Frank Ramblings

Who thought someone could take the 1966 Adam West Batman film and actually make it look epic? I know I didn't. Oh well. "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."

Norweigan Wood (This Bird Has Flown) by Frank  
Download now or listen on posterous

10 Norweigan Wood (This Bird Has Flo.mp3 (3906 KB)

Apparently my Across the Universe was met with something other than disgust, so upon request, I'll post some other covers I've done as well.

Posted via email from Frank's posterous

Across The Universe by Frank  
Download now or listen on posterous

02 Across the Universe.mp3 (4786 KB)

Inspired by the brand new Beatle remasters, here's a recording of Across the Universe that I did about 4 or 5 years ago.

Posted via email from Frank's posterous

So let's talk music, shall we? It's been a while since I've blogged about it. I consider the Beatles to be the greatest band that ever was or will be, period. Call me closed-minded or biased, but that's what I think. I'll admit I'm a bit of a music snob. I've been anticipating the re-release of the British versions of the Beatle albums since I heard about it earlier this year. Appropriately, they were released this past Wednesday, 9/9/09.

I listened to every album in chronological order over the course of two days, and let me tell you, this is the way to listen to these albums! Never before have they sounded so crisp and so clear, and never have they been mixed to such perfection. The 1988 CD releases pale in comparison to the new ones. For over 20 years, those releases were the only way these albums could be heard on CD, but now they sound muddy and bland compared to the 2009 editions. I've been waiting for something this amazing literally all my life, and I am very pleased indeed.

I found that the biggest improvements could be heard on songs that were heavy in acoustic guitar or piano. There was a freshness and a cleanness to those tracks that I've never heard before. Songs like "Yesterday," "Blackbird," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Till There Was You" sounded especially crisp. "Yesterday" brought me to the verge of tears; I really felt as though Paul and the string quartet were in the room with me. I could hear every breath, every strike of a pick against a guitar string. Some of the better-sounding piano songs included "The Fool on the Hill," "Golden Slumbers," and "Martha My Dear."

Of course, the louder songs sound amazing, too. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and "She's So Heavy" blew me away, as did "Helter Skelter" and the end of "Hey Jude." More complex selections like "A Day In The Life," "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite," "And Your Bird Can Sing," "Because," and the Abbey Road closing medley ("Golden Slumbers," "Carry That Weight," "The End") were brought up to a whole new level, chiefly because of the excellent use of the stereo field. The rich sound and presence of those songs is more enjoyable than ever.

There were several instances where I noticed small details that had previously been buried, especially on the earlier albums. On the Please Please Me album, for example, I noticed John half-laughing as he sang, Ringo's voice cracking, and on two or three occasions, a little bit of background noise in the studio. There were occasions on other albums where I could hear someone (presumably John) tapping on his guitar to keep time, and once I even heard Paul whispering as he counted the beats. These imperfections don't detract from the music at all. In fact, they make it more real. Listening in the best headphones I own, I really felt the music surround me physically. This speaks to the brilliance of the remixes and shows how much was missing from the 1988 versions.

Perhaps what helped me to enjoy this re-issue so much is the fact that I imported it into my iTunes library in Apple Lossless format instead of the usual MP3 or AAC. The best music demands to be heard in the best quality, so I turned to lossless to preserve the remastered edge. I've never really considered myself an audiophile, but I had to give this particular collection the Red Carpet treatment. Put simply, Apple Lossless is software that compresses audio files without sacrificing the sound quality. The files are about four times larger than MP3s, but the audio quality is exponentially better. I'm really glad I made that decision, because it enhanced the experience more than I can put into words.

So at the end of the day, I'd call the 2009 Beatles Stereo Box Set a necessary part of any music collector's library. Apart from vinyl, which will always be special to me, this is the only way anyone should ever experience the Beatles from now on. You haven't heard these songs until you've heard them as they are presented in this set.

Lately, I've been all about social networks. As a self-proclaimed Twitter addict for close to a year now, I hear about lots of different sites each day from the many tech people I follow. Listening to tech podcasts -- especially the shows on the Revision3 and TWiT networks -- also ensures that I hear a lot about social networking sites. Whenever I hear of a new site, I usually make an account and try it out. Sometimes I'll check back often, other times I'll never look at it again.


