for those of you that don’t know who cut chemist is, he and numark are the two dj’s that produce for and perform with jurassic 5, and he has also worked with ozomatli, but is also known for being a prolific turntablist. the thing that i was most impressed with about cut chemist’s performance is how well he was able to tell a narrative by mixing beats and samples and also having the right accompanying visuals behind him. it’s kind of hard to really explain what that means, and i didn’t get a good video to express it, but he basically told a few stories, one of a journey through brazil and another about africa, without any real lyrics, except the few found in the samples he used.

but by far the coolest part of the show was the way he ended it. he came out to the front of the stage with a digital camcorder and started recording a video of himself in almost a spring break mtv-style, and talked to a few people in the crowd. i wasn’t really sure where he was going with it at first but then he hooked up the camera to his equipment and moved over to his digital turntables (which are basically big dials that you can scratch like you do vinyl and then it mimics the scratching sounds and effects, except with a cd). he then proceeded to play the video on the big screens behind him and scratch the video and audio right there. it’s probably better seen than explained and i managed to pull my camera out and record the last few minutes of it. the youtube video can be played below (facebook users will have to click “view original post” to see it). the best part of the video i think comes in the second half, so watch the whole thing. i realize some might not be able to appreciate what he’s doing here and may just find it annoying, but i think if you saw the whole thing from beginning to end and were there to witness it first hand with the rest of the show, you’d see how cool this really is.

headlining the show was lyrics born, who i didn’t really know about before the show and wasn’t that into, but a very nice surprise about that part of the show was that he had my favorite keyboardist, kat (from the crown city rockers). she is probably one of my biggest inspirations for learning piano and i will be so happy if i can play like her one day, and if not, then i’d be content with just marrying her, because she’s pretty hot too. I’ve got a clip from the opening of that show that features Kat on the keys doing a spacey version of Moonlight Sonata (listen carefully) that you can check out here.

overall, a great show and a great time. there were some other shows that i’ve seen, most notably the zero 7 concert that i went to about a month ago, that i’ve been meaning to write about but haven’t yet, but hopefully i’ll get to them soon enough.

http://www.endofworld.net/

so i definitely got to the show pretty late, which almost proved to be disastrous, because not only did I miss the crown city rockers playing, as soon as I got to the gate, there were really annoying security people there telling everyone that the park was filled to capacity and they weren’t letting anyone else in. I guess I had the choice to just turn around and go back home, but that would suck, and I wasn’t having it. A bunch of the other people around me felt the same way to, so we all made our way around to the other side of the park to try and find a way in. It’s a huge park and we knew there was no way they could keep everyone out, as much as they tried to keep all the main openings covered. after a trip down the tree-filled side of the mountain while holding a breaking bag of drinks that I brought for me and the friends i was supposed to meet, I finally made it to one of the fences on the side of the stage, pretty close to one of the gaurds keeping an eye out. i waited til they were finally distracted long enough for me to almost cut open my ball sack stepping over the short fence just as the concert was starting.

The concert was definitely worth all the trouble as the music was great and the vibe in the park just reaffirms for me why i love the bay area so much. The best parts of the show itself were definitely the few songs that featured either the violin player or the clarinet player. I always love it when bands use instruments that you wouldnt expect for the type of music they play. I’ve got a short low-quality video of part of the clarinet players performance that you can download here. I’ve also got one other random video of the show that you can see here. You can get a small sense from those videos of the feeling from the crowd. everyone there was dancing and having a great time and just so happy to be there. i ended up sharing my drinks with the people i ended up around since it was too hard for me to find my friends that i was supposed to meet with and it was good times all around. the diversity in the crowd was also amazing and it was great to see all kinds of people from different races, sexual orientations, and backgrounds all in one place getting along and enjoying themselves. i don’t think that there are many places in the world where you would see something like that, and i felt so lucky to be able to be there.

