You've done too much damage.
Now get outta here!

Resolutions are something I always make, and without fail I break them too. This year, I'm taking a different approach; one that is more in line with my new policy of not becoming overwrought with despair at the notion that I have once again not done something I said I would do for myself.This year, I am merely recommending to myself that I will follow certain new pathways to enlightenment.

In early 2007 I did an interview with Marty Weil of The Ephemera Blog. I guess it went over well with his readers, because now he's coming back for more.

This time he'd like to hear from the collectors who read The Baseball Card Blog. If you'd classify your collection as 'oddball' or 'specialized'--meaning you stick to cards of players with funny names, players who wear a specific style of facial hair, etc--send Marty an email; he'd love to hear from you.

Ephemera
Email Marty Weil

Just when I thought we couldn't nest anymore, we did.

Who knew we had files of crap going back as far as 1989? Who knew that they needed to be purged RIGHT NOW?

After a review of all of our personal files, Steph managed to pile up a stack at least 4 feet tall of old paperwork. Since it all needed to be shredded I set to work. Hours later — the shredder would only run 20 - 30 minutes at a time before overheating and needing an hour to cool down — with less than a 4" stack of papers left in the queue for the shredder the shredder coughed and wheezed and stripped its gears. The shredder will shred no more. So much for my recently new but just out of warranty, 12-sheet, diamond cut, king of all SOHO shredders. I'm now left with a pile of stuff to shred and one more piece of junk to throw out this week.

What else was accomplished? Since Steph was reorganizing files and taking ownership of all of our household paperwork, something I am horrible at dealing with, I decided it was time to reorganize my office again. Add a new bookcase here, organize this pile over here, patch and paint holes in the wall, hang up the art that's been on my floor for months, etc. Of course, I'm still not done, I've got a stack of National Geographic maps that I have no idea what I'm going to do with and I still have to rearrange the books, camera equipment and CDs of various operating systems and software I have collected over the years.

Somehow I have a feeling what we'll be doing on New Years Day! Shredding! Anyone need confetti for a parade?

I have been living for the Christmas break for the last two months. Ever since I started a real job, which involves 45 hours a week of non-sofa time, and had to think up unsuccessful strategies to find the time to do the things I used to take for granted, I feel like I have been constantly on the back foot. Teetering on the brink.For me, a break means slobbing about the house, reading and being

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. No need to tell you what I got. Well, I will tell you one of the highlights was some Grinch Boxers.....from my sister! Should I post photos of them? I guess you guys will have to take it to a VOTE......

Some things I'm looking forward to for the coming year:

Topps Heritage '59
I've seen the sell sheets and I've watched the documentary Helvetica about the rise of the now-ubiquitous typeface (and prominent feature of the 1959 design) in preparation. But mostly I've been pining for this set for almost five years (since the release of Heritage '54 in 2003). I will go for the master set (as in 2003), and this time next year will make every argument against Topps Heritage continuing in 2009 and beyond, ransacking its cache of Sixties designs.

Card Trade Magazine
How did I get approved to receive this magazine? It's true, I applied to receive it. It's not that I'm complaining; far from it. I'm just a little shocked that I was approved. I'm also completely amazed that Kelnhofer and SCD give absolutely no mention of O'Keeffe and Thompson's The Card in any of their publications: Sports Collector's Digest, Tuff Stuff, or Card Trade. You'd think that dealers would like to know how an inflammatory text like that might affect their business. Guess not.

Eisner's Plans to Expand Topps' Footprint Overseas
In my review of Allen & Ginter earlier this year, I wrote that I thought Topps dropped the ball in not including David Beckham in the set, and proposed a Garfield Sobers World Champions card for A&G 2008. Well, it seems that Eisner kind of agreed (loosely). It looks like he wants to expand into Europe with cards for English Premier League football. Here's hoping they can get the license. Excuse me, licence. But why stop there? I think they should go for the world's largest sports audience and start sweet-talking the International Cricket Council.

Other Stuff
I plan on continuing (and finishing) the 1990s countdown. I also have a tentative plan to release a book in pdf form sometime this spring, not to mention the many other half-baked ideas on how to further expand The Baseball Card Blog empire.

Today marks Steph's 27th week and we're both in full-on nesting mode. (OK, more her than me, but I get roped into it!) Over the past few weeks, we've been busily cleaning the nursery, choosing paint colors, hanging ceiling fans and a lot of pre-spring cleaning around the house.

Since we've lived here for almost 4 years now and never had much of a need for the extra bedroom that is now the nursery, there was a lot of extra "junk" that just seemed to pile up in there. All of our mostly-disused CDs, books we'd read, magazines we'd flipped through, the "bag of bags" which provided convenient bags for any and every occasion, empty boxes, files, hiking gear, etc. You name it, that room had it! Much of the junk was thrown out or recycled, however, a significant amount of stuff needed to find a new home. By no means are we cramped in this house, but that meant a lot of reorganizing in the basement. Which means more junk to give away, throw out or recycle!

Collectively we've spent a few days working through our crap. Who knew two people could accumulate so much junk in such a short period of time!?

Now we're down to the fun part. The nursery is getting painted next week and the furniture should arrive sometime in February. We're often asked about the Jewish taboo regarding decorating a baby's room or having a baby shower before the baby arrives. Being that it is just superstition, neither Steph or I feel the need to stop being rational. However, we have agreed to limit what we do in the nursery until after the baby is born. So, we're going for the convenience route. The baby furniture will be delivered and set up in the nursery, the walls will be painted and it will be move-in ready! However, all of the baby clothing, pictures, toys, sheets, etc. are remaining tucked away in the basement until after the baby is born.

Audio

The Blendells - Huggies Bunnies - Vampi Soul
Los Buenos - Woovy Graoovy - Vampi Soul
Los Pekeniques - Tabasco - Vampi Soul - Vampi
Boris Gardiner - What's happening - Vampi Soul - Vampi
Eddy Senay - Zambezi - Vampi Soul - Vampi
Silvester Stewart - Everyday People - Vampi Soul
Lord Thunder - Lord Thunder - Vampi Soul
The Soul Searchers - 1992 - Vampi Soul
Cosa Nostra - Nuestra Cosa - Vampi Soul
Dennis Coffey - Capricorn's Thing - Vampi Soul
Orlando Julius - - Vampi Soul
Tony Allen - Jealousy - Vampi Soul
Nathaniel Mayer - Dancing Mood - Alive
Nolan Strong with the diablos - I want to know - Fortune Records
Big Joe Williams - Baby Please Don't Go - Viper
The Hold Steady - Massive Nights - Vagrant
The Checks - Take Me There - Full Time Hobby
Zion Train - Tribute to Keng Keng - Universal Egg
Calvin Party - Come on In - Probe Probe
Kyna Antee aka The Mistress - Mistress of the Boom - Techno Kut
Maggotron - Welcome to the Planet of Bass - Jamrac Records
Spooge Boy - D-bop - Memo Records
Band Apart - Le Mont Des Olives - Crammed Disc
Band of Susans - Hope against Hope - Further
Vieux Farka Toure - Ma Hine Cocore

...a successful, creative and healthy new year! Enjoy what's left from this year!

