I love dumplings...

...when they are made well. Poorly made dumplings suck. I agree with the author of this article that the way we accept, sheep-like, the thick, pasty dumplings heaped on a plate at our local chinese restaurants is just as bad as confusing grated parmesan in a can with the real thing. Forget war and politics, this is an issue that really should generate a popular uprising.

Buying behavior

Seth Godin has a short but provocative post on buying behavior. He says sometimes you buy because the buying process is fun, not because the thing you are buying is something you want or need. Maybe this is obvious, but I found the post interesting nonetheless and am thinking about how it might apply to our business.

Tip of the day for the middle aged

The other day I overheard a conversation between two average looking businessmen that ended with one of them all of a sudden high-fiving the other while yelling "mad props!" What I learned: never, and I mean never, use this term in either verbal or written speech. It's the language equivalent of that 50 year-old guy with the thinning hair, a ponytail, and a soul-patch who thinks he looks cool but really just looks like a 50 year-old guy with thinning hair, a ponytail, and a soul-patch.

Proof that Wikipedia is the best encyclopedia in the world

Today I learned that Death Metal music is not only a sub-genre of heavy metal, but itself has numerous sub-genres, including Melodic Death Metal, Florida Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal, and Blackened Death Metal. Take that, Encyclopedia Britannica!

Update: My friend Steve tells me there are even more sub-genres, e.g. Nordic Death Metal. Guess I will have to go in and update Wikipedia myself!

Do people really invest this way?

I'm not a huge owner of individual stocks (vs. mutual funds) but I do own some and it's been a very interesting experience holding Apple and watching the ups and downs of the stock over the last year. I check the Google finance newsfeed of Apple every now and then and came across this tidbit in the news column. Do people really pay attention to this crap? Does even asking this question reveal some great ignorance on my part?

Self-referential comment of the day that helps give blogs a bad name because it assumes anyone cares

Sometimes you have to eat a hamburger. At least we felt that way on Saturday night. Thank goodness for Rocky's.

Last.fm

Many of my more recent music discoveries come from my obsession with last.fm. It' s one of the best examples of what the internet pundits mean when they talk about the Web 2.0 revolution. If you haven't checked it out yet, you will not only discover some great new music but also learn why such techiniques as collaborative filtering really work.

Great Guitar Players

A while ago I was having a conversation with a couple of friends about Eric Clapton. We agreed that Clapton was overrated as a guitar god. Maybe not overrated as a player, but overrated relative to his status as someone who belongs in the pantheon. The reason is simple: if you forget for a second that you are listening to Clapton, you hear some good riffs, a good basic stratocaster single coil tone, and solid but not incredible technique. He's someone who can sometimes play great, but not someone who is always a great player.

As I thought more about this topic I decided it would be a good idea to try to come up with some criteria that could help filter the great players from the merely good. So here's what I've settled upon: distinctive style (you know within a few seconds who you are listening to), distinctive sound (ditto), great technique that always serves the needs of the song (sorry, Yngwie!).

So, here are six names to get us started. I don't necessarily say they all belong in the pantheon (the pantheon is I think reserved for players who actually invent some kind of style or sound), but all score really highly (in my opinion of course) against the criteria. I list each with a link to a CD that effectively struts their stuff.

Ty Tabor (King's X). Maybe the biggest sound in rock and roll. Liquid but still hardcore metal crunch.

Stevie Ray Vaughn. Like Hendrix, incendiary solos that will take the top of your head off but what's really special are the smaller gestures: the quick double-stop fills and connecting riffs that dart in and out during a song.

Leo Kottke. Playing a low-tuned 12-string rigs the game a bit in that right from the start he sounds like no one else, but it's how he utilizes his brilliant technique and sense of humor in service of his playing that makes him instantly recognizable.

Richard Thompson. The acoustic and electric Richard are both awesome but it's his slinky solos on electric that make him sound like no one else.

Lenny Breau. Wow. No wonder he's called the guitarist's guitarist. Anyone who can play double-stop harmonics at lightning fast velocity deserves to be on this list.

Tony Rice. Smooth as silk, even when stretching the boundaries of what bluegrass guitar is supposed to be.

I know, I know, I forgot about 47 other names....will post again on this topic another day!

Update 9-22: I am listening to Jerry Cantrell as I write this....add him to the list!

Why the Internet is Great

Copyright, schmopyright. Instant access to important (albeit random) historic footage that you would otherwise never know about.

