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Foo Fighters: Acoustic at the Pantages

Sarah scored some tickets to the sold out acoustic Foo Fighters show at the Pantages theater on August 29th. It was the first concert I had been to in a while and all I can say is wow. I’m not a diehard Foo Fighters fan but I enjoy music and good production and engineering qualities. My short recap of the concert is that it was not just good, but is possibly the best live musical performance I have ever been too.

If it had been a traditional plain old rock concert with outrageously loud Marshal stacks and little interaction with the audience then my overall impression would not be so ecstatic. The acoustic setup allowed the band to double in size to keep a fuller sound and add something new. They added on one more guitarist, original band member Pat Smear, a keyboard/organ/accordion player, full time percussionist and Petra Haden on violin/mandolin/vocals. The extended band added a very enjoyable dimension.

When it came down to it though, the show just totally rocked. The Pantages is a pretty small venue for a band of this size and our seats were in the orchestra, 11 rows back, barely off center, couldn’t ask for better seats. Dave Grohl was interacting with the crowd and actually responding to shouted comments which made the performers feel much more accessible. At one point Grohl was telling how he joined Nirvana and was staying in Curt Cobain’s apartment and paused at a point in the story and someone yelled out that “the rest was history” and Grohl went with it.

From a production standpoint things were done pretty well. Lighting was spot on and I couldn’t find anything to complain about with the mix. They were filming for a DVD so we might very well have shot of us since we were right on the aisle and they kept panning by us.

We saw Wicked at the Orange County Performance Arts Center a couple weeks ago so if I keep this up I might be in danger of becoming “cultured”.

Video from concert with pretty good video but clipped audio (I guess tiny digital cameras aren’t designed to handle sound levels over 100 dB SPL). I’ll post another clip if a better one shows up.

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Keyboards are dumb (and I make my living with them)

I have a lull in stuff to do at work and I looked at my keyboard and realized that it is quite an outdated and unfriendly piece of equipment. A line from Atom and His Package’s song on the metric system comes to mind, ” You’re drunk with your tradition / That has no validity”. Ever wonder what the scroll lock key really does (was used to allow scrolling text around the then small screens with the arrow keys)? Ever actually used it for anything? Me neither. So why is it still being placed on our keyboard even though it hasn’t been used since the 1980’s.

Most things we use are engineered for a particular use, the shifter in your car is made just to shift and P, R, N, and D all make pretty good sense. The keyboard sitting in front of you though doesn’t make sense because it is meant as a general purpose input device and this leads to a boatload of problems.

In Microsoft Word, know what the F7 button does? It brings up the spellchecker. The only way you would know that is if you have it memorized, not because it makes sense to associate function key 7 with checking your spelling. Any guesses on what the other function keys do?

The shift key is another marvel all in itself, with the addition of one key the number of available functions available on a keyboard double! So in Word, when you hit shift+F7, it no longer brings up the spellchecker, this time you get the thesaurus. In some programs like Photoshop, I’ve seen some functions being tied to triple and quadruple key presses, good for people highly proficient in the program, bad for people trying to learn it.

Some keyboard functions have become standardized simply because of the location of the keys themselves! Ctrl+X cuts text and places it memory, Ctrl+V inserts that text wherever the curser is on the screen, and Ctrl+Z undos the process. There is no real meaning tied to the Z, X, and V keys, they just happen to be the easiest to press while holding down the left Ctrl key with your pinky. I feel sorry for people without a left pinky because it would make copying and pasting a pain.

So what’s the problem? This abstract relationship between buttons and functions is not user friendly. The longer things stay the same the more people get locked into it and that makes changing things even harder. I think our biggest hope for change lies with laptops and smaller form factor devices that don’t have the real estate luxury for extraneous buttons.

Have you had any problems with your keyboard or experienced difficulty figuring out what keys actually do what?

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Methods of connecting an Mp3 Player up to your car stereo

Posted a comment on a friends page and inspired me to post on this subject.

I wouldn’t even consider an FM transmitter and would only resort to tape at last resort.

The best option is to plug directly into your car’s head unit through an auxiliary input. Even with stock car stereos there is a chance an adapter is available. And if not, I’d try a FM modulator (different from transmitters, they plug directly into antennae on the stereo to minimize interference).

I use to have a Kenwood head unit in my old truck and I got the adapter that plugs into the cd changer port and it worked great. Just ran the RCA cable out from under the dash and up to the center console and plugged straight in.

The best list of available adapters I’ve found is at Installer.com.

So in summary:

  • FM transmitters (the cheap toys you get at Radio Shack) – avoid like the plague.
  • Tape Adapters – Final resort if you are strapped for cash and you actually have a tape player (which is becoming quite rare on newer cars and head units).
  • FM modulator – plugs directly inline with your car’s antennae, final resort if you value sound quality.
  • Auxiliary input – Stereo manufacturers are finally catching on and Aux inputs are becoming more widespread. They offer the least amount of sound quality loss and depending on your setup can be pretty affordable.

I think a lot of people view hooking up their Mp3 player the same as the headphones they use, they simply see no reason to upgrade. After dropping $200-300 on a very capable Mp3 player, most people will not spend the extra money to upgrade their headphones. This is why you see the trendy Ipod masses on college campuses walking around with their white earbuds stuffed in their ears. Spend another $35 on something like these Sennheiser PX 100‘s and increase the quality of your music, unless looking trendy and “cool” matters more.

The same goes with hooking your Mp3 player up in the car, don’t spend $15 on the FM crap emitter, invest a little more and get a higher quality signal with less hassle. I look at it this way, how much is it worth to not have to listen to crappy radio music and commercials? Stick it to the man and hook your mp3 player up to your car stereo.