señor taco’s travels

It’s actually been a while since I got any new music so I did a big purchase
(and of course there is already more stuff to get, but I’ll wait for the next
several things to come out). And now, on with the show:

• 
  Coheed and Cambria: The Second Stage Turbine Blade and In
  Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
  Where have I been these last two years? These guys are amazing. I love that
  they’ve got a concept that will span four albums and these two are #2 and #3
  respectively. The singer has a high pitched voice and more than one person
  has likened him to Getty Lee of Rush and while similar he’s not the same at
  all. The music is good to listen too and has several catchy songs. I mean
  how can you not like a band with a singer/song writer with such href="http://www.coheedandcambria.com/images/co.ca5.jpg" title="go Claudio">
  great hair. Right now I’m really digging these guys while I’m working
  out. Check out their videos.
• Swingin’ Utters: Live in A Dive
  Well, I love these guys. href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2004/07/19#utters-slims-2" title="great
  show">The last show I saw by them was excellent. This live recording
  is no exception. A good mix of old and new and well mixed this I will
  enjoy listening to for a long time to come.
• 
  Alexisonfire: Watch Out!
  I had heard of this band here and there, but never heard them. My friend
  Matt suggested I give them a listen as usual he’s right on (we have near
  identical tastes in music). I will admit the album took a little bit to
  grow on me, but now that it has I like it. There are definitely points where
  I’m glad the singer sings instead of the screamer screaming.
• Only
  Crime: To the Nines
  Take several of the best musicians in punk rock today from bands like Good
  Riddance, Hagfish, Bane, and The Descendents/All and you get Only Crime.
  Because Russ Rankin is the singer there are many direct parallels to Good
  Riddance, but the music is much different in a good way. For hard rocking
  punk this album is a must have. It’s also good work out music.
• Tiger Army:
  III: Ghost Tigers Rise
  Tiger Army, how I love you. With this third release Tiger Army shows no
  signs of slowing down. Some of the songs are a little slower than one might
  expect, but overall the album is solid and has a lot of energy and great
  song writing that we’ve come to expect from the Army. If you like psychobilly
  then you’ll want this release in your catalogue.
• Subhumans:
  Live in A Dive
  Yet another in the Live in a Dive series. Again, Fat Wreck does not
  disappoint. While I’ve heard the Subhumans in the past I got into punk
  in the era post them. Slowly I’ve been picking up older stuff and this
  album is a great addition since it’s well mastered and a good mix (a “best of”
  if you will). Definitely a buy for anyone that likes the Subhumans.
• Bad
  Religion: The Empire Strikes First
  What more can one say about these legends of punk? Not much except that this
  album is great and spot on exactly what I’d expect from them. They did
  manage to release a couple of albums in the 90s that are just not recommended at all,
  but that’s all over now (and has been over for the last couple of albums).
  Bad Religion will rock your lame ass, believe it.
• Sparta:
  Porcelain
  A sophomore effort from some of the members of At the Drive-In. This album
  is solid but I will admit I haven’t given it enough listens to really
  embrace it yet. I liked it on the first couple of listens so it’s going
  to fall into regular rotation now.

For the last several books (excepting a href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2004/06/21" title="Max Barry books review">
little bit of fiction) I’ve have been reading either history or science or
both and Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is certainly
no exception. A fun look at natural history and explained in a very clear
manner, Short History was certainly a good read, even if I had just
covered a lot of the material in href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2004/07/13#atomic-bomb" title="big badda
boom">Making of the Atomic Bomb and href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2004/06/01#krakatoa" title="other big
badda boom">Krakatoa.

Bryson is adept at presenting concepts in an easy to grasp manner and in tying
together a lot of history in scientific exploration into one cohesive tome.
The book occasionally would get off track but always with a reason to explain
some small piece or to illustrate a point. There were very many opportunities
for Bryson to get lost in the woods and he managed to keep it together.

I really don’t have more more to say about Short History other than
if you don’t mind talk of science and some history it’s a good read, just
make sure you separate it by a good bit from other natural and science
history books so you don’t get bored.

The New York Times has a neat href="http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/2004_ELECTIONGUIDE_GRAPHIC/"
title="Election Graphics">Election guide (flash) that shows not only the
way polls are going for each state but also past presidential results when you
mouse over the state or district.

Now, my friend Andre noticed yet another href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2004/07/15#not-a-number" title="Silly
Interface Gaffe">NaN interface gaffe where the District of Columbia (D.C.)
has Kennedy winning by ‘NaN%’ in 1960. Not only should there not be any
listing for D.C. in 1960 (see, they only got electoral votes in 1961 with the
href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxxiii.html"
title="Amendment XXIII">23rd Amendment) if it comes up as a NaN then it
should just not display at all. Oh well, things like this will continue. I’m
guessing it’s because people aren’t doing correct data input validation which
is the cause of many of our buffer over-runs and successful attacks against
software.

My friend the rotomonkey has just joined the blogging world. He’s got a bit
more than a passing interest in photography (what with the dark room in his
basement at his last place and all that) and hopefully will be giving us
the gift of more goodness soon.

Oh yeah, and he’s moving out here to California soon. I can’t wait.

So, last Friday my friend dode and I had decided to see a href="http://www.swinginutters.com/" title="$wingin' Utter$">Swingin’ Utters
show at Slim’s.
The show was part of the Rock Against Bush tour. We got there in time to see
The Reducers
SF play and then the Swingin’ Utters.

