I’m guessing most of you probably just think of me as an Internet geek, but I used to be a classical pianist geek, choir geek, and jazz pianist geek.  I have performed over 200 times, won a bunch of Bach festivals, and studied under jazz greats Ashley Alexander, Frank Mantooth, and others.  This does not inherently make me a wonderful person, but it does (IMNSHO) give me a right to talk smack about some fellow musicians and a nasty trend which I’ll detail below.

Sadly, though, there’s little proof of my musical history, or at least little proof that I can share; for instance, I recently called the music department of my alma mater (Northwestern University) to get copies of my jazz performances in ‘90-92, and alas, they no longer have the recordings.  Ack! :-( So you’ll just have to trust ol’ Grumpy Gramps today.

So what’s my cranky rant for today?  Well, I’m sick and tired of jazz musicians ignoring their audience… more than that, downright ignoring the beauty of musicality.  More and more often, I hear jazz performers—young students and adults alike—musically belching through way-overlong solos that—despite oft-impressive technical wizardry (wow, he can play 743 notes a minute!)—bore everyone to tears… perhaps even the solo’ist himself.  And I think back to one of my fabulous jazz teachers at Northwestern who gave me a delightfully straightforward and valuable piece of advice:

“Play less.  Say more.”

No ands, ifs, or butts—this titilating title and content isn’t just a naked attempt to get a leg up on my subscriber numbers.

I normally keep this sort of thing close to my chest, but when Vanessa Fox invited me to bare all my reasons for blogging, I felt bound to oblige.

Ironically, just the day before, I was asking myself the very same thing (no, not why didn’t I pick a more sexy blog name… okay, that too!… but primarily, why DO I blog?).  Seriously.

And what I came up with at that time was this very-honest list:
1. I don’t know.
2. I don’t know.
3. I don’t know.
4. I don’t know.
5. Honestly, I don’t really know.

That, of course, may go a long way towards explaining why I seem to average about a whopping post or two a month nowadays :-(.

But, to avoid disappointing Vanessa and all 42 of you others who read my blog, I did some more soul searching and came up with a decidedly more interesting list of reasons why I blog, or at least why I think I do.

I guarantee* that the following all-natural AdamSpecial ("CaféKeek" in honor of my now-undoubtedly-horrified French friends) will put a pep in your step, will put the mmmmm in mooove, will take the ache out of awake…

Required...
1) Coffee beans + grinder (ideal) OR not-terribly-fine-ground coffee (okay) OR instant coffee (will do in a pinch; can ignore French press/strainer instructions)
2) Milk (ideally non-fat, optionally low-fat) OR milk substitute that can be heated/drunk hot or warm
3) French press OR extra container + a strainer
4) Teaspoon
5) and - unless you don’t like sweet stuff—one of the following Adam-named add-ins
- “Plain Sweetie”:  Sugar—one to two teaspoons per cup of milk.
- “Chocolate Jesus”:  Pure unsweetened cocoa powder and sugar (one teaspoon each per cup of milk) OR pre-sweetened chocolate syrup / cocoa powder (Nestle Quik does not count!)
- “Cuckoo du mint”:  The Jesus ingredients above + three drops pure mint extract per cup of milk OR Trader Joe’s mint cocoa powder

Instructions for making CaféKeek...
1) Boil milk OR heat milk in microwave (ideally use a microwavable measuring cup or similar item for easy pouring)
2a) Got a French press?  Put in the ground coffee but not other ingredients.
2b) Using a strainer?  Add ground coffee to intermediate container (that you can easily pour from into your drinking cup)
3) Pour hot milk into either French press or intermediate container.  Wait 5 minutes.
4) Pour coffee-soaked hot milk into drinking container (using strainer if you didn’t use a French press)
5) Add optional other ingredients and stir with teaspoon.
6) Enjoy, then come back here and write a comment about how much you loved it and how you’re eternally grateful to me and so on.
7) Repeat, but probably not on the same day.

Strongly recommended in conjuction with CaféKeek...
- Protein—either a handful of nuts or some peanut butter on a cracker, etc.
- Potassium—a banana works great (half of one is fine)
- Exercise—no time for a real workout?  Prefix the incomparable CaféKeek with 18 jumping jacks or 18 seconds of jump-roping or anything else to quickly get your heart pumping.  I’m serious about this… it really helps!

* * *

Okay, now it’s your turn.  What natural foods / practices do you use to help wake you up? (so, yeah, those energy drinks with unpronounceable ingredients don’t qualify here)

*Guaranteed satisfaction, or your pro-rated BLADAM subscription fees reimbursed!

Please forgive the unsexy title.  I know it would have been far more Diggable if I had titled it “Top 10 Reasons Why Your Opinion Blog Needs Comments.”

