I’m happy to announce that I’m showing my photography at the Stillwater Art Guild Gallery for May 2009. Further, the Stillwater Art Walk is May 15th from 4pm-9pm and May 16th from 11am-5pm. Check my shows page for details.

I’ve probably mentioned it once or twice before, but I have this photography site that I started last February. Well, with the help and encouragement of some very dear friends, I’m doing my first photo show! I’m so excited! Please click through, check out the details, and stop by!

Bring money. (grin)

I had been working on a minor redesign on the site since around the 1st of the year. About the same time Pantone announced it’s color of the year for 2008. It was a huge pile of minor changes: change the color (red #c00 -> blue #217), shrink the header area, give the “clickme” area some actual content, etc. Not a sweeping change, but dusting off the cobwebs.

Then a new version of Movable Type came along which changed the template scheme again. So I started revamping my templates to the new method, couldn’t make something work right, and lost the use of a plugin I depended upon.

Dejected, distracted, and disappointed, I gave up on the refresh for a while.

Some time over the summer I worked with a buddy of mine to crank together a couple Web sites. They were each part blog, part static pages, but the main goal was to have a usable template and let the blogging engine do the heavy lifting layout-wise. We chose WordPress as the engine because we were both tired of the difficulties with MovableType updates.

After doing those couple sites, I was re-energized about my own redesign. I completely trashed my prior work and started over on WordPress. It took several late night design sessions, rewiring the template, and completely rewriting my CD database, but it’s done.

I couldn’t decide whether to redo the templates for the photo gallery or just move that stuff to flickr. I was using FolderBlog previously, but the developer stopped updating the software so I didn’t really want to spend much time with dead software. Then I found a plugin for WordPress that would handle the gallery and use the blog engine for layout. Sweet. And it was easy to make things look similar to the old photo gallery. Cotton-candy sweet!

The last thing to do was make my CD database fit the new layout. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all. Then I found some pointers on how to use the WordPress engine to do the layout. Diabetic coma sweet! That part isn’t 100% done yet, but it’s most of the way there. It’s so easy once you get the first couple bumps out of the way.

I’m still going to copy all the photo gallery stuff to flickr — mostly as a way to drive traffic here and to mytwincities.net. There’s also a couple new stories, a new entry for the Taxonomy of Rock, and the start of a new series coming in the next few weeks.

I am unbelievably tickled to announce myTwinCities.net, my brand-spanking new photoblog. It’s a place to showcase my photography from around the Twin Cities and maybe sell a print once in a while.

You may see one of the photos appear on myTwinCities and in the photo gallery on this site, but my intent is that this is a rare occurrence. For example, I’ll keep the concert photography here.

How did I manage the domain name? Complete and unbridled luck. I was doing a little account maintenance at Network Solutions and just got it in my head to see if it was available. It took me a couple days to figure out what I was going to do with it, but after that it just sort of fell together.

The site runs on Pixelpost and the template is cobbled together from a couple that they had available for download. The purchasing code came from one of the several plugins I ended up installing.

Gotta say, I really do like Pixelpost. If you want to run a photoblog, you could do worse.

Much like last year, here’s my year in review — travel- and concert-wise anyway:

Places I’ve Been

The rules are that I actually slept in the city for a minimum of one night and that it must be outside the Twin Cities area (no crashing at a friend’s house and counting it).

• Stillwater, OK
• Phoenix, AZ
• Urbandale (Des Moines), IA
• Brookings, SD†
• Denver, CO
• La Porte, IN
• Detroit, MI†
• Toronto, Canada
• Cleveland, OH
• Chicago, IL
• Madison, WI
• Kansas City, MO

I’m mildly surprised that I nearly doubled last year’s list with 12 cities in 2007, as compared to 7 cities in 2006.

† Multiple, non-consecutive nights.

Things I’ve Seen

No stipulations here, just a list of all the shows and concerts I’ve seen this year.

• Sweet Colleens
• Varttina
• Honeydogs
• Lewis Black
• Klezmatics
• Bx3
• Carbon Leaf
• G. Love & Special Sauce
• Erin McKeown
• James Cotton
• Ditty Bops
• California Guitar Trio
• Amiina
• Roger Clyne (in Phoenix, AZ for the “No More Beautiful World” CD release party)
• Keb Mo
• Ceu
• Seven Steps To Havana
• Bill Cosby
• Konono No. 1
• Air
• Los Straitjackets
• English Beat
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Minneapolis, MN w/ Shurman)†
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Urbandale, IA w/ Shurman)†
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Brookings, SD w/ Shurman)†
• Elvis Costello (finally I got to see him live!)
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Ft. Collins, CO w/ Shurman)†
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Colorado Springs, CO w/ Shurman)†
• Lisa Gerrard
• Carrie Rodriguez
• Chris Thile
• Buckwheat Zydeco
• Squirrel Nut Zippers
• Hookers and Blow
• Puppini Sisters
• Crowded House
• Mina Agossi
• Lenka Dusilova
• James Cotton
• They Might Be Giants
• Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers
• Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers (Not only two nights in a row, but two shows each night! Yes, I love them that much!)
• Nick Lowe
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Toronto, Canada w/ Jason Boots)‡
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Detroit, MI w/ Alternate Routes)‡
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Cleveland, OH w/ Alternate Routes)‡
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Chicago, IL w/ Alternate Routes)‡
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Madison, WI w/ Alternate Routes)‡
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Brookings, SD)‡
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers (in Minneapolis, MN)‡
• Jose Gonzales
• Henry Rollins (another person I’ve wanted to see for years — and a personal hero of mine live!)
• Zap Mama
• Nickel Creek (“Farewell for Now” tour)
• Erin McKeown
• Sia
• Robyn Hitchcock (another hero of mine)
• Kansas City Symphony
• Stellanovas
• Aimee Mann (Christmas show, which was quite lovely)
• 2007 CP Rail Holiday Train
• Robert Randolph
• Wookiefoot (New Year’s Eve)

