A Mind is a Terrible Thing...

To the Q to the A what can you say...
She's got a Masters in Stats
But she's wearing a cardboard engineer's hat!
2 years in cube land, time for an intervention.

Good Ol' Grateful Dead

April 12, 2009 finds the Dead back on the road (sure as you're born). Phish, the Dead, String Cheese incident in Michigan, wow, the jams are coming fast and furious this year. Anyhow, I downloaded the soundboards from the Greensboro, North Carolina show (first of the tour) and I was suitably impressed with the sound. I listened to it on the way to work today, and kept listening while pounding out some code. Of course, first shows after long hiatus could be fraught with peril, but I must say, the boys sounded good. Highlights include a pretty juicy New Potato Caboose, Estimated Profit, and He's Gone. Well actually, it was good to hear the tunes again. Formation seems tight, and outside of a few lyric mishaps, I found myself happy to slip back into the Grateful Dead mindset.

Here's a clip of the parking lot scene before the show:



And here's a clip from the show. Touch of Grey, only "smash" this band had, but I've always liked the song, even before it made it big, and I think it's ringing true as the days go by. I heard this once before at an Atlanta show in 2004:

Get Your Game Face On!

These up and coming stars are getting ready to shine. Don't they look nice! So wholesome, well-mannered, and climbing the corporate ladder!

Phish - 2009 - Kickin' It Live, Again

Phish is back on the road, making lots of folks happy and bringing light to a weary world. They were kind enough to provide free soundboards of their 3 night run at Hampton Virginia to their devoted fans. The music is great, electrifying, and a pure joy to listen to. Thanks Phish!!

Now here's some sights and sounds from the shows:

Mothership Lot:



Rollerblade reporter:



Hi you First Tubers, here are the boys cranking out First Tube, much to the delight of the phans:

Lies Beijerinck - Deep Space

Since I'm on the yidaki kick, here is another amazing virtuoso. This time, we're merging the Aussie art form with the intricacies of a South-Asian sitar raga. Lies is part of an interesting yidaki fusion project called 3ple-D. She is an amazing didgeridoo artist. Check out this peformance:

Primordial Vibration

Check out this over the top yidaki (didgeridoo) performance by Mike Jackson. It features a multitude of simultaneous rapid fire yidaki techniques performed flawlessly and effortlessly. I've been playing for less than a year so Mike and others provide lots of inspiration and are kind enough to supply tips and suggestions. So let's get on this train:

Operation Migration - Whooping Crane Flyover

Operation migration (http://www.operationmigration.org/) brought 7 young Whooping Cranes to the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge today. The hope is to establish migration and winter residency patterns for the amazing birds. We drove down to St. Marks from Tallahassee before the sun rose to get a good vantage spot. Coldest temperatures of the year (low 20s) so until the sun came up, we shivered. Lots of folks turned out (several thousand) to see the 3 ultralights lead this formation of birds to the winter hangout. Quite a remarkable sight, to see humans and animals working so closely together. Please visit their site (above) and help offset the non-trivial costs of this operation. We tried to take a few photos and a little video. Everything happened so fast, and we were shooting into dazzling sunlight, but hopefully you can get a sense of this.

Pictures:

Whooping Crane Flyover

Video: