via the Associated Press:

Jimmy Dean, a country music legend for his smash hit about a workingman hero, “Big Bad John,” and an entrepreneur known for his sausage brand, died on Sunday. He was 81.

I was a big fan of “Big Bad John.”  Rest in peace Mr. Dean.

Posted via web from Brian Junyor’s Stream

Songs from Spirit by Sky Redhawk

I had the opportunity to peruse the fine shops of downtown Santa Fe on my recent visit to New Mexico.  One experience in particular is worthy of a blog post — my visit to the shop of Sky Redhawk, a Native American musician and owner of Native Sounds Music and Art Gallery.

Mr. Redhawk took up the Native American Flute about 10 years ago and has been making fine music with it ever since.  He demoed one of the entry level flutes and I knew immediately that this was something that I was interested in learning more about.  Having never had any affinity for playing a musical instrument, Sky showed me a couple of basic moves and I was sold.  Sky also explained the difference between the Native American Flute and a traditional western flute…where the music comes from…it pours directly from you, and is both emotional and spiritual.

I’ve been playing around with it for a week now and I am still excited about it.  I am definitely a beginner and am usually off key or out of breath, but I am learning – little by little.

If you are heading to Santa Fe, I highly recommend that you stop by Native Sounds and check it out.  If you aren’t, well why don’t you call up the shop and order a couple of Sky Redhawk’s CDs, you won’t be disappointed.

Normally when I travel I have limited access, but having the right tools makes all the difference.

I am writing this on my post on my iPhone. Could have used the netbook, but it is better to have too many options than none at all.

Good times.

Louis C.K. on Conan O’Brien via kung fu grippe.

It would have been fruitful to have installed a monitoring app on my system to determine what I have given up over the last 5 months.  I suspect now that Wikipedia, Snopes, and Facebook have taken the brunt of the loss. 

The last time I posted my stats (June 18th) I had read 4,672 items from 110 subscriptions, starring 22, sharing 217 and emailing 4 over the previous 30 days.  

In the last 30 days, I have read 6,053 items (29.5% increase)  from 116 subscriptions (5% increase), starring 56 (154% increase), sharing 209 (3.6% decrease), and emailing 34 (675% increase).

I have also noticed that what I am sharing has changed a bit over time.  Initially I was focused on GTD and lifehacks, now I don’t really have a strategy other than sharing what I find interesting.  

Recommendations weren’t in my top 10 last time, now scobleizer.com’s recommendations & chrisbrogan.com’s recommendations are high on the list.  Probably one of the reasons I find FriendFeed & Twitter so interesting. 

I am not sharing items more frequently than I used too, but I am starring & emailing them more often.  I typically star items to reread and/or research and email those that someone else will find interesting.  While I add feeds on a regular basis, I also prune them frequently too and have resulted in only a net gain of  6 feeds during the last 5 months.

There is a tech focus to what I am reading & sharing right now,  it might be time to expand my RSS subscriptions.  However,  most of the non-tech info (politics, sports, news, general interest) I read comes from FriendFeed and Twitter, so maybe I don’t need to broaden my RSS horizons just yet. 

If you are a Google Reader fan, it’s worth taking a look at your trends, if only to get to know yourself a little better.

It might seem more complicated to go with multiple devices and it may prove that way in the long run, but I have been working with cobbled together tools and it was taking me too long to get things done.  Under my new strategy, I have a device for taking photos (digital camera), a mobile computer (Asus Eee-PC), a mobile media player & personal phone (iPhone), and a dedicated work & email device (Blackberry Bold).  Instead of trying to find a one-size-fits-all, I’ve gone with a segmented approach, trying to find the best tools for specific purposes. 

For the last 4 years I have used with a Windows Mobile device that served all of those functions, but none of them particularly well for me.  Even moving to the full qwerty keyboard of the HTC Wizard & then the HTC Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) didn’t alleviate my problems.  Sure it has a full keyboard, but our IT department doesn’t support windows mobile, so I had to use xpress mail to push my email and calendar.  That approach didn’t work as seamlessly or as stabily as I had hoped it would.  It has a 3 megapixel camera, but it is slow and doesn’t take the best pictured.  It has a media player, but can’t sync with iTunes.

It might sound like I am knocking the AT&T Tilt, but I am not really.  It is a fantastic, flexible performer.  From maps to weather, gps to email, media to storage, it worked.  It just didn’t fit my life.  Sometimes you need a hammer, or a screwdriver, instead of a multi-tool.

For mobile email, now I have the Blackberry Bold.  It has the best keyboard I have ever used on a phone.  I can type away on the sucker and send emails a mile a minute.  Plus our IT department fully supports the Blackberry, so my email is pushed immediately, my calendar, contacts, tasks and memos are synced over the air. 

For mobile media, now I have the iPhone.  The iPhone, is well, it’s the iPhone.   I was already carrying around my iPod anyway, so it’s sort of a swap.  Since I am addicted to iTunes, for better or worse, it made sense to me to go with something that could sync up and take full advantage of my music & media libraries.

There is definitely an economic impact from moving from one device to two, but I am hoping the increased enjoyment and productivity makes up for it.  If it doesn’t, well, I’ve got two years on this road, so I might was well make the best of it.

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