zigdon

Talking the other night to WBR, we were playing around with the idea of a playlist with a song for every hour.  There are a few trivial answers, but some hours are hard to figure out.

I posted this to twitter/facebook, and got a few suggestions.  I'll compile this list (and update it as more come in).  And no, rock around the clock doesn't count.  Actually, I figure each song should appear at one slot only.

Midnight	"Round Midnight." / Dexter Gordon These don't quite count: 2 Minutes to Midnight / Iron Maiden One Minute to Midnight / Justice 10 Seconds to Midnight / by The Divine Comedy
1am	One O'Clock Jump - Count Basie 1 AM / The Subways
2am	2 AM / Iron Maiden
3am	3 AM / Matchbox 20 3 O'Clock in the Morning / Dexter Gordon Wednesday morning, 3am / Simon & Garfunkel
4am	"it's 4 in the morning, the end of December..." - Famous Blue Raincoat / Leonard Cohen "Four a.m. in the morning, carried away by a moonlight shadow" - Moonlight Shadow / Mike Oldfield "It's 4 O'Clock in the morning and eeeyts starting to get-ta light." - Promise Me / Beverley Craven
5am	"it's 5am and your are lisssstening to Los Angeles" - Screenwriter's Blues / Soul Coughing
6am	"Six o'clock already, I was just in the middle of a dream " - Manic Monday / The Bangles  "saturday morning, baby / who's going to play with me? / 6 in the morning baby"  "6 am, day after christmas...." / Ben Folds Five
7am	7 AM / Deep Blue Something
8am	8 AM / Tom Helsen and the Summer Obsession
9am	9 AM / ATB (Instrumental)
10am
11am	Not quite counting this:  11:11 / Rufus Wainwright
noon	"Look at that big hand movin' round Nearin' high noon" - Ballad of High Noon / Tex Ritter
1pm
2pm
3pm	"Now it's three in the afternoon and I can't leave too soon, saying 'Thank you, I had a nice...time." - Cradle and All / Ani DiFranco
4pm
5pm	Five in the Afternoon / Panic in the Disco
6pm	Six O'Clock / Lovin' Spoonful
7pm	"It’s seven o’clock and I want to rock  Want to get a belly full of beer" - Saturday Night's Alright / Elton John
8pm
9pm	"It's nine o'clock on a Saturday..." - Piano Man / Billy Joel  Step Into My Office, Baby / Belle and Sebastian
10pm	"Ten o'clock and I know I gotta hit the road" - Detroit Rock City / KISS
11pm	Elevent O'Clock Tick Tock / U2

Fill in the blanks!

More guidelines:
- I'll write down close matches (2 minutes to midnight), but won't be too happy with them.
- Song titles are ok, but in the song lyrics is much better.  This applies to instrumentals too.  The idea is that you hear the song, and you should be able to hear the hour in question.
- No, I'm still not writing down "Rock around the Clock" for any or all of these.
- I think I'm not going to add more entries for hours with 2 or more entries.  Unless it's a really obvious one that more people (read "I") will know. ;)

An ok day ended up being weird, starting with me watching this: http://www.vimeo.com/1800647

Nothing there really new, but listening to it today it suddenly clicked in a way it hasn't before.  I suddenly understand what Bebe meant when he said a while back "I think I want to be poor".  At the time, both me and our mother had no idea what he was about.

I don't actually know what this means, if anything, as far as what I want to do with my self, both near and longer term.  But it got me thinking about it in a way I haven't in a while.

I know I haven't written anything about the climbing trip yet, but the pictures have been posted.

Not really going to post about it now either, but I wanted to share my experiments with photo stitching.  The first morning, I got up at a silly early hour, enough so that I was up and about to see the sunrise.  I walked up to the top of the hill near our camp, and just snapped a series of pictures of the mountains around - no tripod, not really even stopping for each picture, just letting the camera grab them as I was spinning.

The original 9 are posted with the rest of the pictures linked above.  Then, I sat with gimp, and just tried connecting them.  It worked kinda ok, but the picture boundaries were really obvious (click to see the whole thing):



Then, I tried (still with the gimp) to see if I can hide the boundary lines a bit - mostly smudging, a little bit with the stamp tool (click to see the whole thing):



Better, but the exposure still needed correcting.  Then, today, Xavier mentioned Hugin, and I figured I'll give it a shot.  I think it really worked quite well (click to see the whole thing):



I think next time I'll try it with a tripod though - you can certainly see the movement as I spin to the left.

