Blog

  • Smashed iPhone

    Update: According to my live traffic feed, busted iphones are hip. My bro posted this to reddit.

    Update2: @chrisrodde Just reminded me that this will be my third iPhone – I drowned the last one on a fishing trip with him.

    Update3: Just visited AT&T. The conversation went like this:

    AT&T guy: Um yeah, so lets see if we can do anything for you here today.

    Me: Great! So maybe I can get a discount on a 16G iPhone? [Thinking I can pay less than the $199 replacement cost]

    AT&T guy: Um no I don’t think so. You’ve only had the phone for 7 months.

    AT&T guy: So that’ll be $299 for the new phone.

    Me: Um. WHAT? The phone only costs $199 to buy! On Apple’s site they’re advertising it for $199.

    AT&T guy: Well you can go to Apple and try.

    Me: What does that mean?

    AT&T: Well Apple might sell you an iPhone that’s $199 but if they know it’s a replacement with no upgrade then they’ll probably charge you $299.

    Realizing that this guy was just part of the corporate meat grinder and really didn’t know WTF he was talking about I called Apple and they’re going to sell me a replacement handset for $199. Looks like AT&T need to realize that they’re just providing the pipe and don’t have a monopoly on handsets on their network anymore.

    Original smashed iPhone post:

    In one last selfless act of recursion my smashed iphone has taken a picture of itself taking a picture of itself taking a picture of itself…  for your enjoyment:

    I’m off to the Apple store to buy a new one this morning. So:

    • Get a cover for your iphone because if you drop it so it pancakes screen down on the ground, it’ll smash
    • The screen is real glass and smashes like real glass
    • It also cuts and splinters into your finger like real glass. I’ve pulled two splinters from my index finger already checking my email.

  • Why those Microsoft ads make Steve so happy

    This is an internal video of Steve Jobs at NeXT in 1991. Skip to about 4:30 in the video:

    Those MS ads you’ve been seeing recently that keep mentioning Apple are exactly what Steve Jobs wanted with NeXT – that every customer of the market leader also considered his product. And Microsoft just made that happen for Apple.

    Congratulations Steve! Now that your competition has leveled the marketing playing field for you, all you need to do is keep building a better product.

    Thanks to VentureHacks for this tweet that pointed me to this video.

  • How to upgrade your server BIOS on Linux without a floppy drive

    This is another thing I just couldn’t find no matter how hard I googled. Here’s the story behind this post. Scroll down if you want to get at the useful stuff.

    I run a cluster of Dell 2950’s and I just ordered second CPU’s (Intel XEON E5410 64 bit) for all the machines. I test upgraded one of them and the LCD on the front came up orange with an error message and the chassis cooling fan cranked all the way up to high. Of course I ignored the instructions that came with the CPU’s that said UPGRADE THE BIOS AND BMC BEFORE YOU INSTALL THIS.

    ATTEMPT #1: I tried to create a Bootable USB flash (pen) drive using various utilities from HP and elsewhere but I couldn’t get my Dell 2950’s to boot into the drive. I even bought an HP Flash Floppy Key and I couldn’t get my workstations to boot into it when switched into floppy mode. I didn’t try it on the Dells because by then I’d discovered the method below. Interestingly, once I upgrade my Dell 2950 Bios’s I noticed it actually REMOVES the option to boot into a USB device from the BIOS menu. So using the method below with Linux and Grub is definitelly preferable – and it probably boots slightly faster because hard-drives are faster than USB 2.0.

    ATTEMPT #2: I got hold of a USB floppy drive, made a DOS bootable disk and upgraded the BIOS and BMC. A week earlier I was in Fry’s joking with my wife holding up a box of 1.44″ disks saying “Who uses these?!” Now I know. The problem was the BIOS upgrade and BMC upgrade was very very slow from a floppy disk. It took forever to load the BIOS upgrade software into memory. And that meant a lot of down-time for our users while I upgrade the whole cluster.