Where-ever you are, and whatever you're doing, I hope you're enjoying the holiday season!We had a considerably better Christmas than last year. This year someone else did all the food-related work, for which we are eternally grateful. The day was a glorious fusion of Latin-American and British tradition: we kicked up our heels to the sounds of Shakira and Ricky Martin, drank Pina Coladas, and

The 55th episode of Seamour Sheep.

Much more Seamour 'n' Marty at Seamoursheep.com

The skyline of Tampa, Florida. My first night shot in a long time. Digital has change so much in the photography world. Four years ago it was impossible to make an image like this with film...I mean I could have pulled it off but it would have taken a lot of time and a lot of money. One day left before Christmas. Man this year has gone by. For all the people that come to this blog may peace find you and may you reflect on the little things in your life that tend to lose focus through out the year. How we tend to forget the things that really matter in this life on Earth. When the Night falls on you tonight may your heart and soul be filled with that peace.

All the best wishes for the holidays and for 2008 to all of you from Sevensheaven (Metin) and Artylicious (my love Natasja), and special thanks to all Clogworkers who have shared their work with the Clogwork audience in 2007. Let's keep Clogwork alive together in 2008!

This is the french version, but my warm wishes are global.

Audio

The Ventures - Sleigh Ride - Rhino
The Aggrovators - Santa Claus Dub - Trojan
Jacob Miller & Ray I - Deck the Halls - Ryko
The Lara Brothers - Maria, la hija de Ana - Winter & Winter
Captain Beefheart - There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evenin' Stage - Reprise
Fountains of Wayne - I want an Alien for Christmas - Atlantic
Little Cindy - Happy Birthday Jesus (A Child's Prayer) - Silva Screen -
Badly Drawn Boy - Donna Und
Rev. Edward W. Clayborn - The wrong way to celebrate christmas - Viper
Blind Willie McTell - Cold Winter Day - Cat Fish Records
Tian Shi He Chang Tuan - Shu Tian Shi Kong Ji Lin - Playasound
Gary Odeimi & Adham Chalhoub - Talj Talj - Playasound
Erland Oye - Last Christmas - Mobile Records
The Band - Christmas Must be Tonight - EMI Records
Mabel Scott - Boogie Woogie Santa Santa Claus - Viper
Beruit - Guyamas Sonora - 4AD
Miracle Fortess - Have you seen in your Dreams - Rough Trade
Bonde Do Role - Marina Gasolina - Domino
Sujan Stevens - Star of Wonder - Rough Trade
Louis Armstrong - The Night Before Christmas - Stash Records
Dillinger and the Brentford - Hi Fahion Christmas - Heart Beat -
John Fahey - White Christmas - Takoma

Again I was asked to do a cover for anti-monarchist magazine ' De Republikein', this time about the consequences a united Europe will have for the crowns on the assorted royal heads, and for their so-called subjects.
Europe, in Greek mythology, was abducted by Zeus in the shape of a bull. ( 'Signal' , the 'Newsweek' of the nazi's, used her and her kidnapping beast as a logo, by the way.)
In my first sketch the king was deemed too positive, too powerful, 'his' people too weak.
The final image is more true to the facts: out of fear of change and loss of independence the people cling to 'their' monarch, not necessarily out of love for the monarchy.

I have been shooting with a buddy of mine Kevin Frew over the past couple of days. This image is from Florida Southern College here in good old Lakeland, Florida. We also took pictures of the Tampa Skyline. Those came out pretty well, I will post a couple of those once I get them done. I got all my Christmas shopping done, I'm ahead of the game. I think this is the first year that has happened. How about all ya'll? All done, or more to get done. Well, may you guys have a Happy Chirstmas.

weer eens wat anders dan kalkoen!

I hear you. We all hear you. You all know we are constantly tweaking the site to make it easier to use and still highly functional. The New Release page redesign is one step towards the idealized presenting new releases. All I can say is that you have always been very constructive and supportive as we iterated on the Community features (remember how those pages began changing this past summer? Aren't they better now? Aren't they still improving?) I hope you'll give the other teams here the same benefit of the doubt while they work on things. In the meantime, don't forget that you can always get a feed of the movies releasing this week via RSS:

http://rss.netflix.com/NewReleasesRSS

Feel free to post your feedback here. We read 'em all.



SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE 12/23/07 11am:
I noticed that Tygger is making a desperate and valiant attempt to save you all from the site redesign. He found this link, which apparently is the missing page:

http://www.netflix.com/AllNewReleases?lnkctr=NavAllNewReleases

At some personal risk, I reprint this link here; Please note- the fact that it is accessible now does not necessarily mean it will remain there, but on this sunday morning (and in the spirit of the holiday season) I present it.

Since my job is to build features that involve the "Community" -- and this page is not part of my job description (although i assure you that those who matter are reading all of your notes) -- what i am able to do is to hear your comments about the failures of the RSS feed, for THAT is part of my job. If it is lousy then that is my fault. I will work to get an ADD TO QUEUE button to be part of it - that should help. What else?

Anyway, please continue to voice your concerns here, or with customer service, as you feel the need.

THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: Dec 27,7am:

Enterprising members have created a formal petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix/petition.html


As I've said before, I don't know what kind of response would be required for Netflix to make immediate changes - is it 100 or a million? for instance - and your comments here may be totally sufficient to effect change (that is, you may not need a petition to get our attention. I think you've got it). And remember, i don't think anyone considers the new release areas "done" anyway; regardless of your comments and petition, i believe work will continue to adjust these areas. But as a PM who is responsible for "community" I cannot but encourage you all to do what you must. Anyway, a petition can't hurt.

Sorry guys haven't posted in a week. These pictures are from last saturday. And I had to post them because it was a Saturday 2 RemembeR. A day of 1st. It was the first time Alison ate at the World Famous Peebles, and her 1st time at the Florida Famous Barn, 1st time Bo and Anana ever bowled in Winter Haven, and the 1st time I ever played Crazy Uno. Merry Christmas everyone...

