However I did make it to the Hawthorne last night around 9:15 and caught a couple awesome acts. Dykeritz was already going when we finally waltzed in, but I think we caught most of the show. I'd never heard them before, but they were great. There are eight people in the band, three of which played the keyboards, one "played" a gymboree, and the rest had normal musical instruments. For how many people were in the band they still seemed to play pretty tight and it was just a generally fun set. I will definitely be picking up their album and hope to see them again some time soon.

After that Copy came on and played his music off his computer and occasionally involved his keytar. All of his songs seemed to follow an identical formula, but they were fun and finally got the crowd moving. Good, fairly predictable, but completely awesome at the same time. His stuff reminded me a little bit of Ratatat.

Finally, Dan Deacon came on and annoyed the shit out of everybody with some instructed pointing, a bit of preaching about compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and his opinion on the Georgia/Russia conflict. He decided not to test the levels before his set which turned out pretty much exactly like you'd expect. We stayed for two songs, but couldn't take any more horribly mixed painful screeching sounds. The second song he played I barely recognized as the song that I've heard on KNRK a few times, but the sound was so bad it wasn't even worth it.

All in all it was a great time, aside from the segregated bar in the back of the room. I'll definitely make an effort to get out and see more of the shows. I recommend everyone retroactively make it to the shows.

Google hasn't officially announced it yet, to the best of my knowledge, but it looks like they're very far along with the development of a new Web Browser based on the Webkit rendering engine. They call it Google Chrome.

The interesting part isn't the rendering though. The underlying architecture is what makes this very exciting news. As everyone nerd knows, websites and web applications are becoming more and more reliant on Javascript to get things done. Most bottlenecks in modern web browsers seem to come from Javascript-intensive sites choking up.

As such, Google has been hard at work on their own Javascript virtual machine for Chrome (and anyone else who wants it) called V8. I don't understand all of it, but the part that seems interesting to me is that all code is instantly interpreted into machine code, allowing it to fly at about one million miles per hour. There's also neat bits about the ease of finding pointers and garbage collection that are going to make V8 the next generation Javascript engine.

The other killer feature, which is the bane of all modern browsers to incorporate tabbed browsing, is individual processes per tab. Say you load up twenty tabs in Firefox right now and one of those tabs loads a site that goes apeshit. In today's browser-world^TM you would most likely either have to restart Firefox entirely, or Firefox would just crash. Chrome aims to fix that by putting all tabs into their own processes, so if one tab freaks out, you simply close it and the process is gone. Everything goes back to normal.

All of this (unconfirmed) information is coming from a thirty-eight page comic that was shipped to Philipp Lenssen. I see this as huge for Google, and huge for end users. Faster web apps for us, amazing open source software for developers, and the world being one step closer to using the Internet as an OS for Google.

There's been a lot of talk about a Google OS for a long time, and I think this might be it.

Update: Looks like it'll be out tomorrow (September 2nd) for Windows.

I'm slowly slipping back in to my old habits of watching CNN all day while I work. Nothing is on at 12:30am on Sunday morning so I flipped it to CNN.

I'd never been acquainted with Dce. (Douche) Sanchez before, but I have quickly learned that he is probably the worst person on CNN (Headline News excluded). Worse than Wolf, worse than Lou Dobbs, worse than the annoying half of Jack Cafferty, even worse than that chucklehead Don Lemon. Actually, Sanchez did a quick video interview with Lemon who had traveled to New Orleans for Gustav coverage and I was forced to actually almost like Lemon because Sanchez is such a heinous guano face.

He's just loud and interrupts everyone he interviews and makes jokes about hurricanes. Dude, there's a reason you're on at midnight and you have to reference twitter and facebook every thirty seconds to sound relevant.

I went to the Oregon Coast for the first time (that I remember, I was apparently there as a kid). Cannon Beach was the highlight of the trip.

This is a big rock.

It was surprisingly warm.

Absurdity of the game-show-ization of the election tone? Check.
Mildly racist portrayal of Asians? Check.
Riggins, Idaho references? Check.

Bloc Party's latest, Intimacy, is available on their website.

It's ridiculously good.

I managed to spend a few hours in Chicago over the weekend and had a pretty awesome time. It's the first time I've got to really spend any amount of time in Chicago (aside from earlier this year where I got sick half way through my trip and had to head home). Lollapalooza was going on while I was there and I had no idea. I walked along Grant Park between museums and managed to catch almost the entire MGMT set which was audible from pretty much everywhere near the water. Good times.

I did the whole Magnificent Mile thing, and also the Museum stroll though I only actually got in to one because they close early on the weekend (boo). Saturday night I hung out in Wicker Park and had a blast. Such a cool neighborhood and really sweet bars. I hope I come back soon.

For reasons still unclear to me I was given a db clay wallet by Lisa Bettany. Thanks go out to both of them.

I'm ridiculously picky when it comes to wallets. I think I've had about five in my entire life and I wear them to shreds. I've never really had one that I've liked for an extended period of time, but I see that changing with this beast.

As a proud new owner of the db clay Orange Hallways Version 3.1 (gotta love an accessory that has a longer name than it's owner) I can seriously recommend these bad boys. The actual wallet style is simple, it's a single fold with plenty of room for bills and four standard slots of cards and your typical somewhat-hidden-underneath-the-normal-slots-slots. I don't carry cash so I have a couple extra cards shoved in the bill area.

There are a couple of things that make the wallet cooler than it's utilitarian purposes. First is the material, something db clay calls Tope, which is apparently eco-friendly and super strong. The material feels awesome to the hand, has a nice texture and feels solid and I can see it lasting. The other cool thing is, obviously, the print. I dig the idea of a picture for a print. The picture is accredited to simply Graeme in the card that accompanied the wallet, but props to this mystery-person and whoever decided to slap the image on a wallet.

Also happy to support a company (in the future I may actually purchase one of these wallets) based right here in sunny NE Portland. I'm not sure where exactly they're located but it can't be too terribly far from my house, which I find pretty cool for no other reason than cred-by-association.

This is probably the longest post I've written, and it's about a wallet. Go figure. Thanks Lisa, and thanks db clay.

Without getting in to any level of detail I find myself in a situation I didn't intend to be in at this stage in my life. I've had plans for myself, who I would be and how I would get there. These plans weren't particularly grandiose, they were logical progressions and they were comfortable. Unfortunately over the course of a half-hour conversation I am now frantically adjusting—recreating—these plans.

I'm having a hard time removing myself from the situation and gaining perspective. I know I can handle this and that the feelings I have towards the situation, and life in general, will pass. However the nasty period between "I can't imagine things being different" and "I'm alright" is an ugly place and I'm ready to be through it.

I feel like I'm a kid learning his first lesson about how life isn't fair. I still hold this romantic notion that good things will come to those who do good things. But that's not the case. The world is political, good things come to those who are lucky and those who know people.

This website is as close as I keep to a journal, so you'll have to forgive the sad view into my head. I hope to look back on this in a few months and feel stupid for letting myself feel this down. I'm not giving up, I'm just one bruise closer to a pessimist.

Update: I'm over it.