Chris J Mears

Mac OS X Terminal Aliases

Partly because I wanted to post more and partly because I transfer computers a lot and I figure a blog is as good place as any to share my thoughts with, well, myself.

Here’s a list of aliases I’ve collected over the times searching the Internet (note: so far, not so many, but that’ll change as I keep finding more).

To be put in ~/.bash_profile:

alias ls=’ls -aFhlG’
alias ll=’ls -l’
alias search=grep
alias ..=’cd ..’
alias …=’cd ../..’
alias bake=’/opt/local/apache2/htdocs/cake/cake/console/cake bake’
alias cake=’cd /opt/local/apache2/htdocs/cake’

If anyone wants more detailed explanation of any or all of these, or if you’d like to know what in the bejesus I’m even talking about, post a comment.

Oh, and I would also happily welcome further suggestions too.

Breaking through the mental block

Motivation is a fascinating thing. Sometimes you have it, other times it’s no where to be found.

I started writing a blog to inspire me, and others, with any random thoughts and ideas that came to mind. Then I realized that I haven’t actually written anything in a very long time. Like all skills, writing takes practice. Practice makes perfect, but to a perfectionist like me, it’s hard to sit down and write when what’s coming out is pure crap.

In fact, the most inspirational piece I’ve heard is from Ira Glass (This American Life), on the subject of sucking. Though the topic is on storytelling, his message is very universal for beginners: you’re going to suck, deal with it and overcome by putting in the effort.

Some other things that I also found helpful are:

• Read Whining, Blue Smoke & the Mechanics of Getting Unstuck
• Make a list of “inspiration” tagged items in delicious or your preferred bookmarking platform. Here’s mine.

Song of the Week - Sebastien Grainger and The Mountains I Hate My Friends

Sebastien Grainger and The Mountains I Hate My Friends from Self Titled (2008)

I don’t actually hate my friends, but I dig this song.

Song of the Week - Animal Collective Summertime Clothes

Animal Collective Summertime Clothes from Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino 2009)

In all honesty, like most of my now favorite albums, “Merriweather Post Pavillion” took me several listens to get into. While we’re on the subject of honesty, I got into Animal Collective pretty late in the game. Starting with “Strawberry Jam” I loved the noise, screaming, and psychedelic electronic instrumentation that was filling my ears! Alas, I find out that was a very odd album for Animal Collective and the newer album gets back to its roots. This isn’t a bad thing, just was a bit disappointing and slowed my appreciation. However, after the 3rd or 4th listen, I started to get hooked. My Girls is easily a favorite. However, this weeks song, Summertime Clothes, just makes me happy to think about all of those summertime clothes we’ll be enjoying soon. Oh, if only it weren’t still March.

Song of the Week - Chad VanGaalen Willow Tree

Chad VanGaalen Willow Tree from the album “Soft Airplane” (2008)

Though riddled with dark lyrical undertones, I absolutely love the vibrato of Chad VanGallen’s voice throughout very vivid depictions of hallucinations throughout “Soft Airplanes.” Willow Tree is a simplistic and beautiful song that I’ve had in my head for quite some time. Just can’t shake the chorus despite feeling embarrassed by the morbid lyrics.

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Setting Themes for Terminal in Mac OS X

After spending way too long using a plain black and white color scheme in Terminal and being unimpressed with the theme options under Terminal > Preferences… > Settings Tab, I decided to do a little bit of searching to remedy the situation.

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13 Most Beautiful … Music by Dean & Britta for Andy Warhol Screen Tests

This evening, I attended the San Francisco Film Society’s  13 Most Beautiful… during which indie-pop icons Dean & Britta performed live songs to rarely seen screen testings by Andy Warhol. During these 4 minute screen tests, frequenters of The Factory are filmed without sound and without speaking. Since these films are in slow motion, the scenes were only about 2 and a quarter minutes.The subjects just remain still, react to an emotion, or just do what they would normally be doing at that particular moment in time.

I took a couple pictures.  Please note that I had my hand slapped by some lady despite the fact that I didn’t have my flash on and my screen was dimmed.  So, these photos were taken under duress like a real journalistic photographer :)

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Canadian Album Releases 2009

Canadian indie album releases for the first half of 2009:

• Jan 20 - AC Newman Get Guilty (Last Gang)
• Jan 20 - Brent Randall & his Pinecones We Were Strangers… In Paddington Green! (Just Friends)
• Jan 27 - Geoff Berner Klezmer Mongrels (Jericho Beach)
• Jan 27 - Final Fantasy Plays To Please (Blocks)
• Jan 27 - Hannah Georgas The Beat Stuff (Upper Management)
• Jan 27 - In-Flight Safety We Are An Empire, My Dear (Night Danger)
• Jan 27 - Andrew Vincent Rotten Pear (Kelp)

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Best of Canadian Independent Music vol. 2

Album Art by Brynn Harris

Welcome to the 2nd volume of my Best of Canadian Independent music mix. Compiled each year, this mix contains my favorite tracks from the top Canadian independent artists.

You can download the mix in a variety of formats. However, I recommend the iTunes Optimized version.

Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments!

Best of Canada 2008: O! Canada!

iTunes Optimized (79MB, Chapters included, M4A format)

MP3 Zipped (97MB)

Track list after the jump.

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iTunes Rating System for Album People

After I started to get very weird songs pop up in my “4-stars and up” Party Shuffle playlist, I decided to embark on a more stream-lined iTunes song rating system.

Here is my proposal:

No stars

This song is unrated and needs to be put in a smart playlist to be rated, even if they’re all 3 star ratings. This is a fire sale people. Everything. Must. Go! (out of that unrated smart playlist!)

1 star

Denotes a supreme dislike for the song that immediate deletion would not be totally uncalled for.

2 stars

This song is a’ight. Not the most inspirational piece of music, but not worth deleting either, if it flows with the rest of the album.

3 stars

This is a good song. Not the best, but you would be indifferent about it showing up once in a while during a shuffle. And hey, you wouldn’t be totally against bumping it up to 4 stars if it revealed a glimmer of potential to get stuck in your head.

4 stars

This song is great! Not only wouldn’t you mind hearing it in a shuffle of all songs in your library, but you’d be happy when it came on! Not only that, it warrants a place in your “Best of Artist” and “Best of Album” smart playlists.

5 stars

OMG! O-M-G! You love what’s happening to your ears right now! It’s, like, amazing and you can’t get enough. In fact, this is a song you want to share with everyone when you get the chance!

Add any additional thoughts or suggestions in the comments.