One of the best social networks I've ever had the pleasure of using is FriendFeed. At first glance, this site looks an awful lot like Twitter. But it's so much more than that. FriendFeed aggregates statuses, comments, messages, and posts from dozens and dozens of sites and puts them all in one place. By checking your FriendFeed profile, your friends can see updates from your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, GTalk, Digg, Delicious, Amazon, StumbleUpon, and Google Reader accounts, as well as many more. Plus, there's RSS support, so you can share your latest blog or podcast entries as well. Plus, you can have all these entries published to your Twitter, so your friends there can stay up-to-date with your lifestream. Personally, I would prefer it if everyone on Twitter would move over to FriendFeed. For one thing, the site is much slicker and more useful. The page auto-updates instantly, so you never need to refresh it. Plus the site is much more stable. I've never known it to crash, while Twitter crashes on almost a daily basis. Finally, FriendFeed was just bought by Facebook (FaceFeed?) so hopefully more improvements will come.

A really neat site that I just joined a week or two ago is gdgt. I think gdgt is really interesting because of how different it is. Members browse or search the site for gadgets and gizmos that they currently own, used to own, or wish they owned. When you find something that falls into one of those 3 categories for you, you add it to the appropriate list. Your profile consists of those three lists, as well as any other information you choose to share. There are also forums, a news page, and a feed of recent member activity. I think gdgt is really pretty innovative because I've never seen a site quite like it, and I must admit there's something almost addicting about looking for anything I own that might be considered a gadget and seeing if it's listed. If a gadget isn't listed, you can add an entry yourself, but there are still a limited number of categories because the site really is brand new. So far I've got 15 Haves, 15 Wants, 1 Had, and made 1 new contribution. Definitely check this one out.

There are also a ton of sites you can use to supplement Twitter. Twitter is my favorite social network by far. I've met hundreds of new people on Twitter, a handful of whom I consider close friends, even though we've never met in person. Some great sites that make use of Twitter include Dailybooth, TwitPic, and Blip.fm. Dailybooth is sort of a Twitter for self-portraits. Each day, users snap a photo of themselves and upload them. Links to these photos are sent out on their Twitter accounts, where their friends can view them and leave text or photo comments. It's a fun project to try and take 1 picture of yourself every day while keeping it fresh and interesting. TwitPic also auto-tweets links of uploaded pictures, but it's more of an all-purpose site. Use DailyBooth to take a self-portrait each day, but use TwitPic to share something funny, interesting, or just cool that can't be described in 140 characters. Finally, Blip.fm indexes links to MP3s and YouTube videos of popular (and obscure) songs for your listening pleasure. It auto-tweets a link to each song as you listen to it so your followers can listen along with you.

Posterous, while not inherently a social network, has some very cool potential social networking applications. At its core, Posterous is a blogging service. But what sets it apart from other services is the fact that you post blog entries via email. In fact, you don't even need to make an account to start using the service. All you need to do is send an email to their address, and the contents of that email will become your first blog post. The neat part is that if you send audio files as attachments, they will be uploaded to the server and a flash audio player will be generated. This allows for easy audio blogging and even podcasting. The social networking aspect of Posterous is that it allows you to auto-publish links to your entries on any number of social networking sites. This means that by sending a quick email, even on-the-go, you can share virtually any kind of content on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, or whatever other site you like, have all your friends and followers view it, and keep an archive of it all. How great is that?!

There are so many other sites I could list here, but I've already rambled quite a bit, so I'll just end by saying that if you want to see my updates on all these sites and more, you can visit my Google Profile.

This is going to seem stupid to many of you, but here goes anyway. When it comes to spelling and grammar, I have a pretty serious case of O.C.D. I'm not very forgiving of those errors, mostly because spelling and grammar come very naturally to me. I know if a sentence is grammatically correct or if a word is spelled properly just by reading or hearing it. It usually doesn't take very much effort on my part. That's why I was so surprised today when I read Green Lantern #45, written by the illustrious Geoff Johns, and ran across the following grammatical error from the mouth of Hal Jordan's on-again, off-again love interest Carol Ferris:

"Hal and I broke up more times then he's charged his ring."

Me: I saw a spelling/grammar error in a comic today

Faith: no way!

Me: yeah. my previously unwavering faith in geoff johns was shaken.

Faith: oh no!

Me: it'll take some time but I think we can patch things up

Faith: so sad

Faith: I know you two will make it work out

Faith: you're made for each other

Me: I hope you're right

Me: things have been so great until now

Me: I don't want it to end so suddenly

Faith: it's the first stutter in your relationship, give it time, things will go back to normal

Me: just because he used "then" when he clearly meant "than"

Faith: oh, that's not as bad as I thought

Faith: it's just one bad issue. It'll go back to normal next time

Me: that shouldn't get past the proofreader!!

Faith: see, that's not him

Faith: that's an external force

Me: but he wrote it in the first place!

Faith: honey, you're arguing semantics in a one time situation

Faith: everyone slips up a bit

Me: this is sounding too much like a real almost-break-up so I'm going to stop before I seriously frighten myself