Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Rasputin’s Booty

    I frequently whine to anyone who will listen about the lack of good used cd stores in Northern Virginia. But, that’s definitely not a problem in the Bay Area, so when I’m out here, I always try to make a run to Rasputin to stock up on cheap tunes. I may have overdone it a bit yesterday. Here’s what I got:

    • Massive Attack – Singles 90-98: I’ve wanted this set for years and I found it for \$30 (it’s \$120 on Amazon). It’s totally worth the wait. Twelve CD’s of the 12 best songs from their first three albums. Each CD is one song, with several remixes. The Teardrop CD alone is worth almost the purchase price.
    • Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People: I keep hearing about them on the CBC Radio 3 podcast and decided to take a flyer on this one. I listened to it in the car, and it’s good stuff – deep rich layers of instruments, which I can’t wait to go over with headphones on and pick out the layers.
    • Annie Lennox – Medusa: Two bucks. How could I not?
    • Something for Everybody: It’s a collection of remixes of songs from Baz Luhrman’s movies and stage shows. Yeah, it was two bucks too. Another flyer.
    • Wintersleep – Wintersleep and Untitled: I just got their latest album and love it (and now everyone on the project I’m working on does too because I keep playing it for them). I found these in the Indie bin and had to get them. I had to order their new album from Canada, so figured I should get these while I could.
    • Mountain Goats – All Hail West Texas: I love Get Lonely and the gimmick on this album was too good to pass up (ten songs about seven people from West Texas). I haven’t listened to it yet.
    • The Clash – Combat Rock: After Tim’s Joe Strummer tribute, I had to pick this up. Another \$2 steal.
    • The Shins – Oh, Inverted World: I love both Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away. This one was on sale, so why not?
    • Art of Noise – Ambient Collection: The Seduction of Claude Debussy is one of my all-time favorite albums. I’m not a huge fan of their other stuff, but for two bucks, I was willing try this one out.
    • New Pornographers – Challengers (Executive Edition): It was only two bucks, so I figured I’d see what was “executive” about it. Turns out, it came out before the album and has a code to download a bunch of b-sides, demos, and live tracks from a super-secret website. Very cool. And yes, I already have the album.
    • Kimya Dawson – I’m Sorry The Sometimes I’m Mean: She’s all over the Juno soundtrack, and I love her lyrics. A really good angsty folk album.
    • Take Action! Volume 5: Yeah, no idea why I got this one. It was a dollar. I think it was because the Dropkick Murphys have a song on it. Yeah, that must have been it.\
      So, that’s a grand total of twenty-four CD’s (there are three CD’s in the New Pornogaphers set even though you have to burn them yourself) for a little over a hundred bucks. I love used cd stores!

  • The Fics Keep on Coming

    (remind me to use that title again somewhere… probably on ficlets)\
    Speaking of ficlets, I just posted the news over on the ficlets blog that the site is a finalist in not one but two categories in this year’s SxSW Web Awards!\
    I’m geeked. I entered ficlets on a whim when I registered for SxSW Interactive last year, and didn’t really think anything would come of it. But, here we are and, well, if it wins, I’ll accept and cry my fool head off just like Sally Field.\
    I think I’ll probably write the acceptance speech as a ficlet and let people finish it for me. Yeah, that’d be appropriate.

  • Ficlets on the Radio!

    Last week, I got an e-mail from someone from the CBC show Spark asking about ficlets and wondering if I’d be willing to do an interview for the show. After freaking out in the airport for a couple minutes, I replied saying (very coolly, I’m sure) that you betcha, I’d love to. So, sitting in my hotel room in Miami last Thursday, I talked to the show’s host about ficlets and read one of my stories (the first one ever published on the site, called The End).\
    Please, go check out the interview (ficlets is the first segment)and let me know what you think. It was my first real interview other than a job interview, and I was nervous as hell. Hopefully it doesn’t show too badly. The folks from the CBC were delightful to talk to, and it was a lot of fun to do the interview, nervous or not.\
    In other ficlets-y news, since John Scalzi left us as ficlets’ blogger-in-residence, I’ve been filling in and doing my best to keep the seat warm. So, if I’m quiet here, I’m probably over there, talking about inspiration, writing and “stuff”.

  • When Silly Becomes a Series

    I wrote this silly ficlet about how the lolcats take over the world, and it’s turned into a series! There are nine parts total. A lovely ficleteer in Australia and I have been trading parts. He took the original bit of silliness and basically turned it into The League of Extraordinary Librarians. There’s adventure, romance, violence and silliness (lots and lots of it, bordering on absurdity). A couple of the characters are (very) loosely based on real people. See if you can spot yourself (Howard, don’t freak out, the Howard in the story isn’t based on you).

    I’d love to see some more branches off the original to see where people take it. It could be Kittehpendence Day where the last dregs of literate humanity fight back, or Dawn of the Kitteh, you know, kitteh zombies. The possibilities are endless.

    (Oh, and there are more than 20,000 ficlets now. Yeah, I’m pretty amazed too.)

