mike's web log

Christmas song superlatives

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 11:04:57 GMT

It is (was?) a tradition in high school annuals to have a selection of "senior superlatives" — "best looking", "funniest", "most likely to succeed", like that. I was thinking about Christmas songs and thought we should devise superlatives for those as well. Here are my votes.

Weirdest premise: "Little Drummer Boy"

Least Christmas-y "Christmas" song: "Hallelujah" (Leonard Cohen). Honorable mention: "River" (Joni Mitchell). Second runner-up: "My Favorite Things"

Most suggestive: "Santa Baby"

Most likely to inspire you to break up with your true love: "The Twelve Days of Christmas"

Most repetitive: "Feliz Navidad". Honorable (though at least amusing) mention: "The Twelve Days of Christmas"

Most dismaying example of social capital as a function of recognition by influencers: "Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer"

Most likely to get someone in trouble: "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

Creepiest 24/7 surveillance: "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"

[more]

For lack of a nut

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 12:59:37 GMT

I have an electric ukulele, which has a jack on the side:

At some point I noticed that the jack had come loose — the nut that holds the jack tight had come off and disappeared and the jack had fallen back into the body of the ukulele.

Well, I thought, I'll go get a replacement nut to hold the jack in place. The first thing I had to figure out was what exactly I was looking for. The nut that holds the jack tight is called a jack nut (reasonably) or a switch nut (because it's used in electronics to hold switches tight):

I started at my local Ace Hardware, but no joy there. Then I went to the "good" hardware stores, which in our area are McLendon Hardware[1] and Dunn Lumber. At those types of hardware stores you can talk to folks who know their inventory, and indeed, I was directed to the hardware drawer where they keep their switch nut-type stuff. But still no joy; nothing in their cabinets fit the jack on my uke. Most peculiar.
At that point I decided that I should contact the company I'd gotten the uke from, a small firm that I think (?) is in Oregon. After some back and forth I managed to convey what the issue was. They were then happy to send me a replacement nut. But … it didn't fit. Given how hard it had been to try to get sizing info for the nut, I wasn't sure that going back and forth with them was going to be fruitful.

Ok, I decided, time to go to the real [more]

Ukulele recordings

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 22:40:38 GMT

These are recordings I've made of me playing solo ukulele. Unless otherwise noted, the tunes come from Graded Repertoire for Ukulele: Classical, Volume 1, a book by Jeff Peterson. The arrangements are his.

Johannes Brahms, "Berceuse" (often known as "Brahms's Lullaby")
Recorded September 6, 2021

Matteo Carcassi, "Andantino"
Recorded June 4, 2021

Grieg, "Hall of the Mountain King"
Recorded May 16, 2021

Ferndando Sor, "Study No. 3"

Recorded April 14, 2021

Ferndando Sor, "Study No. 2"

Recorded March 14, 2021
[more]

Ukulele: Estudio No. 1

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:22:54 GMT

I've been working from the book Graded Repertoire for Classical Ukulele with arrangements by Jeff Peterson. I'm plugging away at learning to translate written music to ukulele strings and learning some basic techniques from classical guitar as applied to the ukulele.

Update I decided to make a single blog entry that tracks these recordings. (The link to this recording is repeated there.)

I could practice the same pieces forever, probably. So I thought I'd finish them as you do when you take piano lessons: perform them. In my case, I thought I'd record the pieces I really liked, and then declare myself done with those pieces. This is my first effort, "Estudio No. 1" by Dionisio Aguado (1784-1849), arranged for uke, as noted, by Jeff Peterson. This is the 4th piece in Grade 1 (of 8), and has been my favorite so far.

Estudio No. 1

The circle of movable shapes on the ukulele (major)

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 21:56:25 GMT

On the ukulele (as with guitar), the idea of movable chords is that the shapes you learn for open chords constitute patterns. By adding a barre, you can move the shapes up the fretboard to form new chords. For example, you can take the C shape, move it up 2 frets, and get a D:

If this is a new concept for you, may I recommend my booklet on movable shapes for ukulele (PDF).

