I had never been to the Lincoln Theatre and was surprised at how tiny it was. It reminded me a lot of the old Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. The show was sold out and soon the place was packed with a mix of old Zappa fans, young kids and several people their with their son/daughter, mother/father.

The music was loud, and I should have had some plugs with me, but it wasn’t obnoxiously so. The mix was great, no one was overbearing and Dweezil had an awesome tone throughout the whole show. They played a great mix of Frank’s tunes. Dweezil joked at the end that they could keep doing this awhile as they “had plenty of material to choose from”. The played some old stuff, they played some classics and several times near the end they seriously jammed, Dweezil throwing his hands up in the air to tell them to ‘keep it going’ which the band did with ease. Dweezil has some awesome musicians backing him up. Frank’s music is challenging and everyone on stage gave an amazing performance.

Dweezil really shone. He was one of the happiest looking musicians I’ve ever seen on stage. Frequently he would be pulling off these amazing riffs while casually looking over at one of the other musicians with this huge shit eatting grin on his face. He just seemed to be soaking up the energy of his father’s music from his bandmates and the crowd. The crowd was feeding off it as well and at one point a pair of panties even made it up onstage!

They played for almost 3 hours only taking a few breaks to tune or fix something. After the show it was nice to see Dweezil out on stage, talking to fans and signing autographs. Usually after most shows I go to the band scurries off to the bus never to be seen again.

Dweezil mentioned that he hopes to keep this show on the road, sharing Frank’s music with old fans and especially introducing new fans to the music.

I hope he comes back to Raleigh again. I’ll be there.

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST… ~ “Packard Goose” (Joe’s Garage)

For more info - including a few good blog posts about the Raleigh show - check out the official Zappa Plays Zappa site.

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• ZAPPA!
• Surrender

Andy Allan, Peter Amiri, Mike Brunt, Sean Corfield, Mark Drew, Adam Haskell, Jordan Michaels, Alan Williamson, Matt Woodward and Andy Wu

LOTS of good names on there and some really nice quotes but obviously I’m going to have to step up and volunteer for the committee myself.

“formalised language”… “masterful clustering-replication mechanism”…

Huh?

Not one of them mentioned the dreaded ‘f-word‘…. Can’t anyone say it??! Me of shallow pockets (have you priced kid sneakers lately?) will…

OpenBD is Free!! (it even rhymes - marketing will love that)

OK. Now I feel better.

On a serious note - I am happy to see such prominent names on the committee and I’m really looking forward to seeing where all this goes. Exciting times!

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• The Closed State Of The ColdFusion Community
• Vince Bonfanti On ColdFusion Weekly, OpenBD Mailing List

I am SO there!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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• Zappa Plays Zappa, Raleigh, NC

Watched a few movies this weekend:

The first - I Am Legend. Ugh. I had recently re-read this book and I wish I had left it there and not seen the movie! Why is it Hollywood can’t leave well enough alone? This movie - much like I Robot only shared the title of the novel. Otherwise it was complete garbage. A Hollywood flick that totally missed the point of the book. If you haven’t read it - go visit the library!

Next was The Host. I had been reading Cloverfield stories for the last few weeks and this movie kept popping up. We were in Blockbuster getting a movie for the kids and I grabbed it. It was surprisingly good. I reminded me a lot of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. Filmed in Korea it seemed like it was dubbed over. But overall a good, unique ‘monster’ movie.

The final one I watched was Sunshine. I haven’t seen a good science fiction movie in quite awhile but this one blew me away. It had a really unique storyline, a great cast of unknowns, and awesome cinematography. I wish I had seen this one in the theaters… If you like scifi - check it out!

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Good Times Bad Times
Ramble On
Black Dog
In My Time Of Dying
For Your Life
Trampled Under Foot
Nobody’s Fault But Mine
No Quarter
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Dazed And Confused
Stairway To Heaven
The Song Remains The Same
Misty Mountain Hop
Kashmir
Whole Lotta Love
Rock And Roll

Looks like a blues heavy set! Sweet! Oh I hope this was recorded in some form or fashion…

Page looks AWESOME.

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My first record (yes as in vinyl) was Cheap Trick’s “Live at Budokan”. I can remember bringing it home, unwrapping it and plopping it on my folks ancient TV/HI-FI set. Firing up the volume I promptly blew out one of the speakers listening to “Surrender”.

Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away

28 years later, listening to that song on my MP3 player, I realize the tide has turned and now I’m a little weird. Time to go find Mom and roll around on the couch.

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Last weekend I went to Myrtle Beach to see Megadeth! Dave and crew put on an awesome show. Checkout the Megadeth site for some great concert videos! I’m sure I lost a bit more hearing but it was well worth it

Turns out it was also the last weekend of Bike Fest so I managed to check out some of the zillion bikes before I had to come back home Saturday. Sweeeeet! Unfortunately I only had my camera phone and the few pics I did take sucked but there were some incredible bikes.

This week I’m swamped at work digging through an older MVC Fusebox app. Since I’ve done Mach-II going back to Fusebox has been a challenge. I definitely prefer the event driven Mach-II.

Tuesday at our latest TACFUG meeting I volunteered to do a presentation on using Selenium to test your web applications. Will certainly post presentation files afterwards! I also need to give my Ant presentation on Meetup.com for Charlie Arehart.

And finally I’m helping my wife setup a site - more on that soon!

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Book:
Learning jQuery : Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques

Description:

jQuery is a powerful JavaScript library that can enhance your websites regardless of your background. In this book, creators of the popular jQuery learning resource, www.LearningjQuery.com, share their knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm about jQuery to help you get the most from the library and to make your web applications shine.

5 Minute Review:
The book is a nice size (I don’t like huge books), about 350 pages. I have no idea what the image on the cover represents…

Glancing at the Table of Contents - I’m happy to note there are no basic introductory ‘HTML/Javascript’ chapters (no fluff!) you dive right into a simple jQuery script where you manipulate some CSS.

Initially you start at the basics - jQuery syntax, selectors, events and using effects. Then you move into manipulating the DOM and using AJAX. Then forms (styling and validation) and finally manipulating images. It appears you initially work through basic scripts and as the book progresses - you combine what you have learned in previous chapters to develop more complex applications. I enjoy that form of progression - I can take my time as I go and as I advance - I can go back and review the simpler things if I get confused (which often happens!)

I’m only on Chapter 2 but I’m already beginning to think of some cool places I could use these techniques in the application I’m currently working on (which is a mess of old spaghetti code)!

My only complaint so far - and it’s a minor one - is the screenshots - it would be helpful if these were in color as many of the examples are dealing with changing colors of screen elements and it’s difficult to tell what is going on with the b/w images - but I know if they were color the book would probably be twice the cost so I can live with it

A few notes:

• The publisher Packt - has ‘Open Source Project Royalties’ - when you buy a book about an open source project - they pay a royalty to that project. Neat!
• The authors of this book are going to be coming out with a companion reference book
• There are a few other jQuery books in the works - hop on the mailing list to learn more

I’ll post more as I work through the book. I need to setup an http server on my local box at home so I can work through the examples - maybe it’s time to setup Railo?

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If you like guitar - you must watch! His influence on the modern guitar and multi-track recording is inspiring.

And best of all - he’s 90 and still jams.

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He opened a chat:
> Stop probing my server
He expected bluster, guilt, denial. He was surprised.
> Are you in the Front Street data-center?
> Yes
> Christ I thought I was the last one alive. I’m on the fourth floor. I think there’s a bioweapon attack outside. I don’t want to leave the clean room.

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