Something is happening, and it is becoming harder to ignore. Allow me to introduce the evidence.Category A: The Office Exhibit 1: One of my colleagues looks disarmingly like a young Luke Wilson. My colleague has longer hair, but truly, the resemblence is astounding. Exhibit 2: A separate colleague looks almost exactly like David Schwimmer, only with lighter hair colour. His personality is

Dear Friends,

What will you think of when you think of 2007? The year you fell in love? The year you said the hell with it all? Well, for us, I mean me, here at The Baseball Card Blog, 2007 was the year baseball cards crescendoed (if that's a real word). While 2006 saw a explosion in mainstream attention towards the hobby, 2007 was a year of ups and downs, with whatever mainstream attention given focused on the public and private sides of the drawn out Topps sale...

...2007 also saw the publication of Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson's The Card, a telling of the somewhat tawdry history of the former Gretzky/McNall T206 Wagner. Not surprisingly, the book didn't garner much press in hobby publications like Sports Collector's Digest, where Mastro Auctions is a large advertiser. O'Keeffe also achieved my own personal life goal this year when he became an obscure footnote in a text of importance by being quoted in The Mitchell Report...

...2007 saw me sell out to help Topps checklist an under-performing eTopps product, and branch out to Beckett.com for a few weeks there in the summer, if only to prove that writing on a schedule is harder than I thought...

...But mostly, 2007 was the year of collaboration, with the successful launch of A Pack A Day, the Cardboard Junkie/Baseball Card Blog alliance in creating The 792, and interactive projects like The Great Goudey Trade-away and Top Topps. Both proved to be unqualified successes thanks to Blog readers. And speaking of readers, 126,400 people visited The Blog (that's over 184,000 page views!), from all over the country and the world.

I got a lot of emails, answered a lot of questions, got some hate mail, made some friends, ate some bad food, went to some shows...

Not a bad year. Here's to another.



Fondly,


Ben

My readers just can't stop the sending in of new card designs (not that there's anything wrong with that). Reader Adam (from Response #8) has sent in another card (albeit a while ago and I'm just now getting to it):

"Again, simplicity is the key for me."

Found these widgets online. Pretty cool. They're from a company called AdaptiveBlue. They're developing some very interesting new objects they call "SmartLinks" which are also pretty interesting. Anyway, I've been talking to them about how we can help them make these tools better. We've got some ideas around here, but your input is always good. This is their blog:

http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/?p=806

and here is their pile of widgets for Netflix (and lots of other web services):

http://www.adaptiveblue.com/widgets_auto.html


POST SCRIPT:
This is a design for a Netflix badge that would be attractive. Whatcha think?

If you have your own widgets/badges you'd like others to know about, post a comment with a link to your page. Mabye we can even generate some feedback for y'all about what works and what doesn't...

POST SCRIPT II:
I'm trying various widgets over in the right column of this blog to see what works and what doesn't. Clearly, Blogger doesn't work with Flash... but this will be an ongoing experiment.

Reader Mike thinks he can top Topps.

"Here's one that flashes back to burlap (1968) - I started to do a 'Steroid Sluggers' series, but the hypo needle didn't quite look right, so I just kept it as a basic issue. This is from Albert Belle's Disabled List days with the Orioles ..."


Want to get your card on the web where people will see it? Email me your designs and I'll post them on the blog (in a somewhat timely manner)!

Following Canada's lead, the US will now be phasing out inefficient incandescent lights bulbs in favour of compact fluorescents by 2012. Read all the details here.

A few more images of a tropical paradise...

Two illustrations with my crash test dummy character design for a new project.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

I failed to mention that most of this African experience is taking place on an overland truck tour with a group of other travelers. Though the company is nice, so is stretching the legs out on your own.

So taking advantage of a week long break at the end of stage one, I booked airline tickets to Lamu - small island off the coast of Kenya.

A recognized World Heritage Site, Lamu is the last undiluted outpost of true Swahili culture. Swahili was never a pure group of people, nor language. It grew over centuries through a mixture of the traditional African coastal tribes with Arab, Persian and Indian influences arriving from sea. I never appreciated this before.

My destination was the town of Lamu, the largest town on Lamu Island, which in turn is a part of the Lamu Archipelago. The island population is made up of about 20,000 people and 6,000 donkeys, with the only motorized vehicle traffic being the Island Commissioner's Land Rover and two ambulances - one for people and one for the donkeys. However, they should probably have a third ambulance devoted to tourists who die of heat stroke the second they step off the plane. When the doors opened on my Air Kenya prop, I said to the person next to me, "I think my underwear just melted!"

But that was the only thing to complain about for the next week.

The town itself is a tightly packed outpost of 14th to 19th century buildings that hug the coastline and feature Arab style windows, thatched roofs, rooftop views, and stunning wood carvings that demonstrate all of the island's myriad influences. As for the time spent there, it was nothing but leisure.

The food is picked straight from a tree or pulled from the sea, and my meal of choice was fresh snapper served with a glorious mug of fresh squeezed lime juice, which ran about $5 total. I spent most of the rest of my time making the 50 minute walk to a nearly deserted expanse of tropical sand called Shela beach for sun tanning and swimming.

There was also a day trip in a traditional Swahili sailing dhow to catch lunch from the sea for a traditional swahili meal of fresh fired fish, coconut rice and mangoes cooked on the beach. I should say that my boat mates caught the fish, and our guide did the cooking. I'm alright at negotiating the variables of African travel, but I a fisherman I'm not.

After 5 days of tropical living I've rarely felt healthier. Life remains slow on the island despite the modern world lying just across the sea. To date, islanders have resisted all attempts at rapid modernization or any firm connections to the mainland. From the airstrip at nearby Manda Island the only way to reach Lamu town is by boat. My own motorized dhow featured a diesel engine that used a cooking oil container for a fuel tank, a water bottle for oil, and made about 1/2 a knot at 800 decibels.

Developers have tabled plans to connect Lamu Island to the mainland via road and to build an airstrip, but so far to no avail. With luck it will stay that way. The European travelers who are snapping up land on the island appear anxious to bring in more western amenities and tourist wealth. The islanders could care less. Though poor by any monetary standards, they are rich in health and natural beauty. They have all they need for food and shelter and nobody seems to desire anything other than to carry on as they have for centuries.

I hope the rest of the world gets the hint.

The International Rhino Foundation has been thanking everyone who bid on their wacky Rhino Poop auction on ebay.

We have just ended IRF’s Endangered Feces auction, ending with a total of 76 eBay bids, with a high bid of $1,075 for the white rhino specimen. We can’t wait to learn about the folks getting these special gifts.
[...]
The Endangered Feces auction was easily one of the wackier projects IRF has ever undertaken. But it captured people’s imaginations and generated interest in rhinos all over the world. Media coverage reached at least 3.5 million people. There are more than 200,000 references to “rhino poop” on Google, and our YouTube video had more than 500 viewings – and a several 5-star ratings!

Many good suggestions - keep 'em coming. I have some questions for you.