In this post I want to talk about the patterns—the relationships—for moving these patterns around the fretboard. Bear with me while I explain this notion.

On the concert uke, there are basically 5 shapes for playing movable major chords[1]:

In addition to making it easy for you to move a C shape to a D shape (for example), this means that there are 5 ways to play any given major chord. Here are 5 ways to play a C major chord:

There's a relationship—a kind of circle—among these shapes in terms of how you can move between these different ways to play the same chord. I'll show you the diagram and then illustrate how it works.

Here's a different, more formula-like way to indicate the same thing:

C shape + 3 frets = A shape A shape + 2 frets = G shape G shape + 2 frets = F shape F shape + 3 frets = D shape [more]
Ukulele Christmas tunes Wed, 23 Dec 2020 22:16:29 GMT Every year I get out the trusty Hal Leonard Christmas Carols for Solo Ukulele book and see if I can remember the ones I learned the year before and maybe learn a new one. Then I use my primitive home recording setup to record them, just for fun. Here are recordings of some of them that I made this year. These are all MP3 files that are about a minute long and all less than 1 MB. PS I'm not a very good uke player. Note: For technical reasons that I don't understand, you might have to refresh the page after listening to a track before you can listen to a different track. Sorry :( Away in a Manger Jingle Bells O Tannenbaum Silent Night Merry Christmas! How we talk about our favorite music through the years Wed, 18 May 2016 23:51:18 GMT Inspired by a Facebook thread today. Junior high This music is hip because the older kids listen to it. High school This music is cool because it's edgy. And deep. College freshman This music is fun because LET'S PAR-TAY! College junior This music is so much more sophisticated than what I used to listen to. Early 20s Aw ... remember this music from high school? Late 20s This music is perfect for our wedding reception! 30s Shut up, you snotty teens. This is GOOD MUSIC. Early 40s Ha, you kids today don't even realize this music is a cover. Late 40s How did this music get on a PBS special? 50s Hey, those weasels are using this music for a TOYOTA COMMERCIAL! 60s Can it be 50 YEARS since this music came out?! Oh say, can you sing it? Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:40:57 GMT Here's a little self-administered test for Americans. (Of course, non-Americans are welcome to play, too, if they want.) Sit yourself down with a blank piece of paper or a blank document in your text editor and write out the words — first stanza only — of the US national anthem. When you're done, check your answers by looking up the lyrics. (Here's one site you can use.) How'd you do? Something like 2/3 of Americans can't get the lyrics right. I got to thinking about this because twice in the last few weeks I've seen a sporting event at which the pre-game singer mangled the words to the anthem (most prominently, Christina Aguilera at the Superbowl). The US national anthem presents some difficulties, I think, in a couple of ways:The words only make sense if you know that it commemorates a siege and bombardment. What "perilous fight" are we talking about here? What's up with the "rockets' red glare"? In the second line, "what so proudly we hail'd," what does what refer to? Not that this is necessarily important, but what war is this? The musical range, an octave plus a fifth, is at about the limit of the range for amateur singers. There's more than one reason that people applaud when singers hit that "home of the FREE". :-) [more] An early example of repurposing Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:24:42 GMT That Mozart could be a sly fellow. Music poured out of the guy seemingly effortlessly -- legend has it that the Kegelstatt Trio was written out while Mozart was waiting his turn at skittles[1] -- but maybe it wasn't as always as easy as that. And the man did have to make a living, after all. Take, for example, the flute concerto in D. According to S. W. Bennett, on the liner notes to the LP The Virtuoso Oboe:[T]he financially hard-pressed Mozart had an opportunity to earn some money by writing for the flute, an instrument he disliked. A Dutch patron of music and flautist, M. de Jean, commissioned in 1778 a group of flute works, which Mozart had to supply in a hurry. He brought forth three flute quartets and two flute concertos. You're in hurry, you have some distant patron, and you don't even like the flute. So what do you do?Of