Anyway… I can sometimes enjoy link blogs ("101 uses for a paper mache African swallow.  No, European!") without comments.  Or info-blogs (new product released, site will be down next Tuesday, check out these new features).

But blogs in which the author is mostly discussing his or her opinions about stuff, or blogs that cover controversial stuff (news stories, culture, etc.)… damn, those better have comments enabled, or they won’t get my eyeballs for long.

For instance, I’m looking at you, BoingBoing.  Aside from the fact that I have (somewhat) of a life that precludes reading a bazillion entries a day that are talking at me, not with me… when it’s uber-oh-so-important-or-popular sites, I’ll be bound to find the same links in my friends’ blogs anyway.

Yes, I know, comment and trackback spammers are a bitch.  I hope their nether-regions suffer from this and/or they are forced to be locked in a closet with Vanna White night after night after night after night.  But with good software, good plugins (YAY, Akismet!), and a little elbow grease, these cretins are substantially less of a problem.

I have no idea if the rank and file in other companies—say, Yahoo and Microsoft—start their day by scheming how to beat, conquer, overtake, pummel, or even “kill” other companies.  At least at the engineering and product management levels, I both hope and expect not.  I prefer to think that—like the folks I work with at Google—most individuals at other companies are dedicated to just making damn good stuff, and not particularly caring how this affects the competition.

But appallingly often it seems that what happens after stuff gets filtered through marketing, execs, journalists… well, it ain’t pretty.

Apparently, engineers and product managers don’t give a whit about users.  They care about beating the other guy.  Stealing their market share.  Even putting them out of business.  And, though as I’ve noted I’m confident that’s not an accurate depiction of what’s going on in the frontlines, I still need to emphatically call it like I see it: That attitude is wrong, it’s shortsighted, it’s counterproductive, and—more concisely—it’s absolute bullshit.

Let me give a clue to these folks who continue to moronically view—or at least portray—the exciting and complex world of technology as cross between WWF and rollerball:  At the end of the day, only the users matter.

No, I really mean it.  Stockholders are fickle, particularly American stockholders.  Competitors sometimes come and go, sometimes lose focus, sometimes totally drop the ball.  Forming business plans around their actions—whether from opportunity or fear—is just plain stupid.

But users?  They are the ones that actually, well, use your products.  Pay you money.  Tell their friends.  Convince their Fortune 500 IT manager.  They have a *need* to be productive, to learn, to feel secure, to have fun.  And there are a LOT of users… not just in America, but all over the world.  If you have 50% market share for a product, you’re probably going to make a lot of money.  If you have 3% of an sufficiently large market, you’re probably still going to make a lot of money.

There is no need to kill anything or anyone, dammit!!! The pie is so large that a significant number of companies can have a slice (or a niche or whatever) and be perfectly happy, successful, and well-respected. 

Hear ye, hear ye!  From now on, the use of the following phrases is to be discouraged, if not downright forbidden:

• Attention metadata.  Attention anything for that matter, unless it’s used in a non-technical phrase such as “Put down the crackberry and pay attention to the real world for a sec, dammit!”
• Web 3.0.  Web 4.0.  Web anything.0, for crying out loud.  See my comments on Web 2.0 and Web 4.0 for more information on this ridiculous fad.  Note:  Web 2.d’oh! is okay.  For now.
• Relationship economy.  I just saw this one today.  Grrr!  Note:  Okay if used to refer jokingly to prostitution.  For now.

I’m sure there are others, but I’m getting nauseous just mulling over the above trite phrases.  And yes, I realize that it’s a sadly losing battle to do away with Web 2.0.

So… what empty, cliched, uber-annoying geek-phrases drive you nuts?

I’ve been duly inspired by my friend Graham.  And given that I’m too lazy / cautious / tired to do a deep and meaningful and original blog entry this evening, I’ve decided to instead just share a few thoughts about the search phrases people have used to get to my humble BLADAM 2.0 site over the last 3 days.  Each phrase is linked to the entry on my blog that the searcher clicked through to (providing a fulfilling-but-sometimes-scary-bladam-blast-from-the-past!)

First, the odd but undoubtedly heartfelt declaration:
i have bad luck
I’m sorry, fella.  I’m not quite sure what sort of solace or answers you were seeking in this grand set of clogged tubes, but luckily another BLADAM visitor feels your pain and offers this advice:
dont feel sad about bad luck
Well, there you have it!  Now we just need Bobby McFerrin to pop by and it’ll all be hunky dory.

Oh, and speaking of heartfelt, I had a few zillion folks visiting here searching for advice about girls (specifically, how to win them over and settle down happy ever after, or at least see them naked).  Faithful readers… let me just be straight with you up front here:  you’re asking the wrong guy, and you’re definitely browsing the wrong blog.  Do I look like Oprah to you?  [hint: the answer to that should be NO.]