1) Should we do any kind of filtering to restrict the presentation of these monster long lists? It does take a long time to load a list of 100 movies and I also find them of limited value. It's true -- as someone pointed out -- that they do have their place, but i tend to avoid them. We wouldn't stop their creation or anything, just perhaps we should not present them on this main Top 10 List page in that top block of personalized suggestions. They'd still be in popular and recent. But how many is the dividing line?

2) Did anyone notice that - based on your suggestions - we randomize the presentation of lists on an individual's List page? It used to only show your "Favorites" list - which is an automatically generated list of your 5-star rated movies. But if you have more lists than this, it presents something (anything) else.

3) Search-features would really be nice, i agree. I'm lobbying hard for getting lists into the search infrastructure. No timeline as of now. The more lists are useful and used, the easier this becomes.

4) Still tuning the way the various blocks "refresh". There were sufficient complaints about lists refreshing every time the page loads - it was (and continues) to make it hard when you have a few interesting results show up at a time. I have left the (original) block on the Community Home Page to refresh with each pageload, but this new page all blocks are "sticky" for your entire session. (Except the Featured Members, which is still fluid). Maybe these are too extreme. Maybe all we need is a "See more lists" button that forces a refresh. I won't be able to get to this any time soon, but i would be interested in your feedback.

5) Rating and hiding lists. Interesting. Not going to happen right now. Hiding a list is way to fringe a feature for me even to consider right now. Rating is interesting, but i think adds too much clutter. Voting on helpful is better, i suppose. But still, unlike receiving and watching a bad movie, finding a bad list is not all that painful. Protecting y'all from it might be overkill.

6) A special List "BOB" (the pop-up with special movie info) is a nice idea. I'll put it into a wish list.

In the first version the little foxy lady had a bright red foxtail, which gave my (mainly male) colleagues on my favorite forum lots of disgusting associations.
But in Illustrator such details are so easy to change, so this is the third and final version.
Oh yes, the text is rough text, which will be embellished by the editor of "Graphic Classics".

This year I decided to track my travel and map out many of the places I have been. While I have been obsessive at times, tracking every restaurant and hotel, I have been lax at others. But this map should give a good overview of the traveling I did this year.

Highlights include:

• 2 continents (North and South America)
• The Hawaiian Islands
• 2 foreign countries (Argentina & Uruguay)
• 19 states (including OR, MI, WY and MN which I had never visited before)
• ~60,000 miles on Delta Airlines (still not enough for Platinum Medallion again... damn!)

Last night Steph and I went to the Piercing Experience in Candler Park to get her some new jewelry for her nose. While there, another couple was buying some jewelry too. They didn't fit the usual clientele, being a bit older and pretty "vanilla" looking. So we thought nothing of it... until the following exchange:

Woman (to the piercer): "He's always losing the jewelry in his PA..." (NSFW! Prince Albert)

Me: "That's gotta be hard to do..."

Woman: "He can't keep his hands off his dick. He's always playing with it. So much so that he rubbed the color off of his jewelry! Its a 00 [double-zero gauge] and expensive to replace. The balls are $45/each!"

Me: "I think you'd notice that falling down your pant leg..."

Pierced Man: "No, I have lost them at work, in the grass, everywhere. I never feel it, but I feel naked without it!"

A few things to note...

• Don't play with your cock so much, you might lose your expensive jewelry. Or rub the color off.
  
• People who play with their cock at work deserve to lose their jewelry. And their job.
  
• People who have a penchant for playing with their cock (ring), might want to try Loctite to ensure that they don't lose their jewelery. I'd hate to find a stray piece of body jewelry and have to find out where it came from.
  
• Even when in a piercing studio, I don't want to know about your cock ring. Keep it between you, your wife/girlfriend/SO and the piercer. Please. If I wanted to know, I'd have asked.
  

A 3D exercise in toy figure design. I hope one day he will be realized.

More stuff at Sevensheaven.nl

Audio

Rebuilding the Rights of Statues - If the Monkey Becomes (to be) the King - Tag Team Records
Venice is Sinking - Pulaski Heights - Tag Team Records
Johnneytwentythree - Exorcism - Tag Team Records
Arrows Made of Desire - Conversing With Myself - Tag Team Records
EVERYBODY - Screen - Tag Team Records
Du Yun - Untitled 1 - Tag Team Records
The Submissionaries - The Blood of Danish Kings Courses Through My Veins - Tag Team Records
EVERYBODY - Pedal, Pedal - Tag Team Records
Lonely China Day - One - Tag Team Records
Johnneytwentythree - Red Bird - Tag Team Records
Lonely China Day - The Child - Tag Team Records
The Bug - DJ Baku Megamix - Ninja Tunes
Malcolm Middleton - We're all going to die - Full Time Hobby
The Grit - Surrender - - People Like You Records
!!! - Yadnus - Warp
Mrs Cakehead - Pickled Egg (Live in Accrington)
Wilson/Lee/Bentley - Sinister Two - Drip Audio
Fond of Tigers - Hebvark - Drip Audio
That was Cucumber Farmer - Since I've Been Edge and Bono - American Brothers
Miracle Fortress - Next Train - Rough Trade
Devotional Ensemble - Section 0 - www.devotionalensemble.co.uk
Arp - St Tropez - Smalltown Supersound

It's 'Best Of' season. So to get into the spirit, I thought I'd post a little something about my favorite purchases of 2007. A few caveats before I begin. I'm not counting cards I got in the wildly popular Great Goudey Trade-away, nor I am taking into account the cards I packed into storage after moving back in September. So really, my own Best Of should be called Best Purchases September through December, 2007.

Best Card of a Wizened Old Timer/Manager:
1951 Bowman Bucky Harris
On the wall of my parents' kitchen is a panoramic photograph from the 1924 World Series, with both lineups (Washington Senators and New York Giants) assembled along the third base line. Walter Johnson is in his pitcher's warmup sweater, Bill Terry looks to be maybe all of twenty-four, there's an oompah band in the right corner getting ready to strike up, and there are a few faces blurred out from moving while the camera moved. The reason I'm mentioning this is because about halfway up the photo, in the center of the packed stands, President Coolidge is flanked by John McGraw and the young Senators player/manager Bucky Harris. Flash ahead 27 years and here's Harris back helming the Senators. Another fun thing about Bucky Harris: though the guy had nine career regular-season home runs over 12 seasons, he managed two dingers in the '24 World Series.


Worst Spelling Error Left Uncorrected:
2006-07 Upper Deck Derk Fisher [sic] I bought a pack of these cards at Target thinking they were from this year. Getting this card of Fisher more than made up for my disappointment (I was trying to determine who to draft for my fantasy basketball team, currently mired in last). Not a bad design, not memorable... I'm still trying to figure out what the defender's tattoo is; it's either one of the ThunderCats or is of Justin Bateman in Teen Wolf Too.


