A little CD Release Party!

OK, it's really just a blog entry prompted by an e-mail, but it is still exciting news! Our friend and fellow cyclist, Ron Wesley, has finished a CD of his music! Check out his music at Broadjam. He's got songs up for preview and download. Ron is a bass player extraordinaire. The tunes are a mix of smooth and funky electric blues. If you are interested in the CD, drop me an e-mail and I'll hook you up with Ron. Check out his band, WES The Power Trio, too.

Look it up

Mac OS X 1.4 (Tiger) introduced many new features, including Widgets, small programs accessed from the Dashboard. One of these was the dictionary widget, which does just what you would think. It lets you look up a word and gives you the definition. It works very well as long as the word you want is in the Oxford American Dictionary, which the widget uses.

If the widget doesn't find the word you are looking for or if you don't have a Mac, try looking it up on OneLook®. It uses 931 dictionaries (at the time of this post) and produces a very compact list of results to look at, along with the most common definition of the word and lots of links to related and more specialized result lists. Unlike the venerable dictionary.com, OneLook® has no pop-up windows.

A Night with Nick Charles

For anyone who hasn't heard of Nick Charles, he is a fabulous guitarist and songwriter from Australia. I was pleasantly stunned to find out he was playing Las Cruces. Cindy and I were blown away by his playing earlier this evening. It is easy to understand why Nick was chosen “The Blues Artist of The Year” and “Solo Performer of The Year" in his native state of Victoria, the most recent in a long string of awards. He played mostly his own compositions, both instrumental and vocal. An outstanding fingerpicker, he did justice not only to his own work but to songs by Norman Blake and Peter Green and others. Some of his playing reminded me of John Renbourn for the sheer beauty of his guitar instrumentals. Other songs were pure blues, both traditional and his own.

We got a bonus in the concert, too. Steve Smith, a fine musician from Las Cruces, sat in with Nick on mandolin. Steve is an amazing picker himself and it was a treat to see him play with Nick as though they had been playing together for years. Both are very talented musicians but easy with letting each other take the lead.

I had heard Nick's music before on CDs and radio but never had a chance to see him in concert. Besides being a really outstanding musician, he's a very warm and friendly person. He played at the High Desert Brewing Company, a small restaurant and microbrewery in Las Cruces. In between sets, he chatted with audience members about his music and whatever else people wanted to talk about. We talked about house concerts and who knows, maybe we'll get to host one for him next time he comes by this area.

Sunset

Sunsets in the southwest are times of beauty. Tonight was no exception. Cindy and I took a short walk around the neighborhood, returning home just at sunset. This picture is looking west over the side of our neighbor's house. Our house is to the right, just outside the picture, on the north side of the street opposite the neighbor's house. Just another beautiful evening in the desert.

Stargazing

Last night we went to see the stars at Leasburg Dam State Park, about 15 miles north of Las Cruces near Radium Springs. The Sky Safari consisted of two New Mexico State University (NMSU) graduate students setting up an 8" telescope to view various stars and planets.

As the sky darkened, we were treated to a wonderful display. Jupiter, Saturn and Mars were all in the sky and visible to the naked eye. In the telescope, more details were visible - the rings of Saturn, stripes and other features on Jupiter. The second starMizar, in the Big Dipper has another star next to it, visible to the naked eye. In the telescope, another star in the system with Mizar became visible. One of the oldest star clusters in the universe, M13 was invisible to the naked eye but a beautiful cloud in the telegraph.

The students guided us through various constellations in the Zodiac and the rest of the sky and walked us through descriptions of each of the planets in the Solar System.

We learned a lot of astronomy. Sitting under the stars is always inspiring and getting to do so in a place without a lot of light around was truly wonderful. I'm looking forward to getting into our new house which is in an area with no streetlights and few house around to be able to go out every night to see the stars this way.

Speaking of intense...

I haven't posted since April, which could lead one to wonder if my inbox cleanup had done any good to free up time to do other things! The answer it that it freed up some time but I filled up the time saved and a whole bunch more.

To make a long story short, we decided early this year that it was time to sell our house in Colorado Springs. It was a dream come true to live in one of the old Victorian houses in the Old North End.

Having made that decision, the question of where to move surfaces immediately. We had talked about various places to move at various times. One of those places was Las Cruces, New Mexico, where my parents have lived for the last 20 years.

This is the beginning of our third week in New Mexico. We are now in a furnished rental house with the expectation that we will close on our permanent house at the end of the month. All our stuff is in storage at the movers. We brought our computers, some clothes, our wine and our bikes.

Comcast came and installed cable and high speed internet connectivity on Memorial Day. The Tivo box is up and running and so is our wireless network. So we are back at work and play.

More to follow. The last few weeks have been incredibly busy, so I'll post some entries about the excitement of getting the houses ready to sell and all the moving. Things will not really settle down until late summer but I'll try to post regularly so I get caught up on the move and keep up with all the new things happening in New Mexico.

Empty Inbox to Intense Inbox

It's been two months since I cleared the lists from my inbox. This effort has succeeded except for a few stragglers to unsubscribe from every few days, though these are tailing off as well. Clearing all the lists out of my inbox has created an interesting side-effect, predictable, but one whose impact I hadn't really thought about. Now that almost all of my e-mail is from people I care about and even at work, things requiring action or at least careful review and understanding, it takes much more time to deal with each message than it used to.

While still appropriate, applying Merlin Mann's three Getting Things Done rules from a recent 43 Folders post:

What does this message mean to me, and why do I care?
What action, if any, does this message require of me?
What’s the most elegant way to close out this message and the nested action it contains?

does not accelerate processing the inbox as much as it did before the cleanup. With lots of junk or marginally useful e-mails, the answers to the first two questions get you quickly to the delete key. Now in most cases, I do care, even if only enough to read the e-mail. In many cases, some type of action is required, even if only a quick response to the sender to answer the e-mail.

This is really all by way of observation. In fact, I think it is a good thing. I am corresponding with friends instead of deleting junk mail and most of what is in my inbox has value to me. But it certainly has changed the feel of working through my e-mail.