Here are my current favorite albums:

Joy Zipper - The Heartlight Set

I’m sure I am not the first to make the comparison between the duo of Vinny and Tabitha from Joy Zipper with the brains behind Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. You can’t help but notice the influence. Yet, this is original music that is much more popier than Sonic Youth. It also reminds me of Echobelly and Lush. This album includes the song Go Tell the World that’s featured in the new Nike Soccer commercial which begins with a typical American sports DJ putting down soccer and explaining why no body cares about it in the US. The commercial then goes onto show many different places in America where soccer is being played and ends with the US National Team scoring against England in front of a packed crowd. Very cool. You can’t help but sing out loud to “Go tell the World! We’ve been here for too long.” The rest of the album is not as rowdy but the musical range this band has is amazing. I hear hints of My Bloody Valentine, The Breeders and The Velvet Underground. Also, this album is an import and you can’t get it through iTunes in the US. I got it from CDZone in the UK.

Ivy - Realistic

Originally released in 1994, Unfiltered Records re-released it in 2003. I had heard some of their newer stuff and really liked it. On iTunes, they had this available and I’m always interested in how a band develops over the years so I thought I’d start with this one. This is pop music to the core. Very shiny. Very happy. It’s not that I’m in a tremendously happy mood, just that this is the type of music I’m listening to these days.

Sloan - A Sides Win: Singles 1992-2005

This Canadian band has been around for a long time. Hence, the singles album. They will at first remind you of the Beatles, except that the more you listen to them, the more they don’t sound like the Beatles (if you know what I mean). This is a power pop band with, at times, some heavy guitar work. If you don’t know what that means then listen to Cheap Trick first and you’ll notice (1) how much better than Cheap Trick they are, and, more importantly, (2) where the catchy hooks and melodies come from. I love to listen to this after work, it puts me in a good mood.

A busy project at work has taken me to San Francisco three times in the last two months. Each time has been for a week. We’ve been working with some folks in Macromedia Consulting to build the next version of one of our applications in Flex.

A couple of things about this process have been very new and rewarding. The Macromedia folks are user experience experts. Its been good to see the process of learning how our clients use our application, understanding how it might be extended to incorporate it more fully into their workflow, and to see how design is instrumental to usability. I am amazed at how fun the process has been.

We’ve had usability tests and designed prototypes, proof - of - concepts, and put out more documentation than I’ve ever seen in any project. And we aren’t even to the development phase yet!

And finally, programming has become fun again. Doing things in ActionScript is so easy, I’m enjoying the Java (at long last) that makes up the server-side middle tier, and designing GUIs in mxml is just plain fun.

As far as the trips are concerned, I’ve put up two sets of pictures in the photos section: Tiburon, September 25 and San Francisco 2005. Enjoy.