the latter [that is, the concertos] the one in D is undoubtedly the C major oboe concerto transcribed. As "almost conclusive evidence" Alfred Einstein points to the fact that in its D major flute form, the violin parts of the concerto never go below A on the G-string, indicating that the whole work was simply transcribed a whole tone upwards. Heh. Hey, maybe he won't notice that his commissioned flute concerto is actually an oboe concerto redone to make it more flute-y. But alas, it seems that De Jean did actually notice -- per the infallible Wikipedia [more] DIY (almost) guitar setup Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:07:27 GMT This post is strictly about guitar setup; for those who care naught for guitar mechanics, nothing here to see. Catch you next time. I had an interesting guitar setup experience recently. If you have even moderate experience with guitar setup, this will probably all be old hat. (And if you have none, you probably don't care. So who's reading? Hmmm.) I got my electric a year and some ago. It's a knockoff of a Gibson ES-330: I like it fine. As I got it, it had some relatively high-gauge strings (11s, probably). Being new to electric, I had nothing to go by, so I used that guitar as-is. I had a setup done at one point, but didn't have it restrung. During one of my lessons, tho, we were talking about bending, and my teacher had a go on my guitar. "Lighter strings, dang!" was his recommendation, so I had one of the shop guys put on some lighter ones (10). It was sort of a rush job, which more-or-less explains the rest. The lighter strings were a definite plus. However, it seemed to me that the guitar had developed a slight buzz. (This is where the experienced folks say "duh.") I kept thinking I should take it in for another setup, but didn't get around to it. One night, tho, I was at guitar school (not to be confused with lessons), and the owner dude (Jay) introduced Ryan, a new guy they had. Ryan was a guitar builder, Jay said, and was open for business. Specifically, you could bring him your guitar for repair or whatever. It was the same price as taking the guitar to a shop, but -- the cool part -- you could watch and, if you wanted, Ryan would teach you to do what he was doing. [more] Roundup Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:20:19 GMT You know what I wouldn't mind? A bit of sunshine. Wrong time (winter) in the wrong place (Seattle), I guess. Fake reviews prompt Belkin apology. I guess I've just always assumed that some number of product reviews (and restaurant reviews) are by shills. (I'm usually most suspicious of the ones with the really, really bad grammar, haha.) The #1 Song on this Date in History. What was the #1 song on the Billboard chart on the day that you were born? (Me, it was Elvis Presley, "Too Much.") [via Sarah] [18 Feb 2012: h/t to Rupert Charles for the updated link!] What the Web knows about you. Check out the list in the sidebar of all the things the author was able to find about himself. [via ... just about everyone] Facebook and list mania, aka "25 Things About Editors". John McIntyre's editor-specific take on the "25 things about me" meme that's been going around. Roundup Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:01:50 GMT A short list today. Spending too much time away from the computer. Ha! How to get someone to answer your questions. Clever strategy, heh. [via Raymond Chen] How Math Unraveled the 'Hard Day's Night' Mystery. You know that opening chord for The Beatles' "Hard Day's Night"? Guy figured out how they made it. [via Daughter Sabrina] Spelling Bee. The Visual Thesaurus people have put up a spelling-bee style spelling test that's strangely addictive. [via Fritinancy] Key to the Highway Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:17:23 GMT Alternative lyrics. I got the key to the highway Billed out and bound to roam It's a new GPS box It tells me how to get home I'm going back to the border This time I won't get lost Like when we went there that last time And got ourselves all crossed When the moon peeks over the mountains My beacon I'll be able to set I'm gonna roam this old highway And my old maps I'm gonna forget Gimme one more kiss, darling And one for my GPS Coz when I leave here this time Directions I won't have to guess Our bummer song lists Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:20:30 GMT I've been taking guitar class for several sessions running, as noted before. Although members come and go, over the course of these sessions the median age of the participants just hasn't gone down