Listening to CD's With

Here's a cool article where Pat Metheny explains why he likes some of his favorite CD's . Hopefully the Times will do more of these; the Watching Movies With... series was great.

Woyzeck and Wozzeck

Here's a nice writeup on Woyzeck the play and Wozzeck the opera.

Rambling

First, go here to opt-out of getting pre-approved credit card offers (via Lifehacker). I find that these offers are most of my junk mail, and I've heard of problems stemming from others getting ahold of your pre-approved cards and signing up. Good riddance.

I bought a bunch of CDs at Amoeba today: Peter Grimes, Quartet for the End of Time, Miles Smiles, and Mingus Ah Um. Total cost: $8, after the use of a gift certificate. Thanks Sylvia!

While I'm sort of on the topic, I just put together a semi-decent stereo. I got a Technics SA-DA10N receiver (thanks to AJ), the JMlab Chorus 706s speakers (used from Craigslist), and a Sony DVP-NC875V 5-disc CD/DVD player. I'm really happy with the whole setup. I found the AudioReview and Audioholics sites to be very helpful. Oh, and my speaker wires were created exactly as described here, same parts and everything.

I visited the Legion of Honor for the first time a couple weeks back and loved it. The views are amazing, and the art collection is solid too, with a lot of great Rodin. It made me want to watch Vertigo again, as did this thought-provoking writeup (via GreenCine Daily). And this page, which contrasts shots from the film with the current appearance of the same San Francisco locations, is also worth a look.

To conclude, Elephant is a powerful and disturbing film, and The Wire is a good show through 8 episodes of the first season. Enough for now. Wait, one last thing: Alex Ross has more on applause.

Electronic Dance Music Guide

Check it out. A bit biased, and not really clear on the differences between the genres. But very fun to play with.

Package Tracking RSS

If you have a UPS or USPS tracking number, you can use this page to make an RSS feed to track your package. Sweet.

Lifehacker

I ran into this site Lifehacker that "recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time." Then I wasted a bunch of time surfing the site. Something is wrong here.