That’s 63 events (one every 5.79 days), only 1 of which was not an actual concert. I can’t remember all of the opening acts, but among those 62 shows, there are likely more than 100 bands. Allowing 4 hours per show (30 minutes pre-show, 60 minute opening act, 30 minute stage turn, 90 minute main act, 30 minutes post-show), I spend about 2.88% of my time at concerts — Hmmm, maybe a pie chart is in order here.

† Rock-N-Roll Road Trip #2 (Spring) ‡ Rock-N-Roll Road Trip #3 (Fall)

In case you saw it on the news, a section of I-35W collapsed this evening during rush-hour. I don’t travel that section of highway and was completely across town at the time.

Thus far, I don’t know anyone that was on the bridge.

I’ve been making an effort recently to get more of my photo backlog on-line. I posted stuff for the following concerts:

• Aimee Mann (23 June, 2006)
• Chris Silver (18 March, 2006)
• Massive Attack (28 April, 2006)
• Ray Davies (04 March, 2006)
• Robert Randolph (15 February, 2006)
• Roger Clyne (23 March, 2006)
• Sigur Ros (08 May, 2006)
• Spinout Records Package Show (01 March, 2006)

I also added a section called Dailies & Whatnot to hold miscellaneous photos and concert one-offs. The “concert one-offs” are where I have only one picture from the entire show, typically a shot of me with the artist/band.

Titles and captions are sparse at best. I’ll be going through and adding them later — it was a huge effort to get these posted.

Just over a month ago my beloved Jeep Grand Cherokee, “Trusty Rusty,” was rear-ended when driving home from work. Although it was still drivable, it wasn’t in good shape. The floorboard in the back bed was creased, the frame was cracked on the left side just behind the axle mounts, and the left passenger door didn’t sit right in the opening (I could stick my hand through the gap.) And those were just the easily visible problems. Suffice to say, the insurance company totaled the poor thing.

Last night I found its replacement — a Silver 2007 Mazda 6i — and bought it. Whoop-de-do, you might say, but this is a big step for me. At 41 years old, this is the first time I have ever bought a new car. All of my previous cars have been second-hand, often well loved by their prior owners. Trusty Rusty, for example, was a 1993 model with 187,000 miles that I got from my dad about 4 years ago. It was working great up until the accident and I wanted to see it through to 200,000 miles.

When I first sat down in the Mazda (I’m not usually one to name cars and “Trusty Rusty” was bestowed by a friend) it had 5 miles on it. Five. I’m kicking myself now for not taking a picture right then. After the test drive it was at 10 and the above picture is just after I got it home — by taking the long way.

Ever since Patrick had his done, I’ve wanted one. What, you may ask? My own icon. And now I finally have it. Paul over at IconizeMe finally started accepting orders again and I got mine in right away.

I was surprised how fast he turned it around. Based on email timestamps, I submitted my original photo around 1430 CST, Paul sent a confirmation email around 1800 CST, and I had the finished icon set (8.5″x11″ vector based PDF, 128×128 pixel gif, 2550×3190 pixel jpeg, Windows .ico and .icns file) by 0202 CST. I wonder if the guy actually sleeps.

Now I just have to figure out to do with it — although I have a couple ideas.

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally redesigned the site. I’ve also put a bunch of new picture sets on-line.

This is the 6th major version since I put up my first Web site in 1994 (1995?) and represents about 140 hours of work over the last several months. Much of that was spent rejiggering the templates and testing testing testing (cross-browser compatibility is not fun.)

The original site was a ˜ through my Internet provider at the time. Since then I’ve gone through many iterations, including one for my (long abandoned) Web design consultancy.

Over the years I’ve had:

• The original ˜ site.
• A revamp of the original site, still a ˜. Mostly this brought some cohesiveness to the site as a whole.
• The Web design consultancy — Phosphor Images — aka “Green Sock-Hop” because of the headline font I chose.
• The “Yellow Blog” site. This is where I first started doing what would become blogging. (Not that I was a pioneer. There just wasn’t a special word for it back then.)
• “Red With Bubbles” that was here yesterday. Sick of hand-coding the each page, this is where I started using Movable Type to drive the main content areas.
• This version, affectionately called “Blended Elephant,” where the biggest change, content-wise, was to move the story section into the Weblog engine.

I’m hoping that I can find copies of the front pages from each version so I can post them for everyone’s enjoyment and amusement.

FYI: A ˜ (tilde) site is one where you’re basically a subsection of someone else’s site, typically the ISP. In my case that was http://www.visi.com/~michaela/, which I haven’t used in at least 60 Internet years. More info via Wikipedia.