Best Miscut: 1953 Topps Clem Labine
I love miscut cards, the older the better. I love how it accentuates the fact that it's all about cardboard––and machines that cut cardboard––image be damned. Another fun thing: it's self-reflexive. One of the ads on the outfield wall behind Labine is for Topps Gum.


Best Use of a Nickname:
1963 Topps Choo Choo Coleman
It's almost as if the Topps copywriters bet each other they could write a whole card and never once mention a player's real name.

On an unrelated note, someone should write an essay on the effectiveness of the careers of Choo Choo Coleman and Pumpsie Green on race relations within their respective cities (New York and Boston). I know very little about Coleman, but how can a grown man command respect while being referred to as 'Choo Choo'?

As for Green, I have always considered him to be the unfortunate symbol of the deep-seated racism and segregationist beliefs of the Boston Red Sox of the 1950s, from Yawkey to Higgins. It would be interesting to read about what civil leaders and thinkers from the time thought about the teams and these two men.

Finally I was drawing someone my friends in the dog park could relate to. It made for a fine subject while slipping and sliding on the ice. And I wasn't even the most elitist dog owner, one woman actually hadn't even ever heard of Dr. Phil. A doctor herself mind you. Which is pretty comforting when you think about it. Now I will stop thinking about Dr. Phil the moment he turns into fish wrapping paper. I don't know, I always get into these imaginary relationships with the people I have to draw, I can't help it. Like with Dr. Phil, jesus. I keep thinking of things in my life that I would have him talk about in his show. That is too creepy to even ask you guys what you would have Dr. Phil talk about regarding your lives. I have way more shit happening than I thought, I could fill (Phil) ten shows. Easy.

It turns out Al Gore reads The Conscious Earth. Back in June I wrote that to solve global warming the international community is going to have to leave the United States behind and go it alone. As long US motivation is to derail international talks rather than join them, the world's efforts will only be harmed by granting them a place at the bargaining table.

Speaking from the United Nations climate change summit in Bali yesterday, Al Gore echoed my sentiments,

The Bush administration is the main obstacle to progress in international efforts to fight global warming, but the rest of the world should move on without it, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said Thursday night during a special appearance at the United Nations climate change summit.

"I am not an official of the United States and I am not bound by diplomatic niceties," said Gore in an emotional speech to delegates that lasted close to an hour. "So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth: My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that."

Time to retreat back under my rock. May I present the next fifty numbers of The 792, starting with card #201.

201. Vince Coleman, Record Breaker, 1986
You want a memorable baseball scandal? Vince Coleman, a crowd of fans and a handful of firecrackers.

202. Steve Carlton, Record Breaker, 1981
I believe this is the Carlton record breaker with him in a batting helmet. I always thought that Carlton in a helmet looked like Miss Finch, the villain from Follow That Bird. If you're not familiar with Follow That Bird, it was part of a trilogy of Sesame Street movies (though the only one that had a theatrical release). OK, there was no trilogy, but the other two are: Big Bird Goes to China and Don't Eat the Pictures.

203. Blue Jays Future Stars, 1982 (RC)
How do you argue with Jesse Barfield's rookie card? Especially when one of the other guys on the card is named Boomer Wells? You don't.

204. Ron LeFlore/Rodney Scott, Record Breaker, 1981
205. Tony Perez, Record Breaker, 1986
206. Andy Van Slyke, 1984 (RC)
207. Ozzie Smith, Record Breaker, 1981
208. Champ Summers, 1985
209. Dickie Thon, 1981
210. Steve Carlton, 1980
211. Mike Pagliarulo, 1989
212. Broderick Perkins, 1984
213. Dave Stewart, 1982 (RC)
214. Angels Team, 1980
215. Mark Langston, 1987
216. Tony LaRussa, 1983
There is no way you can pass up a shot of a dazed LaRussa.

217. Chris Codiroli, 1987
I always thought that in the off-season Codiroli was a Statler Brother.

218. Doyle Alexander, 1985
219. Cecilio Guante, 1987
Guante was always a favorite of mine. Mostly because he looked like he had led a hard life, like he escaped a De Beers diamond mine or was an actual pirate.

220. Tom Seaver, 1981
221. Joe Cannon, 1980
222. Ron Hassey, 1980 (RC)
Only one catcher has caught two perfect games. Can you name him?

223. Lloyd Moseby, 1982
224. Wayne Tolleson, 1987
225. Ramon Martinez, 1989 (RC)
Yeah, Ramon Martinez! Who knew you'd be the brother with less talent? This card was unstoppable in 1989.

226. Manny Sanguillen, 1981
Another of my favorite cards from a great, underrated set.

227. Jamie Moyer, 1987 (RC)
228. Tom Lawless, 1986
229. Phillies Leaders, 1983
230. Dave Winfield, 1980
231. Pirates Leaders, 1988
232. Alan Trammell, 1980
233. Gregg Jefferies, 1989 (RC)

The Top 5 Cards of 1989
1. Ken Griffey, Jr., Upper Deck
2. Billy Ripken, Fleer
3. Dale Murphy Reverse Negative, Upper Deck
4. Gregg Jefferies, Topps
5. Ken Griffey, Jr. Fleer & Donruss (tie)

234. Lou Whitaker, 1981
235. Andre Dawson, 1980
236. Frank Eufemia, 1986
237. Rusty Kuntz, 1982
If you're not familiar with this card, head over to Cardboard Junkie in the next few days and check it out. It features a photo of Rusty signing an autograph. Who wouldn't want a ball signed 'Rusty Kuntz'?

238. Jose Rijo, 1985 (RC)
This might be the only card of Rijo where he's standing still and not holding a SuperSoaker.

239. Rick Miller, 1981
240. Nolan Ryan, 1981
241. Danny Heep, 1987
242. Rick Mahler, 1987
243. Bob Boone, 1989
244. Cardinals Team, 1980
245. Jim Rice, 1989
This guy was so strong that he snapped a bat in two on a checked swing.

246. Mets Leaders, 1984
247. Terry Harper, 1986
248. Storm Davis, 1988
249. Larry Cox, 1981
This is probably one of the ugliest cards in existence. The yellow border. The powder blue Mariners uniform. And Frank Zappa, er, Larry Cox looking tired and bored in his catcher's crouch.

250. Dwight Gooden, 1986
If #249 shall be remembered for its ugliness, #250 shall forever be one of the most beautiful. Like a tornado about to strike, this is Gooden in his glory.


For the complete 792 experience, view card scans in numerical order at Cardboard Junkie.

At long last, here is a short photo series of the mountain gorillas....well, except the first shot. Enjoy!

What's funnier: the fact that Clemens needed help injecting himself with steroids, or that Clemens is the face of Topps Series 3? As much fun as a Saturday night spent shooting a washed-up Roger Clemens full of steroids sounds, I'm going to have to go with the fact that Topps is now connected with the two most high-profile users in the Mitchell Report.

