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Friday’s back – the day when I try to introduce a new song, album, or band.  Not too much planning this week, so please excuse the rush job but found one that I definitely recommend you checking out.

MSTRKRFT - Fist of God

MSTRKRFT’s latest album Fist of God was released on March 17, 2009. The title track has a hard electro melody on top of a heavy 4/4 beat drum hit, making you feel like you are being punched by the Fist of God at each beat (but in a good way!).  Definitely a track to get you off your butt and start moving.

Overall, the album keeps on the faster/harder side, although with some interest mixed in with a little disco-ish melody over Breakaway (feat. Jamal of the Carps) and a little R&B mostly due to the vocals with It Ain’t Love (feat. Lil’ Mo).

The album has a decent mix of vocal and non-vocal tracks, which is nice depending on your mood. The 11 tracks are available on iTunes for the typical $9.99, so its not the best value but its not bad.

Apple not only stuns WWDC crowd with pulsating App Store hyperwall, but they have also stunned me.  Have you seen this thing?  Wow.

Image from Flickr user Oyvind Solstad

First of all, the World Wide Developers Conference is already conference full of fanboys who eat, sleep, and bleed the brand.  They already love Apple and its technologies (iPhone, OSX, you name it), and have even traveled to San Francisco and paid for tickets to learn how to develop more beautiful, efficient, and advanced applications on top of these platforms.  It’s not as if Apple needs to do much to convince these developers to continue to use their platforms.

Instead, Apple creates a technology-infused-media-monolith to both visually stun attendees and remind them: your app could be here.  What developer wouldn’t want to see their 99 cent application that finds your beverage of choice, takes a photo of it, Tweets it, and posts it to your Flickr feed while simultaneously posting it on your blog showing up for all the World [Wide Developers Conference] to see?

Blip, fade… blip, fade… I’m already mesmerized.

It’s a great reminder of potential — both of technology and what we can do with it.  It may not be the first hyperwall out there, but it is still stunning.  So ask yourself, what can you do with existing technology, a little bit of effort¹, and some outside-the-box thinking?  I know I’ll be daydreaming all week.

Note 1: Ok ok, who knows how long it took developers to use the OpenCL API and how long they were given to get it ready for WWDC based on when this hyperwall concept was dreamt up.  Point is, it’s feasible.  :)

A week or so ago I saw this weird, and yet mesmerizing, commercial with a guy walking through parties seemingly through different generations.  Through each scene this very cool raw drum line, catchy piano, and vocal track persisted, somehow seemingly to fit into each generation – I suppose I could say timeless.  I wasn’t really paying attention, and so didn’t know what the ad was for, and didn’t particularly remember the music afterwards.

A few days ago I caught the ad again.  This time my girlfriend commented that the guy in the commercial was “cute” (there’s no accounting for taste ;) ), but I was rocking out yet again to the song.  Ended up being a Barcardi Mojito commerical, and I decided to look it up.

The track in the video is Daylight from Matt & Kim, a duo from Brooklyn, NY.  Matt is a vocalist and keyboardist, and Kim vocalist and drummer, and you can find more bio details in their Wikipedia entry.   Also, have to give them credit for not only having a blog on their main site, but embracing the web as it is and  kicking it with Flickr.

Not only is Daylight a great song, but I’ve been bringing back my early Nintendo days with Cinders, in which the keyboards remind me of a sped up puzzle arcade game of some sort, but again with Kim’s catchy drum lines.

So for this Music Friday, check out Matt & Kim.

Today I was excited to pick up my first box of fresh produce delivered right into my local community from a local farm.  At a friend’s recommendation, I signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture program (also known as a crop-share) and obtained a full share from Red Earth Farm out of Schuylkill County, PA.  Through the Farm to City program, which helps market and coordinate a variety of Philadelphia-region farms and bring them into various drop-off locations in Philadelphia, I will have 23 weeks of fresh and seasonable vegetables!

CSA Vegetables

This week I picked up: spinach, green lettuce, red lettuce, green onions, baby basil plant, bunch of radishes, swiss chard, kale, and pac choi.

A good summary of what a CSA is can be read in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide published by the United States Department of Agriculture:

In basic terms, CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Typically, members or “share-holders” of the farm or garden pledge in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the farm operation and farmer’s salary. In return, they receive shares in the farm’s bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from reconnecting to the land and participating directly in food production. Members also share in the risks of farming, including poor harvests due to unfavorable weather or pests. By direct sales to community members, who have provided the farmer with working capital in advance, growers receive better prices for their crops, gain some financial security, and are relieved of much of the burden of marketing.

For me, there are three aspects that I’m looking forward to:

1. Eating with the seasons
   I’m used to buying vegetables from the grocery store based on what I want to eat or what’s in a recipe.  Blueberries? Not a problem.  Asparagus in November?  Yep. If my target produce is not in season locally, my store will have on-hand the produce from areas of the world where it is in season, be it California, Florida, or South America.  Moving food around the world like this uses large amount of energy just so I can have my preferred vegetable side.  I hope that by eating with Red Earth Farm’s crops this year I will become more conginzent of what I’m eating and what the side effects are of my buying and eating habits.
2. New taste treats & mixing up my diet
   I’m also excited about trying new or unusual vegetables I don’t normally eat.  I tend to get into a rut, buying the same vegetables each few weeks.  My regulars include: romaine lettuce, potatoes, onions, red peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, repeat.
3. Happy pets
   Along with my own diet, we have two guinea pigs and they will definitely benefit from the fruit (vegetable?) of our labor by having leftovers or simply new treats they’ve not had before.  Tonight they enjoyed some radish leaves, which they ate but didn’t like as much as their dandelion greens. 

Over the next 23 weeks I hope to document my milage with the program through the blog.  If you have any tips or good recipes, please share them!