Self-improvement tip of the day

I noticed the other day that when my kids and their friends get together, hyperbole is their default mode of description. Everything is either the best, or the worst. It's fantastic, or it sucks. She's my best friend, or my worst enemy. Well, pot, meet kettle, because I realized this morning that I do the same thing. My descriptors are always at the edge, never in the middle. Here is my ranking scale that I use in my daily life (and I mean for anything -- a new product interface I am reviewing, a contract draft sent by a partner, the weather, a new CD I bought).

The worst ever
The second worst ever
Not entirely sucky
Amazing
Incredibly amazing
The best in the universe

Note to self: add more shades of grey. Sometimes a thing can just be reasonably good. Makes it that more impactful when something really is great or bad.

Am I a Republican?

If not, then why did I cheer when I read this piece by Andrew Sullivan?

Enigmatic Business Quote of the Day

You can turn a bad onion into a good one by peeling away the rotten layers. But at a certain point if you keep peeling you have no more onion.

Jets vs. Patriots

Many years ago when I was in publishing I edited a fascinating book called Apprentice to Genius by Robert Kanigel, which looked at a chain of mentor-protege relationships among scientists at John Hopkins University. The book analyzed both the positives about such relationships (passing along lessons learned and professional expertise in a way only possible through close personal contact), as well the negatives (difficulties in sharing credit, psychological toll when the protege finally leaves the mentor). The break-up usually follows a script that has the mentor looking uncharitable and petty. That book came to mind as I watched the end of Sunday's Patriot-Jet game and witnessed the frosty Bill Belichick-Eric Mangini handshake. I love the Pats and have always bought into the conventional wisdom that Belichick is a genius, so I hate to see him acting like such an a-hole towards a guy who toiled for him loyally for 10+ years. Good coverage here, with some additional background and analysis here.

Update: I may have been overanalyzing the whole mentor-protege angle. Read this for a good simple explanation.

New Favorite Restaurant

Or, it would be my new favorite except it's nowhere near either my house or my office. 360 is on Van Brunt St. in Red Hook, Brooklyn and it just kills. I could describe it at length but why re-invent the wheel since it is so well said in this review (outdated since they changed chefs, but otherwise still applies). A more recent discussion is here. Note to my Brooklyn friends: I know, I know, it's been there for years so I expose my severe uncoolness by discovering it only now. Thanks to Eric for a great dinner!

I'm glad I am long Apple

Lost in the media tumult surrounding Steve Jobs' latest iPod announcements was this tidbit from Apple's head of retail: Apple is the nation's fastest growing retailer, opening a new store on average of once every nine days. I am glad I am holding on to my Apple stock.

Eating your own dogfood

At Sunburst I spend a fair amount of time figuring out how we can lower our tech support costs for our software. We sell to technically averse customers and our support reps spend a lot of time troubleshooting issues that are either not really issues (the reason you can't run it on your 10 year old mac, m'am, is because you are running OS 7 and our software is for Mac OSX), or have nothing to do with our software (the reason you can't print, sir, is because you need to plug in the printer). So what we have been doing is slowly but surely reducing live tech support, relying on asynchronous communications media like email, or community-based support like user groups, or even just comprehensive FAQs that are searchable on our site.

This is a long-winded intro to the real point of today's entry. When I logged into blogger this morning I couldn't pull up Walking With Norman. Nothing but a whitescreen. Fearful of losing my major worldwide audience, and knowing that I had a very brief window to post today because of my schedule, I tried different browsers, cleared my cache, restarted my machine, checked to see if I had accidentally deleted my content, etc. Then in a panic I went to the blogger support pages but didn't immediately see a reference to my issue so I searched for a tech support email or phone number but it was (intentionally, I'm sure) buried so all pissed off at how hard they were making it for me I went to Google and typed in "blogger technical support" and got to the right page from there and found a good email form and described in detail my issue and hoped I would get a quick answer. Then I went to close my browser and grab a cup of coffee but then I noticed a reference to Top Support Issues. I clicked the link, and low and behold saw the simple note that if you can't load a blog but you know you didn't delete it, simply republish it. So I did, and well, here we are.

Moral(s) of the story: 1) Brilliantly designed non-human tech support systems often fail in the case of immediate need and user panic; 2) Don't assume if you are yourself technically savvy you never need help; 3) I am an idiot.

A real guitar hero and the best tribute band ever

Last night saw a twofer of some artists from back in the day who can still bring it. Jeff Beck was at the Hammerstein Ballroom (backed by Vinnie Colaiuta on drums) and, although both our seats and the house sound were less than desirable, we saw enough to know that he's playing as well as ever -- better, even. How he gets such a liquid sound out of what looks like a stock stratocaster is a mystery. How his solos come at you in such unexpected ways, how he works in and around his rhythm section, how he can string impossible riffs together with ease is less a mystery -- he's been doing that for 30+ years.

