Unbelievable toys, part 1

I'm fine with Pegasus, but look at the tag: this is endorsed by the
Animal Planet network. Can't wait to see their special on wild Pegasii.

Is Oden done for the year?

Haven't heard an injury report in the last few games on Oden, regarding that chipped bone he got in his knee before the all-star game. But every week since then we've heard that he'll be out another few game, or another week.

Last March the Blazers trotted Oden out for his first practice of the year with the team a day before season tickets for this season went on sale. Season tickets for next season go on sale in the next week, and the team is advertising that people who act early on season tickets for next year have a shot at playoff tickets this year.

Are the Blazers delaying an announcement on Oden being done for the year until after the first week or two of initial season ticket sales? I wouldn't put it past them. You heard the speculation here first.

Someone hates cyclists

Heard about this today:

http://bikeportland.org/2009/03/06/mandatory-bike-registration-bill-introduced-in-salem/

Oregon House bill 3008 would require that bikes in Oregon be registered with the state, and pay a registration fee: $54 every two years. This is the same cost as registering a car for two years. The registration money would go toward bike projects.

Since bikes have become part of the transportation strategy in Portland, I think it makes sense to start looking at them as similar to cars. I don't have a problem with registering a bike, or paying for it. But $54 every two years? I bought my bike for $300 brand new, so registration would have amounted to 1/6 of the cost of the bike right away. If I bought an $8000 new car, which is as cheap as new cars come, that would be like paying $1300 to register it every two years. Outragous!

If registration for my cheap bike was proportional to registration for that cheap car, it would cost 300*54/8000 = $2. That is how out-of-proportion the registration cost is.

Furthermore, now if a parent wants to buy a bike for their kid they're automatically looking at a $54 mark-up, plus more fees as the years go on. I'm not sure if the fees also apply to tricycles.

The article I linked to implied that one of the bill's sponsors doesn't like cyclists. Fine, then tax spandex and Nalgene bottles. But don't make me and my family pay car registration for the bikes we ride for leasure.

NBA attendance down

Found this the other day:

When I go to games, even ones that are packed in other cities, I don't
see a lot of fans decked out in their team's gear, I see a lot of yuppie
businessmen who have decided that the NBA game is the place to be seen. They
could care less what happens on the court, as long as they can glad-hand the
rest of the "important" people.

The wife and I have noticed this at the Blazer games since the start of last season. Lots more douchebags, for lack of a better word, are showing up. Last season we had courtside tickets to a game and the young couple sitting next to us (read: too young to own the seats) showed up halfway through the second quarter and immediately started ordering a bunch of white wine.

If that's who's keeping attendance up in Portland, then the league has problems.

Good blogs

Someone put me on to counterpunch.org recently. I wish I had an easier time finding blogs with writing this thoughtful.

Shazam!

I was skeptical of the Shazam application for the iPhone. Well, it was undeserved. For those who don't know, it records about 20 seconds of audio through the microphone, then a few seconds later tells you the artist and song name. I've got some pretty underground stuff, and I expected it would work so quickly by comparing against a relatively small database - like if you were trying to remember who did "Love Shack" while it's playing at a wedding in order to distract yourself from the song.

First I put it to the test against some classic rock off of iTunes; I was playing the songs through car speakers. The app identified 10 of 11 songs by artists like The Who, Blue Cheer, Zepher, Gentle Giant, White Witch, and Octopus. The only song it didn't get was by Captain Beyond. Anyway, those are on iTunes, so it's fair to expect those to be in the library it compares against. Too easy.

Next I tested a couple songs I had recorded off of record onto tape. I played the tape in the car and Shazam successfully identified a New Birth song and a song by the Rimshots. New Birth is on iTunes, but the Rimshots "Super Disco" is not.

Next I tried some songs straight off of vinyl. Jeannie Piersol's "Gladys": failure. Black Anger's "S.E.L.F.": failure. Johnny Hammond's "Never Can Say Goodbye": success. The Johnny Hammond is on iTunes, the other two aren't, and probably aren't available on CD either.

Anyway, it's a lot more useful than I expected, if you have an iPhone you should check it out.

Audacity

I just downloaded Audacity this morning and I'm mixing a track I recorded with Mr. Wright a few days ago. I haven't tried anything advanced, but so far I think it's great. No need to get Audition or Pro Tools if you're just mixing stuff that's already recorded.

I wasn't even thinking about trying to record with it, but maybe I'll try.