10 posts tagged “posted-by-joe”
...well, you know.
In 1985 I saw Billy Joel in my first concert ever at the Bayfront Center, St. Petersburg. I was totally hooked -- everything from the 16th notes in Prelude/Angry Young Man to the totally clever Beethoven-salute melody in This Night.
Since then I've seen him more than anyone else in concert-- Ben Folds a close second-- and when he came to Seattle, Kristina and I splurged on seats in the second row!
It was a terrific show ... I had seen Billy with Elton John a few years ago and thought "wow, he's getting kinda old ... not as much energy... maybe the great BJ performances are over". But last night proved me wrong! Some highlights:
- early in the set list the tunes were more artistic and quiet ... but the highlight was Zanzibar, where the whole band had a terrific groove and the trumpet solo was just awesome
- mid-way through they retracted the piano into the stage and Billy picked up a guitar... the band did a Seattle salute in Purple Haze, and the brought out 'Chainsaw', one of their guitar techs, who sang to Highway to Hell. The guy was a bit older, a bit overweight, looked like a total blue collar dude and ABSOLUTELY ROCKED out, running all over the stage. It was well-performed, energetic, hilarious and TOTALLY FUN.
- of course he did all the greats as well... in typical BJ style, about halfway through the show the ushers were instructed to let people run from their seats to the front edge of the stage, and Kristina and I were right there with them -- we moved up and were standing behind just one row of women and could reach out and physically put our hands on the stage.
The last part of the first set was a string of high-energy rock tunes: Still Rock 'n Roll to Me, You May Be Right, Big Shot, etc. (Jesus "Glass Houses" is a terrific album! My only disappointment: no "Sometimes a Fantasy!")
- on his way out, in traditional fashion, he walked the edge of the stage shaking hands and giving high fives. Kristina and I both got some skin... and I got a SOLID high five. Yeah baby!
- in the encore they did an epic "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", which is my all time single favorite song. He ended with Piano Man (not one of my favorites) and his classic 'don't take any shit from anyone'.
It was a great show and we had a terrific, terrific time. I could barely talk the next day with a throat hoarse from all the singing.
we got a bunch of great photos, now in full slideshow form at: http://www.belfiore.org/2007/billyjoel
If he comes to your town and you're a fan... don't miss it!
OK, since the girls were born, we've had some alternating streaks of smiles... at first Sydney would smile occasionally, but I NEVER saw Piper smile. Kristina says she saw Piper smile a few times in the last month, but I never did.
Last week for the first time I saw Piper smile and managed to grab a pic -- at left. (that's Alexander making her laugh) And then today we had BOTH GIRLS smiling AT THE SAME TIME. I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've seen that -- well worth a post to the ol' blog! Enjoy!
This week at Digital Life we launched some new stuff for Media Center... (1) four brand-new "Extender" devices that you can buy to make your Media Center show up on TV sets all over your house, and (2) a feature called "Internet TV" that lets you watch high quality streaming video from the internet on your Media Center (or extender) without needing a TV tuner. Here's a sample blog writeup with some screenshots.
As part of my job I had the privilege of doing a keynote speech at the Digital Life event... and this was videotaped and made available as part of Media Center Internet TV ... so, for the first time, I'm on "Internet TV"! Seems even cooler to me than being on regular TV. :) That's a picture, above, of the TV in our bedroom running Internet TV with a media center extender.
If you'd like to learn about this new stuff, you should watch my talk! Two ways to do it:
- use Internet TV! This is high-quality video, and you can watch it on your TV set if you have a media center extender and Windows Vista. If not, you can also watch it on your Windows Vista PC. Launch "Media Center", and under "TV & Movies", choose "Internet TV".
- if you don't have a Windows Vista PC, you can watch a lower quality web streaming video from here.
And here's a few pics from my keynote...
Stuck travelling to one of the NFL games in person? Can't stand the thought of missing the action while you're there?Rent one of these -- it's called "Kangaroo TV" and it's about $24 per game. It's an in-stadium broadcast of the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket, and it also has current scores, stats for every player by position, etc. Not bad ... a little bit hard to use and the broadcast quality of the video leaves a little bit to be desired, but it was fun to have with us at the stadium today. Amazingly, we left it on the entire time and the battery never went dead...
Hey hey! Sydney and Piper made it to their two month old birthday on 9/19... and somehow mom and dad (and alexander) managed to make it with them.
Since the girls were born about 5 weeks early, they act more like 1 month old babies than they do 2-month old babies. It's REALLY hard to try to get them both to look in the same direction, as you can tell from the photos. They don't really yet track much motion unless you're in really close.
