So I've got about 6 or 7 songs I'm really happy with in this new set, but I have up to an hour if I want it to play with Emy Tseng on our sunday night show.

So I decided to bring out the big guns and fly my great original guitar player - the one I wrote most of the stuff on lisarein.com with, out here from his farm in Idaho, where he now lives.

BTW - If anyone would like a CD of my songs to pop in your car or whatever before the show, just send me an email. (I'm making some of them this week anyway.)

So Ron and I are meeting in the airport Sunday morning, as I am flying back from the Pixelodeon Conference going on that weekend in LA, and he'll be flying in from Boise, ID.

The we get a whole day to get back in our groove for the show. I don't think it'll be that hard. We've been playing together for like 13 years now. It's incredible. These are all our oldies and goodies mostly...unless we end up writing a new song real quick once we get together, which sometimes happens...

So now you get BOTH the set of my new acoustic stuff AND a whole other set of acoustic versions of all of our old great stuff :-)

Many of you have expressed to me over the years that I basically needed to keep Ron in the picture -- that he added a lot to the style and the songs. So I'm listening to your suggestions, thanks!

I do hope that you will be pleasantly surprised with my new solo acoustic stuff though.
(I know I have been.)

I'll have a zip file of all my music here soon. Man there's a lot of it now, hadn't realized.

ok talk soon!

I'm watching Bill Richardson on Meet the Press right now, and Tim Russert is doing a great job of making it clear that this guy is all over the map and not worth any serious consideration for President in 2008.

OMG. He just said he couldn't address the immigration bill he opposes because he's been on the road campaigning and hasn't actually read it yet. You've got to be kidding me.

I mean - I agree that it sucks - and there's lots of easy reasons to give that explain why, and I haven't read the damn thing, and even I could do that. What is with this guy?

He's done some interesting things in the past that I agree with, that I wish I had enough time to link to right now. He's not a "bad guy." But he ain't it for 2008!

That about covers it. I have it on tape, of course, if you need it. But why would you? :-)

I'm starting to get out more and travel around again, and I'm going to start keeping track of nice places (and I suppose, bad ones, when necessary) -- to maybe help you out when you're traveling around.

Last night's find was Goat Hill Pizza in Potrero Hill in San Francisco.

Great Pizza and nice atmosphere. (And they let me intervew Eva Jettmar in the back without a complaint. Actually, she's pretty fascinating, and I think most of the people eating in the back were pretty entertained.)

Lots of networks, and I found a few open networks, but I couldn't get one to work. But I didn't get around to trying them all. There were over a dozen, and some of them had names like "PUBLIC" and stuff. It's just hard on Potrero HIll with all the hills and stuff to get good reception, so that could have also been a factor.

Hey the Farmer's Market show was great! (post 1 about it - post 2 about it.

Looking forward to the
show on June 10!

And the new song went over very well! It was as gratifying as I had hoped :-)

Sierra and I really kicked ass on the few songs we sang together. I looking forward to working out a whole set of songs with her.

I'm going through the video to pick out a nice clip or two to show you.

Special thanks to gregory for helping me set up my sound!

Tomorrow I'm performing with my sister at the Farmers Market in Kensington from 10-2.

from Bart, take the 7 bus from berkeley bart. tell the driver you're going to "Kensington Stores"

Just drive up to where the stores are on the Arlington

take 580 north Berkeley, Buchanan street exit. Go right.
Buchanan turns into "Marin" keep going until you get to a roundabout from hell and try to pick the left turn with the least hills (Arlington). Then stay on that road till you get to stores where there once was only houses.

303 Arlington, 94707 if you're mapquesting.

I wrote a couple songs this last week just for the occasion for us to sing together.

My sister's what I call "me +" when it comes to singing -- we both lucked out in that we've never had to try hard to sing well. Our voices have just always been there for us.

But she's actually been working hard at having incredible pipes for years. She has this crazy amazing range that she uses when she does comedic opera and such in LA. (That clip is from Mulholland Christmas Carol.)

