Now I realize that I’m starting to look at C programmers the same way.  “Thank goodness you like that stuff.  Now I can concentrate on solving real problems with Python.”

I guess I’m just a “top of the stack” kind of guy.  Shoulders of giants and all that.

“The world is a dangerous and uncertain place.  A few odd moments of respect and affection here and there is about as good as life gets.” — Hal Hartley, Ambition

Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.

The idea behind the site is to turn scouting for new independent music into a game. From their website:

thesixtyone makes music discovery a fun, adventurous experience with persistent reputation and rewards — it’s like a massively-multiplayer game for music junkies who are always on the prowl for new sounds…

Musicians upload their music for listening, but rather than allowing the Simon Cowells of the world decide which songs go on the homepage, the listeners do. If you like a song you’ve found on thesixtyone, just click the “bump” button to increase its bump count. Doing so will cost you points, but if songs you bump get bumped by others, you can earn more points! Collecting points increases your level and reflects your skill in picking top songs in your favorite genre!

By listening to songs through the lens of the collective community on thesixtyone, you’ll always find good new music. We’re committed to giving every bit of music on the web the opportunity to find its audience.

mebeli

It can be quite an addictive experience as one logs in regularly to be the first to bump (”firstbump”) a great new song or just to check your score against others in the community.

I’m sure that this model of new music discovery will eventually replace the traditional music industry “gate keepers” in their role of taste makers. Just listen to “front page” songs that have gotten significant bumpage and although you probably won’t recognize more than a couple mainstream acts, you’ll find that songs that get that kind of attention are without exception, Quality music. That’s the power of the collective. We can weed out our own trash, Mr. A&R man.

In honor of this exciting discovery I’m posting my first thesixtyone.com song as the trackoday:

Love During Wartime by The Main Drag (warning: myspace link) is a track that I think is tragically underbumped, so don’t be afraid to click on it and set up an account. It’s free and you can help this track gain some dearly deserved momentum. Oh, and if you do set up an account, don’t forget to list me (gumptionthomas) as a referrer.

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I had also been sitting on a few walk tracks from over the winter that I hadn’t posted. Those are now up on the Dog Walks page for posterity’s sake.

Would you like me to provide you with a weekly mix of music rarities from my collection?

And just in case you were curious, Wordpress 2.5 rocks!

Just a little less cool.

But now I’m about to embark on the upgrade to Wordpress 2.5 and figured that’s as good a time as any to get back into blogging gumption.   So, please pardon the mess while I try out some new themes and plugins.

Hopefully more interesting posts will follow.

After the museum we went into downtown Amsterdam for drinks and dinner. We saw only one person in costume, worn by the Irish bartender at a little hole in the wall bar we stopped in, but I get the feeling that Amsterdam feels a little like Halloween every night. The dinner wasn’t very good, but the milkshakes we had for dessert were excellent. The city seemed to be glowing.

For we are at the heart of things here. Have you noticed that Amsterdam’s concentric canals resemble the circles of hell? The middle-class hell, of course, peopled with bad dreams. When one comes from the outside, as one gradually goes through those circles, life–and hence it’s crimes–becomes denser, darker. [...] But you understand then why I can say that the center of things is here, although we stand at the tip of the continent. A sensitive man grasps such oddities. In any case, the newspaper readers and the fornicators can go no further. They come from the four corners of Europe and stop facing the inner sea, on the drab strand. They listen to the foghorns, vainly try to make out the silhouettes of boats in the fog, then turn back over the canals and go home through the rain. Chilled to the bone, they come and ask in all languages for gin at Mexico City. There I wait for them.

–Albert Camus, The Fall translated by Justin O’Brien

Yesterday we all took a day trip to Rotterdam and walked a self-guided tour through the city. We traversed the Willemsbrug (nicknamed The Golden Gate of Rotterdam) and the Erasmusbrug (a monstrous drawbridge) and ended it at the Kunsthal Museum where we saw exhibits by Jean Tinguely, Robert Knoth, and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen.

Rotterdam is by far the most architecturally interesting city I’ve ever seen. They seem to take it as a point of pride to take risks by creating buildings that are unique and add character to the skyline. With the constant construction going on, I can’t wait to come back and see what it looks like later.

My holiday reading is The Fall by Albert Camus. It’s actually my 5th reading, but I feel like I’m reading it for the first time. The city plays an important part in the novel and I hadn’t previously been able to fully grasp why.

I think I’m beginning to understand why a novel about the absurdity of life works so well with this bustling, compact, circles-of-hell shaped city as a backdrop. If only I could find my own Mexico City and judge-penitent barfly, my holiday would be complete.