Finding new music, without a computer

There are some things Google is not (yet) very good at finding. For example, Google is still not very experienced at finding good music for me.

To find new music, I like simply talking to people and asking them if they would recommend something for me. While travelling in Peru and Ecuador, there is a mónton of music that is completely new to me. Here are some of the recommendations I´ve received from a Peruvian, a group of Argentinians, and two new Chilean friends:

From my hand-written, scanned notes above, here are some of the artists that have been highly recommended to me:

• Eva Ayllon
• Lucha Reyes (video)
• Charly Garcia
• Andrés Calamaro
• Los Cafres
• Fito Paez
• Los Pericos
• La Renga
• Gondwana
• Chancho en Piedra

With the endless sources of music that exist, here is why this method of just asking people works well (it sounds obvious, no?). Asking someone provides two mostly qualitative filters that other computer-based recommendation engines (last.fm, Pandora) can´t yet provide.

1. I ask for recommendations from people who I think will have either similar musical tastes... or from people who might have some insider music knowledge. Last.fm does show people other users with similar musical interests, but what I like about just asking people is that there is an element of randomness thrown in and I might find something completely new.  Also, I can get a sense of how excited someone is about a certain artist. I don´t know of any current efforts by Google, last.fm, or Pandora, to use ´´excitedness´´ or other emotions to refine their recommendations.

2. The more someone knows me, the more likely he or she will be to know what kind of music I will like. Even asking strangers for recommendations, with just a short conversation they can quickly widdle down a long list to something that´s customized for me.

(3.) There is also an ´´anti-filter´´ effect associated with asking for recommendations. People can recommend music that might not be readily available for streaming or downloading on the internet. In Peru, I have received plenty of recommendations of artists that I can not readily find (for streaming) online.


p.s. I also love using hypem.com with its social-filtering abilities to find new music.

Please leave a comment with your own recommendations because I know my lists are incomplete!

abandoning iTunes, finding new music sources

One day at work, our IT department told us all that we could no longer use any third party applications on our computers without explicit approval. This included iTunes. When I heard this, I panicked, I got bitter, I thought about leading a revolt, but in the end I hesitantly uninstalled my sole means of computer-work-environment survival, iTunes. As difficult as it was, uninstalling iTunes opened up a whole new world of musical discovery for me.

I used Pandora when I was lazy, Last.fm too.  I fell in love with The Hype Machine, which lets people listen to the music people are blogging about. My other favorite listening method was to subscribe to a podcast´s RSS feed in Google Reader and then stream the mp3s from there. When there was a specific full-length song I was looking for, somehow YouTube was (strangely) almost always the easiest way to find it.  All these ways of streaming music allowed me to continue listening to music without iTunes. And what I first looked at as a hindrance became a new channel to musical discovery.

Today I wanted to share a source I just came across, which is NPR´s podcast of free live concerts.  In my opinion, this is a gold mine.  Have a look at the list of concerts you can stream or download and you are sure to find an artist you like.  For me, I´m going to be listening to the hour-and-a-half Neko Case concert, and watching the Rodrigo y Gabriela video, and Dan Deacon, and Radiohead, and The Avett Brothers, or Doc Watson.



UPDATE ... January 11, 2010.  Pandora will not work from a Peru IP address, and the last.fm website appears to no longer be free, so I´m back to loving The Hype Machine for my music streaming.

Buying skate shoes in Bismarck, North Dakota

Today we have a guest post from Cat, who I met through her Fort Collins blog, Lost Fort Collins: ´´An unofficial exploration of Fort Collins history´´, who recently posted today´s story on her new Bismarck Blog.  Cat´s blog has inspired me in many ways to explore things like Reedsburg history and see the value of putting the content online.  It is amazing to see how much people from the community can add to a post through their comments.

She says this about today´s ´´Buying skate shoes in Bismarck, North Dakota´´ post:

´´My online friend, Paul, left for Lima, Peru, at about the same time I left for Bismarck, North Dakota. In some twisted way, I see parallels as we both leave behind life we know and abandon the job force in the middle of a recession to find what else there is. In a recent blog post, he wrote about finding a surfboard in Lima, Peru. This is my not-so-parallel universe response.´´

We came to North Dakota, my son and I, with one bag each, a carry on, and whatever we could fit in the pockets of our jackets. Underwear and chapstick, mostly.

