"Don't try to be original, just try to be good."

Yes, in fact everything IS louder than before

As I suspected, there has been a growing trend in music production over the past decade or so to increase the compression in mastering, which makes everything sound louder (and less dynamic) than it really should.

Huh?

What it means is... well, take a look at this:

This probably shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but it really is a sad thing, and I wonder if there will ever be a way for this trend to reverse itself. Greater memory capacity & processing power in portable music players? New storage methods or encoding for the future of digital music? Who knows.

Check out this great article from Rolling Stone for more in-depth info about all this and what it may mean for the decline of civilization in general, and excuse me while I go dig out my Steely Dan...

Sing your own Christmas Carol Mashup!

For some strange reason, I began humming the tune to "Desperado" by the Eagles. But since I was walking through the snow on my way to work, instead of the lyrics to that song in my head, I began to hear the lyrics to "Frosty the Snowman" instead, and was pleasantly surprised that they matched up really well.

Try it yourself and impress your friends at your next holiday party. Know of any other traditional holiday songs that work with a different melody? Let me know!

Happy Hands for Cold Climates

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have always been a fan of great design that also fulfills a practical goal. To that end, I was super excited to discover my new favorite winter outerwear - the Access Mitt from Loki.

I've always tended to favor mittens over gloves - they're almost always warmer. Recently, I've had a pair of the old style half-finger gloves, but they were made of fleece and once they got wet, they got cold.

The Access Mitt fixes that - it's a perfectly waterproof, insulated mitt that allows quick and easy use of not just your fingers, but your whole hand. It's a great design that just makes you wonder why nobody's thought of this before. It gives you fast and easy access to your wallet, your phone, anything else that needs dexterity, without the need to remove and potentially lose a mitten.

Did I also mention they're super warm? That they look great and are made really well with high quality materials, but you can get them online for less than $50? Check out this YouTube video for even more specs on this cool new winter gear:

Wovel in a Winter Wonderland

When we bought our new house, we gained a garage and a driveway. And now that December is here, that meant finding a tool to clear the driveway of snow. But given that our driveway is relatively small (maybe 40 ft by 20?), I knew a standard snowblower would be overkill, but a regular shovel would be really bad for my back after too long. But that didn't matter, because I already knew what the solution was...

Behold, the mighty Wovel!

I won't go into too much detail about how this thing works here (check out the Wovel website for the details), but let's just say it fit all my criteria for my needs: it is green (recyclable materials construction, 100% human powered), it's efficient (I'm done with the whole driveway in less than 10 minutes without a sore back), and it's really smartly designed so it's easy to use, easy to store, and easy to maintain. In fact, the Wovel was one of Time magazine's best inventions of 2006, and word is starting to spread.

The one thing you have to change when using the Wovel is the pattern you use to remove snow. Because you're using more of a plowing motion, you release the snow straight off the end of a row, rather than off to the side like when you lift and toss with a standard shovel. But the Wovel inventors have thought of everything, because they include a short DVD intro that suggests different "Woveling" patterns that work for different sizes and shapes of driveways or patios.

Now, the Wovel costs about $120, which is more than an average shovel. And you could probably pick up an electric "power shovel" mini snowthrower for about $100. But if you factor in the power you're using, the maintenance involved in keeping a machine going, and the overall lifespan of such a thing, a Wovel is a much better investment.

So if you live in a home that doesn't have a really big driveway but enough that you feel a regular shovel isn't enough, try a Wovel. The only hard part about it is dealing with the cars that slow down when they pass by and see you using it - I'm starting to worry about someone getting into an accident on a snowy road because they were staring at me and my Wovel instead of watching where they were going!