2011 Music I Listened To The Most

For the last three years (2010, 2009 and 2008) I've looked at what albums I've listened to the most during the year. This year I thought I'd also look at it by artist. The numbers in parentheses show the number of times I listened to a song by the artist. (All based on iTunes stats.)

1. Tom Waits (1,947)
2. Fleet Foxes (928)
3. U2 (746)
4. Miss Li (672)
5. Tori Amos (622)
6. The Decemberists (551)
7. The Tallest Man On Earth (550)
8. Adele (528)
9. Ida Maria (522)
10. Ani DiFranco (518)

Not surprisingly it's a mix of artists that released new albums this year and artists with large back catalogs.

Here's a statistic: these 10 artists make up 19% of my total listening this year. Which means that over 80% of the time I'm listening to something else.

Onto the most played albums:

1. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues (721)
2. Adele - 21 (495)
3. Ida Maria - Katla (429)
4. Jay-Z and Kanye West - Watch the Throne (357)
5. Miss Li - Beats & Bruises (353)
6. James Blake - James Blake (301)
7. R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now (297)
8. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake (294)
9. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (285)
10. Joan As Police Woman - The Deep Field (279)

I acquired all albums in 2011 except The Suburbs which took the 11-spot last year. Had it been released early in either year it would likely have made the top 3.

A few more observations:

• 50/50 distribution between female/male vocals this year. 6, 5.5 and 8 female vocals in previous years
• James Blake is the only new discovery on the list. In the previous years that number has been 3, 4 and 7. Less new discoveries every year, it seems
• If I limit the list to albums acquired in 2011, Drake's Thank Me Later would take the last spot
• These albums make up 9% of my total listening this year. So, over 90% of the time I listened to something else

What makes a neighborhood a neighborhood?

I moved into a new neighborhood at the beginning of the month. And when I say new I don’t just mean that it’s new to me. This is a new neighborhood that didn’t exist five years ago.

This is Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. In the mid-90s, when I lived in East Cambridge I walked through this area every day on my way to school, and, to be fair, the transformation had already started then, but it was a far cry from what anyone would call a neighborhood.

Boston to the south and east of the Charles River;
Cambridge with MIT and Kendall Square to the north-west

The occasional pharmaceutical and software company had moved in and a handful of restaurants had popped up right around the T-stop (the subway), but the area generally consisted of a few surviving remnants of a foregone era fenced in with barbed wire (a pipe supply company, a taxi dispatch and repair shop…), and a wasteland of deserted broken-windowed industrial plants, wishing for a demolition crew to come and bring a merciful end to their misery.

There are still some deserted buildings left

This entryway is less than inviting

Thankfully, most of those wishes have now come true, and up has sprung a vibrant mixed-use development with apartments, offices, shops, bars, restaurants, coffee shops, public areas, activities, and so on. All of the things you’d find at the center of a good, older, small town.

My apt building with storefronts facing 3rd St: Voltage Café, and Abigail's restaurant seen here.

This type of planned community is a welcome break from the segregated residential subdivisions, office parks and shopping malls that have dominated American development for several decades. However, although the concept of a neighborhood where people can live, work and play, sounds like a great idea, creating one from scratch is easier said than done. I saw several valiant attempts in Arizona but none of them as successful as this one. Some of them stalled entirely when businesses and restaurants either did not move in at all, or did move in to then quickly close up shop a few months later; others focused mostly on shopping and dining, making it feel like you lived at an outdoor shopping center; and all of them felt much more planned than vibrant, and not at all like a natural neighborhood.

A side-canal provides access to launch kayaks and canoes into the Charles River

So, what makes Kendall Square work? First, it’s in an already-urban setting so it doesn’t feel like it’s been plopped down in the middle of nowhere. Second, it has managed to hit critical mass in all of the different uses: there are many companies of different sizes offering office jobs, there are several large apartment buildings with first floor street-facing small businesses (in my building and the one across the street I found six restaurants, a physical therapist, a Taiwanese bubble tea shop, a trinket shop, a coffee shop, a gym, and a bilingual Spanish immersion day care center), there are outdoor spaces with a farmers’ market and concerts in the summer and ice skating in the winter, there is a canoe/kayak rental place by the river. Oh yeah, I realized after I moved in that I only live a block from access to the Charles River.