Compound that with the fact that the level of bad luck handed down to Topps spokesmen has to rank up there with the Sports Illustrated and Madden cover curses. First David Wright's Mets put together a collapse that puts the 1964 Phillies to shame. Then Father Time, excuse me, Greg Oden, shuffles into the operating room and misses the entire season. Follow that by golden boy Alex Rodriguez bitch-slapping the Red Sox on the eve of their World Series sweep with news that he'd burn a stack of $100 dollar bills in front of a group of needy children––I'm sorry, I can't read my own handwriting––I mean opt out of his already mammoth contract for one even more mammoth-er. Now Roger Clemens, Topps' cover boy for Series 3, is about to enter panic mode (if he wasn't already there). Oh, and I totally forgot about Dwyane Wade and his Magic Shoulder. And I guess you could add Barry Bonds to this list, since technically he is still under contract with Topps, though what's the point? In case you haven't noticed, that guy's a ticking time bomb.

Seriously, it must suck for Topps PR right now.

UPDATED FRI 4pm: Almost Done. Check out the new features! Will be a little longer for a few items... but mostly ready...

UPDATED FRI 1:30pm: We'll be revising some software today -- sometime in the next hour I'm told (around 2pm PST give or take) -- it will be for an hour or two at most. The Netflix site will be unaffected, but the Community features will be offline for this period. Watch this post for updates.

One of the moments I've most looked forward to in the early part of travel is visiting Rwanda. The genocide that the nation survived is a defining event in the modern era and, touching closer to home for myself, it was Canadian General Romeo Dallaire who led the UN effort here while maintaining a near solitary voice for further intervention - a call that was patently ignored until the genocide was over and nearly 1,000,000 people had died.

We're told that the genocide was the culmination of tribal conflicts between warring Hutus and Tutsis that stretch back far beyond European colonization. In reality, this is a bald faced lie designed to protect the conscience of the developed world while stopping us from understanding the true nature of the killings, and the integral role of the west in bringing them about.

The Germany was the first nation to first to colonize Rwanda during the late 1800s. At that time they found 18 distinct tribes living in relative peace. The labels "Tutsi", "Hutu" and "Twa" did not identify distinct tribes, but rather represented the social standing of individuals within tribes, much like the labels 'doctor', 'lawyer' or 'labourer' might describe a person's status and occupation today.

More importantly, there was nothing about this distinction that was fixed or hereditary, and an individual's standing changed with changes in their personal circumstances. Hutu would become Tutsi if their personal wealth increased through building larger herds of cattle, and a Tutsi who lost livestock through drought or disease would fall in status to Hutu.

This changed in 1932 when the Belgians gained control of the area. Seeing an opportunity to gain a more rigid control of the local population, the Belgians moved to make these distinctions permanent. Anyone who possessed 10 head of cattle at that time were declared
"Tutsi", and those with less were labeled "Hutu". These distinctions remained unchangeable and hereditary, and they were further reinforced by an identity card system that labeled each Rwandan according to their "tribal" status.

Through class distinction and bureaucracy, the Belgians ruled the colony through the Tutsis until the Rwandan independence movement began in the 1950s. At that time, the the Belgians found it to their political advantage to switch their allegiance to the Hutus. As the Hutus moved into power, Belgian support continued despite increasingly oppressive anti-Tutsi policies that included massacres, job quotas, limits on education, and an increasingly sophisticated and coordinated propoganda campaign. In the decades leading up to the genocide thousands of Tutsi died and 700,000 fled into Uganda and other neighboring countries to escape persecution.

By the time the genocide commenced in April of 1994, the doctrine of "Hutu Power" and the plan for the extermination of the Tutsis was well rehearsed and tightly organized. Between 1990 and 1993, Hutu extremists had initiated eight separate trial massacres in preparation for the launch of 'final solution'. During these warm up phases, the French government was fully aware of the situation and continued to guarantee loans to the Rwandan government for arms deals with French companies.

Near the end of the 1994 genocide Rwanda erupted in civil war. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Tutsi general Paul Kagame eventually took control of the country, but not before 100 days of slaughter and the death of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

But despite this violence, Rwanda has made a startling recovery.

After becoming President in 2000, Paul Kagame instituted new stability and national cohesion. Tutsi and Hutu class distinctions are now strictly forbidden. All citizens are now known only as "Rwandans". Assuming that mass violence is far less likely to be initiated by women, the new government has also mandated that 39% of representatives must be women, the highest level of female representation in the world. Corruption has nearly disappeared. There is a building boom occuring throughout Rwanda. And though understandably guarded, the people are open, friendly and welcoming, even though there is scarcely a soul who was not touched directly by the genocide. Equally startling is that there does not appear to be a scrap of litter anywhere in the country - a huge difference from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania where old plastic bags collect like snow drifts.

The most striking aspect of the country is the national recognition of the events of 1994. Driving through the impossibly steep farms of Les Milles Collines (land of 1000 hills), there are countless signs marking mass graves and sites of wholesale slaughter. The look and feel of these memorials is ghostly and rarely do they mark a place where less than hundreds died. The most stirring of all is the Genocide Memorial in Kigale where more than 258,000 people been interred so far, including the parents of the young man who guided us through these memorial grounds. As new buildings go up around the country, more graves are constantly unearthed, and it will be decades before all of the phantoms are finally put to rest.

These are but a few words, and in truth it is impossible to capture the emotion and scale of what occurred here....even 13 years later.

Some readers well versed on the history of the region may point out that the summary above ignores the ethnic clashes between Hutus and Tutsis that took place in bordering countries, especially in neighbouring Burundi where several killings of Hutus occurred at the hands of Tutsi forces throughout recent decades. This omission was intentional.

After spending months reading the histories, and now after speaking to Rwandans first hand, I'm convinced that the story we hear in North America and Europe is one that has been purposely focused on so called "ethnic tensions" in order to spare our collective conscience from confronting our own responsibility. The distinctions between Hutus and Tutsis were consciously established, cultivated and maintained by western powers for their own political advantage. They knowingly ignored the threat of genocide, they armed genocidaires for their own profit, and when the killings began they did nothing to stop them.

If we truly want to stop such a thing from occurring again, our efforts need to begin by accepting responsibility for our role in the genocide. Otherwise it can, and inevitably will, repeat.

The question only is when.

This weekend we will release some fixes that will solve this problem for many of you. Unfortunately it will not solve it for all of you. Here's the deal: When you go the the Friends page, the website loads up those sliders with the movies your friends have rated. It pulls in your notes. It calculates your sim% to each friend. And it does a few other things. To calculate the sim% it is doing an analysis and comparison of your ratings to each of your friends. We give the page a time period to get all this done. If it doesn't complete its tasks in this period, it "times out" and you get some kind of error message.

