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Boston

Lately, in an effort to listen to more of the music I own, I have been just setting my iPod on “Shuffle Songs” and letting it play. It has been a great experience, largely because the iPod seems to somehow always intuitively know what music I love but have not heard in a while.

For instance, I forgot how much I love Boston’s self titled first album. In my opinion, it is truly one of the greatest sounding albums of all time. Perfect albums are very rare and this is one of the finest examples ever made. Every single song on this album is a hit. Expertly produced and mastered, it sounds as good if not better than most albums produced today. When you add to that the pure arena rock-pop goodness and the brilliant sound science of Tom Scholz, you have magic – pure and simple. 

This is just one of the many albums I have “re-discovered” while listening to my iPod on shuffle. If you have never really taken the time to let “your life be random” you should, I can’t begin to tell you how much fun you might have.

A funny thing happened on the way to the blog…

Sorry for the lack of posts as of late. There are many reasons for this that I could list here but they would all sound like a lot of excuses. They would not hold much water anyway. The fact is that I have been posting a fair amount other places. Just not here.
Many who know me are aware of the fact the I have a very broad set of interests. When I started this blog, it was supposed to be just a place for me to post any old thing I wanted. Anything that had my attention at the time. Apple news, productivity stuff, film and media, science, religion – anything. I had a handful of readers. Most of them were friends, or family, or internet acquaintances. They stopped by to see what was on my mind that day or week. They stopped by after Apple news broke to see my take on it. They stopped by to see what I had to say about an article on particle accelerators that I read. They stopped by to see what was up with me and Princess Bethany. It was a lot of fun. It was mine.
It just so happened that, I caught the GTD bug right around the time that über-meme was beginning to catch fire. Therefore, I just happened to be posting a lot about that subject because that is what was up with me. I had this new and very busy life and personal productivity, lifehacks, Moleskine, Backpack, GTD was helping me get through it.
Then, to my amazement, my little musings on these subjects started getting linked by others. Not just any others mind you, but some of the gurus of the GTD field. My traffic from this exposure grew exponentially. More and more people were coming to the site, looking for more and more of that type of information. Therefore, I felt the obligation to deliver, since that is what so many of my visitors were looking for. My little spot on the net became “Patrick Rhone’s Personal Productivity Blog”. I soon felt like I could not post about other things that captured my attention because that is not what people were visiting for. People wanted GTD. They wanted lifehacks. They wanted info on web apps. It was an obligation. It was a task. It stopped being fun. It stopped being mine. It belonged to the readers.
This being said, I am posting a whole bunch some other places. You may even find some of those posts of interest. Here is where you can often see me:

  • The Random Post – This is my current favorite baby. It really is as close to what I originally intended for this blog. Just like the name implies, I post anything that captures my interest or that I run across in my internet travels. I post short little reviews about stuff I read, see or buy. My del.icio.us links and Flickr photos get aggregated there as well. I am having a lot of fun with it.
  • Jaiku – This is fairly new for me but I am having fun with the whole idea of “microblogging”. If you want to see what I am doing and where I am going on a regular basis, this is a low impact way to see.

  • Team Trixie – This is the blog I have started to keep family and friends updated as to the progress of my (yet to be born) daughter. For those not aware, Princess Bethany and I are having a baby.

  • Geek Gather – This is a collection of friends of mine that get together on a regular basis at a local venue to talk tech and such.

  • In addition, I have several other projects in the cooker but not ready to share those yet.

I am not quite sure where to go next with my feelings stated above on this site, or what to do to change them. I have some ideas but they are not well fleshed out, and may not come while patrickrhone.com is in it’s current configuration. That does not mean that you wont see any more posts here. You will. Just expect them with the frequency that they have been for the past few months (i.e. occasionally).
Thanks to all of you who have followed this far. I hope not to let you down.

Art vs. Porn

Me: Back in 94, even the porn was done in ASCII art. They even made the pictures by using the first letter of the name of the body part they were drawing so there was no confusion. You know, like BBBBBBBBBNNN
Michael: What letter did they use for, you know, down there on a girl.
Me: Why, “P”, of course.
Michael: Why not “V”?
Me: Because it was porn. If they used “V” they would have to call it art!