Following the canal to the river: view of the Longfellow Bridge to Boston

MIT is another big influence in shaping the community here. Many of the companies are here largely because of the university, especially the ones in the biotech/pharma and software sectors, and MIT has invested both capital and idea power into transforming the area. You can definitely feel that there's an intellectual atmosphere in the neighborhood and it's oftentimes hard to find the line between corporate and university labs.

MIT's Koch Institute for Integrated Cancer Research

My apartment complex adds to the community experience further with its common spaces for the residents. The apartments are in two u-shaped eight-story buildings facing each other with a large courtyard in the middle, which in the summer has six barbecue grills, tables and chairs, and lawns where people lay out when the weather cooperates.

BBQ pits in the courtyard

There is one indoor pool, and each of the buildings has a gym - to energize, a movie theater (think nice, large, home theater) - to visualize, a club room with Ping-Pong, foosball, skeeball, couches and a bar (bring your own beverage, mostly useful if you rent the place for a party) - to socialize.

Signage inside the apt building

Finally, in addition to brand new buildings, a number of older factory buildings have been renovated for new corporate tenants or converted into apartments, which provides a nice link back to the history of the area.

Former factory converted to loft style apartments

In summary, I've very excited to be part of this up-and-coming neighborhood which only ten years ago was mostly a source of urban blight and is now quickly becoming a destination for ideas, research, arts, shopping, fine dining, nightlife and just plain old living.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...

...It's about learning to dance in the rain.
- Vivian Greene

As I was walking home from dinner, in a slight drizzle, I walked by the fountain near my apartment building, and encountered this parent and child:

Ready, set...

Go!

Go, go, go, go, go!

Sammy and the Space Station

Space shuttle Endeavor blasted off this morning on its last mission, and the second to last mission of the space shuttle program. Over the last thirty years there have been 133 launches using five different shuttles, and, as we all know, two of them ended in tragedy.

On this journey, Endeavor is delivering equipment to the International Space Station for a particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - a $2 billion project designed to spend the next decade or so searching the universe for antimatter and dark matter. If successful, it will resolve two of the biggest outstanding questions of the Big Bang theory: 1) whether the universe consists of equal parts matter and antimatter, and 2) whether the predicted invisible dark matter does exist.

The AMS being loaded onto Endeavor

The principal investigator (lead scientist for the experiment) is MIT professor Samuel C. C. Ting, who shared the Nobel physics prize in 1976 for his discovery of a particle containing the "charm quark", solidifying the theory that particles like protons and neutrons consist of even smaller particles called quarks.

Samuel C. C. Ting and two astronauts (Commander Mark Kelly, husband of Gabrielle Gifford, on the right) 

During my freshman year at MIT, I got a job doing research at the cyclotron lab (basically a giant magnet used to accelerate particles.) I mostly assisted one of the Ph.D. students, Bryan, in the experiments for his thesis but also got the chance to build and run a couple of my own. Bryan and I worked for professor Ulrich Becker, but the head of the lab was Samuel C. C. Ting.

Professor Becker showing the MIT cyclotron

A few months into the job, I was invited to a meeting that professor Ting would also attend. The meeting consisted of different groups within the lab presenting the progress they had made, and I wouldn't need to say anything, but being a young physics geek, I was very excited and a bit nervous to meet a Nobel prize winner in person and was hoping to at least be able to introduce myself.

The cyclotron building with a J denoting the J-particle which led to Ting's Nobel prize

I sat through the whole meeting not able to understand a thing, partly because much of it was over my head but mainly because I kept repeating a single line in my head: "Professor Ting, it's a pleasure meeting you." After the meeting I carefully approached professor Ting, but before I could blurt out my line Bryan introduced me as one of the new undergraduate students in the lab. Professor Ting turned around with a big smile and said "Nice to meet you - please call me Sammy!"

It´s the changing of the seasons...

...he says ”I need them”

I guess I’m too Scandinavian

the relief of spring

intoxication of summer rain

the clearness of fall 

how winter makes me reconsider it all

Ane Brun - Changing of the Seasons

My bedroom window faces almost exactly due east. This means that I can see the sun rise every morning over the harbor. In winter it comes up late, and off to the right, over the water south of the airport. In spring it rises earlier and directly above the landing strips. I have not lived here in summer yet, but it is bound to appear even earlier and further to the north; perhaps even behind Harbor Tower I - the other apartment tower located a stone’s throw northeast from Tower II where I live. I’ll find out in time.