When the Utters came out I saw they had a different person on rhythm guitar.
Now normally this wouldn’t be to strange since they’ve had a few of them
since Max Huber left (or at least it seems that way). This time however the
guitarist looked familiar, and then I pinned down who it was before they
mentioned his name. It was Jack from href="http://www.byorecords.com/bandpage.php?band=onemanarmy" title="OMA @ BYO">
One Man Army (official site which
seems down). I know, double-eww tee eff, right? My only wish is that my
friend the
rotomonkey was already living out here because I know he would have enjoyed
it. By far it was the best Swingin’ Utters show I’ve ever seen, hands down.
Oh well, there will be more once he’s finally out here.

I saw that Planes
Mistaken For Stars has an title="ecard: stream the album">ecard available where you can stream the
entire new album before it’s release. So, when I get there I’m greeted with
not a time value for the track I’m not playing, but a value that a human
probably shouldn’t ever see, href="http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Not-a-Number"
title="NaN definition">NaN. It’s not a big deal, but those kinds of
interface gaffes are humorous to me.

alt="NaN screen grab" />

Well, I finally finished reading href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684813785/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20">
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. I’m just going to
start out by saying that was one heck of a weighty tome. At more than 760
pages of small type and with very dense subject matter it took me a while to
read through it. I’m glad I did though since it was a href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2003/12/30">gift last holiday from
some friends.

The first thing I will say about The Making of the Atomic Bomb is that
it is thorough. Rhodes covers every detail needed to tell the story of the
men and women that developed the first atom bomb. He starts farther back than
just the Manhattan Project with the discoveries about the principles of matter
that were built upon and led to the great discoveries like neutrons and fission.
At points the detail was almost too much. While great and fascinating
discoveries there was so much to get through that I actually ended up putting
the book down and reading something else twice. That was good because trying
to push that much information in when I’m not needing it (like say when I was
in school or for work) just isn’t fun and for me reading is fun. It’s an
extracurricular activity. I like to enjoy what I read and with Atomic
Bomb I knew there would be a big payoff.

As I got farther and farther into the book I started to meet up with the more
modern giants of research. Seeing how their lives were effected and shaped
by the world around them and the political atmosphere of the time certainly
gives me a new found respect for them. Escaping political persecution and
facing the real possibility that those bent on world domination could have
obtained the bomb must have been an unprecedented stress and motivational
factor in pushing some of these scientists forward.

As the book moved through the early stages of the war and into the founding
of the Los Alamos lab things seemed impossibly slow to me. I realize I’m
looking at the events from the successful side, but the way the government
seemed to drag it’s feet was incredibly. To the credit of everyone involved
they did seem to pick up the pace and move with appreciable speed as
discoveries progressed. I was significantly impressed with the speed at which
the government finally did get production plants and research moving.

The last third of the book was the most exciting. The building of the bomb,
the development of the implosion devices, the testing of the theories, all of
it was nearly nail biting. The hurdles those men had to overcome were fantastic
and they still did it.

The descriptions of the bombing of Hiroshima were quite fantastic and
horrifying. I am saddened that any group of people, in war time or not, had
to experience such devastation and destruction. I understand the motivations
for using such awesome weapons in that situation, but thankfully no one else has
had to go through an atomic blast and hopefully no one ever will.

Discussions on the secrecy of the projects involved were also particularly
eye opening. Seeing the scientists that were used to an open scientific
society having to close off from even family and friends was eye opening. The
need to keep certain parties from building on discoveries they made was
paramount, but I think it only harmed the general scientific community in the
long run. Lessons from then have been wrongly applied to today in the wake
of “terrorism” and a supposed call for security where some research has been
squelched and information redacted. All of these secrecy things do nothing but
cause wasted effort in research and limit the good benefits of certain fields.

All in all I loved the book. I’m looking forward to getting href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684824140/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20"
>
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb also by Richard Rhodes,
however I’m going to wait a bit on that one since it’s just a thick and dense
as Atomic Bomb.

My friend KP
seems to be a href="http://speak.pushmedia.com/archives/2004/05/11/jamba_juice.php"
title="yadda yadda yadda">fiend or a href="http://speak.pushmedia.com/archives/2004/06/18/jamba_mamba.php"
title="blah blah blah">nut for title="come, be one of us">Jamba Juice, I’m not sure which it is. Now, me,
I’ve seen them around but a smoothy is a smoothy, right? I figured it’s time
I found out. I was informed there is a JJ right next to the supermarket we
sometimes go to. You could have fooled me, I never noticed it (but that’s
probably due to the horrid design of the center and the way the bland
architecture does a good job of de-emphasizing the signs of the stores that are
there). So, we went up there for lunch and I started in on my first Jamba
experience.

The first thing I noticed as a I walked in the door is that even though there
was a line I was greeted. It was an odd thing at first and only the first sign
of the unorthodoxy that is Jamba Juice. The staff was helpful and friendly
(while not that unusual out here it was certainly above the normal levels).

I was quite impressed with the freshness and overall flavor of my smoothy. I
think I’m going to have to go back there some more, especially in the mornings
since I don’t drink coffee. Thanks KP, but I think you’re still a nut.