at least one new image up in there.

And, yes, sharp-eyed readers: That’s a new picture from the Jake Shimabukuro concert that I have yet to talk about here. . .

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s what happens when Weird Al Yankovic meets Jim Steinman and hilarity ensues:

As much as it pains me to say it, Amazon should start collecting sales tax and save itself a load of trouble. This is a fight it can’t win, in the end. Why fight the inevitable and piss off legions of people (Affiliate site owners, in particular) along the way?

There’s really no reason Amazon shouldn’t be collecting sales taxes today. They’re using an arcane and antiquated loophole in the law to justify not doing so. Honestly, it’s not that hard a thing to create a database to know how much sales tax to charge a buyer, given their billing address. Yes, it is a system that will require some resources to start and less to keep going in the future, but it’s got to be far cheaper than the lawyers they keep using to fighting local laws and politicians every couple of months.

I’ve enjoyed the tax-free shopping at Amazon for a long time now, but let’s not fool ourselves: we’re supposed to report it at the end of the year and pay it with our state taxes. Very few people actually do, though, and the cost of tracking this and fining people for it is a little overwhelming for state governments to handle. In the end, it likely wouldn’t make them enough money to cover costs.

It’s time for Amazon to grow up and be a real business and collect and pay the same kinds of taxes that every other business in the country does. When I shop at other on-line retailers, they calculate sales taxes and charge me accordingly, particularly the camera stores like Adorama and B and H. Some sort of system could be worked out at Amazon, too. It will level the playing field and save a whole lot of fighting — plus, more revenues for governments that can’t help themselves from wasting it!

And, as a consumer, I know I’m still getting everything cheaper than at a brick and mortar shop. That 7% sales tax (in New Jersey’s case) still doesn’t kill the 30%-plus discount on books we get today.

Still, I’d miss the extra savings. I admit it. But I’m also one of those “grown-up” types. Reality has to set in eventually. The internet is no longer the wild wild west it once was. And this is part of its maturation process.

Also, if your sole source of income is Amazon Affiliate links, you needed to rethink your business model before Amazon started closing its affiliate program in several states.

On the perhaps brighter side, we return to the research of Dr. Faustmann, who years ago I once sent the biggest charitable check in my life to. (Lee Iacocca was a big contributor to her work at the time. That link is from 2006.)

She’s seeing results now for curing diabetes through a TB vaccine:

The first trial in a handful of humans has suggested that injecting patients with Type 1 diabetes with an inexpensive vaccine normally used to prevent tuberculosis can block destruction of insulin-secreting pancreatic cells in humans and allow regeneration of the pancreas. Such a finding, if confirmed and expanded on, could lay the foundation for freeing the estimated 1 million U.S. Type 1 diabetics from their daily insulin shots. It brings up a word that is rarely or never used in considering the disease: “cure.” Such an outcome is still a long way in the future, but Dr. Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital has already come a long way in her quest to find a new treatment paradigm for diabetes.

So she’s actually showing progress, at least, moving in a direction that most people gave up on too long ago, in the hopes of making it easier to take shots and prick our fingers endlessly. Thanks, Dr. F!

Every month or two, this blog likes to highlight the latest cure-all for diabetes. Often, it involves only Type II diabetics, and usually nothing comes of it in the long run.

So goes another cure. This time, it’s extreme dieting:

Eleven people with diabetes took part in the study, which was funded by Diabetes UK. They had to slash their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. But three months later seven of the 11 were free of diabetes.

Still nothing’s been done for those of us who got screwed genetically, not just from eating too much damned McDonalds…

Time for another update…

I saw The Voice for the first time tonight. Besides Frenchie Davis showing up on there, I immediately recognized the singing sisters. i remembered their names first, properly, but I had no doubt who they were: Tori and Taylor Thompson, of American Juniors fame. Eight years ago, they were in the winning group formed by American Juniors that so famously did nothing, released nothing, and disappeared into obscurity. Lucy Hale — the eldest and best of the lot — has since done acting, but The Thompson Sisters stuck with the singing, bouncing from country fair to country fair. And then they, and their parents, found The Voice on NBC and returned to our living rooms for 2011.

Here’s some video of those original auditions. You’ll see Mom is in there, too:

Now you have “One Step Closer to Heaven” stuck in your head again, don’t you? It’s OK to scream. Go ahead…

Wait, was that Carrie Ann Inaba from “Dancing With the Stars” choreographing the kids? Crazy small world…

Here’s one of the spare comments I wrote about them at the time:

In the end, Chauncey is the lucky guy with four cute girls surrounding him, and the Thompson Twins’ parents are the lucky ones who don’t have to worry about favoring one sister over the other in the coming months or weeks. (I know they’re not twins, but I like the 80s sound of calling them that.) Lucy Hale will be the first to leave to pursue a solo act, and I’m afraid I’m not nearly crass enough to predict who will get the first Playboy spread in a few years….

That I know of, there have been no Playboy spreads yet…

I remember when the finalists were chosen that we all figured the second sister would make it once the first did. Sure enough, that happened.

And since that night, I can’t get “We’re the Kids In America” song out of my head when I think of the show. Watch them all in action once again, to refresh your memories.

Or, watch the whole group sing with judge Debbie Gibson, who’s now on tour with Tiffany, by the way:

Cross-posted from AugieShoots.com:

Last week, I wrote up five blog entries detailing my adventure in photographing the SCR concert. Now, for your convenience, here’s a link to them all:

Part 1: Time Constraints
Part 2: Creating Exposure
Part 3: Objects Getting in the Way
Part 4: Be Nice to the Crowd
Part 5: Behind The Scenes, or “How I Got My First Photo Pass”

* Last week at AugieShoots, I talked about my experiences shooting a Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers concert.  Pictures and technical stuff and more can be found in that five day series.

* Good news!  The new O.A.R. album has been announced, and it’ll be out in August.  It’s called “King.”

* Found an interesting band last week: Honeyhoney.  They have one album out on iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store now.  It’s a duo from California, and they’ll be opening for Christina Perri on her tour this summer.  They’re a great match.

* And, of course, Weird Al’s new album, “Alpocalypse,” is due out at the end of the month.