Author: Kent

Reader, writer, arithmeticer. Proprietor of Newsome.Org, a tech, music and life blog.

Soccer with the Kids

We set up a soccer field in the new yard and Cassidy, Delaney and I have come up with a way to play one on two (old slow daddy against young and tireless Cassidy and Delaney). Here’s how it works. Cassidy and Delaney can run anywhere on the field, but I have to stay within around 12 feet from my own goal (we use one of the trees as the marker). This means that all of my shots are long distance shots, which makes it hard to score. In fact, I am 0-5, having lost 3-2, 5-2, 2-1 and, in a couple of one-sided marathons, 20-8 and 20-9. During the last couple of games, Cassidy actually concluded that I couldn’t score on an open goal and that there was no real need on her part to play hard on defense.

It’s amazing how much the kids get into it when they think it’s playing instead of practicing. Cassidy has already figured out four things on her own that she never learned at soccer practice:

1) If I get the ball, either by stealing it or after she scores a goal, she runs back to her goal and guards it (more casually now than at first since she thinks correctly that I can’t kick the ball straight). Since I am kicking from the other end of the field, I cannot (and probably never will) score a goal if she gets back into position. My only chance is to kick it around and past her while she’s running back. This is hard to do, which is why I have lost 5 straight games.

2) If she’s dribbling towards my goal and I challenge her, she turns around and kicks the ball back out to mid-field, beyond the tree- where I cannot go, and starts over.

3) If she gets close to my goal and kicks it hard, most of the time the worst thing that will happen is the ball bounces off my leg and she gets another shot. If she kicks it hard and repeatedly, she often scores, since I can only block so many shots in a row.

4) She and Delaney have learned to work together. One of them gets on one side of my goal and one on the other. When they do this correctly, it is almost impossible for me to stop them from scoring.

If we’d had this yard when she was 3 years old, Cassidy would be a good and interested soccer player. I don’t know if it’s too late to get her interested in it, but I’m going to try. Delaney may actually become a good player by the start of next season.

This is the first sports game we have come up with where I can try as hard as I want and it’s still competitive and fun. It is a whole lot of fun, especially for them. It’s easy to have fun when you’re clobbering your daddy.

New Houston Chronicle Page – Update

Here’s my update on the redesigned, very busy and ads aplenty Houston Chronicle web site. Part 1 is here.

One of the guys at the Chronicle has a blog about the Chronicle. He asked “How Do You Like Us Now?” and based on the comments to that post, I’d have to say not too much. The complaints range from too many ads, to too little content, to too darn slow.

Dwight Silverman posted yesterday and (a) confirmed (in my mind at least) the “community building” objective I mentioned in my prior post by announcing a bunch of tech-related reader forums (reader forums equal more page views which equal more potential ad revenue), (b) said that the problems that were making the site so slow have been resolved (it has seemed faster the last day or so) and (c) said that he thought we’d like the redesigned site once we get used to the change (perhaps I’m looking for my cheese, but I don’t think I’m going to learn to love the new layout).

I know that the whole newspaper revenue model is going up in flames as people move towards free web content in lieu of papers in their yard every morning (we haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in many years). And I applaud the Chronicle for trying to get out in front of this problem while there’s still time. And I even understand the need to sell ads to pay people like Dwight to write the content we want to read. What I don’t like is having the Chronicle’s front page try to push me toward those things (e.g., classifieds, job listings, etc.) that still generate revenue. I have never used that stuff and I never will. I want news and commentary. If I have to work too hard to find it, then I’ll get it someplace else.

I also don’t think all of these reader forums are going to turn the Chronicle web site into the page viewing, ad-clicking cyber-community they’re hoping for. Lots of media (read TV stations, radio stations and newspapers) have tried to build internet communities and most have failed. Here’s why.

There are two kinds of web site readers. One, people who either don’t know how or don’t want to get interactive. They just want to come to a site, get the information they want and leave. All of the reader forums in the world are not going to entice these folks to start debating school revenue or the latest Lost episode on some message board. Two, people who have the desire to be interactive and the knowledge to do it. Those folks generally choose their ultimate internet community (by ultimate I mean their internet “home base”) based on relatively narrow shared interests like hunting, sports, photography (think Flickr) and other shared passions. They may initially be drawn to all these reader forum links the Chronicle is putting out there, but eventually they’ll find a more comfortable niche elsewhere. A community built on a city or a newspaper is too broad. There’s no glue to hold people there.

So where does that leave us? The pages load faster. That’s good. The content is still there somewhere- I just have to click around to find it. I don’t care a whit about the reader forums or the classified ads. Don’t get me started about the polls (another doomed to failure attempt at creating interactivity). At least the lottery numbers seem to have been relagated to a link as opposed to a real estate hogging list.

