tonyballinger.com

Y’know, I was looking at my home page with utter disappointment once again because I haven’t written a single thing on my blog in 2012. I tweet often enough, but really — what’s the point of having a blog if you don’t write on it?

Then I remembered, I have a kid under two, and that’s where the time goes. At this point in my life I have dramatically simplified my life to three things: family, clients and concerts. If it’s not one of these three things, it just gets the time that’s left over in the day, and that’s not often. And when I do have time left in the day, it’s not much.

Blogging doesn’t have a fighting chance against those three things.

That said, I’m trying to tie those three things to blogging, so blogging at least gets a shot at the scraps of time that are left over.

Cooper’s First Concert

I took Cooper to Pitchfork Festival on Saturday. Honestly, I didn’t care too much about the lineup on Saturday, so it seemed a good fit for a first show. It was outdoors, I really only needed to see Cults at 2:30pm, and anything after that was just gravy.

On the drive in, things were going well. Coop was in good spirits, we were having a nice drive, and then things got real quiet in the backseat. Cooper had fallen asleep, and while he slept it rained like hell. The sky was very dark in the direction of Pitchfork and Cooper is not a fan of getting wet. So I jumped off the interstate at the Oak Park exit and bought a couple of umbrellas. We got back on the road, drove downtown and found parking pretty quickly. I love parking the MINI in the city, because I don’t need a real spot. I need half a spot.

As Coop and I parked, the skies cleared up and it turns out we never needed those umbrellas. We headed in, found a spot in the shade and set up our blankets and such. It hadn’t really occurred to me how different it was going to be to be at a festival with a 4-year-old. But he did great. He listened, he held my hand in the crowd and he didn’t raise a fuss about anything much. I don’t think he could have cared less about the music or the commotion around us. He was perfectly happy to play iPhone games and use me as a pillow. He did get a little bored a few hours later and said “Daddy, let’s go home”, at which point we went in search of ice cream. Thankfully we found vegan ice cream, which is not ice cream, but it’s cold and it’s sweet (it tastes like frosting, actually) at which point we sat down again and watched Wild Flag perform. By the end of their set, I had pushed my luck as far as I was going to and we hit the road home.

On the way home I asked him what he thought of the concert. He said “it was fun!”, and I asked “why did you want to go home then?”

Cooper replied “Oh, I missed my mom.” It might be another year for Lollapalooza…

Despite the awful name, AudioGalaxy is just about exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’s a free and simple way to access your entire music library when away from home. You do this by downloading a small helper application that connects your iTunes library XML file (or any other shared folders you choose) to the AudioGalaxy.com web site. The initial scan can take a while depending on the size of your library (I think mine took about 16 hours, but I’m not sure about that) but once it’s completed, your tunes are accessible on the go.

The Browser Interface

When at work, I primarily use the web browser interface to browse music, add songs/albums to a playlist and listen to my music. The user interface is pretty bare-bones, but it does what it needs to do. There are a few quirks, like I have artists such as “01″, which I don’t actually have in my library. But it allows me to listen to Tom Waits when I didn’t think to put any on my iPhone, so I have no complaints.

The iPhone App

In addition to the service being free, their companion iPhone app is free as well. The app is reasonably similar to the native iPod app on the iPhone, but same as the web interface — you have to add your music to a playlist before you can listen to it. It sounds like it might be downsampling the music a bit to keep things streaming smoothly over 3G — but that’s acceptable to me, since a day of 320k streaming would likely kill my data plan.

I had a feeling that having a second kid was going to take a bite out of my personal time, but I had no idea it meant I was going to post a single blog post in 2011 (so far). Well, it’s only the end of October — so maybe I can catch up a bit in the last few months of the year.

Parenting Update

Totally enjoying being a parent more the second time around. But I suspect that I’m going to need to read a parenting blog, or get a parenting podcast or something soon because going on instinct is only getting me so far. Anyone know a foolproof method to potty train a kid over the duration of a week?

We Moved

While my city friends thought I sold out and moved to the suburbs years ago (when we moved to Oak Park), now we really have. I dreaded this day for years, fearing that it would mean that I wouldn’t go to concerts any longer. Turns out it’s not that big a deal, I’m seeing just as many shows as I did in Oak Park. I guess when a person will fly to Australia or Amsterdam for a concert, a 40-minute drive to Chicago isn’t that substantial a drive.

I’m Going to Sell My CDs

Just typing those words horrifies me, but honestly — I haven’t listened to a CD in a CD player in over a year. Everything is on the computer, backed up to a hard drive and then I’m going to start backing that up to the cloud. I figure I might as well sell the CDs while they’re worth a (very) little something, before they’re worth nothing at all. I’m keeping the Eno CDs though — I’ve scoured the Earth for those.

Concerts

I’ve seen Veronica Falls, The Horrors, Wye Oak, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Death Cab for Cutie, The Cults, Best Coast, Lykke Li, Coldplay, OK GO, The Kills, The Vaccines, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Vivian Girls and a few others. Hoping to see The Cure in L.A. soon (fingers crossed!), Fitz and the Tantrums and Still Corners.

iPad 2

I got an iPad 2 (thanks Gerard Design!) and it’s true — it’s twice as badass as the first iPad. It’s faster, wicked thin and the video camera makes Facetime chat as easy as on the iPhone. I like the Smart Cover too (in orange of course), but every now and then I have a heck of a time getting it to act properly as a stand. But then again, I have a hard time with Transformers too.

iPhone 4S

The 4S is certainly quicker, the camera really is much better and Siri is pretty interesting — though other voice apps are actually a bit more helpful (like Dragon Go!). For example, I asked Dragon Go! who was playing at the Empty Bottle in Chicago tonight and it gave me a list of upcoming acts. Siri just said it didn’t understand the question, offered to search Google for me, and then game me some lip when I told it that it “sucked”. But being able to read and send text messages by voice is great and iOS 5 is a terrific upgrade.