So, without further ado, here are the lovestruck searchers:

A few days ago, I lost my wallet.  Understandably, I was pretty bummed… but I was also grateful that I had taken some steps ahead of time to minimize the damage.  So, without further ado, let me share with you some suggestions so you, too, can suffer less when you stupidly lose your wallet.

1. Don’t keep more than what’s necessary in your wallet.
This is the easiest way to avoid headaches.  You may have 10 credit cards, gas cards, etc., but how many do you really need to use on a daily basis?  Putting less in your wallet not only means less hassle when it’s is lost, but also less heft that you have to sit on (if you’re a guy) or carry (if you’re a woman, or a guy who doesn’t like to put his wallet somewhere other than his back pants pocket).

2. If you do keep gift cards / stored value cards on your wallet, make sure they’re registered!
Addicted to Starbucks and got a Starbucks card, for instance?  Make sure it—and all your other stored value cards—are appropriately registered so that when they’re lost, you don’t lose the money on the cards.

3. Start a document or note that you can access electronically where you can put critical wallet-related info… ideally something that also syncs with your phone.
You should write down what’s in your wallet and be able to access it from nearly anywhere.  You could use Google Docs or Google Notebook or even a (very, very secure, password protected) file on your Web server or file server.  Here’s what I do:  I have an “In my wallet” Outlook note that I update regularly.  I use Plaxo to reliably sync my Outlook notes between home, work, and laptop computers, and then I use my Treo’s software to regularly place that same info on my phone.  I don’t put credit card numbers or similarly private info in this note, however, since it’s possible my phone could get stolen, and I haven’t gotten around to passwording it yet.  I store that more detailed info on a file on a network drive.

4. Actually update this document.
Yes, you actually have to remember to update this document (or these documents) regularly.  Given how often I’m putting things in and out of my wallet (particularly since I travel internationally), this is more important than you might think.

Have you heard of the movie Metropolis (the anime one)?  No?  How about film scorer Toshiyuki Honda?  No, again?  Well, you’re missing out!  It’s a delightfully quirky and surprisingly touching film, despite a somewhat slim plot and cursory characterizations.  And the Metropolis soundtrack is especially charming and catchy… in particular, it’s surprisingly jazzy, providing a sometimes-stark (and undoubtedly intended) counterpoint with the dark feel of the film.

Here are three different ways to listen to this great music, and I’d love to hear your feedback on which you find best overall:

1) Click on the “Metropolis soundtrack” link above to go to the Amazon.com page, and listen to clips there.

2) Listen to Metropolis on Rhapsody
NOTE: You’ll have to download a small plugin.  Non-subscribers (free users) get 25 free full-length track plays per month.  No registration required.

3) Listen to the title track below on Napster.
NOTE: Registration required (but it’s pretty fast and painless).  You can listen to an unlimited number of songs (from blogs and directly on Napster’s site), but can listen to any particular track a maximum of three times total.
EDIT:  Dang, for some odd reason, I’m not able to embed the Napster player in my blog, so you’ll have to make do with a Napster popup player that plays Metropolis.

* * *

For more info on how I think these options fall far short of ideal (and a glimpse into what my ideal is), feel free to check out my post from yesterday if you haven’t already (”Fair use, mashups, and profits” )

And of course, there’s always the easier way… er, easier for users, pain in the ass for me.
Visit my entry on humorous a cappella ditty Aunt Sue’s Aunt Soup to see what I mean.

Anyway, I look forward to your thoughts on embedded music and sharing music in general!

Lots of us love music and we love to share it; I think that’s even more powerful than simply “grab lots of music for free”—it’s the sharing that excites us, motivates us.  Music is a shared experience!

Why, then, hasn’t anyone made it easy to share music snippets legally from a simple iframe, a simple widget that someone can cut and paste or even drag and drop into their blog?

Let me give an example of how painful it is to share (within, IMHO, fair use) a music snippet:
1) Identify song you want to share with others.  Determine that it’s DRM’d.  Ack!
2) Remove DRM (yes, I know this may technically be illegal, but frankly I don’t give a damn.  Call it civil disobedience)
3) Use software to grab a relevant thirty second snippet and save it as an mp3.  Make sure tags are still embedded.
4) Upload to server.
5) Before all of this, download and install a good flash player so others can listen to your snippet whether on a Mac or PC.
6) Embed the appropriate code into your blog entry.

Check out this entry on the emotional wallop of strings for an example of the result. 

I think it took me at least 20 minutes just to prepare, upload, and post this one clip.  Does that sound very conducive to sharing to you?!

So you know what massively puzzles me?  Why on earth hasn’t any major player (Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Apple, etc.) made this process easier… not only facilitating the discovery and sharing of music by the increasingly powerful blogosphere, but increasing subscriptions and download sales?!  Let me explain how I envision this working…