Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

Under duress, a lot of traditions can go by the wayside. Example: we couldn’t find cotechino this year, having gotten started on our shopping a little too late, so we will be ringing in the new year with salmon and lentils instead. Oddly appropriate, given the little tidbit that Zalm dug up earlier this month [...]

I’ve been offline for a really long time, in terms of this blog’s history, and thought I’d surface for air to post a brief update.
It’s been a quiet Christmas here at Jarrett House North. My mom came up to spend Christmas with Lisa and me, and we’ve had some nice gift giving and some really [...]

The Hardest Working Man in Show Business has taken his last curtain call. Obituaries: AP, New York Times plus local reactions, Washington Post plus appreciation.
I first became aware of James Brown through “Living in America,” I’m sorry to say, but even that throwaway song became mystery and power when he grunted out “I feel good!” [...]

There are brief stirrings on the Sony Boycott blog, where I’ve posted pointers to settlements made this week by Sony BMG to the tune of about $6.75 million so far. A drop in the bucket, to be sure… and there’s still an FTC investigation pending.
Combine these settlements with the recent news that major labels like [...]

I saw the series of posts last week on Universal Hub about the new MBTA site, but didn’t think too much about them at the time. It’s honestly been a long time since I’ve even ridden the T. But today I found myself needing to find a T station, and my usual standby (go to [...]

I’ve been playing with Vox, the new service from SixApart. So far it seems like a really slick Ajaxy blog site with some good features (Flickr integration is especially nice), one killer feature (per-post privacy settings), and some big glaring omissions, especially the lack of compatibility with Metaweblog API tools like MarsEdit.
However, I think the [...]

Yep. When there’s no room in the brain for anything else, try a meme. As seen on Isis:
1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?

The nog, but only if I make it. True story: we used to do team Christmas parties in my first job, and we were all supposed to bring refreshments. I brought eggnog, and [...]

To those of you who know what’s going on with me and Lisa: all is well with our world. To the rest: you’ll find out soon enough.
But here’s a note from last year’s Christmas mix to tide you over:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of [...]

ThinkChristian.net: Protest or Celebrate?. A nicely done tweak at those who protest the lack of publicly endorsed Nativity scenes and insist “It’s Christmas, dammit” when you wish them Happy Holidays, in the form of a letter from the Big Guy himself:

How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those [...]

Christmas albums by popular artists face a pretty significant challenge: how to make the holiday canon, which ranges from medieval plainchant (“O come, o come, Emmanuel”) to high classical music to Tin Pan Alley tunes and children’s TV show theme music, sound like it belongs to the artist and not let the artist be overwhelmed [...]

Just in time for the holidays, a pair of BoingBoing links to some great gifts for that person who has everything. First, the OnDemand Action Figure Builder, which primarily seems to be about hair and face type generation and clothing choices — the available body type is essentially a GI Joe, limiting one’s ability to [...]

Very cool: the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (New Mozart Edition), an online archive of scores to all the composer’s works. Please note the Personal Use Only warning before you download a set of scores for your next concert performance…
The resource is going to be invaluable for scholarship. Why, I myself have already downloaded the scores to KV. [...]

The Pops Christmas season is upon us. Last night I sang the opening night performance for the Boston Pops Christmas concerts. It’s a fun concert as always, even if the repertoire isn’t very highbrow. As I said to someone last night, “I have probably 10 or 20 CDs of Renaissance and Medieval Christmas music, but [...]

Today, a prize in the cereal bowl that is my daily webcomic reading: a fractal space map of the IPv4 address space. Cool stuff: check out the big blocks in the upper left corner that are owned by Net pioneers, including DISA, IBM, Apple, and MIT. And, interestingly, Halliburton.
This site, for what it’s worth, is [...]

I thought I’d do a rare Sunday post. It’s clear and beautiful here in a so-far-dry late autumn/early winter kind of way. Even the snow flurries at the beginning of the week and the snow squalls on Friday left no lasting traces. Much like my Christmas planning so far: we have a photo and text [...]