much, so our jocular appellation for the class ("Old Guy Rock") these days is less humor and more just, you know, fact. And as it turns out, left to our own devices, we always end up selecting songs that are not the, you know, sunniest pop songs. Let's see ... we've had suicide ("Fire and Rain"), regret ("Best of My Love"), regret ("Brown Eyed Girl"), regret ("Can't You See"), regret ("Layla"), regret ("Wish You Were Here"), depression ("You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"), resignation ("Flake"), despair ("Cold, Cold, Heart"), existential ennui ("Norwegian Wood"), prison ("Folsom Prison Blues"), death ("Gravedigger"), suicidal depression and regret ("Hurt"), and, um, who knows ("Ripple"). As a sample. Well, it turns out there's a reason. I dug up an old, old quote tonight, and golly, maybe this is relevant. Rock and roll has outlived its usefulness to most of us who grew up with it. The current hits aren't about us anymore, but that's all right--we're no longer crowding the clubs and record stores. Pop has always existed primarily for the young, the only ones who have time for it. The source of disenchantment is in realizing that the favorite songs of our high school and college years are no longer about us either--they reflect where we were in our lives then, not where we are now. This may be why so many of my friends have developed a sudden interest in country, a style of pop whose subject matter is less often adolescent sensuality than adult wreckage. -- Francis Davis "'Vox Populi" The Atlantic Monthly, October 1993Johnny Cash, anyone? Disharmony at SSO Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:06:21 GMT If you have any contacts at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, or if you follow the gossip side of the cultural scene in Seattle, you certainly know that things have not been smooth in the relationship between the orchestra members and Gerard Schwarz, the music director. Just how not smooth, however, might be a surprise. The New York Times had an article on Sunday that recounts just how bad things have become:The Seattle Symphony Orchestra has carried disharmony to new heights, lurching from crisis to crisis. There have been allegations of vandalism aimed at players, including a dented French horn and a razor blade planted in a mailbox; a players’ survey that condemned the conductor only to be deep-sixed by management; and lawsuits filed by players accusing the conductor of mental if not physical abuse. It is a cautionary tale of how the relationship between performers and a long-term leader can go awry and how, in an artistic hothouse, a tangle of emotion and politics can veer out of control and take on a life of its own. It's a tricky situtation. The problems are affecting morale and relationships all through the orchestra. At the same time, tho, Schwarz has basically put the orchestra on the map, and the board is presumably loath to mess with a formula that, from the perspective of fame, audience loyalty, and $$$, has been extremely successful. Stride rite Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:20:44 GMT One of my favorite Christmas CDs is "Yulestride" by Butch Thompson -- holiday favorites on stride piano. (sample, 775KB). Butch Thompson spent a long time on A Prairie Home Companion, and he is versed in that same laconic storytelling style. This is from the liner notes he provides for the CD: In December 1954, I was the leader of a three-piece band that closed our school Christmas program with an instrumental reading of Silent Night. We had two clarinets and a cornet, and we just played the whole thing, three times through, in unison. We were in the sixth grade, and had received three months of weekly lessons on our instruments. Rehearsing at home one day, I happened to throw in a little "Good evening, friends" blues lick that I thought sounded pretty good, but my mother persuaded me that people might not want to hear that kind of thing on a favorite hymn. They might be offended, she said, or (worse, I thought), they might laugh. So when the big might came, we played it straight. We had no conductor, so our initial attack was unpromising, as each of us waited for somebody else to do something definite. A beachhead was eventually established, a gradual crescendo ensued, and as I recall we came to a forthright conclusion. Luckily, the first few weeks of clarinet instruction are customarily confined to the low register, so we didn't have to contend with the high notes and their hazardous intonation. In fact, our little trio had a comfortable, unthreatening