5ive Things I know to be true, but have a hard time convincing others

I don’t read many blogs and so I really don’t have much to inspire me on that end. But, one of my favorite is 5ives a humor blog by Merlin Mann who is, dare I say, a fellow Web.2.0 renaissance man. Whatever. I found myself having a number of conversations over the last few days that lead me to compile this (rather unfunny) top five list of my own. Here goes: 5ive things I know to be true, but have a hard time convincing others.

1. C# is the best programming language.

2. Lefties should play right-handed guitar, and righties, left-handed guitar. Why? because the hard part is fretting the notes not “starting” the note. Keep it strung upside-down too – it looks cool and free you from all the hackneyed riff patterns

3. When moving to a new home, people tend to take a long time to unbox themselves and feel guilty about it. The best approach is to open all the cardboard boxes and dump out the contents on the floor. Remove the cardboard! It is a bureaucratic hurdle to your need to get settled.

4. Phil Collins established himself as one of the best drummers of all time with Moroccan Roll.

5. We should teach base-12 (dozenal as opposed to decimal) to grade schoolers – it is superior to base-10 in every way.

iTunes Purchase

I uncreatively use Microsoft and Yahoo! for nearly everything I do. It’s not that I don’t see the superiority of Google or Macintosh it just I prefer to go with what's popular and easy for these things. I see now that when it comes to music, I’ve lost out. I totally dig the new WiMP (version 11 beta), and have bought a bit of music from MSN and MusicMatch. I even helped start a business that sells local wma files as opposed to the aac and m4p files that Macs use, but I eventually had to install iTunes and use their store to make the following purchases. So sad to see that some labels or musicians only want to sell on iTunes and not these stores or the local online route. Ah well. Since I wasn’t able to bring myself to completely switch to iTunes, I immediately burned my purchases to music-CD in order to re-rip them to mp3PRO (my preferred unlocked format). I saw the CDs in a traditional CD store for some $18 or so, but decided I rather forego the fancy artwork for the downloads (which cost less than $10). So here’s what I bought.

“People People Music Music” by Groove Collective : The sixth full CD by perhaps my favorite band of the last 10 years – ever since their release of “We the People”. The music produced by the band (which despite their name is relatively cohesive over the 6 albums – very few member changes for a group of studio-grade jazzers of NYC) continues to fly under the radar of both critic and popular acclaim. That’s too bad. ‘Tis especially a shame that jazz-fans and jazz-critics are not able to appreciate the music, but maybe now that they are on Savoy, things will change. Granted the music is fun, but it also has its complexities. This album shows the band engaging in melodic and harmonic themes extending well beyond 8 bars, and solos that are truly stirring. The album lacks some of the rhythmic complexities we heard on Dance of the Drunken Master, but all in all a rich set of new jazz material. By the way, I am completely comfortable calling this jazz even though purists will be more apt to call it funk or sugar-free jazz.

“Observing Systems” by Tied and Tickled Trio : The second album I bought from iTunes was one I’ve been pining for for years now – but well worth the wait. This is a German band that makes a darker shade of acid-jazz than Groove Collective. What’s gone is the danceable jam-band tendencies, but what replaces it is the brooding glitchy trip-hop underpinnings that reek of euro-trash sophistication. Here is finally a group which I can say is closest to what I try to do in my music. Of course, what we struggle to do with four people, they manage to pull off with 3?! My guess is that trio doesn’t translate to a three-person band in this case. At any rate, this is a hard album to find in the US – but represents (along with the Groove Collective CD) some truly innovative jazz IMHO.

Puzzle: Tale of the Eccentric Vintner

The following is my adaptation of a puzzle offered by an old friend. The original is a little too bawdy so I’ve recast it…

This one eccentric winemaker believes the secret to great drink is to have the grapes squashed by the feet of dancing maidens. He has arranged for one on Saturday and another for Sunday. Given modern health regulations the dancers are required to wear booties, but the vintner is unwilling to spend much money on such disposable footwear. Given that each dancer will be required to squash both chardonnay and cabernet grapes which cannot contaminate each other, and that the dancers are unwilling to wear booties worn by one another – What’s the least number of pairs of booties that the vintner needs to buy? And what procedure is necessary to ensure that the dancers’ feet won’t have to share booties and that the two kinds of grapes do not contact each other.

Hint: 1) it’s fewer than you think, 2) no it’s not 3 pairs, and 3) one can wear booties over other booties.