The blinds in my apartment are cream-colored and seem to be semi-permeable for light, meaning that they do a good job of providing cover from people seeing into the apartment (at least I think so) but I am able to see out through them, similar to a screen window. This means that, whether I want to or not, the sun is very noticeable in the morning hours when it is shining directly into my apartment.

At first, I wasn’t crazy about being woken up by the sun, but over time I’ve come to embrace it. I like how it keeps me in tune with the seasons. I have stopped using my alarm clock; if I don’t wake up on my own first, the sun works as my safety net. 

Good morning

I have also learned, very roughly, to know what time it is based on the position of the sun. Recently I had stayed up late one night on the weekend and I was hoping that I would be able to sleep in and not wake up too early, and the next morning I immediately noticed that the sun was higher in the sky than usual and guessed that I’d probably slept about an extra hour, and it turned out to be almost right on.

So, even though I live in the city and I fully enjoy the modern lifestyle that I have chosen, I do like that I have a window (literally and figuratively) into something that is natural, simple and pure, and that although it may not be much I’m at least reminded of that at the outset of each day.

Simplify. Simplify.

I realize Thoreau wasn't trying to escape superfluous language when he went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately, but...

"We are currently in the process of remodeling this area."

What does "currently" add to this sentence? Or "in the process of"? Neither word/phrase adds any meaning not already conveyed by "We are remodeling this area."

I suppose if you feel it is necessary to remind your customers that you're not planning to continue remodeling forever, I'll let you add "currently" or "in the process of", but not both.

On the positive side, I do like that they said "any inconvenience we may have caused you" rather than the neutral/passive "any inconvenience this may have caused you." It shows that they hold themselves accountable for their customers' diminished experience. Unlike many celebrities/politicians half-heartedly apologizing for "the situation" or "what happened" as if they had nothing to do with it.

End of rant. I leave you with a few more words from Thoreau's Walden (which I found when I made sure it indeed was Thoreau who said "Simplify. Simplify"):

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.

Why won't anyone sing about the month of March?

And where is the love for hump day?

I just examined my music collection, looking for songs about each month of the year. Here are the results:

- January (2 song titles)
- February (2)
- March (0)
- April (5)
- May (2)
- June (3)
- July (4)
- August (1)
- September (6)
- October (4)
- November (4)
- December (6)

So, what inspires people to write songs about September and December, but not about March? I don't know. (Several song titles with "march" in them, but none of them meaning the month.) Looks like the months ending in "ember" and "ober" do well, perhaps they work better lyrically.

Next, I looked at the different days of the week:

- Monday (11)
- Tuesday (5)
- Wednesday (2)
- Thursday (3)
- Friday (6)
- Saturday (13)
- Sunday (18)

Clearly, people are inspired by the weekend and the dreaded Monday, leaving little love for the middle of the week. Not much else to say here, I guess...

Is life too short or too long...

...to drink bad beer? (Or insert your favorite version of the saying.)

People frequently say "life is too short to drink bad beer".

I've said it. But, I've reconsidered.

I think life is too long to drink bad beer. Let's say I expect to have beer on average once a week for the next 40 years. That's about 2,000 times. That is a lot of times to suffer through bad beer. On the other hand, if life were shorter, drinking bad beer would be a smaller mistake, no?

If you believe private businesses are better...

... than the government, you're clearly not a Comcast customer.

Here is an abbreviated version of the Kafkaesque nightmare labyrinth I had to navigate to get cable TV and Internet in my apartment:

• I moved into my apartment on November 22 and I called Comcast the same day. 
• A few days later a technician came out "sometime between 1-5 PM" (showed up at 4:30 PM) to do the installation but failed because the signal going into the apartment was too weak. 
• Not only was he not able to fix that but he said that Comcast would not fix it - I needed to get my landlord to hire an electrician to fix the wiring going into the apartment. It surprised me that a cable company can't fix their own cables.
• Here's the highly abbreviated part. The next two months consisted of a circus of phone calls between me, my landlord, his general contractor and Comcast, trying to find out exactly what we needed to do. Rewiring the entire apartment would require tearing up walls, and we were trying to get Comcast to come out and help us determine at what point the signal degraded, since only Comcast has the equipment to  test whether the signal is strong enough, but they refused. "The wiring outside the apartment was not their responsibility."
• Finally, last week, the general contractor brought in an electrician who quickly determined that Comcast had connected the cables incorrectly where they split inside my apartment to the different rooms, so he fixed that.
• Then I got Comcast to come out again last Thursday ("sometime between 1-5 PM" but they showed up at 11:30 AM - good thing I was home) and the installation seemed to work fine.
• Except, after the technician had left I noticed that I didn't have HBO, which I was supposed to get for free for 6-months as part of the introductory package I'd selected.
• I called Comcast and asked them to fix it, being transferred around to five different people. The first three said they couldn't help me but would transfer me to someone who would. Each time I had to tell them my name, address, phone number and last four digits of my social security number. The fourth person said he couldn't help me but he would enter a help ticket for me and someone would call me back. While he was entering the ticket I got disconnected. I called back and asked someone whether they could look at my account and see if a ticket had been entered, and they said "no". So, I explained the problem and asked her to enter a ticket for me, and she said "that's not necessary, I can fix it for you" and two seconds later HBO appeared on my TV. 
• Yesterday I received my first bill and saw that I was being charged $19.95 for HBO in addition to the intro package.That explains why she was able to fix it so quickly - she didn't understand what I needed.
• Given the poor experience with their phone support, I opted for sending them a detailed email explaining the billing issue. From this point forward, everything worked surprisingly well. Within 24 hours I got a response confirming that they understood the problem and that I needed to contact them via online chat to confirm my identity, which I did today and within 20 minutes everything appeared to have been fixed.

So, I spent the first 10 weeks in my new apartment without TV or Internet and I don't even know how many hours of my time it took (including staying home from work twice) before everything was resolved. Things appear to be working well, now, though. 

Knock on wood.

My Top 2010 Albums

As I’m looking back through the new albums for 2010 I can only conclude that it wasn’t a great year for great music. A good year for good music, but not for great music. What I mean is that there were a good number of solid, enjoyable albums, but very few great albums. In fact, in my mind, only one. I didn’t even have to think about my #1 album, and after that I had a really hard time picking. Well, enough, chit-chat and on to the lists:

1. Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me
2. The Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt
3. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
4. Anna von Hausswolff – Singing From The Grave
5. Menomena – Mines
6. The National – High Violet
7. Vampire Weekend - Contra
8. She & Him – Volume Two
9. The Dead Weather – Sea Of Cowards
10. M.I.A - /\/\ /\ Y /\

Don’t read too much into the individual spots from 2-10 – they are all packed closer together than the gap between Joanna Newsom and the rest. I’ll only comment on the top album today and leave the rest for another day.

Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me
I’ve been a big fan of Joanna Newsom’s previous albums – especially Ys – and it was great to see this triple-album being so good across the board. I was lucky enough to catch her live at the Phoenix Orpheum in November and it was a pretty amazing experience. Her music isn’t for everyone and it’s going to take some patience to appreciate it but it just keeps getting better with the more you hear it. I’ve listened to all 18 tracks (6 per disc, averaging ~7 mins each) anywhere from 20 to 40 times since February and I have no plans of stopping.

Honorable Mention (alphabetical order):
• Ariella Daly – Waterkeeper
• Dirty Projectors + Björk – Mount Wittenberg Orca
• Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
• Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
• Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can
• LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
• Owen Pallett – Heartland
• Robyn – Body Talk (Parts 1-3)
• Various Artists – Best Of Bonnaroo
• The White Stripes – Under Great White Northern Lights

Albums that were ok:
• Amanda Palmer – Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits Of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukulele
• Basia Bulat – Heart Of My Own
• Belle & Sebastian – Bella & Sebastian Write About Love
• Best Coast – Crazy For You
• Bill Callahan – Rough Travel For A Rare Thing
• The Black Keys - Brothers
• Christina Aguilera - Bionic
• Elvis Costello – National Ransom
• Karen Elson – The Ghost Who Walks
• Massive Attack – Heligoland
• The New Pornographers  - Together
• Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Ads
• Various Artists – The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Albums that I wanted to like, but didn’t do it for me:
• Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti – Before Today
• Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
• Ceo – White Magic
• Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
• The Drums – The Drums
• Frightened Rabbit – The Winter Of Mixed Drinks
• Goldfrapp – Head First
• Johnny Cash – American VI: Ain’t No Grave
• Julian Lynch – Mare
• Laurie Anderson – Homeland
• Matthew Dear – Black City
• Melissa Ferrick – Enough About Me
• Twin Shadow – Forget
• The Walkmen - Lisbon