I thought it was modern Joad. Flying away from the old life, the house, the job that wasn’t going anywhere, and all those possessions that weigh us down and keep us from what’s real.*

But tell that to a 13-year-old with only second-hand snow boots to wear. As you might imagine, we were soon downtown, scouting Bismarck’s two skate shops for acceptable boy shoes. Maybe a pair with some free stickers in the box…:

Discontent
On the web, Discontent looks the most promising of the local stores. It has an indoor skate park for these cold Bismarck winters. Surely the center of skate culture, if such a thing exists here.

And maybe it is, but it’s also a head shop. Burning incense, dusty skate shoes, Bob Marley silk screens, well-used ramps, and an 18+over back room.

Let’s talk about pot for a minute. I don’t care how legal pot ought to be, little kids have a hard enough time of it and…okay, let’s not. But someday you’ll have a kid or even a kid sister, and you’ll get it. So, I’ll just say this:

Damn, you’d think shop owners would know who pays for those $60 skate shoes. It’s not the kids.

Savvy Sk8 and Sno
Even less promising was Savvy Sk8 and Sno. Its lame web presence is dated and incomplete. From the web site, I was sure I had missed it by maybe 3 months–out of business. I drove to the address anyway, in a hybrid residential/industrial neighborhood next to a public housing complex, and found a splintered sign on top of an aluminum barn.

If they went out of business, it surely wasn’t the rent that did them in.

But surprisingly, the lights were on. Then more surprisingly, inside I found a thriving skate and snowboard enterprise. Nicely lit, full of choices.

“Of course,” I thought. “An incomplete web site can mean dead. But it can also mean too-popular-to-get-to-the-online-thing.” And I think that might be the case for Savvy. It fairly teems with kids.

Could it be that the best businesses don’t need social networking to make it? That in a small town getting your name out there isn’t near as important as getting kids to want to come back?

Maybe it’s in fact a positive statement that Savvy didn’t sink money into rent or online marketing.

I’m guessing, no, I’m hoping, that could be true about many more things in life.

*In truth, we’re only Joad-ing temporarily, in a few weeks we’ll go back to Colorado and get more of our crap to move back up here…but that doesn’t change my image of myself as a 21st century Henry Fonda, not even a little bit.

Buying a Surfboard in Lima, Peru

UPDATE (11/29/2010): After I broke my first board, I had a new board made by a friend of a friend, Daniel Martinez.  He made me an awesome custom board (6'2") and I would highly recommend him to anyone else who wants a new board.  His shop is located in the south side of Lima in/near Barranco.  Here is a video of him making some boards.  The easiest way to contact him is probably through Facebook.

***

During my first two weeks in Lima I tried to ask as many people as I could about where I could get a decent surfboard.

Before I left, I searched on Craigslist - Lima, but found nothing surf-related.  I got the impression that Craigslist is not so popular here.  Later, I posted a 'wanted' listing for a surf board on Craigslist and about a week later, I got a response from Sebastian at nextsurftrip.com.  He had a board, but it wasn´t the size I was looking for.  He recommended I try a Derrem board, (derrem.com), made in Lima.

Piero, from my hostel in Barranco (Hostel Kaminu), who was generous to lend me his board while I searched for my own, recommended I try going to either the Wayo Whilar board shop nearby in Barranco (wayowhilar.com.pe), or to the Klimax surf shop in Miraflores (klimaxsurf.com).  Both shops sell new and used boards for very reasonable prices compared to U.S. prices.

Meanwhile, I came across vendotablasperu.com.  This is the craigslist of Lima surfboards.  The site is clunky but the content is great.  Here I found my surfboard, a 6-year old, plenty-used, 6`5`` board shaped by Peruvian Martín Jerí, for $100.  I was pretty happy about it.