    Here’s the solution:

    –USEFUL STUFF–

    If you’re running any flavour of Linux using Grub as your boot loader and you need to upgrade your BIOS from a floppy drive, and you don’t have a USB floppy drive or you don’t want to use one because they’re so damn slow, then here’s the trick. This is taken from David Backeberg’s page at MIT which seems to be offline at the moment. I had a very hard time finding his advice so I’m echoing much of it here. I’ve removed steps to compile memdisk because they’re unneccesary and I also don’t use autoexec.bat because I prefer to manually launch the bios upgrade on each machine so that I can shut it down immediatelly afterwards in order to upgrade the hardware.

    1. Go to FreeDOS floppies and download the OEM bootdisk. (NOTE: I’ve tried to use the 2.88 Disk that FreeDOS provides but it doesn’t mount with dosemu)
    2. Unzip the file you downloaded: unzip FDOEM.144.imz
    3. Rename the image to something useful: mv FDOEM.144.img dell_bios_floppy.img
    4. Setup the loopback device (Try /dev/loop0 if loop2 doesn’t exist): losetup /dev/loop2 dell_bios_floppy.img
    5. Install dosemu. Instructions for Ubuntu: (apt-get install dosemu)
    6. Edit /etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf and add (or edit the floppy_a line) to say: $_floppy_a = “threeinch:/dev/loop2”
    7. Check where the c_drive is in your dosemu.conf. It’s usually at /root/.dosemu/c_drive
    8. Copy your BIOS flash executable to the fake C Drive and give it a 8.3 style name: cp PE123456789.EXE /root/.dosemu/c_drive/BIOSUP.EXE
    9. Start dosemu: dosemu
    10. If you start Dosemu and you see a blank screen, try typing ‘cls’ and hit enter.
    11. Feels good being in a DOS shell on linux doesn’t it? Don’t ask me why – nostalgia maybe.
    12. Copy your BIOS exe from C drive to your A drive image: copy C:\BIOSUP.EXE a:\
    13. Type exitemu to exit dosemu
    14. Unloop your loopback device: losetup -d /dev/loop2 (or loop0 if you used that)

    You now have a floppy image you can boot into that contains your BIOS exe file. If you are also upgrading your BMC or other components that require booting into a floppy and executing files, you can try to fit those files on the floppy using the above steps. If they don’t fit then you need to create a second floppy image using the above steps and add a second entry to your menu.lst file in the steps below.

    Now you need to set up Grub to give you the option to boot into your new floppy image when you reboot your machine:

    1. First install memdisk. If you’re running Ubuntu, memdisk is in the syslinux package: apt-get install syslinux
    2. Copy your dell BIOS floppy into /boot: cp /root/dell_bios_floppy.img /boot/
    3. I like to put a copy of memdisk into /boot:  cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot/
    4. Edit Grub’s menu.lst file. On Ubuntu it’s in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Add the following lines – and change (hd0,4) to whatever your harddrive setting is – look at other entries in menu.lst to figure it out.

    title DELL Bios flash 1
    root (hd0,4)
    kernel /boot/memdisk
    initrd /boot/dell_bios_floppy.img

    That’s it! Reboot. Hit ESC when you see the grub menu. There should be a new option labled “DELL Bios flash 1”. Select it and boot into FreeDOS. Run your bios update.

    Please add comments if you have any tips for other flavors of Linux.

  • Ever wondered how a pumpkin feels?

    Took this tonight. Sister carving. Her new Canon G10 lowered inside a sloppy punkin.

  • 7 Reasons why it's a great time to be a Tech Entrepreneur!

     In 2002 Warren Buffet sent this stark warning to his investors:

    “In our view […] derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.”

    Bill Gross was rumbling about the looming crisis in November last year.

    Marc Andreessen predicted the “oncoming nuclear winter” on April 18th in Ning’s D round announcement when they raised $60 Million.

    And here we are. Our biggest banks are failing. California (the worlds 5th largest economy) is running out of money. Two weeks ago our economy did almost collapse. Valley layoffs are starting. And every entrepreneur I know has that thousand yard stare.

    All is not lost. If you, like me, run a technology startup, then you are in a better position than most to weather, and even profit, from the coming recession. Here’s why:

    1. No more false economy!

    For years there has been a false economy created by VC backed companies giving their services away for free to “go for growth”. The money gets consumed, the company goes away. But ten other promising startups in the same sector didn’t have the same runway and could not generate revenue to survive because the VC backed startup had forced everyone to give away the service for free.