The problem appears to be that there are cases where a member has a lot of friends. Not one, not 3. Not 15. But lots. Say, 30. (Only a tiny % of members have this many friends, btw). But lots of friends isn't enough alone to be an issue. We test this with lots of friends. But if a significant number of those friends ALSO are heavy raters -- say with many thousands of movie ratings (say, 5K or 7K!) -- it is taking too long to pull in their movie rating data and do the sim% calculation, and a few other things, such that it runs out of time. And thus the error message.

It's not that Friends is down. Friends is NOT down. >99% of you are not having a problem. But ironically, the few that have this problem are people we like a lot - you have lots of friends, you write notes, you rate lots of movies; you usually write reviews too, and make lists--you're all round good Netflix Samaritans. So we are taking this seriously. (For the record, this problem only affects a few hundred of you.)

The problem starts and stops for some people because there are other factors - for instance, the time of day you try it (because of changes in server loads), or which server you get when you log in; it might matter which pages you view in which order. We're still looking at these components.

The quick fix is to widen the window of the time period, which will hopefully allow more time for these events to transpire before triggering a timeout. this will go into effect this weekend, and will improve things but not eliminate the problem for some. It is a somewhat inelegant solution and there are clearly smarter ways to handle this. We could change the way we calculate and store sim%, for instance, or change the way we deal with notes. There are many possible ways to address this, but all are long-term, and none can happen immediately. We are looking at a range of solutions, and will keep you posted on our progress.

For those affected, sorry for the trouble.

In less than 24 hours, the entire American media will be consumed with Roid Rage. Columnists and bloggers will never have had it so easy, with myriad angles to cover, so-called big names to out and moralizing to be done. But the question that probably won't be raised (because it doesn't sell papers) is: Does anybody actually care? Seriously. Do you really want to know if your favorite sports star has injected himself with more hormones than a Perdue chicken?

I mean, read any anecdotal baseball book and you'll see that ballplayers have been popping greenies since the Seventies. It's one of the things that ballplayers are all about: getting an edge, acting batshit crazy on the road, and winning the World Series. But you still like those players from the Good Ol' Days, right? You still collect their cards. Even if they were users.

And what about the Pittsburgh Drug Trials? Players were buying cocaine from the Pittsburgh Parrot, for chrissakes. Sure, it may have ruined Tim Raines's and Dave Parker's chances at making the Hall of Fame, but Keith Hernandez figured into that stuff as well, and well, he's still a well-liked baseball celebrity.

Baseball has probably weathered more vice charges than any other sport in America, and may rank second to soccer on the world stage in terms of public relations nightmare scandals and fuck ups.

Here's a handful of other good times: Hal Chase gambling on games while still on the field playing in them, Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb fixing a game in 1927, legends Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays banned for life for appearing at a casino, and who could forget Sammy Sosa losing his grasp on English before the Senate Committee? Yes, it's easy to make it through a whole post on baseball's storied scandals without even mentioning Pete Rose or the Black Sox. (Well, almost.)

So let's face facts. There will be hundreds if not thousands of articles written on the Mitchell Report. ESPN will launch special coverage and Pedro Gomez will go without sleep for six weeks as Barry Bonds will most certainly be named in the report.

Will card prices suffer? Cards of The Asterisk have had plenty o'time to have the bottom fall out, and if anything, it's been a slow decline. But what about others? I just don't see it happening. Well, unless Clemens is named...

Reader Jason thinks he can top Topps. It's nice, though reminiscent of Fleer Excel circa 1992.

"I've been playing around with ideas for baseball card designs for a while now. I would have to say that my inspiration for these comes from the Topps cards of the 70's and 80's, before computers brought about the endless gradients, drop shadows, layers, and other distractions. I would love to see Topps get back to where they once were, design-wise, without having to resort to another 'heritage' set."


Hey you! Send me your baseball card designs. I'm not picky.

I’m in the mood for christmas! So I made two cute greeting cards. If you want to buy them: just send me an e-mail (click!) and I’ll send all the information you need.




Have a closer look on my Flickr-page!

This was one of the last Polaroids that I did in the old Kitchen. In my opinion this is one of the best ones out of all the new ones........more to come

Novels. Novels bore me to death. Always have and probably always will. As a kid I used to read in the big art books we had at home. They were full of wonderful images and amazing stories. Stories about how Géricault kept rotting horses heads under his bed. Stories about van Gogh cutting his ear. Stories about how Lautrec had a custom walking stick made in order to be able to hide booze in it. I couldn't get enough of those stories and I couldn't wait to grow up and become a tortured, neurotic artist myself. I became an illustrator-with-a-communication-disorder instead.
Close enough.

Born near Paris and living nearly twenty years in Amsterdam, I'm a vector addict. In fact: Pierre Bézier is my hero. Furthuremore I'm in love with my drawing tablet, an ageing Wacom Intuos A3 (but that's ok, I'm not getting younger either). That it then. Cheers.

This is a commissioned image about how retaining a "hollyday feeling" after returning to work kan keep people from being stressed and getting ill.

In the next release we're adding a page to the Community - a more general Top 10 List page - that might be interesting to you all. In this first iteration, it's not all that pretty i suppose, but it has four zones, each containing a different set of movie lists:

1) Most Popular - looking only at the quantity of movies added to member's queues (and shipped), we come up with this set of lists. Clearly, being in this set will further make the lists popular - so we only look at popularity over the past week, and also (since the list is really longer than the 20 shown) we randomize which ones we present and the order.

2) Most Recent - we get thousands of new lists each week, and we will pull randomly from that set each time this block is refreshed. Gives new lists a chance to shine.

3) Lists Selected for you based on the movies in your Queue and that you've rated - This is a slightly different version of the personalization we do in the block you see on the Community Home page; but the effect is similar: we look at highly rated movies and movies you've just moved high in your queue, and find member's lists that include those titles.

4) Featured Members - here we look at members who have created at least a few lists (but not necessarily a lot), find those generating a good quantity of additions to queues, and then sort by similarity % to you -- and then present a sampling of the top ones. It's really just another way to find interesting similar members.

NOTE: in this first release, the lists update every time this page refreshes. WE know this is a problem. It will be fixed in the subsequent release. With the exception of the Featured Members section, the lists will persist through the session you're in, but will refresh on your next login. Based on your comments once this releases, we may adjust other elements as well. So try it out and let me know what works and what doesn't.