Some locals tell me that my find was 'mas o menos', in terms of a deal.  I have some things to learn.  For example, today when one visitor left the hostel where I am staying in Punta Hermosa, he left his board behind with the hostel owner in exchange for a $30 discount on his hostel bill, rather than paying $150 or so to bring his board back with him on the plane.

I don't know of any websites or boardshops where you can get a deal like that, but if you hang around surfers getting ready to fly, you're sure to get a true bargain board.

If you can recommend other ways to buy a surfboard in Peru, please leave a comment below.

3 fruits

If you happen to be near a store that might have any of these three fruits, I highly recommend you try them some time.

1. Maracuyá (aka passion fruit)
My favorite is simply as fresh juice, or as a maracuyá sour.


2. Lúcuma
I´ve had this one a couple of times, once in a blended drink, and once as a yogurt flavor.  In the blended drink, it tasted like white cake batter mix.  The second time I had it, as yogurt, I got sick shortly afterwards but I think the two things were unrelated.

3. Miracle Fruit
This one I´ve never tried but I want to... it makes the most sour fruits taste intensely sweet.  Eat a lemon after eating miracle fruit and it will taste sweet.  I don´t think I´d be able to try this one if it wasn´t for the wonders of the internet.  Via enjoymiraclefruit.com one can get 10 ´Miracle Fruities´ chews for $14.95

NOAA Historical Fisheries Photo Library

The header image from this blog comes from NOAA´s Historical Fisheries photo library from George Brown Goode´s 1880 study of fisheries in the United States, ¨The Fisheries and Fisheries Industries of the United States.¨

from NOAA´s site:

These wonderful works resulted from a study undertaken in the 1880's by George Brown Goode, Deputy Commissioner of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. The purpose of this study was to capture the state of the American fisheries at that time and to use the knowledge gained as a base line for future studies. Goode admirably succeeded in this, but at the same time he also captured an interesting segment of Nineteenth Century Americana and helped describe a significant part of the marine environment.

Want a new desktop background image?  Have a look at the fish/animal drawings or the History of Methods and Fisheries album.

Getting a yellow fever vaccination in Lima, Peru

´´Anything free is worth saving up for,´´ says Grandpa Sodey in the Wisconsin/Michigan cult-classic film Escanaba in Da Moonlight.  I thought that this was true, but I will now settle for ´´Anything cheap is worth saving up for.´´

After talking to many people and visiting several places around the city, the place I recommend going to obtain a yellow fever vaccination in Lima is the Hospital del Niño at 28 de Julio and Brazil in the Breña section of Lima.  There, you can get the yellow fever vaccination for 65 nuevo soles, or $22.50 USD.  Unless you want it for free...




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To get a free vaccination for travel within the country of Peru, one can go to the Hospital Santa Rosa to obtain the shot and a certificate for domestic travel on Fridays between 8am and 11am.  However, when I went, the vaccine was no longer available so I would have to try again in a week to get the free shot.  I went to the Hospital del Niño, instead.

Also, anyone with plans to travel to in high-risk areas outside of Peru would still need to exchange their domestic-travel certificate from the free clinic for an international one at a place like the Centro de Salud San Isidro.  The certificate costs 30 nuevo soles or about $12 USD.

In the United States, you can expect to pay about $225 to get a yellow fever vaccination if you are paying out of pocket.  At Physicians Plus Travel Clinic in Madison, WI, most visits include a $54 counseling fee, a $146 fee for the vaccination itself, and $24 for a nurse to administer the shot, totalling $224.

In his talk, Money Saving Advice From a Cheapskate, Ryan Wanger says, ¨Being a cheapskate is all about time and money.  People who have a lot of money, they don´t want to invest the time.  Then there´s the reverse; people who are cheapskates, their motto is ´my time is basically worthless.´¨

$24 for a shot in Lima was small beans compared to getting the shot for $225 back home, but this time, the free shot wasn´t worth saving up for.

By the way, I´m posting this less than twelve hours after getting my shot, and I am still alive, so hopefully I can still say ´It was worth it´ 48 hours from now.