    As Wall St profits dry up and losses are incurred, many VC fund partners are unable to deliver the money they committed to their funds. So the amount of money sloshing around the Valley and other tech hotbeds will decrease.

    With the venture capital glut removed we now have something closer to a free market among tech startups.  Bad ideas will be given less runway. Good ideas will get their just profits because pricing will be market driven by realistic supply and demand curves. At the end of the day the same number of startups may actually make more money.

    2. Efficiency of execution will matter again

    This false economy has caused an entire skill set to be ignored. There are many folks out there who are very good at running a high traffic website or a complex business with very little money, people and resources. In the false economy their skill has counted for diddlysquat. If you are one of these people, your time has come. If you’re competing in the same business side-by-side with an old school false economy entrepreneur who needs his team of 50 and and his 200 server cluster just to get off the ground, you’re going to eat them for breakfast and ask for seconds.

    3. The relative risk of investing in a startup has decreased

    The problem on Wall St and the global banking industry right now is one of trust. An economist will tell you that asymmetric information has led to adverse selection. That means that people lied so people got screwed and now no one trusts anyone lest they too get screwed.

    If you’d like to know exactly how bad this problem is in real-time, check out the TED spread on Bloomberg. It tracks the inter-bank lending rate. It’s the closest way of tracking the credit crisis in real-time. Notice how the “bailout” has had zero effect on the bank lending rate. It did nothing to improve trust. In the week before the bailout the Fed injected roughly an additional $300 Billion into the global economy and that also had zero effect. Apparently you can’t buy trust.

    Startups were just as risky before and after the credit crisis. Investors are still investing in a great idea and a great team and nothing more. In our world we don’t have credit rating agencies who have lied about bad CDO’s in order to drum up more business from other banks. Our credit worthiness started of as really bad and it’s still just as bad. And our potential return on investment is still just as enormous as it was.

    While VC funds may have less money sloshing around from sources they’re accustomed to, this relative decrease in risk may attract new investors who now see us as far less risky since the alternatives are so much more risky.

    4. It’s going to become easier to recruit great talent

    Large companies are already shedding huge numbers of staff and many of them are talented people who were simply underutilized. With jobs being scarce and now that even large established companies aren’t a sure bet, it may also persuade risk averse folks who would not normally work for a startup that we’re not such a bad bet.

    5. We don’t need credit anyway!

    The commercial paper market is a huge credit marketplace that very stable, well capitalized companies with huge asset bases use to borrow money for short periods of time. They use the money to pay their staff and for their day to day operations. Unfortunately the commercial paper market has just about frozen. It’s become very difficult for even reliable companies to borrow the money they’re accustomed to have access to. Even the state of California is going to have to borrow from the government because they can’t raise money for their regular operations from the commercial paper market.

    If you’ve ever tried to get a line of credit as a loss making startup with no history, you’ll know it’s near impossible. We didn’t survive on credit then and we don’t need credit now. And anything that causes the incumbents to struggle when we don’t have to is a competitive advantage for us.

    6. Times of change create a greater need for innovators

    As costs increase and spending decreases the incentives to find a way to do something better or cheaper become huge. If you can give Coca Cola a way to figure out that only 10,000 of their 30,000 people who have Microsoft Office licenses actually use the product, then you’re in the money. And if, because of inflation, the price of MS Office has gone up from $300 to $400 then  you’re saving them an extra $100 per user and you can charge more for your service.

    7. A weaker dollar means you make more money

    If the US economy truly is toast, that probably means the value of the dollar will fall. That means that every Pound, Yen and Euro your website earns either in direct payments or via ad clicks will be worth more. If 25% of your website traffic is from the USA, that means the net result is more money without you lifting a finger.

    Now that you know how good you’ve really got it, and while everyone else is still crying down at the bar, go get caffeinated up and grab yourself a piece of this great opportunity!

    ~Mark

  • Mt Rainier

    Scroll to the end of this blog entry for a video of Camp Shurman, a few of my photos and a link to Joe’s photos.