UPDATE 7/12/07 12:30pm
Okay, here's the bottom line. We've got some fixes that we'll implement in the next couple days. The good news is that this will improve things for many of you; the bad news is that it won't improve things for some of you - alas, probably the heaviest users. The reality is that you've uncovered a serious issue, and that the real solution is not quick. We're working on it now, and i'll have more information as it comes in, but there will not be a fix possible that cures this for those of you with many friends and many ratings. (It doesn't seem to affect Faves or Fans use.) Through your input and alerts, this has been caught - but i have no happy words for those affected (check early next week to see if it has improved for you; it could take that long for the fixes to ripple through the system and membership). More news as it becomes available. (And if anyone comes up with some work arounds that improve experience - PLEASE let me know here.) Sorry, and thank you.


UPDATE: 7/11/07 1:03pm
Thanks for the info and the alert. I think you've uncovered a flaw in the design of notes -- When we first implemented it, we hadn't fully fleshed out what happens in the cases where someone has lots of friends and lots of notes and lots of ratings and rentals. There are a number of ways we are exploring to address the problem, but i'd like to ask members who only have 1 or a couple friends and use the notes features to let us know if you are having problems. It is unfortunate that this is starting to affect our most active users. I'll let you know as the situation improves. Until then, consider some of these features unstable. My apologies (I might have been writing this blog when i should have been anticipating that problem...)

I"ve noticed a couple people reporting problems with Friends only working partially, or the Notes features not working at all... those postings were the first we had heard of it -- with no unusual outages on this end, lest you believe we just weren't reporting it.

When something goes wrong its almost always widespread (meaning: everyone has a problem at the same time -- which didn't happen in this case), or it is connected to a new software release on our side (which didn't happen either, we haven't changed this code in some time, so if it is now broken, it's not obvious what caused it). Regardless, the postings on Hacking Netflix got us to look around and see if we could deduce if there was a bona fide problem, and if so, what was going on. I certainly believe some people are having occasional issues, but at least at this early stage, they don't seem to be widespread bugs and they do seem to (magically?) self-correct. Anyway, we're still looking into it. Leave comments here if you've got these problems too, and any specifics you can relay about how they manifest and if/when they seem to self-correct. It will help us get to the bottom of it.

Not sure how I missed this, but CBS aired a 60 Minutes segment about the Mountain Gorillas recently. Here is the Video Link and the main webpage can be found at CBSNews.com.

It's hard to imagine a more magnificent animal than the mountain gorilla. There are only about 700 of them left on the planet and so far this year at least ten have been shot to death.

As CNN's Anderson Cooper reports, it's gotten so bad for many of the remaining gorillas that conservationists genuinely fear the entire species might become extinct. They live in east Africa, in a forest that straddles Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a family of gorillas was massacred last summer.

So last month 60 Minutes went to Congo, a desperately poor country, to see why those gorillas were slaughtered, why the surviving gorillas are in jeopardy, and what can be done to save them.

Here at the Cottage, we love games. Specifically, we love board-games. Even more specifically, Cowboy loves Scrabble, because out of 499,256 games, he has beaten me 499,256 times. Victory is snatched from my grasp usually during the last few turns, when I will put down something like effete and score 12, and he will put down icky and score 57. We also love Pictionary, Articulate, and Blokus.

Life did not come to an end on this Sunday, but I did end up losing in all my Fantasy Football leagues. Just in case you were wondering how many Leagues I was in......Its 4

Cartoon for NRC.next, monday 10 december 2007

Audio

The Sound Stylistics - The Players Theme - Freestyle
Ron Dante & Peter Link - Mighty Gents - Susu
DJ Jazzy Jeff (FT. Raheem Devaughan) - My Soul Ain't For Sale - Expansion Records
Chieko Kinbara - Time to Love - Grand Gallery
Kenny Bobien & Stephanie Cooke - Hold on to me - Soul Shine Recordings
Simpson Vaults - Just a Touch -
Lightin- Rod - Spoon - Celluloid
Dennis Coffey & Lyman Woodward Trio - It's Your Thing - Maverick
Eddie Bo - Check your bucket part 1 - Bo-sOUND
Osbina - Music for Gong Gong - Decca
The Rebirth - Love Issue - Susu
Jazztronik (Ft. Lorraine Cato) - Beauty - Flow (Incognito Session) - Expansion Records
Mr Day - Get your point over - Favourite Recordings
sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - 100 Days 1000 nights - Daptone Records
Donald Byrd - Lansanna's Priestess - Blue Note
Virgo - RU Hot Enough - Trax -
Rhythm is Rhythm - Strings of Life - Transmat
Foster Sylvers - Misdemeanor - Pride
Wahoo (Ft. Paul Randolph) - Don't Take it Personal (Geord Levin Edit) - Exansion Records
Lady Alma - Pressure - Especial
Domu presents Pete Simpson - Look a Little Further - Papa Records

Different Reader Christopher thinks he can top Topps. His formula?

"You can never get enough woodgrain, right?"


Want to show the world your design chops? Send me your designs for a baseball card and I'll post it on the blog!

Super-pooper. The International Rhino Foundation's ebay auction of rhino poop has received bids totalling nearly $2000. And there's still two days to go.

I would love to say that Cowboy and I met in an unbearably romantic setting. I would love to say that we were both supping espresso in a cafe in Santiago and that when we simultaneously looked up from our coincidental copies of Pride & Prejudice, our eyes locked, violin music uttered from the heavens, and we haven't been able to spend a moment apart since.I would love to say that we had to

Earlier this week someone posted this to the blog comments:

I am BEYOND frustrated with your website.
I can find NO WAY to contact customer service except via telephone!!!
There is no email anywhere under CONTACT US.
There is no online 'chat' type of service either.
Have you never thought you might have a HEARING IMPAIRED customer that cannot use a PHONE? [...]

I am completing training of our agents today for the TTY system... I have tested the line through a TTY service, and the line is functional. The number that will be used for TTY Customer Service is 1-866-402-2619.

No distorted sunshine down here. Current Temp is 76 degrees, and it will be in the 80's the rest of the week. Wow, what a winter down here in florida. Can't wait for the weekend, I"m going to see The Avett Brothers at the Social on Friday. Actually never heard of them till last week, but I can't pass up a show at the Social, I have been catching up on their music and I really like them. I mean you can't go wrong with any band that has a banjo in it! I love me some banjo............

Reader Wes thinks he can top Topps.

"I drew from the 1984 Topps card for my inspiration."


Think you've got what it takes to design a baseball card? Send me your design and I'll post it on the blog!

Reader Christopher thinks he can top Topps.




" I like white borders, and I'm actually a fan of the 'foil' as I guess it's known. In these designs, the team name, player name, and position can all be done in foil. I'm still pushing for the great announcers' cards or subset."




For the past 57 years, Topps has sated our previously-unknown desire for obsessively collecting cardboard things. But perhaps more important than that generosity, the company has provided us with a continuous crash-course in creating accessible modern art for the masses. So you want to get in on the act? Send me your design for a 2008 card and I'll post it on the blog!