  • A Blast From the Past

    <object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”400″ height=”300″ data=”http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=669551&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933″> <param name=”quality” value=”best” /> <param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /> <param name=”scale” value=”showAll” /> <param name=”movie” value=”http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=669551&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933″ /></object><br /><a href=”http://www.vimeo.com/669551/l:embed_669551″>Tech X: Tucson Public Access Show from 1998</a> from <a href=”http://www.vimeo.com/user167311/l:embed_669551″>kplawver</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com/l:embed_669551″>Vimeo</a>.
    \
    What you see above is an entire episode (lucky #13) of the public access show I was a part of back in Tucson. It was called Tech X and was nominally a computer call-in show. We took a few computer calls, but had much more fun screwing around with our friends and making fun of the callers, each other and saying extremely inappropriate stuff.\
    I only did about twenty episodes. I watched a few on the plane today, and the first five or so are really painful to watch. By episode ten, though, when we moved to Saturday nights at 10 (opposite the local news and then SNL), we really picked up steam. We were actually funny for short stretches!\
    I played Otto the HED and was basically a fat head floating behind the two “stars” of the show, Lee King and Hugh Mongous. Yeah… ummm… just watch it. Or don’t. You’re an extremely strong or masochistic human being if you can make it to the end.

  • Social Networking Mashups

    I’m speaking today at The Social Networking Conference about social networking mashups. I decided to turn it on its head a little bit and do an introduction on portable social networking instead, because what is it but a big ol’ mashup of identity, relationships and content?\
    If you’re at the conference, I’ll see you at 1:30, and I’ve updated the slides a bit since I had to turn them in for the CD, so the presentation is a wee bit bigger and more complete than the one you got in your packet. I’ve uploaded the “final” version here, and you’re welcome to download it.\
    Feedback is welcome. I certainly couldn’t cover everything, because I only have about 35 minutes to cover everything (and 36 slides). I don’t touch on the Data Portability working group, or several other relevant things, because there just isn’t time. It’s very much an introduction into why it makes sense for social networks to support “good things” like OpenID, Creative Commons, microformats, providing feeds for everything, etc. Hopefully, it will lead to more technical discussions and some good questions.\
    Feedback is, of course, welcome!

  • Tagged by a Chipman

    Well Steve got me, and well, since I’m awake and everyone else is in bed, why not? I like a meme as much as the next guy, so I’ll play along. Here are five things you probably don’t know about me, even if you’ve been reading this blog for almost eight years:

    1. I was a missionary for the LDS Church (yep, the Mormons). I was sent to the Spokane, Washington area, rode a bike for two months and then was sent to a very large area near Fairchild Air Force Base and then the fun started. In less than a month, I totaled a mission car, watched my companion sneak out of our apartment to go to Wal-Mart with a female friend of the family we lived with, blew out my ankle, and went home in a cast. It took me quite a while to get over my disappointment with the whole mission experience. It was “sold” as this great spiritual experience, but ended up feeling a lot like selling used cars to people who were pretty darned happy with their bikes.
    2. I was on a TV show. Yes, really. When I lived in Tucson, my friends and I started and ran a Saturday night tech call-in show that competed directly with SNL. It was called Tech X and I played “Otto the HED”, a floating head that sat behind the hosts and said really stupid things. Yes, there is video around somewhere, and I’ll try to post some… but won’t look too hard for it.
    3. I swear… a lot. Now, to some of you, this isn’t a surprise. To others, maybe it is. I don’t know why I do it, but I do. I’ve tried to stop, and hell, I may try again, but maybe not.
    4. I never finished college. You know number 1 up there? Well, after I got home, I recovered for a little while and then got what I thought was a summer job taking tech support calls for AOL at the call center in Tucson. I met so many cool interesting people and was having so much fun, I just never went back. I just kept learning and trying new things, and well, here I am.
    5. I hate bananas, hate them. No really, can’t stand how they feel, smell, or heaven forbid, taste. I always have and am not sure why. Just can’t stand ’em.\
      There you go. You know who I’m going to tag? I’m gonna tag Jen. Sweetie, that means you gotta post five things that folks probably don’t know about you. Won’t that be fun?

  • Happy Anniversary, Lady!

    Kevin Lawver making a heart with his hands in a very cheesy self-portrait photo.

    Jen already posted her list, but since I’m in California, I’m not late with mine. I honestly can’t believe it’s been ten years. It certainly doesn’t feel like it. She said all the important stuff – that it’s been way easier than we thought it would be, and while we’ve had “issues” over the years, we’ve figured them all out together and come out the other side stronger and happier for it. Jen puts up with a lot. I travel too much, work long hours, am distracted when I’m at home sometimes (part of my New Year’s resolution, and I’m getting better, but it’s still hard to switch gears) and other stuff that’s not as important, but probably just as annoying.\
    Jen already gave a partial list of stuff that sticks out to me, but I was thinking about it last night, and here are some other things that have made the last ten years fly by:

    • Jen’s verbal dyslexia. I wrote a blog entry about it a long time ago (thanks for finding it, Dave!), but she sometimes mixes up the first syllable of two words (like “toin coss” instead of “coin toss”), and then gets this look on her face like she knows she just said something funny but can’t figure out what. My all-time favorite is “Moodist Bunks”.
    • It’s that we’re pretty much always making things fun, no matter how stupid, icky or menial they are.
    • She makes me want to be a better man.
    • She’s understanding and never makes me feel bad about things I can’t control.\
      Like I said five years ago, I’d do it all again in an instant. The sun definitely still shines out your ass, sweetie, and you’re gorgeous (if you haven’t seen Juno, you really should). Actually, since both of our asses have “settled” a little over the years, it shines even brighter.\
      I love you.

  • Brian, Snow Explorer

    I Found You, Mommy

    Jen took a bunch of pictures of the boys on Thursday playing in the snow. Enjoy!

  • I Got Interviewed!

    Frank Gruber interviewed me about Adapting to Web Standards the other day, and has posted it to his blog. Go check it out. I almost sound like I know what I’m talking about!\
    And if you don’t want to go all the way over there, you can watch it right here!