    About 2 months ago Joe Heitzeberg called me up and asked if I wanted to climb Mt Rainier. I said yes (and gulped) and we both started fairly intense training immediately. We started hiking Mt Si (4 miles to summit, 8 miles round trip, 3000 ft elev gain) with a group of guys and Joe (being the smart one) started out carrying about 20 pounds on his back. I thought I’d give my knees a break and start off with no weight and gradually ratchet up the load.

    About a month in we hiked up to Camp Muir on Rainier which is one of the base camps for summit attempts. I hiked up on skis and Joe carried a snowboard and we skied down which was unbelievably fun!! It was really hard work though and I think this trip gave our chances for the summit a huge boost.

    Shortly after Muir we graduated to a hike called Mailbox (4000 ft elev gain and 3 miles to summit) which is a lot steeper than Mt Si. My knees were feeling much stronger and we were both feeling quite fit at this point. I was carrying around 20 pounds and I think Joe was up to about 40 pounds.

    Last Thursday the 24th of July we drove out to Rainier for our summit attempt. (!!!) We spent the night at the White River camp ground. The next morning we were up at around 6am and after breakfast we were on the trail by 9am.

    Our rope team was Tom Romary (very experienced and our fearless leader), Chris Rodde (experienced), Dan Pingree (experienced), Joe Heitzeberg (newbie) and me (newbie).

    I put my pack on to start the hike and I couldn’t believe how heavy it was. I instantly regretted not training with more weight. My pack weighed around 60 pounds.

    The trail from the white river camp ground was blown out by a major flood, so some of it was clambering over river boulders and tree trunks. We hit glacier basin and stopped for a snack. I was doing the approach hike in my (new) ice climbing boots and they had already started eating away at my heels. Chris was kind enough to give me some mole skin to put on my heels and that helped for a short while.

    After our brief stop we started hiking up a gravel moraine that runs alongside the white river and started gaining some elevation hiking on the gravel ridge. My heels were at this point killing me. It was a combination of new boots and not training with a full pack to condition my feet and build up callouses. I had a conversation with Tom about actually bailing out at this point. We were just a couple of hours into the hike and at this rate my heels would be worn down to bone by the summit. Tom in his experience suggested I wait until we hit the snowfield to make the call because ice boots generally perform better on snow and Chris and Dan said my heels would go numb.

    So we trekked on and hit the snow field a few minutes later and Tom was right. My boots almost instantly improved and I was good to go.

    As we hit the snow field at the bast of the Inter Glacier we roped up so we could start practicing working as a team. I started seeing some black ice and then later our first crevasses which was a real thrill.

    The hike up to Camp Shurman was a long one and as we gained altitude I started rest-stepping and pressure breathing which (when I remembered to do it) worked great to increase my endurance.

    As we were arriving at Camp Shurman there was a thin path leading into camp with a slope on the right side and a crevasse at the end of the slope (about 30 feet from the path). I tripped and fell and started sliding down the slope. I self arrested immediately. The rest of the guys probably just saw it as a quick fall and recovery – but that was a real adrenaline shot for me and I think it built my confidence too with the knowledge that I now knew how to self arrest in a scary situation.

    The hike from the White River camp ground to Camp Sherman took around 7 hours.

    At Camp Sherman we pitched our tents – Tom pitched his rather luxurious North Face three man and Joe and I pitched our 2 man bibbler rental that would fit quite comfortably on a narrow ledge with room to spare. (It was light though – thankfully because I carried it up)

    We hit he sack at around 7pm and planned to wake up at 11:30pm for our summit attempt. I woke up at about 10pm and lay there staring at the stars through the tent thinking about the hike ahead. I saw a shooting star and wished for the obvious – a safe and successful summit attempt.

    Tom came around at 11:30 and got us on our feet.

    We put our crampons on, donned our helmets, grabbed our ice axes, strapped on our much lighter packs (we were carrying warm clothes, water and a few snacks – about 15 pounds total), and tied in to our positions on the rope. Tom was leading and I was second (newbie position).

    As we started up the mountain I felt awesome. We were hiking under a beautiful moon-rise and could see the Seattle city lights in the distance. We immediately started crossing a few big crevasses and the combination of hiking at night and seeing big 50ft+ holes in the ice really got my adrenaline going.

