Author: Jim Cofer

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-11

  • @mitomommy Awwwww! Your "sleeping angel" is adorable"! 🙂 #
  • Come on, Falcons! #
  • I almost never say this, but COME ON, CLEVELAND! Beat the Ratbirds! #
  • "Yes you did – you invaded Poland!" #
  • @gastongazette #Big12wasbetter Don't make me laugh! #
  • So we finally go to trivia night at Sir Ed's… and no one is here! #
  • Second place! #
  • Asobi Seksu and Washed Out on the jukebox at Sir Ed's… Nice! #
  • My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Roxy Music (38), Washed Out (7) & Bryan Ferry (5) http://t.co/6xmXsQXb #
  • Gaston County: where grown men wear baseball hats backwards without shame, guilt or irony. #
  • @MorganFogarty Yes, Morgan… nice to see you at the Belmont Christmas Parade! 🙂 #
  • Huh. I wasn't aware that any North Carolina universities played football! #
  • @thatDJSpider Must have holiday treat? SAUSAGE BALLS! 🙂 #
  • RT @ERIKAjaneC: RT @dannypudi: That's it. I'm putting Sriracha on everything. #
  • GO NAVY! BEAT ARMY! #
  • Roast beef and Red Leicester: always a winning sandwich combination! 🙂 #
  • GAME OVER! GO NAVY! 🙂 #
  • Van Halen at 4:40am. Jesus. #

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My Top Albums of 2011

As 2011 draws to a close, it’s time to look back at the year in music. Below is my list of Top Ten albums for the year; following that is some commentary about good albums that didn’t quite make it, and bands I’m going to be looking at closely in 2012!

As always, remember that this list is about complete albums and not individual songs. Yes, there may be songs out there from 2011 that I liked better than anything on this list… but, as a whole, the following ten albums are my favorite of the year!

#10: M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

M83 is a band I always wanted to like. Why not? They’re all French and sophisticated, doing their own special brand of electronic shoegaze. But I’ve never met an album of theirs I liked all the way through… until now. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. is a delight from start to finish. And I’m happy for them! The music of M83 (named after spiral galaxy Messier 83) has been featured in dozens of films, TV shows and video games; I’m glad to see them put out an excellent product.

M83

#9: Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place

Julianna Barwick is an American musician who was born in Louisiana and grew up singing in church choirs before moving to (where else?) Brooklyn. It’s kind of hard to pin down her exact sound. To me, she certainly sounds a bit like Elizabeth Frazer of the Cocteau Twins singing over the late 70s\early 80s ambient work of Brian Eno or Harold Budd. But it’s not that simple. There’s certainly some Björk, Enya and maybe even some Danielle Dax thrown in for good measure. In spite of all the comparisons, I think she has a totally unique sound that’s both ethereal and otherwordly. It sounds like something 4AD would have put out in 1984… and I mean that as the highest possible compliment! On the negative side, Elizabeth Frazer\Enya singing over very mellow Eno\Budd isn’t something you can throw on at a party or on a whim. But that’s cool. Different is good sometimes.

Julianna Hardwick

#8: Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes

Swedish musician Lykke Li (real name: Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson) has been an indie favorite ever since her tune “Little Bit” hit the scene in 2007. But her second album, Wounded Rhymes, just hit it out of the damn park. Like Björk, Li has a tendency to kind of go all over the place with her music, a trait that was held in check better by this disc. And I don’t know why, but I just love this woman’s lyrics: cold, dark, and sometimes just plain clever. “Like a shotgun needs an outcome” is my favorite line for all of 2011.

