Off to Austin (Texas, that is)

For everyone who has been asking over the last several months, I found out that I'm getting transferred to Austin, Texas for my imminent job promotion. I'll be doing technical field sales for my company and be responsible for supporting and increasing sales in Texas. When am I gone? Mid-October. It'll be a big change, but God is good.

To all those in Illinois - high school friends, church friends, work friends, camp friends, college friends, and others - I have enjoyed calling each and every one of you my friends and getting to know you (some more than others). I hope that I get a chance to see all of you in the next 4/5 weeks before I leave. If not, call me if you're ever in Texas. I'll be happy to share my place or meet up.

As for this blog and my other one, I plan on continuing to use both of them.  This one will be for random thoughts and stories, whereas the Fourth Photography blog will be mainly for my photographic interests.  Also, I plan on actually utilizing my domain name and creating a website for www.fourthphotography.com, but that won't be for a little while.  I have to let my portfolio continue to expand and then learn some kind of web programming.  We'll see.

Anyways, it's off to Austin.  But there will probably be more blog posts before then.  Stay tuned!

Music Adventures

Three things for this post:

Internet/Mobile Music - if you haven't checked out Grooveshark yet, you're a complete loser.  Checking out Grooveshark may not help you with your "loser-ness," but it will make you much more informed about internet music.  My guess is that you and your friends all still "YouTube" songs that you want to hear.  That's dumb.  YouTube is for videos; Grooveshark is for music.  Not only does it have a great selection of music, you can create playlists, store songs in your Grooveshark library, and download a mobile app for these phones (psych! not the iPhone).  To get full functionality on the site and the mobile app, you will need to sign up for a "VIP" account - a reasonable $3/month.  Even without the VIP account, it's much better than any other online music streaming site.

old logo - CD + cool blue circle = iTunes 10 logo

Social Music - iTunes 10.  But more specifically "Ping."  I'm not too sure how Ping works yet, but I did sign up last night.  I guess you can follow your friends, favorite artists, and people you don't even know!  So it's like Twitter + iTunes = Ping.  Since there are millions of people with iTunes accounts, it's a good concept, but we'll see how it works out in practice.  I'm not sure why you'd want to know about the musical tendencies of people you don't know.  Final thought - which sounds less masculine? "I just pinged!" or "I just tweeted!"

Good Music - If you're a fan of Iron & Wine, Brand New, Kevin Devine, Manchester Orchestra, Colour Revolt, Dear and the Headlights, or Winston Audio, you need to listen to Right Away, Great Captain!  Check out the first song on their album "The Eventually Home" on Grooveshark.  The band is a side project of Andy Hull, the lead singer of Manchester Orchestra, and has produced two of a planned three total albums.  All three are written from the viewpoint of a 17th century sea captain who caught his wife cheating on him with his own brother.  The third album is planned for release later in 2010 and supposedly begins at the point in the story where the captain is standing over the dead body of his brother who he has just killed.  Sounds strange, but the music is well written, well performed, and definitely worth a listen.  I mean, how many bands do you know are completely formed around the character of a 17th century sea captain?

P.S. - Another song worth your time is (Fork and Knife) by Brand New.  Listen here and check out the amazing lyrics here.

That's all for now.  Check out my new photography blog while you're surfing around the internet.