Sydney continues to be the mellow younger sibling, rarely fussy, sleeping a pretty long time (if you count 4-5 hours as pretty long) ... and Piper is as feisty as ever. She pretty much demands only to be breastfed, stays awake a LOT more than Sydney, and has developed enough neck strength to frequently crane her neck around to get a glimpse of whatever's happening.
You wouldn't tell it from the description I gave guessing who's who in the pics at left-- but Sydney's on the left being goofy and that's Piper on the right, looking nearly sedate for a change.
As for Kristina and me, we are surviving. It's pretty amazing how an aging adult body can somehow manage to hold itself up on just 4 or 5 or so hours of sleep each night. I've been telling people -having two is DEFINITELY more than twice as hard as having just one. (oh wait a minute... we actually now have THREE. I need a nap!)
This year our fantasy football league moved to yahoo... and one of the nice side benefits of yahoo is that they have a media center plug-in for "Yahoo Sports". The plug-in has a fantasy football feature, so you can have your fantasy league scores shown in a dynamic on-screen ticker WHILE YOU ARE WATCHING THE GAMES.
The pic shows...the yahoo plug-in running on my Media Center PC, which is hooked up directly to the plasma. That's our league scores (my team is winning...) on the left and live, hidef TV playing in the inset window.
i sometimes also have a PIP which I can use to show additional games either through media center extender running on my Xbox360 -OR- via DirecTV satellite box (separate from media center). Sure will be nice when we have support for DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket native in Media Center!
If you have media center and want to try this... just click on "Yahoo Sports" in the Online Media section of your start menu (Vista) or Online Spotlight (XP).
What happens when the Bucs play the Seahawks? The photographers from Jones Soda were on-hand at Seahawks stadium to capture the solution.
I wanted to send my sister driving directions to the Puyallup fair ... on her cel phone. Sure, I can type txt on my cel and send it to her, but I wanted to copy text from a web site (PC), clean it up and send it to her. Of course this is WAY EASIER to do with a PC ... as if you were sending an email ... but what address do you send it to?
The problem with sending TXT messages to a phone from a PC email client is you don't know what carrier most people's cel phones are on.
The solution: send the message from your email to <phone number>@teleflip.com.
For example, 2065551212@teleflip.com
The teleflip service figures out what the right address is for anyone's cel phone so you don't have to. It's super handy ... and free. Worked for me, try it out yourself!
OK, it's not huge news or anything ... plenty of you have kids starting school again, but we thought it warranted a mention. here are the highlights we've observed so far:
- Crossing the Chasm: For the first time ever, Alexander can swing himself across the monkeybars! hand over hand, all the way from start to finish, without falling. Lookout Tarzan...
- Shockingly Accurate Self Portrait. Ok, we're probably biased in this, but holy crap, is that a PHOTOGRAPH? look at the detail! And look at the lovely smile on his face...
Dan Lyons (aka the famous "Fake Steve Jobs" blogger) wrote an article for Forbes magazine talking about how Media Center is a great way to consume all the digital entertainment you'd want on TVs around your house... and how it's ahead of what Apple has got. Here's a few quotes:
Guess who's got the slickest software for handling TV, movies and music? Not Apple.
You've seen the Apple ads: Microsoft is the dorky, puffy loser who runs spreadsheets, Mac the slick, sleek Gen-Xer who has fun with music and movies. You haven't seen any ads, though, for a new product that can do things with digital media that even Apple can't match--and it comes from none other than Microsoft.
A PC running Windows Vista and hooked to a Microsoft Xbox 360 can outgun the coolest Macintosh, thanks to a key program called Media Center, now built into high-end versions of Vista, the latest generation of Windows. Microsoft hasn't touted Media Center much in hyping Vista, but surely it should.
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You can attach a computer running Media Center directly to your TV. But who wants to have a computer sitting next to the TV? Better solution is to send data from the computer to your Wi-Fi router. From there it goes to a hardware device such as an Xbox 360 game player, which catches the signal and relays it to the TV.
The very idea of setting up these pieces is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. Microsoft? On multiple devices that need to work together? With software that needs to be configured? Does the phrase "blue screen of death" resonate at all? Fear not. Microsoft has figured this stuff out.
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The cool thing was that with a single remote control, on a single screen, we could "consume media" without caring where it originated--on cable, the Internet or our computer's hard drive. This unified world of Web, TV and homegrown content is something our kids will grow up taking for granted.
For now Microsoft offers the best way to get a glimpse of the future...