After an hour we headed over to the Garden to see Roger Waters' Dark Side of the Moon show. Hard not to compare it to David Gilmour's recent Radio City show, where he also played (parts of) Dark Side. Gilmour's was the more sedate performance, but also the more authentic: listening to the guy who sang and played the classic guitar solos (not to mention seeing the accompanying laser show) made it seem like we were really at a Floyd show. Waters' performance was more incendiary, the audience more passionate, so the show was ultimately more powerful. But without Gilmour it was a little like seeing a tribute band (fortunately, the best Pink Floyd tribute band ever)!

Dinner at Midnight

I don't often go out to dinners where the appetizers first show up at midnight and the main course well after 1 AM. Nor do I often go to movie premieres, hang out with A-List celebrities, and de-construct Led Zeppelin songs with rising young rock stars. But that's exactly what I did Saturday night, where I went to a screening of the documentary I Trust You to Kill Me and had dinner afterwards with the subjects of the movie, the Long Beach, CA band Rocco Deluca and the Burden and Kiefer Sutherland (who not only appears in the movie but is also co-founder of the record label that discovered Rocco). If you like slide guitar and smoking hot vocals (and if you like Led Zeppelin, Jeff Buckley, Muddy Waters and the many other artists Rocco's music resembles), his CD will blow you away (btw, don't trust the negative reviews of the movie you may have read in places like the New York Times, the audience at the screening loved it). I should also put in a plug for The Spotted Pig, which served the the most kick-ass food I've had in a long time.

This week's playlist

Gomez - How We Operate
Danielson - Ships
Johnny Cash - American V
Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird Bark
Pierre Bensusan - Intuite
Ralph Towner - Timeline

Some blogs I am reading

The Bad Plus (Jazz and other cultural musings from one of the coolest bands working today)

Night After Night (Omnivorous music coverage from the music editor of Time Out New York)

A VC (Music, technology, investing from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures)

Comics Should be Good (Comic books. 'Nuff said)

Word of the Day

Confucked, verb: To confuse in such a fucked-up way that there's no chance to figure out the reasons for the confusion. A neologism invented by one of my staff, referring to a less-than-stellar performance from one of our offshore software teams.

Siberian Khatru Revisited

Broke out Close to the Edge after about what feels like 10 years. Holy crap is Siberian Khatru as good as, or even better than I recall. I think of Steve Howe as being a wildly imaginative guitarist who busted genres as much as anyone , but I swear I didn't remember that he could play funk like this. I'm now adding this to my list of favorite funk grooves. Some others (in no particular order):

Fight the Power - Isley Brothers
Lopsy Lu - Stanley Clarke
Maybe Your Baby - Stevie Wonder
Hip Pockets - Billy Cobham and George Duke
Work It - Missy Eliot
Funky Avocado - Michael Hedges
Just Kissed My Baby - The Meters
Tell Me Something Good - Chaka Kahn
Sign O' the Times - Prince
Thank You - Sly and the Family Stone

I could go on forever I forgot James Brown and Bootsy Collins and the Brothers Johnson and...

Life without Electricity

Couldn't post for a few days, as Tropical Depression Ernesto paid us a visit and we were without power from Sat-Mon afternoon because of downed trees and wires. The good news is that it coincided with the Labor Day holiday, so the three things that would otherwise make such an outage difficult weren't present: 1) the good post-storm weather made both heat and a/c unnecessary, 2) school hadn't yet started so we didn't have to worry about homework without light or the computer, and 3) I was home from work so both Nicole and I could stave off the kids' boredom.

I suppose I could add a fourth item that made the outage tolerable -- the new TV season hasn't yet started. In the words of my son, could you just imagine if the power was out during the premiere of 24?

At the risk of being corny, it actually had the side benefit of forcing us all to read, play board games, and go to sleep early (nothing like a power outage to make you realize how much earlier you could go to bed with no TV). I could use this blog entry to make all sorts of grandiose moral statements about how modern family leisure is too dependent on the computer and the TV, or tell you about how I tried to make parallels for my kids between our situation and those left homeless by katrina (the idea being there is no way to appreciate what they are going through without some frame of reference, even if it is pretty insulting to compare the two). But I will just close with this thought: nothing like a power outage to make you realize how much of your daily life is really controlled by just a few organizations -- power, telephone, dept of highways, maybe one or two others, and if you are like me you just take their competence (or incompetence) for granted.