    The first part of the hike out of Camp Sherman was fairly easy and I thought to myself: “Self, if we keep up this pace and this gradient, it’s going to be a walk in the park”

    Ahem. About an hour into the hike the gradient increased from about a 15 degree slope to about 30 degrees. That, combined with a rapid gain in altitude, and I started feeling really bad.

    At this point in my narrative, any members of my rope team reading this are wondering how much detail I’m going to go into in my retelling of our little story. 🙂 Part of the reason I was feeling really really bad was because I REALLY had to go. So I had a brief discussion with our team leader, decided I’d rather have cover of darkness to do the deed, and pulled off to the side of the path on a 30 degree slope. I dug a makeshift toilet seat with the adze of my ice axe and sat and contemplated life, the universe and the beautiful seattle city lights from my lofty throne – while another rope team hiked past us just 5 feet away from me.

    You have to give the other four guys on my team credit for their patience and good nature.

    …and yes, a freshly carved out snow block the size of your fist feels a little different from the soft and luxurious paper at home.

    We continued hiking.

    We watched a beautiful sunrise and kept on our path to the summit. As we gained altitude I started feeling nauseous. I tried walking slower and pressure breathing and nothing helped. I asked Tom to hold up, sat down and puked – over and over and over. Until there was nothing left in my stomach. I instantly felt better and told Tom “lets go”. I think at that point I knew I was going to make the summit.

    Tom, in his experience, kept bugging me to eat Gu or a Cliff bar or something and eventually I managed to force down some Gu. Later he kept bugging me again and I forced down another packet. Getting that crap down my throat and Tom’s encouragement are probably the two main reasons I made it.
    The rest of the journey to the top was slow rest stepping and lots of water breaks. As we approached the summit I felt tired, but better. My head started clearing, the nausea was completely gone and it was just patience and distance in front of us.

    Eventually we crossed from the snow onto a gravel area where everyone was gathered. Joe and I thought we were a few feet from the summit but then realized that we had to hike another half mile up a gravel hill, down through a snow field saddle and up to the main summit covered in snow. Once there it was awesome. We were looking down into Rainiers crater and felt (and were) on top of the world.

    We started our hike down at about 11am and were the last team to start the journey down from the summit. It was a hot sunny day and we realized we’d left it too late and the Emmonds glacier was now turning soft and dangerous in the heat of the day.

    We agreed to travel as fast as we could down the mountain, but the path was slipery and Joe and I kept falling down, being less experienced at plunge stepping. Eventually we got the hang of it and were making good time. I remember the scariest moment being when we passed through a small field of giant Seracs with a soggy looking snow-bridge in their midst. One of the seracs actually creaked a greeting as we passed.

    We made it down to Camp Sherman in about 4 hours, rested for a short while (caught a 10 minute nap) and headed down the Inter-Glacier. The trip down the Inter Glacier was awesome. We were glassading on these well used glassading paths that looked more like olympic luge runs. I think Joe broke the world glassade speed record while shooting up a huge rooster tail of snow heading down.

    The hike from the Inter Glacier’s terminal morraine to the car park was unbelievably long and it even had Tom cursing the distance towards the end.

    But we made it. Our total time from leaving the car park, to Camp Shurman, the summit, back to camp, down the Inter Glacier and back to the car park was 36 hours. During that time I lost 11 pounds (5 kilograms) of body weight and drank a total of 7 liters of water (almost 2 gallons).

    Tips to remember if I do this again:

    1. Train with a full 60 pound pack hiking mailbox or another very steep 6+ mile hike
    2. Train at altitude above 10K ft for conditioning and to avoid AMS. (I said this after I hiked Kilimanjaro and I obviously didn’t remember my own advice). Hiking up to Camp Muir a few times would work – or even better, doing Pikes peak in CO.
    3. Wear off-road running shoes for the approach hike – even if they are extra weight to carry to base camp, they’ll save my feet a few inches of skin.
    4. Break in both my off-road running shoes AND ice climbing boots by hiking with a FULL 60 POUND PACK starting at least 1.5 months before the summit attempt. That way I’ll have plenty of time for the blisters to heal and callous.
    5. Carry a bladder with insulated tube instead of a water bottle because fishing out the water bottle from the side of my pack is a pain. Sipping from the tube is effortless – and staying hydrated is super important.
    6. Wash out new Nalgene bottles with copious amounts of water to get crappy nalgene chemical taste out – preferably run them through the dishwasher.
    7. Figure out how to lock the keypad of my Garmin Vista Cx GPS so that it doesn’t turn itself off and I lose my track.
    8. The Gu that Cliff Bar makes tastes like shit. And Cliff bars taste better than Gu but freeze about 2000 ft from the summit. They’re fine to get to base camp though.