Lykke Li

Continue reading “My Top Albums of 2011”

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-04

  • Let's go, #SteelersNation #
  • When did it become #SteelersNation I always thought it was Steeler Nation? #
  • Dear #Steelers – I'm getting way to old for this shit. #
  • @TVbytheNumbers Seriously… are you guys gonna change the picture in the Walking Dead post or not? #
  • @TVbytheNumbers Well thanks a lot. Nice to see in what regard you hold your readers. #
  • My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Washed Out (11), Georgia Tech (10) & Duran Duran (3) http://t.co/6xmXsQXb #
  • HP printers can be remotely controlled and set on fire, researchers claim http://t.co/eaAIjzCY #
  • Oh come on! Just put @DaleMurphy3 in the HoF already! #
  • Hey everybody! Text BUZZ to 78527… DO IT! DO IT NOW! 🙂 #
  • @bobpetesarah I hereby request, nay DEMAND, that Saint Etienne cover Carl Carlton's version of "Everlasting Love". Make that happen! 🙂 #
  • @Heyred704 RT @JennifersWayJE: Hey look for me in USA todays insert. All about Celiac disease. Many other helpful articles as well! #
  • @Legursky No, I hate those commercials! Especially as you see them 94 times every Sunday! #
  • Geaux Tigers! #
  • HOW 'BOUT THEM DAWGS??? #
  • WTF Climpson? #
  • Would just like to remind Climpson fans that they're 25-50-2 against GT. #

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The Sad Anglican Roundup

The train wreck that is the Anglican Communion keeps chugging along towards oblivion. Want to know why? Just check out this handy Roundup of Sadness.

– Bede Parry was a priest at Conception Abbey, a Benedictine community near St. Joseph, Missouri. He also has a history of sexually abusing young boys dating back to 1981. Parry was kicked out of the Catholic Church. He then moved to Nevada, where he became a music director and organist for All Saints Church, Las Vegas. He approached the Bishop of Nevada about becoming a priest in the Episcopal Church. The Bishop agreed, apparently knowing full well his pedophile past. The Bishop of Nevada at the time? Katharine Jefferts Schori, the current Presiding Bishop of the United States. Although Schori says otherwise, Parry himself has said that Schori knew all about his past before she consecrated him. Is the Presiding Bishop so attached to her policy of inclusion and diversity that she’ll turn a blind eye to pedophilia? Apparently so. Read more about the sad story here.

– Speaking of Catholics… ya know, you’d think that the Episcopal Church would enjoy a rise in membership with the large number of Catholics leaving the Church in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals. But you’d be wrong. According to Freakonomics, if Catholics leave the church and join another denomination, it’s most likely to be a Baptist church. I don’t know if it’s because those Catholics are choosing to go in the opposite direction, or if the Episcopal Church has dropped the ball yet again… but guess which one I’m leaning towards?

Continue reading “The Sad Anglican Roundup”

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-11-27

  • If I hear that Jay Z song one more time… Thanks, #Chrysler #
  • @TechWhistle TO HELL WITH GEORGIA! #
  • Kevin Federline is turning into Turtle from "Entourage"… #
  • I am a IT Consultant and The Customer is Not Always Right! #iPodTouch #contest (RT your job & follow @notalwaysright to enter) #
  • My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Japan (9), Roxy Music (5) & Washed Out (4) http://t.co/6xmXsQXb #
  • Mark Richt will only be dressing twenty players for the Georgia Tech game. The rest of the players will have to get dressed by themselves. #
  • @krystalweaver Try Juice Defender for Droid. It's free, and almost doubles my battery life! 🙂 #
  • Holy crap! Olivia de Havilland is still alive?!?! #
  • Meh. Have fun getting crushed by LSU next week, jerks. #
  • @MazerRoddy Thanks for all the memories and God bless, Roddy! #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-11-20

