Month: August 2015

Cloudy Sunrise

Hampton Beach Sunrise

Usually I don’t go to the ocean for sunrise pics unless the forecast calls for nothing but sun. I don’t want any risk of driving all that way and then not being able to see the sun break the water. After a few successes though, I wanted to try going on a day with some clouds in the hopes of seeing how the sun makes the clouds change color. Sunday’s forecast called for partly cloudy.

It was almost a bust. “Partly” turned out to be “almost completely” except for a little band of sky right on the horizon. If not for that, I would have been screwed. As it was, I only had a few minutes with a visible sun before it hid behind the partly=completely.

Sunrise Windows

I may have mentioned it before, but I want to live in one of those houses that the windows light up when the sun rises. I’m sure that once I move into one of those houses it will not live up to expectations as the first time I walk into an East facing room during the sun rise I will have my retinas burned to a crisp and never see light again for the rest of my days.

Still want to live there though.

Hampton Beach Sunrise

Apple Music Fail

It was just a matter of time, but this iTunes Match user (who generally sings the service’s praises) just found an instance of the Apple Music bug where Match users are finding that songs have been removed from their My Music libraries.  Tracks 1-3 of the Rush Vapor Trails remix are gone, gone gone.

Hey Apple… I want my missing files back.

I sure hope the last backup I did has everything that Apple removed.

Addendum: The bug is dumber than I thought.  I organize my iTunes library in playlists.  Every song I have exists in at least one playlist, and when I use iTunes, the playlist view is the only one I ever use.  When I’m using my iPhone or iPad it sometimes feels faster to find what I want to listen to by pulling up the artist, and then drilling down to the album.  That’s what I did when I noticed the Apple Music bug.  The full album exists in Apple Music, just not under the artist/album in My Music.

Those three songs appear in about 1000000000 different versions in My Music (ah bootlegs), so I thought I’d search for one of them and see if any others disappeared.  Imagine my surprise when not only did I not notice any other versions of “One Little Victory” missing from the search results, but the remix album version actually appeared and I could click it and play it.  Well, that’s dumb.  It’s still labeled correctly, but it shows up in search but not in the album itself.  Right.  Dumb.

I then thought, I made a playlist for Vapor Trails that included the album, the remixed album, and the couple of additional remixed songs from a compilation album.  I went to my playlists… and the missing songs were all there (“Ceiling Unlimited – Remix” is playing in my ear buds as I type this).

Well… that’s just… Dumb.

Fix this please, Apple.  Fix it soon.

R40 and Oggl

Still messing around with using Oggl to hipstafy some of my Rush R40 in New York pictures.  Why?  Because I’m one sentimental red head, that’s why.  Also because as I clean the house I’m listening to R40 New York bootlegs.  Why?  Because I’m not ready to let go.

What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, Oggl.  Turns out I am the only Oggl user who used the tags R40 or R40Live.  There are thousands of pics with those tags on friggin’ Instagram, but only the few I posted on Oggl.  During the Periscope fun last night I tried to Google the number of active users on Oggl and the only numbers I found were for Hipstamatic users at the time Oggl launched in 2013.  I don’t think that’s a good sign, do you?

Anyway, here are more hipsta-Rush pics. 

    
    
    
   

Rush R40: It’s Over

Well kids, the Rush R40 tour is over.  I was running out of gas during the great periscope viewing of the second set.  I turned off the lights and laid down during Jacobs Ladder.  I blinked once and suddenly Eugene Levy was introducing the encour.  I shut it off after the great “F*ck you, puppet.”  

But what does it all mean?  Band members have been quoted saying that they are not breaking up, but no one has given any definitive plans for the future.  Maybe we’ll make another album.  Maybe we’ll do residencies instead of big tours (if that’s the case, get your passports ready as any such residency would most likely be in Toronto, where 2/3 of the band lives).  Maybe we’ll tour, just not for months at a time.  If the band doesn’t know what’s next, how can we even speculate?

Ray Daniels, who has managed the band longer than Neil Peart has been a member, has let it be known that he thinks an end to touring is a bad idea.  Who know, maybe he has enough influence over them to talk them into another full blown tour.  I doubt it though.  I couldn’t see any signs that age was catching up to them during the 2.5 hours they were playing, but I have no idea what the other 21.5 hours of the day are like.

Here is my hope for the future of Rush, based on absolutely nothing but my own wishes:  Take a few months off, start writing, make a new album, rehearse for a month or so, book a week at a smaller arena in Toronto, or Radio City Music Hall in New York, and politely ask your fans to come to you (this fan will be first in line), wash-rinse-repeat for as long as you have the physical ability and desire to do so.  That would be pretty sweet.  

If not, then we the fanatics have 40+ years worth of music to continue to enjoy for as long as we want.  When you think of it, that’s a pretty astonishing gift they’ve given us.  I will thank them for it until the end of my days.