    Things that worked well:

    1. The crampons, 65 cm ice axe (I’m 6’1″), and helmets that REI in Seattle rent are awesome!
    2. The Bibler tent that I rented from Marmot in Bellevue was a little cramped, but very light and quick to set up which made it awesome!
    3. The two 1.5 liter nalgene bottles and 1 sports squeeze bottle of water (about 700ml) for a total of 3.5’ish liters of water for each leg were exactly the right amount.
    4. The Gregory Palisade 80 pack I used was the perfect size and very comfortable even with the 60+ pounds I was carrying.
    5. The 4 liter lightweight pot I used and MSR stove with 22 Oz fuel bottle was great for 5 guys. At base camp I threw a pack of 5 serving fast cooking pasta, drained the water, threw in 2 cans of chicken and the juice, and a pack of powdered chicken soup, stirred it up and viola! instant chicken noddle with sauce.
    6. Studying Freedom of The Hills (the bible) before we left was an excellent idea. Specifically the chapters on glacier travel and on knots. Knots I used were the double fishermans knot (to join a sling), figure eight on a bite (to create the tie in loop on the team rope), figure eight follow through (to tie one end of a rope to my harness), prussik knot (to attach my hand prusik and texas prusik’s to the team rope). Also knowing how to tie a texas prusik was helpful.
    7. Even though they ripped my heels up on the approach hike, the La Sportiva Nepal Evo’s that I was wearing are excellent ice boots once you’re on the snow. I recommend getting sole inserts and wearing liner socks with thick expedition hiking socks. Also carry mole-skin for blisters and if all else fails, duct tape your feet. (Thanks for the suggestion Eric from Marmot)

    This video is a 360 view of Camp Shurman. The tiny yellow triangle at the beginning of the video is our two man tent. Panning left you’ll see tom’s yellow north face tent. The video does a 360 and then looks up towards the summit and down towards the rangers hut at the camp.



    Click here for a link to the video above on youtube if for some reason you can’t view it on my blog.

    Looking from Camp Shurman up towards the summit of Mt Rainier (5000 vertical feet away) along the summit route we took, with our little Bibler tent in the foreground with Chris sitting outside the tent:

    Looking back down the route we came to get to Camp Shurman:

    The Rangers hut at Camp Shurman. Yes, those are pink flamingoes on his porch:

    A closer shot of our bibler tent with Chris outside:


    Click here to see photos Joe took on the hike.

  • Seattle's Coffee Gods (and goddesses)

    A few minutes ago Taylor at Umbria in Pioneer Square poured this masterpiece. We were both snapping photos – it’s the best fern she’s ever poured and the first time I’ve ever seen a double fern in real life. If you’re still mindlessly stumbling into starbucks, give Umbria (or Zeitgeist or Elliot Bay Bookstore) a try in Pioneer Square.

    Double Fern Latte at Umbria in Seattle

  • Skiing down Rainier

    Video from 1 week ago with Joe H and Tom R skiing down Rainier from Camp Muir. Thanks Joe for putting all the clips together! We ran out of water about halfway down and the clip about the water bottle is me holding a squeeze bottle filled with snow that just refused to melt. We filled up further down from a glacial stream. The clip where Joe shouts at me “This way” is him saving my ass from skiing off a cliff.

  • Hiked up to Camp Muir on Rainier and skied down

    Had an amazing weekend with friends Joe Heitzeberg and Tom Romary. We met on Saturday evening in Rainier park. The campsite at Cougar Rock was full so we drove a few hundred feet down the road, parked at a trailhead, hiked in a bit and slept under the stars. We got up to paradise at about 7am and started hiking up to Muir on skis with skins. We hiked from about 5,500 ft to over 10,000 ft, took a break and had lunch and then skied down on a route we made up as we went along. At one point we had skied into a valley and had to climb a snowbank to get back on the trail (the alternative was skiing down the Nisqually river valley on top of the river and possibly falling through, so we decided against that).  Joe has posted photos and video here.  (Page 2 has the videos) The videos are a little large to download, so as soon as they’re up on youtube I’ll embed a few here.

