Auto Body Experience

The Auto Body Experience is a local band that performs often-humorous music. Their latest CD was just released last week, and Melissa, Sabrina, and I went to the concert (along with Melissa's sister). It was a fun time, as Auto Body performances always are.

Anyway, one of the songs on the new album is named "Terry Gross", named for the host of the NPR program Fresh Air. Well, it turns out that the song actually got Scott Yoho (the lead singer and an awesome guitarist who writes the music and lyrics and happens to also work in the local computer industry at Coda) an interview on that show today.

I should also note that the saxophone player, Max, is a coworker of mine. We worked together on ImageReady a few years ago, but have moved on to separate projects at this point.

You can buy tracks from their previous CD, A Tribute to Carhenge from the iTunes Music Store. I don't know if the new one will go on iTunes or not, but it can be purchased from CD BABY. The CD doesn't quite capture the energy of a live performance, but on the plus side, I can hear Max's saxophones more clearly.

I think my current favorite track from the new album is "Tom Fixed His Spit Valve Spring" -- I mean, how can you not like a song with the lyric: "Tom became a cross between McGyver and E.T."? Of course, it's also the newest (to me) song, as I hadn't heard it before last week's concert. Other good tracks include "EDAJTC" (Everyone Deserves A Job That's Challenging), "Annie" (a 'love song' about the CPR dummy), "Inside Out", and "A Cave Beneath My Cube". (The above links are 2-minute sections of the songs in pretty highly-compressed form.)

In the Bay Area next week

I'm flying with my wife and kids to San Francisco on Friday. We're going to drive down to Scotts Valley and stay there for a few days (going to Shakespeare Santa Cruz on Saturday and the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Sunday.

Monday, we drive to San Jose where we're staying until Friday morning. I'm probably going to be going into the main office (the "mothership") for a couple of those days to get some work done (so that I only have to take 5 days of vacation for our 10 day trip).

On Friday, we're going to Grass Valley with a friend of ours to stay at her family's house/ranch near the mountains for the weekend. It should be fun.

If anyone in that area reads this and wants to get together while we're in town, give me a call (cell phone at this point), send me an e-mail, or post a comment.

New Gadget: Mighty Mouse

Apple finally released a respectable mouse (with a cute name: Mighty Mouse), today, and I was able to pick one up at a local Apple Store. It's been a long time coming, but in common Apple fashion, it isn't just an ordinary two-button mouse with a scroll wheel. Instead, Apple was able to retain the simplicity and clean design of their one-button mouse while adding multi-button support and a two-dimensional scroll ball.

While I wasn't sure if I was going to like this new mouse, I've been getting used to it for only a couple hours today, and it's already becoming comfortable. I'm not sure whether I'll ultimately replace all four of my Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorers (or is that IntelliMice Explorer?) with Mighty Mice just yet (and even if I wanted to, it seems that the local Apple Stores sold out of the new mice within a few hours of them having been announced), but it is a possibility.

One of the things that I particularly like about the new mouse is that clicking with your full hand on the mouse causes it to act like a one-button mouse. If you try that with a standard two-button unit, you end up clicking both buttons at the same time. Even still, it's easy to perform a right-click (or left-click if you're a lefty -- another nice aspect of this mouse is that it is shaped and can be configured for right- or left-handed use).

I'm not sure if the "grip" button will get much use from me, but then I also don't tend to use the side buttons on other mice, either (even though I have them hooked up to Exposé). I heard an interesting idea about programming the grip action to allow moving a window by gripping the mouse anywhere within the window. Apple's software doesn't allow this, but it would be a great hack for someone else to write.

Clicking the scroll ball works great, but it will take some time to get used to the entire mouse performing a click operation (it feels like you mistakenly clicked the primary button, but you didn't -- that's just how clicking the ball works: the mouse "knows" what part you were clicking). Again, I don't tend to make use of the ability to click to perform an action on other scroll wheels, either, but tying this click to the application picker is an interesting option Apple provides.

So anyway, in summary: new mouse = good. Now if Apple could just get started making something like the Optimus keyboard, they'd really have a first-class set of input devices.