sorry for the extremely low quality camera phone pics and videos. I have plans to buy this great new phone (se K790) that will hopefully do away with these crappy pics for good. but for now, we can use the power of flickr to find other people’s pics of the event so you can get a better idea of what i’m talking about here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/faernworks/sets/72157594247992147/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evermore/sets/72157594246613434/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flashfish/sets/72157594245866466/

so I just wrote about my new job and how one of the best parts is that it’s in sausalito, which is a great little town that is extremely pretty and filled with really nice people. they’ve also got this great little floating homes community, which consists of about 5 or 6 docks with homes attached that are built on a big hollow concrete slab that floats on the water. when I started looking for an apartment, i saw a couple of them for rent, went to check them out, and fell in love with the homes and the lifestyle. all of a sudden all the apartments that I went to see on land felt so boring.

so i ended up getting this one bedroom houseboat thats got a nice big living room, kitchen, cozy bedroom, and a great deck. after I saw it, I jumped on the chance to take it. Eventhough it was a little bit more than I wanted to spend, I only signed a 6 month lease because the owner is going to want to remodel it around then, which will be a nice trial period for the whole houseboat thing. there are a bunch of awesome things about this place though. it’s about a 5 minute walk to my new job, so i’m gonna save a lot on gas money and not have to worry about waking up an hour before work or even taking lunch with me because i’ll be able to go back home to get something . also, i’m definitely going to get a kayak that i can just park on the water right off my deck and go kayaking everyday, or take my morning paper out to read in the middle of the bay. the deck is also going to make for some amazing barbeques and parties. I already met my neighbors and they seem really nice. I’m moving in for good tommorow and will be spending some time organizing and fixing the place up, but if you’re in the bay area, you should definitely come by to hang out, check the place out, and maybe go out for a kayak ride. click on the picture above to see more pictures of the place.

update: if you’ve got Google Earth and want to see where the boat is and everything around it, download this and open it with Google Earth.

There are lots of cool things about this job that I’m really excited about and made me choose it over more money at a couple other places. One is that their office is located in Sausalito which is in Marin County and is the first city north of San Francisco past the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a really nice small town that I think will provide the small town feel that I like, while still being really close to San Francisco when I want to go out and have a good time. I also just got an awesome place that I will write about in my next post. The company also recently (1 year ago) got acquired by Garmin International, which is the number one gps device manufacturer in the world. They are located in Kansas and seem to be a good company that lets MotionBased do what they do without interfering too much. So I will get a chance to feel a start-up type environment where I will be only the 8th employee working in their pretty small office (one block from the water by the way), but will have the backing of this huge international organization with lots of money. The best of both worlds in my opinion. Really though, one of the best parts about the job is the people that I’m going to be working with. I got a great feeling from all of them when I visited for my interviews and they all seem really cool and easy to work with, even the founders, who will be my bosses. All in all, I have to say that things worked out great and I’m really excited about what will be coming next.

check out how cute my baby cousin dylan is. he’s now about 8 months old and is extremely eager to start walking. he’s been holding on to tables and now making his way to balancing and moving from holding a table, to holding a chair behind him. this is a picture of him in a moon bounce that we got for his brother and sister’s birthday at our house. click through to see more pics from the day. it was lots of fun.

there were definitely some very shocking facts and figures presented. throughout the movie, i couldn’t help but get an overwhelming feeling of helplessness in my ability to really make a difference in solving this increasingly surmounting problem by doing things like buying a hybrid car or making my home more eco-friendly, when the people in power that can actually make a big difference refuse to do things like ratify the kyoto protocol and so many people in the world choose to remain ignorant about the problem. however, that is not an excuse to be lazy about it, and i still plan on doing what i can to make a difference, first off by urging everyone that’s reading this to go see the movie and then by taking some of the actions that were suggested in the movie.  hopefully we can all work together to see that our children have a world to live in that is not ugly and destroyed because we didn’t care enough to make a few simple and sensible changes in our daily lives.

the above screenshot is a view of my itunes library being browsed through this new program called CoverFlow. if you’ve got a mac and have a large music library in iTunes, you’ve got to check out. Of course, if you haven’t already done so, you’re gonna have to spend a lot of time getting the album artwork for all of your music (or you can be lazy and get a program that does it for you automatically like Fetch Art). This is what the album browsing in Front Row should look like. I like how it makes you feel like you’re looking through a stack of physical cd cases and choosing an album to listen to. A very nice transfer of a real world experience into a user interface. The developer is right when he says its better seen than explained, so here’s a video of it in action. PC users eat your hearts out