reedy sound, not much different from an old pedal organ. As we say in the Midwest, it could have been worse. [more] Rip-roarin' Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:22:36 GMT I've settled into the groove (haha) of ripping the CD collection. I started by using MusicMatch, a product I have an irrational loyalty to. I never loved starting it up, what with it doing its "component check" that took forever. Since Yahoo bought it, it's gotten even more inconvenient. It keeps popping up some screen about some subscription or other has expired, and sign up at Yahoo, and blah-blah. Then there's the issue that MusicMatch doesn't recognize a lot of my more obscure CDs, i.e., it can't find them it whatever database it's using. (Perhaps this is the Yahoo message I keep getting -- no database?) This means I have to manually enter track and tag info, and holy cow, that's tedious. But the problem that finally led me away from using it as a primary ripping tool was that I couldn't get support for WMA Lossless. Friend John had recommended WMA Lossless as compressed but, you know, lossless. And a day or so later I was reading someone's advice (sorry, don't remember where) that you should rip lossless, and then convert copies to whatever format you need for (e.g.) your iPod. MusicMatch doesn't support WMA Lossless native, but it's supposed to be available via an add-in. But the add-in page 404s, and about then I thought I'd had enough with MM, or more specifically, with how Yahoo is handling MM. So I'm ripping using Windows Media Player 10. It supports WMA Lossless, and a little bit to my surprise, I've been able to configure it to create tracks with file name format I want. Plus it has recognized every CD I've put in, so no manual tag editing, yay. So far -- it's still early -- I haven't run into any problems that make me hate WMP. I guess that over the course of the next few weeks I'll be whittling down the CD collection as I rip. For the time being I'm concentrating on CDs that it wouldn't devastate me to lose. Even so, I'll also burn some DVDs with backups of all this and keep them someplace offsite. Roundup Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:28:38 GMT On my list for Christmas is a magical ability to play blues lead. Toyota Shows Violin-Playing Robot. Insert joke here about how we have plenty of mechanical musicians already. 'Cat Lady' Conundrum, The. Has Fluffy been eyeing you hungrily? One possible reason: more than 60 million people might be infected with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite of cats. "... Toxo must find its way back to a cat’s stomach to survive. So the parasite has evolved a complicated system for taking over its hosts’ brains to increase the likelihood that they’ll be eaten by cats." Buy Houses in Detroit For $250, Monthly Pmt = $1. "You can go to Realtor.com and search for homes for sale in any city in the U.S., and you can specify a certain price range. If you search for Detroit homes for sale between $0 and $1,000, you'll find that there are 74 homes for sale in that price range." Not quite so good in Seattle; the cheapest listing I found was for a manufactured home in Seatac that is listed as having a view of Angle Lake. Point being, there are cheaper houses out there than people probably think, as long as you think cheap. [via grow-a-brain] Offical Home Page. Fast, "Ad-Free Internet Starting Page." Includes a (Google-based) search and links to email and popular sites. I just can't help but wonder what the angle is. (No ads?!) Roundup Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:55:18 GMT Snow, rain, gale-force winds, flooding, power outages, all in the last 72 hours. I tell ya, it's been some kinda weather up here in our corner. La Niña year, they say. Ten Mistakes In Education.[1] "I believe that the school system is making a great many mistakes. Here are my ten favorites, favorite not because I like them but because eradicating them would go so far towards helping kids learn." Interesting ideas, not sure how practical. Here's a sample:Mistake #6: SCHOOLS BELIEVE STUDYING IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF LEARNING. Practice is an important part of learning, not studying. Studying is a complete waste of time. No one ever remembers the stuff they cram into their heads the night before the exam, so why do it? Practice, on the other hand, makes perfect. But, you have to be practicing a skill that you actually want to know how to perform. One Possible Reason for On-The-Net SQL Servers. Reader follow-up to the recent posting about the 