If you like art, and you like people, you’ll love Craftstravaganza - a rogue art and craft fair for handmade art. My wife and I attended last year and were really impressed with the talent and variety of artists – some really great stuff. Great gift buying opportunities at affordable prices.

At that time our baby clothing project was still in the design phase, so one of our goals for this year was to apply to become a vendor - and am pleased to announce we were accepted. Vendors are judged and a limited number are accepted so we were very excited. Come and say hi, and support our local artists. In fact, I will even offer $5 off any onesie or t-shirt if you mention this post! Preview our wares, http://orangerhinokids.etsy.com

Craftstravaganza takes place this weekend, complete information on the website: http://www.craftstravaganza.com/2008/home.html

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Saturday April 26th, 9am - 6pm
Minnesota State Fairgrounds - Fine Arts Building
Complete directions here

Our booth will be directly across from the band (yes there is music too!), our business name is Orange Rhino
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Our family got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and it has transformed our living room. Aside from a few broken glasses (we’ve only had one semi-serious injury with my seven year old flipping over an end table - don’t worry, he’s OK) we have had a blast gathering around the TV. All four of us standing, talking, and playing a variety of games. Even my wife likes it - after being dead set against any video gaming in our house, she is regularily initiating Wii activity (yeah!).

If you have never played the Wii - it is an amazing piece of tech. Tactile and responsive, it is a blast.

Our latest Wii adventure is Guitar Hero III - Legends of Rock. Now you have to understand that I have played guitar for 25 years. When I mentioned to a co-worker that I was planning on getting Guitar Hero he said, “Yeah it’s really fun, it’s addictive, but you already play guitar.”

With Guitar Hero they’re doing a ton of clever things - too many to run through here. The basic experience though is right on. Guitar hero lets you rock.

You can lose yourself in the song - totally immersed, concentrating, losing track of time and space you hear the music, sense the crowd. It is very close to truly rocking out - achieving a musical flow experience that normally takes years of practice to get a glimpse of. Music is about becoming one with your instrument, joining your voice with others - being able to suspend time and thought.

Guitar Hero spoon-feeds that “flow” experience - enabling you to rock immediately - insant rockification. I predict (hope) the current Guitar Hero frenzy will isnpire a new legion of dedicated real world rockers. Where will they go to get their gear? Guitar Center of course, that’s where you go in the game to buy fancy axes you pay for with your hard earned gig bucks (you can even click on the Guitar Center logo - clever, evil marketing folks).

Fortunately for me there does appear to be some overlap between real world guitar chops and Guitar Hero. This advantage inspires me to throw down - any ArcStonian who can outshred me gets a guppy named in their honor….

I won’t argue that it’s OK to break the law. But I would also say it’s not OK to break the law in order to catch people breaking the law. The RIAA, everyone’s favorite association (racketeering group), has gone to great lengths in the past to prosecute copyright violators.

Lately, however, they are stooping to unheard of depths, even pushing legislation that would pull funding from colleges who don’t comply with their strong arm tactics. This would mean schools that decide not to get in bed with the RIAA would lose federal funding, and important grants that often help pay for low income kids to attend higher education.

If this legislation becomes law, and rampant copyright violations continue, what will RIAA do then? Maybe build some sort of P2P downloader-zapping death star.

I couldn’t think of anything else to post, so I decided to put up a brief synopsis of my current musical adventures, especially what I listen to while I program.

1. The Knife. These guys are great; sort of electronic with fast beats. I listen to them when I really just need to focus, even if I’m having a bad day. I’ve never written any great code with them playing, but what they do for me is allow me to write code even when I really don’t want to.
2. The Hold Steady. I can’t listen to most of their stuff except in full album format, and I never listen to them just to get motivated. I reserve The Hold Steady for when I need to stay on a hot streak. I can listen to them on headphones, like The Knife, so they’re good for a midday streak often.
3. The Decembrists. I have all their stuff on my computer, and I’ve written a lot of my best stuff to their erudite lyrics and catchy melodies.
4. Radiohead. An old standby for writing great code. My very best coding sessions have involved listening to everyting they’ve ever done, in chronological order–it’s what I put on when I know I’m hot and I want to stay that way for the next 12 hours…
5. Dave Matthews Band. Not many programmers I know of are down with DMB, oddly, and I can’t listen to them for really hard concentration, but for basic bug fixing, they’re alright.
6. Mayaflyer. I like to start and end every day with Mayaflyer. They’re the only reason I’ve ever produced a worthwhile line of code, ever.
7. Wilco. Unbelievable for sustained periods of productivity. I can code for hours, especially with “A Ghost is Born.”
8. Just about anything from Schubert onwards, chronologically. I code really well to Shostakovich symphonies, Brahms concertos and sonatas, and Menotti’s operas. Also Philip Glass. If you’re a programmer reading this, try some Glass, especially the album of the Brazilian group playing his stuff, it’ll blow your mind.
9. TV on the Radio, The Strokes, The Libertines, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Velvet Revolver, Portishead, Interpol, We are Scientists… see Radiohead.

Oh, and as for what I’m reading right now, I’ll admit without embarrassment that I’m progressing through the Harry Potter series in order; I’m on book four and loving every second of it.

A current Internet issue that I care a lot about the potential death of Internet radio due to everyone’s favorite self-appointed sheriff, judge, and jury, the RIAA. (Read all about it from the point of view of the radio stations themselves.) BUT It looks like SoundExchange, which is the central collection point for Internet radio royalties, will extend the current royalty structure until 2010, at least for the “small” webcasters which can’t afford to pay the crazy new royalty rates.

I listen to Radio Paradise while I program, and some of my best work would never have been born without it.

If you’re in a technology market, or even if you’re not - I highly recommend you check out Flashbelt 2007 - June 18-20. Three days of education and inspiration. I met Dave Schroeder a few years back when we collaborated on a project and have been friends ever since. He had this great idea to promote Midwest flash experts and local technologists. Each year its been bigger and better than the last and this year has some BIG names.

The topics vary and cater to anyone form beginner to serious nerd - something for everybody. Check the official site for details and sign up to attend, you’ll be glad you did.

ArcStone is a sponsor of the event providing the online registration and last year our own Nick Longtin presented his implementation of a multiplayer flash tank game.

Do you have a Mac? Do you use iTunes? Does it frustrate you that Apple has chosen to make it a dumbed down music manager that lacks some truly useful features? Me too!

Check out Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. Doug has collected a truly great collection of script that are free to download, easy to install, and add new features to iTunes. More iTunes tips after the jump.

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For years I have been looking for an excuse/justification to get down to SXSW to listen to some good music and have a few days/nights of fun. With the emergence of SXSW Interactive, it may not only be justified, but possibly a good career move - who knows maybe even work-sponsored. I may just have to let it develop a couple more years the way it sounds - or just go for the music

A very funny, well written summary of the state of SXSW Interactive