States with populations smaller than the county in which I live

States with populations smaller than the county in which I live.

[ Link ]

More free mp3s from Amazon.com

Even more free music from Amazon.com record label sampler albums:
Jagjaguwar 2008/2009 Sampler (8 downloads)
Gigantic Music Sampler (8 downloads)
She Loves Everybody (1 download)
Slumberland Records Spring 2009 Sampler (12 downloads)

Fur

My sister Anna has written a paper about the conflict in Darfur for one of her classes at university. It's a good read and makes a couple of excellent points -- like how people are using the Internet in several different ways to try to help the Darfuris, and how this sort of broad support from otherwise non-grouped individuals is unprecedented with respect to these kinds of ongoing atrocities.

[ Link ]

Currently listening to...

...

[ mp3 ]

can't activate rails (= 2.2.2, runtime)

Is your computer being uncooperative when you try to run rake or some other ruby or rails software?

$rake
rake aborted!
can't activate rails (= 2.2.2, runtime), already activated rails-2.3.2

From my experience, this probably means that you have installed other versions of rails or some other conflicting gems in your local gem repository (~/.gem).

How did this happen? Well, you probably installed those gems without using the sudo command.

When you install ruby gems as a user without root or admin privileges, ruby will warn you that you are not installing those gems for the entire system.

WARNING: Installing to ~/.gem since /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 and
/usr/bin aren't both writable.
WARNING: You don't have /Users/nels.nelson/.gem/ruby/1.8/bin in your PATH,
gem executables will not run.

Don't worry -- you can recover from this misstep. Those locally installed gems will probably interfere with gems that have been installed system-wide. No problem.

Remove them!

$rm -rf ~/.gem/ruby/*/cache/*
$rm -rf ~/.gem/ruby/*/doc/*
$rm -rf ~/.gem/ruby/*/gems/*
$rm -rf ~/.gem/ruby/*/specifications/*

BUT WAIT!!

Don't just delete stuff because you are told to. Examine those directories, and make sure that you have already installed those gems for the entire system. If not you will have to reinstall them for the entire system if you still need to, and if you have admin privileges (you can use the sudo command).

$sudo gem install <your gem>

Now that you have removed those gems from your user-local gem repository, you should be able to actually reinstall them. This means that you should make a list of what you had previously installed.

Lovin's For Fools

Justin Vernon, or Bon Iver, often plays a very pretty cover of "Lovin's For Fools" by Sarah Siskind.

Here he gets together with Bill Frisell and Sarah Siskind herself to sing it. Enjoy.

[ via Ghost Electricity ]

12 free songs from Amazon.com (The Free Mixtape)

The sampler for Sub Pop
records on Amazon.com

Several record labels are using Amazon.com to give their sampler albums away. That's right, free mp3s. No DRM. No pirating. No guilt. And the best part? You can pick and choose which individual songs to download from the sampler album. So, unless you already have that Vaselines song, why not download it? Just click. It doesn't get freer and easier than that.

My playlist:

	Song	Artist	Record Label
1.	Hurt Feelings	Flight Of The Conchords	Sub Pop
2.	Son of a Gun	Vaselines	Sub Pop
3.	Furr	Blitzen Trapper	Sub Pop
4.	Mykonos	Fleet Foxes	Sub Pop
5.	Belated Promise Ring	Iron & Wine	Sub Pop
6.	People Got A Lotta Nerve	Neko Case	Anti
7.	Ghosts Under Rocks	Ra Ra Riot	Barsuk
8.	My Only Offer	Mates Of State	Barsuk
9.	For What Reason	Death Cab For Cutie	Barsuk
10.	Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh	Say Hi	Barsuk
11.	When Planets Collide	Viva Voce	Barsuk
12.	Pushover	The Long Winters	Barsuk

[ playlist.m3u ]

It's like a label promoter person standing outside a music show and handing out CDs to fans, except in cyberspace.

If you've never downloaded music from Amazon.com before, you're in for a treat. Amazon has a music downloading software application (for any operating system), which automatically downloads purchased music for you, and puts in your music folder or loads it into iTunes.

[ Link ]

Currently listening to...

Related: Portishead Redux

...This cool live version of Portishead's "Sour Times".

Also, check out this video of a live performance by Portishead of their song "Only You". I don't think I can express how good this is. I must have listened to this song a thousand times after it came out when I was 19. The song is complex, yet simple. It is understated, and yet Beth's lyrics get stuck in my throat just thinking them in my head because they're just that dramatic. This tune makes me want to hug people I don't know and cry because jazz is so beautiful and darkness is so soothing.

[ mp3 ]