So it begins

I knew it was coming, but it was always in that sometime in the future sense.  In two days I'm going to be staying at home with my son to take on my turn of full time child care.  Yikes.

I just hope we get along well enough that he doesn't scream at me all day.

Original Vs the Cover

So I heard the cover first and that my have set my bias for it, but I thought I would post here to see which version others preferred.

The original is from Beirut (the band not the place) and I heard it recently on the nighty night Last.fm station of indie music I listen to with my son. The seed artist is The National and I like them but seriously Bon Iver, Iron and Wine, Beirut e. al ad nauseum put me straight to sleep with their slow pace and muted vocals. But I digress the song is Postcards From Italy and the song is a nice little ditty.


Then there is the cover by Florence + The Machine that dominates this song into sweet oblivion.(an additional note to all bands adopting web/im/text speak for band names that make for really dumb typing and hard to find you on the internet so they eventually change their name ala Panic! at the Disco now known as Panic at the Disco stop it, seriously)


International versions below

Beirut version

Beirut - Postcards from Italy from Fulanito Sutano on Vimeo.


Florence + The Machine version (feel free to ignore the video here, it was the best audio quality version that I found but the video is some weird hipster bs)

Pichidangui 2011 from Camila Rubio on Vimeo.

wasting time

This is killing me slowly.

Music streaming or otherwise

The article that started this thought is ancient by any standard, but I remembered it when I was looking for more music recently.  There is the standards of course with Pandora, and for me Slacker, Turntable.fm, Last.fm, straight up youtube and vevo, tumblr (if you follow someone that posts music often) ect.  Most of this just promotes what is popular, and doesn't really help you with "discovery"  The article mentions Soundcloud which has come on like gangbusters since the article was written, it mentions the now defunct but previously awesome LaLa.

My trouble is I feel like I'm in a funk.  Radio top 40 BS isn't doing it for me, and most of my streaming services either don't really help with discovery or are so fine tuned that very few new songs come up.  I follow a very select few indie music blogs, but they are either loosing steam for interests elsewhere, or have gone defunct in the case of Woxy.  My slacker radio station has turned into a Manchester Orchestra fan station (the seed artist was the Dead Weather) and it's only Manchester Orchestra because I had to ban The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's.  Don't get me wrong I love Karen O (seriously check out the Immigrant Song cover she did with Trent Reznor for that movie coming out soon), but she can be super annoying after like 6 songs in a single listening session.

Anything really stoking your fires lately?  Also for giggles if you accidentally search for radeo because you're tired and cannot type it gives you interesting results.

exactly this.

I don't understand ostensibly sane people and the end of the world garbage.  Freak out, but I predict a precipitous drop off in the talk about the Mayans sometime around December 22, also when is there a time that isn't appropriate to drop an XKCD link? Just saying.

Copy run start

On command on a cisco switch would have saved me a decent amount of stress on Tuesday.  Vlans that you didn't create, using a VTP server that you only half understand coupled with power outages = fuck yeah wasted time and day.

The guy that was Cisco certified decided he didn't want to work here any more, I'm not certed, but have somewhere between one half and three quarters of a clue, but sometimes I forget important things like copy run start.

This means nothing to anybody I realize, but I'm kicking myself for it.
conf t
interface gigabitethernet 0/44
switchport mode access
switchport access vlan 112
exit
exit
copy run start  <--- Important last step you idiot.

Eggs poached in Tomato Sauce aka Shakshuka

Via Joe and Jo

I cannot believe this has been sitting in my drafts for so long.  I actually made this and was super excited about it at the time too.  I looked on both cameras, looked all through Picasa, and cannot believe that I didn't take a picture of the outcome!  You will have to settle for a Flickr picture instead, but this was really good.  I served it with Naan, but it is a Jewish dish so Pita's may be more traditional.

The recipe I followed of course comes from Saveur, but they never called out the name of this dish.  It was only when I started searching for eggs poached in tomato sauce that I found out.  Another dish I found while I was looking for more information about this dish was Moroccan Ragout with poached eggs.  The Shakshuka was almost a vegetarian dish (eggs are ok with some vegetarians but cheese made with animal rennet is not)  the ragout adds a lamb sausage.  I will do the Shakshuka again, but the lamb sausage sounds pretty good too.