It’s not horrible. It might even be getting slightly better. But it’s not good either. And it needs to be good.

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Tech Tips for Tweeners: Maxtor Network Storage Drive

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One of the primary purposes of Newsome.Org is to introduce and explain computer-related programs and features to other in-betweeners like me- people who are the parents of the youngsters to whom computers and the internet are as integral as the telephone and the children of our parents who have no intention of ever using computers.

I have a pretty extensive home network. Most rooms and all bedrooms have wired network access leading to a Linksys 10/100/1000 Router. I also have a secured wireless network with access points upstairs and downstairs. It works fine except for one thing: backup.

The computer in my home office is so loud that putting another computer in there for backups simply isn’t an option. Raina’s office is too small (and chaotic) to accomodate another computer. The kids don’t and won’t have computers (or TVs) in their rooms. With the pending arrival of child number three, we’re down to one guest room that cannot double as my backup server room. Even when I had my backup server in that room, it was not a good solution. Everytime we lost power and often when we didn’t, that computer would be down or inaccessible over the network for some reason- requiring me to trudge upstairs, reboot and hope.

So, I decided to find another solution. After considering and quickly rejecting online backup, I elected to try network storage- specifically Maxtor’s Network Storage drive. Here’s the skinny.

Basically, a network storage device is an external hard drive that has a network connection and can be accessed from other computers on the network. After installation, it appears as a hard drive just like the other hard drive(s) on the computers.

maxtor_shared_storage-769255The Maxtor drive was a breeze to set up and install. You take the drive out of the box, plug it in, attach the included network cable to the drive and then to your network outlet, and turn the unit on. Then you insert the included CD on each computer you want to access the network drive and follow the step by step instructions to set up an access ID and password. It is that simple. Without cracking the instruction manual, I had the drive up and running and accessible by three computers in under 15 minutes.

The drive has a USB port that supposedly allows you to connect additional drives and increase the capacity. I haven’t tried that, but if it works it’s a very nice feature.

My only mild complaint is that the software you install on each computer to allow access to the network drive automatically creates a bunch of folders on the network drive (My Documents, My Music, etc.). I am not a big fan of the “My” naming convention. Fortunately, it was easy to rename or delete the created folders.

So what does this do for me? It gives me the very important backup capability without the necessity of maintaining a second computer. Plus, the network drive is much smaller and easier to place than an entire computer, monitor, keyboard, etc.

This is a great product.

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Tech Songs

Kevin Maney, USA Today’s tech writer, is also a songwriter. He has posted a couple of his own tech-inspired songs on his blog, including the excellent Found It On Google.

The other day he posted in search of tech-related songs. I emailed him a link to Lost in a 403, a song Ronnie Jeffrey and I wrote a couple of years ago.

He mentioned it in a post today. Many thanks, Kevin, for the link.

Look for more Tech Songs every Tuesday on Kevin’s blog. It’s one of my daily reads- for the tech and the music.

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New Houston Chronicle Page – Mixed Bag

Well, after this post I guess I can stop hoping for a link from Dwight Silverman. The Houston Chronicle unveiled its new web site design today. To put it diplomatically, the new front page is not very good. To speak frankly, I really don’t like it. The jury is out on the rest of the redesigned site.

While it was certainly not cutting edge, I liked the old Chronicle page because there was a lot of news on the front page. You could scroll down the front page and see links to most of the stories in all of the sections. Not any more. Not by a long shot.

My rough estimate of the real estate allocation of the new front page:

Menus/Site Info: 20%
Photos: 8% (including a tiny live traffic map- are you kidding me?)
Third Party Ads: 25%
Chronicle Ads: 5%
Polls/Forum List/Lottery: 10% (again, are you kidding me?)
Blog list: 5% (this is a good addition)
Classifieds/Jobs: 12%
News: 15% (that’s right- very little news content)

Lots of ads. Not much news. As bad as it looks in a regular browser, I can’t imagine how bad it will look (and how hard it will be to find the content) on a handheld.

There is some sort of a flash-looking thing that purports to provide “easy access to popular features,” but I find it to be exactly that- a lot of flash. If I want to see little boxes with little snippets of information, I’ll go back to AOL.

There is a News link at the top that takes you to a page with a lot more news content/links on it. This page, if it stays flash and ad-overfill free, may be the one to link to. I wish this News page was the front page.

It is obvious to me that the redesign has 3 purposes: first, to generate more page views (e.g., potential ad revenue) by making you click around to find the content you want. Second, to try to build some sort of community by adding blog listings and reader forums to the front page. Third, to highlight those parts of the site that make money (classifieds, etc.).