  • Whew! Go Steelers! Bungles suck! #
  • YES! YES! YES! Thanks, Seattle! Who's #1 in the AFC North now, people? #
  • My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Asobi Seksu (18), Big Star (6) & The Raveonettes (6) http://t.co/6xmXsQXb #
  • @andersoncooper – Where's your outrage over THIS gay bashing? http://t.co/OgLjF3IT #tcot #p2 #lgbt #homocon #
  • Good riddance, fucking hippies! #ows #
  • Sounds like the #ows idiots are screaming "We like ABBA! We like ABBA! We like ABBA!" Which is odd. #
  • What a rip! I watched the Livestream of #ows for 45 minutes last night and didn't see a single hippie getting his head smashed! #
  • hahahahaha!!! "Joy Behar's HLN Show Canceled" Good riddance, you liberal ass! #
  • Every time I go to Ikea, I feel like I'm on the set of a glamorous 60s European film. I look for Catherine Deneuve and Lewis Gilbert! #
  • #GoJackets Beat Puke! #
  • I hate president Obama because I feel he has taken the shit sandwich he was given and made a shit smoothie with it. #
  • @Beadlush Hell, a one-armed blind man could have done a better job. #
  • @ajcgatech How's Hill? Is he at least walking the sidelines? Or is he in the locker room? #
  • WinAMP on Android? Ugh, no thanks! #
  • Let's go NC State! You can beat #Clemson too! #
  • @rgpgreenville You're welcome. #GoJackets #THWG #
  • hehehehehehe!!! #Clemson sucks! #
  • RT: Most Brilliant President Ever thinks his birth state Hawaii is in Asia http://t.co/kFnWrAdw Maybe it's one of the 7 missing states? #
  • Obama Regime: Lying on http://t.co/5tG1T1dY needs to be a crime http://t.co/aUIHwsbv #
  • Opened a pack of fresh chicken breasts that said "READY TO COOK!" on label – so much better than "Some Assembly Required" chicken breasts! #
  • was listening to 38 Special earlier. Seriously. #
  • The #BCS just exploded. #
  • I've never said this before, and will likely never say it again… but "GO BENGALS!" #

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A Neat Firefox Trick

I normally keep anywhere from 30-50 tabs open in Firefox at any given moment. There are two specific downsides to this. For one, restarting Firefox takes forever, because the browser has to load 30-50 web pages at once (although this isn’t really a Firefox-specific problem; any browser would take a while to open 40 pages at once). The second problem is that Firefox often eats RAM like candy. It’s not uncommon for Firefox to use anywhere from 1GB to 1.5GB of RAM on my system.

But the folks at Mozilla added a nifty tweak to Firefox 8. If you go to the General tab of the Options pane, you’ll see a new check box that says “Don’t load tabs until selected”:

Firefox tabsIf you check this box, Firefox will keep track of which tabs you have open, but won’t actually load the page until you select its tab. This tweak was added to speed Firefox’s start-up time (and, as such, works beautifully). But the tweak also greatly reduces the amount of RAM Firefox uses in general. When I enabled this option a few days ago, I had 48 tabs open, and Firefox was using 1.2GB of RAM. After restarting, I selected a few tabs and Firefox was only using 443MB of RAM. I’ve had the same session open for three days now, and have opened and closed several windows (and still have the same “base” of 30+ tabs open) and Task Manager reports that Firefox is “only” using 553MB of RAM.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-11-13

  • My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Depeche Mode (6), The Hot Place (3) & Dum Dum Girls (3) #
  • Goodbye, Smokin' Joe! 🙁 #
  • Every time I see Michele Bachmann's eyes I think, "Look at me, Damien! It's all for you!" #
  • Hell yeah! Less than 24 hours until @asobi_seksu at the @VisuliteTheatre in Charlotte! BE THERE! #
  • @asobi_seksu Hey! going to the show tonight… but no opening band? Just you guys at 9:15? I need to know – go a repairman coming! #
  • What an AWESOME show from @asobi_seksu here in Charlotte! They REALLY put on an incredible show! Now go back to NYC and enjoy the time off! #
  • GO JACKETS! BEAT VIRGINIA TECH! #GoJackets #BeatVT #THWG #
  • Pics of @asobi_seksu at the @VisuliteTheatre in Charlotte, 11/09/2011 http://t.co/zndgNIUU #
  • LET'S GO JACKETS! #BeatVirginiaTech #THWG! #
  • Well that sucked. Thanks a lot, Attaochu! #
  • Happy Nigel Tufnel Day, everybody! #
  • The theme to "One Day at a Time" is now in your head. #

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