500,000 exposed SQL Server and Oracle databases. See also: Continuing the Exposed Server Debate. (Might be more to come, but I'll leave it at this.) Gibson Shows New Self-Tuning Guitar [more] Guitar heroes Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:17:10 GMT As occasionally mentioned here, in my copious spare time I've been plunking away at (haha) learning to play guitar. Slow going, that, but I've sorted out that you press with the left hand and strum with the right, stuff like that. So as to have some structure for the whole bidness, I am, uh, matriculated at a guitar school, where of late I've been in a class. The place offers ensemble classes in many manners of playing -- blues ensemble, classic rock ensemble, jazz, like that. I've been doing an "acoustic rock" ensemble, which might as well be called "old guys strum songs of their youth." No kidding -- we were joking that they should have a sign that says "You must be this old to take this class." Aside from needing to get past the image of old guys rockin' out, which was my problem, not theirs, I've had a blast. The guys who run the school are all great guitarists and fun guys. (In fact, we had a couple of them play at the wedding.) The acoustic-rock class has been fun as well. At the beginning of the class the instructor presented a list of about 50 songs that were suitable for our level(s), and while I was off larking about in Hawaii, the class settled on an Eagles tune, a James Taylor song, and -- what else -- a Beatles song. As backup we had Clapton's unplugged version of "Layla," which was held out as a kind of "if we nail the first three" sort of option. (We didn't.) So you get the idea, basically. Last week all the classes had their quarterly performance, which Sarah kept calling my "recital." Having attended many a student performance in my day, I know this drill, and "recital" is not entirely inappropriate. [more] Roundup Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:55:11 GMT Hey, it's Monday. Why do only the "Experts" use online help? Jeff Smith is the resident expert on many applications at his work. Like this: Me: Ok, so, according to the help, it tells us <what to do>. So, let's just do this... [later...] User: It works! Wow! You are a GENIUS! I do not know how you memorize and know all this stuff! [via Michael B] Missing Greatness. If one of the world's best violinists were busking in a train station, would you notice? [via BrettZ] Asirra. Another CAPTCHA control/service. Like HotCaptcha, Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access) is based on images, but it's substantially more work-safe, I'd say. I also like their explanation about HotCaptcha that "Asking users to rate people's attractiveness is potentially offensive, and the challenge does not have any ground truth." (Emphasis mine.) Linguistic note: the term CAPTCHA is tm'd by Carnegie-Mellon; the generic term, apparently, is HIP (Human Interactive Proof). Pick a License, Any License. Jeff Atwood bravely catalogs the types of licenses under which you can release your software: "I hate software licenses. When I read a software license, what I see is a bunch of officious, mind-numbing lawyerly doublespeak. Blah, blah, blah.. kill me now." As usual with Jeff's posts, the comments go on and on and on, but as usual, with good info. [more] Craftsmanship (and violins) Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:39:16 GMT Sarah recently got me a copy of The Violin Maker, a book about (what else) making violins, and one of a series of books I seem to have read on the craft of instrument making.[1] John Marchese, who is himself a trumpeter, watches the Brooklyn violin maker Sam Zygmuntowicz make a violin, a Guarneri copy, for Gene Drucker of the Emerson String Quartet. As always, there are many keen meta-observations about music and craft. Here are two that I liked. In the first, he quotes Zygmuntowicz: "If I may be so obnoxious as to say so--violin-making is a kind of un-American activity. It goes against one of our fundamental beliefs, which is that things always get better and the new replaces the old--Progress. "[...] Violin making has been immune to mechanization and standardization ... it's a very foreign idea that violin making is not all that mysterious, but it is one of those things where the basic way it works best was stumbled onto a long time ago. The requirements haven't changed, and therefore the results haven't changed and therefore it's a very complex custom that is only learned through long application and a great deal of knowledge. It's not arcane