Went today to look at another house.  It's a tiny little thing in Fremont, but I actually really liked it.  It's cute, it has a really neat yard (not that THAT'LL keep), close to BART, close to the bridge I can ride my bike to work.  Not going to get a chance to do anything about it until after the climbing trip, but I suspect it will still be there. 



That's the listing picture - the ONLY listing picture.  I should go back with my camera to take more, of the indoors and yard.  But I really don't see anything wrong with it, I think the foreclosure people were just being lazy.

Of course, need to get it inspected, especially the roof.  But I'm cautiously optimistic. 

And if it turns out ok, it would be really neat - my monthly payment should be about the same as my current rent, leaving the extra I've been saving for taxes, improvements, etc.

In general, I love my bank (ING Direct). They're awesome in all sorts of ways, one of which is that they email me every time I have a large transaction posted on my debit/credit card.

For instance, I ordered a new tape deck for the car this morning, and promptly got an email about it. Great.

But I just got another email from them:


It was good sushi, but I'm not sure I'd have gotten it if I knew it would have been a "Large Transaction"!

Went riding around today with Stephanie and DC in SF.  Given that I've lived here for over a year, there really isn't any excuse for barely ever making it up to the city.

So we went riding around, and even crossed the Golden Gate Bridge :)  Fun day, not too much to report.  Pictures are here.

Well, I kinda do.  Bugs me that I'm flushing rent money down the toilet.  Bugs me that my apt has wall-to-wall carpeting, but it's really too much of a bother to move to a new apt (assuming I'll just have to move again in a year or two).  Bugs me that I live about an hour south of my social life.

So the goal:  Get a house.  It must be within riding distance from work, (and not too close, ideally) - so let's say in the 10-20 mile range.  Has to not have a HOA - I do not play well with others.  Has to have hardwood floors.  Has to be in a reasonable area (crime-wise).  Has to be affordable.

Would be nice if it was on BART.  Would be nice if it was two stories (I suspect the cats would love that).  Would be nice to have a connected garage. 

Looking at the prices in the area, seems my best bet would be to look somewhere around Fremont - I can ride across the Dumbarton bridge, easily get to BART, and houses there are not as insanely priced as houses on the peninsula.

But, I just talked to my bank - seems I have two options.  FHA loans go up to $362k, and require at least 3% down;  I can do that, but that wouldn't buy much around here.  Conventional loans go up to $417k, but require 10% down;  I'm pretty sure I can found houses in that price range, but I can't quite afford the down payment yet.  Over $417k is considered a 'Jumbo loan', and we won't talk about those.

Seems the laws might change, that will raise both of those numbers, meaning I could get an FHA loan, afford the down payment, and be able to get a reasonable place.

Bottom line, I have to wait;  Save more, wait for house prices to drop more, and/or wait for the laws to change.

But hey, I will be getting the paperwork that I'll need to fill out, and I found out some information - so that's progress, right?

Stoled from _falnfenix_

(My answers are here)

If you're on my friends list, I want to know 36 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine ... you're on my list, so i want to know you better!
Comment here and repost a blank one on your own journal.

01) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
02) What was your dream growing up?
03) What talent do you wish you had?
04) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
05) Favorite vegetable?
06) What was the last book you read?
07) What zodiac sign are you?
08) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
09) Worst Habit?
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
11) What is your favorite sport?
12) Do you have a Pessimistic or Optimistic attitude?
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
16) Do you have any pets?
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
18) What was your first impression of me?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22) What color eyes do you have?
23) Ever been arrested?
24) Bottle or can soda?
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
27) What's your favorite place to hang out?
28) Do you believe in ghosts?
29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30) Do you swear a lot?
31) Biggest pet peeve?
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
34) Favourite and least favourite food?
35) Do you believe in God?
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

# Take a picture of yourself right now.
# Don’t change your clothes.
# Don’t fix your hair
# Just take a picture.
# Include these instructions.