The bottom line is that the Chronicle dumped a useful design in favor of one that is less informative, less useful, too busy, and with a bunch of useless stuff on the front page.

Maybe this is a work in progress that will get better. But if the current design is any indication of where they’re headed, I am not hopeful that the end result will be an improvement over the old design.

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Renaissance Festival

The Newsomes, Clarks and Veldmans went to the Texas Renaissance Festival today. This was the 6th straight year we have been and, as always, it was great. The kids had a blast.

We rode elephants, camels and llamas. The kids rode the merry-go-round, the spinning cups and the big swing. Cassidy did the bungee cord/trampoline thing and loved it- she was higher than the top of our house!

We dug in the rock mine and found some really cool rocks.

We ate some good food, saw some jousting and watched a funny mud pit show. Mostly we just walked around and had a great time.

On the way back we stopped at a Greek restaurant and had dinner. My sister won’t believe it, but I actually liked the food. Mercifully, there was not a grape leaf in sight.

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3 Things I Remember About: 1970

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(1) I went with my grandfather to Houston to see a baseball series between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros. It was my first time on an airplane and my first trip to Houston. Little did I know that I would end up living here. After the game, we got a bunch of autographs from the Houston players.

(2) I started the fifth grade. That was the first year my school was integrated. It seems surreal to me now that before that white kids and black kids went to different schools. We had no problems at all at my school. In fact, my teacher that year, Mrs. McIver, who previously taught at the black elementary school, became and remains one of my favorite teachers ever.

(3) I remember seeing reports about the Kent State shootings on TV. I was too young to be as outraged as I should have been. Neil Young wrote a phenomenal protest song about that horrible event.

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Friend Fishing: Pud Man

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Now that Project Flickr has proved to be a complete failure, I need a new experiment. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go internet fishing for some old friends of mine.

When I started this blog I figured by posting here, sending some emails, sharing photos, etc, I’d create a happy little cyber-community and all of my current and past friends would join me in an in internet reunion and love-fest. Well, that didn’t happen. While Newsome.Org has a bunch of readers, my record as a poor correspondent who has lost touch with a lot of his old friends remains mostly intact.

Everyone who uses the internet does a Google search on himself or herself from time to time, so I’m going to cast some lines in the great Google lake and see if I can catch an old buddy or two. My bait will consist of occasional Friend Fishing posts about people I haven’t heard from in a while. Maybe some of these folks will find a link to a post about them and find their way here. I’m sure they won’t sign up for Flickr (I’m not bitter, really. I just sound that way), but maybe they’ll send an email or leave a comment and tell me what they’ve been up to.

I’m going to start with the infamous Pud Man. My old friend Kevin Morris is, like me, originally from Cheraw, SC (now a Google search for Kevin Morris and Cheraw will pick up this post).

Pud Man, as we called him for reasons I can’t recall, drove a yellow car we naturally called the Pud Mobile, until he wrecked it on Highway 9 one day. He was a good basketball player and a very smart dude. He had a very strict mom and didn’t start partying until around our senior year of high school. He made up for lost time though- I remember one night he and I got all liquored up at Pizza Inn after we got off work. He spent the night with me the night of our Senior Prom and we drove around drinking before and after the dance with our highly irritated dates. I’m pretty sure that neither of those too-nice-for-us girls ever spoke to us again.

I last spoke to Kevin in 1998. He was living in Charlotte, NC and working for a bank. He has a daughter close to Cassidy’s age.

Pud Man is the Kevin whose yard was the target in my factually accurate song, The Kansas Reflector Incident.

He is the guy making the “err” face at the far left in the photo. It’s not really possible to explain “err” after all this time, but that very important word was the inspiration for the name of my publishing company, Err Bear Music.

I’m going to toss this post in the water and see if I get a bite.

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Jukebox, Annotated

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play. Each week, I add a little commentary about some of the artists, songs, albums, etc.

Maman Rosin – Beausoleil (Vintage Beausoleil) (1)
Papa Gene’s Blues – The Buckets (N/A) (2)
Let’s Live Together – Robbie Fulks (Country Love Songs) (3)
Moonrise – Charles Brown (The Classic Early Recordings) (4)
Boot-Leg – Booker T. and the MGs (Stax Set) (5)
4th of July, Asbury Park – Bruce Springsteen (The Wild, the Innocent…) (6)
Bungle in the Jungle – Jethro Tull (War Child) (7)
Standin’ – Townes Van Zandt (High, Low and in Between) (8)
Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac (In Chicago 1969) (9)
One of a Kind – Moe Bandy (Honky Tonk Amnesia) (10)

(1) I rember going to hear Beausoleil at the Bon Ton Room back in the eighties. I also saw them at the Festival Acadians in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2003. Great cajun band- a little better live than on record.