  • 7 Songs

    Alan Steele just tagged me to write 7 songs I like and then tag 7 people I know to do the same – kind of a blog chain letter. I don’t actually know 7 bloggers – and yes, I don’t get out much at all – in fact I’m pretty much an uber nerd who just fishes and writes code and both don’t require much interaction with humans. But I’ll give it a shot….

    I’m tagging Jason Goldberg, Tony Wright, Joe Heitzeberg (can’t remember your blog url) and the Shy Guevaras (Sergio specifically!).

    Please note that the first song has explicit lyrics and is not safe for work or kids.

    1. NWA – Straight outta Compton

    This is the original gangsta rap song. Pretty much launched the entire genre. The album has special meaning to me. I was in high school in 1991 in South Africa during apartheid. The school I was in was a private one and therefore one of the very few multi-racial schools in the country. A black friend (Natasha) was into NWA and black culture at the time and gave me a tape of their music. We used to spend hours having political debates at school. I ended up dating her friend (Claudette) and a white boy dating a black girl in apartheid South Africa was an interesting time of my life. This album captures that time.

    2. Pearl Jam – Alive (Ten album)

    Right after high school I joined a band doing half covers and half originals. We used to gig to a packed room at the local lifesaving club in Milnerton. The first gig we ever did was at the University of Cape Town and I was scared shitless. We covered Alive and it has an almost 2 minute guitar solo at the end that I totally pulled off. Good times!

    3. Mother Love Bone – Come Bite the Apple

    I left South Africa when I was 23 and went to live in London for 5 years. I was working for Credit Suisse after 6 months for about 1.5 years and living in Canary Wharf. I would walk to work with a Sony Minidisc player (where did they go?!) and listen to this song repeatedly whenever I was having a bad day and it would cheer me up. The lead guitar work in this song is just unbelievable – I love the whiny slow sound he gets. I never got into Mother Love Bone until after Andrew Wood died and it kills me that I’ll never see them live. Ah well – at least we have Pearl Jam.

    4. Massive Attack – Three (from the protection album and City of Industry soundtrack)

    My good friend Antonio Separovic has an eye for the artful and he told me one day that the movie City of Industry has the most amazing opening scene and soundtrack. I have slow moral and aesthetic reflexes, so it took me a while to catch on, but one day I was watching it for the 2nd time and it clicked. I was still living in London and Massive Attack had finally gone mainstream and the visuals and the song captured London beautifully even though it’s set in LA. Massive attack’s music reminds me of London and I had the pleasure of seeing them live at the London Arena.

    5. Paul van Dyk’s Ministry of Sound session on friday night on Radio1 in London

    There’s a session that Paul van Dyk did that was rebroadcast on Radio1 (who I worked for in 2003 but this was recorded in 2000 I think) and that my friend Marco Stichini and I used to listen to before a workout or a cycle to get psyched. It’s the most incredible 1 hour of Trance/Techno you’ll ever hear. It’s still floating around on the peer to peer file sharing networks today.

    6. Rammstein – Du Hast

    One night at 4am in 2004 after a rather harrowing experience (Atlanta – my friends know what I’m referring to) I walked into a bar in Table View in Cape Town and they were blasting Du Hast over this amazing sound system. I ended up drinking tequila with the barman and blowing off some steam. Du Hast captures that time.

    7. Heart – Crazy on You

    My amazing wife introduced me to Heart and the song Crazy on You is a great one for the stage I’m at in my life right now. Nancy Wilson’s guitar gives me chills and Anne Wilson is IMHO one of the best vocalists in the history of history. Heart came out of Bellevue, Washington and I’m very much into their music right now so I’ll have them as my 7th choice. Here’s the video of Crazy on You. There’s a 2 and a half minute acoustic guitar solo at the beginning. Enjoy!!