knowledge; it's something any guy can learn--if you spend thirty years doing it." Later on, Marchese observes that Zygmuntowicz has measured and recorded, perhaps obsessively, details about the size and thickness of every part of a violin. "Does every violin maker do this?" he asks Zygmuntowicz. The response: [more] Roundup Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:01:36 GMT What better way to wait for traffic to die down than to inventory recent findings? universcale. A beautifully designed, animated, interactive examination of the scale of the universe. Elizabeth Warren on the Credit Card Industry. Have you ever wondered whether credit card companies are ... weasels? Why, yes! Way more than you think! Terry Gross interviews a Harvard professor who is an expert in the ways of credit. Dead & Buried. Euphemisms for death and dying. [via John McIntyre] Joe, this is for you. Geoff Pullum on offering grammar advice to writers: "The bottom line is that you should let your expert writers write, and choose from the full array of presentations that English grammar allows, rather than chasing around trying to eradicate putative errors that actually are not errors at all, and never have been." Complaints Choirs of the World. Something new to me, anyway[1] -- choirs that sing complaints set to music. The idea originated in Finland and has spread across Europe. There are videos on the site; I found the German song the cleverest, and the children's complaint choir the funniest. The Science of Lasting Happiness [more] Roundup Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:04:00 GMT Today's selection. Gumby on the Moon. Nothing says "Childhood in the 60s" like Gumby. A 50th-anniversary celebration of the surreal claymation series. (Dig the theremin sounds -- nothing says "Sci-Fi in the 60s" like the theremin ...) [via Daily Grind].) How naming works at Microsoft. Leon Bambrick explains how various proposed product names are considered and a final name is decided on. Daffy “Times” Article on Amazon and Classical Music. Charles Petzold recounts the horrors of Amazon's search engine for classical music. For example, searching for "Schubert Piano Concert" gets a whopping 815 hits, which is odd, since Schubert didn't write a piano concerto ... [via Michael B] McRidicUlous. Nicole Stockdale comments on an effort by McDonald's Corporation to have the dictionary definition of McJob changed "... to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression and skills that last a lifetime." Roger Shuy on the Language Log comments in more depth. Roundup Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:22:09 GMT I'm not even going to bother to post the spectacular video of the Demolition Derby that was Portland (OR) during a recent freezing spell. You Say Tomato. Matthew Baldwin recounts a little intergenerational misunderstanding about working with routers. The Complete Guide to the Guitar for the Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced Player. An early post from the inimitable Leon Bambrick. "The first Riff I am going to teach you is from the Cream classic 'Sunshine Of Your Love'. This riff requires a great deal of patience and you shouldn't expect to master it for at least a few years yet. In the tradition of over six million guitarists world wide this should be the first riff you learn, closely followed by smoke on the water. If however your guitar teacher/guru is born after 1980, then he or she will force you to start with a Kurt Cobaine tune or some Jeff Buckley nonsense." Note that this is followed by "Part 5 - How to Tune Your Guitar." pork, porcelain, porcupine, porpoise, aardvark. Bradshaw (of the future) occasionally writes posts that explain the etymological relationships of a handful of (now) seemingly unrelated words. A few more: foot and pajamas, grime and Christ, crimson and worm. Patching OFFLINE Systems with Windows Update [more]

Junior high	This music is hip because the older kids listen to it.
High school	This music is cool because it's edgy. And deep.
College freshman	This music is fun because LET'S PAR-TAY!
College junior	This music is so much more sophisticated than what I used to listen to.
Early 20s	Aw ... remember this music from high school?
Late 20s	This music is perfect for our wedding reception!
30s	Shut up, you snotty teens. This is GOOD MUSIC.
Early 40s	Ha, you kids today don't even realize this music is a cover.
Late 40s	How did this music get on a PBS special?
50s	Hey, those weasels are using this music for a TOYOTA COMMERCIAL!
60s	Can it be 50 YEARS since this music came out?!