(2) My friend Ray sent me some MP3s a couple of years ago. They were supposed to go on his band, The Buckets, second album. Their first record is available from Amazon. Unfortunately, the second one never got made. Another great alt. country, slightly Byrds-like song, from one of my favorite songwriters.

(3) An original that sounds like a classic country number from his first record. I like most of his songs, including this one. Some of his satirical, trying to be funny, songs miss the mark a little with me. But at least half the songs off of any of his records will be excellent.

(4) Charles Brown is one of my favorite piano players, behind my all-time favorite Otis Spann. This is an old, old song and it sounds like it. But even your grandfather’s Charles Brown is good stuff.

(5) Booker T. rocks on a lot of stuff, including this one. Folks that only know him from Green Onions should check out more of his stuff. Funky, funky, funky.

(6) I just wrote about this record as a part of my Favorite Records series. Great folky, funky sound.

(7) I really like Jethro Tull. Raina says they were by far the worst concert (out of many) that I’ve drug her to. This one, while a little tired from too much airplay on the classic rock stations, has everything that makes them a fine band.

(8) I bought every one of his records, until he died and people started repackaging and rereleasing records that may or may not be previously unheard stuff. High, Low and in Between was the second Townes record I bought, and its a good one. This one gets lost in the shuffle among the many excellent songs on this record, but it shouldn’t because it’s a fine song.

(9) Most people don’t realize that before they became a gigantic rock band, they were an awesome blues band lead by the great Peter Green. Well they were and this record is proof of that. Recorded with blues legends like Otis Spann and Willie Dixon. One of my top 10 blues records of all-time.

(10) I grew up listening to country music before it became the regurgitated pop music that it is now. This is a great cheatin’, drinking, honky tonker that makes me remember why I love country music.

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Some Bands

I’ve got 3 potential new bands to add to my good list.

The other night I was driving home and listening to XM-12– the mostly but only in a real middle of the road kind of a way alternative country, Americana station on XM. I listen to it a lot, mostly because I can’t map out the difference between Lucy, Ethyl and Fred (Lucy seems to be the best, but only on some days- it’s very confusing to me). Anyway, they had this live show thing on and the band was Cigar Store Indians. They were recorded, as far as I could tell, playing live in XM’s studio in front of little or nobody. Anyhow, they were really good. And then they played a “love song” the singer wrote to his kids that really blew me away. Two things: (1) having written songs for both of my kids, I dig songs about kids, and (2) this song (his, not mine) is a damn fine song. The first time I heard the line “You’re gonna try to live your life kind of like a script, like you’re in a movie, like your watching it,” I literally teared up. So I bought the record from CD Baby (sorry, baby, but only because Amazon didn’t have it- I dig the Prime). I sampled some of the other songs and they sound really good. I’m a little worried about the rockabilly references, but the sound was more alternative country than rockabilly and that’s what I’m hoping for.

I also heard a really good song by a band called Bucktown Kickback on XM-12 the other day. So I bought their CD too. More on both after they arrive in a week or so (more than the 2 days it takes to get stuff from Amazon thanks to the Prime). I really dig the Prime.

CD Baby, here’s what you do. Get some shipping thing like the Prime going, and then allow me to download MP3s of the records I buy. That and the pay by Paypal option would lead me back to CD Baby. Also, get better servers- your site is slow, slow, slow. But you’re supporting the starving artists and I’m one of those, so you’re still good with me.

Finally, I got exactly the kind of email an artist should send if he or she wants me to listen to their stuff.

I got an email from one of the guys in Chuckanut Drive. First of all, the email had a link to a page where I could hear full versions of all of the songs on their new record. Second, he described the band as “a mix of Exile Era Stones/Gram Parsons with the Byrds and a touch of Stax Soul thrown in for good measure.” So either he’s been reading my blog and has condensed my musical taste into 22 words, or this is my kind of band. I listened to a few of the songs, and they are very, very good! My favorite so far is Pittsburgh (I put it on my server to keep the location provided to me private and so I wouldn’t be stealing bandwidth). This is a mighty good song that will be in the Rancho Radio rotation next time we update. It might even get on the upcoming City Names edition of our RanchoCast. I’m looking forward to hearing all the songs over the next few days.

As a songwriter, musician, sometimes entertainment lawyer and Grammy voter who has an internet radio station and does a podcast, I get a lot of music sent to me. Most of it is of less than Uncle Tupelo quality (to put it delicately) and some of it is too hard to access. Within about 3 seconds of reading this email, I was listening to some mighty fine music.

Anyhow, check out Chuckanut Drive. I’m going to.

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