Anyhoo, I'm really excited that I finally started putting her to good use in my music.

So maybe I'll see ya Sunday. If not, no biggie. I've got a show on June 10 in SF and I'm going to be playing all over the place, so I'll cyou whenever it's more convenient...

It just feels so good to be playing for people now instead of my cat. (He just threw me a look! How do they KNOW?)

And now, when I write a new song, like i just did over the last few days, I get to play it for people.

Tomorrow.

That's just the best :-)

This is when You Tube Becomes really valuable...

i will embed vid in the "more" section

I've been learning a lot about a cool new tool I found called
Yackpack.

So if you want to talk to me, you can go here:

Lisa Rein's Yackpack Channel

I'm using this tool to communicate with my development team at Mefeedia, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to just talk to my readers in real time too.

It works like a walkie talkie. You press to talk and release to listen.

Anyone at this webpage can join in:
http://www.yackpack.com/walkietalkie/?lisarein

See you there!

Hey I know it's a long shot, but if any of you down in LA know a nice cafe I could take over for a half hour some night while I'm hanging in LA June 4-9th, do let me know, so I can bring my guitar. (Although I suppose I could just play someone else's, if something turns up last minute.)

I'm in town for pixelodeon, on mefeedia business. So do ping me if I should be connecting with you, or someone else/another company/organization while I'm in town.

And LA locals: please do tell me where to show up and play!

Thanks!

Yeah I stole this category title from the daily show. I'll embed the vid in the "more" section, if they ever send me my "embed" code...

BarackObama really in the twitterverse?

Does it really even matter?

Update 05-11-07 - so far he hasn't twittered me back! Humph!

Friend me in SL - I'm Haley Bailey - and I'll send you a Mefeedia T-shirt you can wear in Second Life. So I'm learning how to program and build objects and buildings in Second Life, and I can tell that I've found a new obsession for sure. As I mentioned above, my SL name is "Haley Bailey." I extend the usual offer to "friend me." I'm still hanging out for the most part at my friend Ryce Broderick's place. He's David Meade in meatspace -- Teleport Now - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gyeongju/106/166/73 I met a lot of other ethnographers and researchers at CHI 2007 last week. We're all going to share data! Yippie!

I don't understand the whole "wasting time in SL" thing though, because I am definitely learning technical and cultural skills while I'm in there.

There's so much culture and social intrigue in world. And it's not necessarily a substitution for meatspace.

I'm getting more into meatspace too! There's a new vlog on the way!

But my point is that it's really the instances of the virtual world's bleeding over into meatspace that fascinate the hell out of me. Why I decided to start writing up tutorials and tours of SL. (Tour index on the way.)

So I have a twitter account now. I'm "lisarein"

Here's my RSS feed:
RSS
- http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/5822042.rss

I'm just learning about how twitter works and can't even figure out how to add friends yet.

Let me know about any particular software and services that you like!

I'll actually be tracking them over on the Mefeedia Blog soon...

Warning that I may be twittering fast and furiously and have no idea where my random thoughts might take me! Subscribe at own risk :-)

Rafael Lopez makes some interesting observations while testing out the BART beta wifi network.

From Rafael:

Today on the way home I was pleasantly surprised about this adhoc free public wifi that rode along with me from Montgomery to Balboa Park. The Bssid changed between stations. The thing that stuck out was the signal power. I had a solld half signal bar all the way down. Comparing it to wifi rail which is usually a quarter bar at best. I hope to find out how I can get on their beta list...

It stops streaming in the Powell tunnel

Edited April 24. 2007

Ok I tried streaming a video of my five year olds birthday party from my home pc. I ran the test between powell and civic center heading south at 6 pm. It didn't work. It played for about 10 seconds then the video buffered and then it didn't recover.

Maybe the BSSID changing had something to do with this? Who knows. I'd love a steady wifi connection
while riding through underground tunnels. We're still in beta - I know. I asked to be a "beta" tester from their website via their support email address. Still waiting to hear back from them.

from: http://geocities.com/rlymp/

Edited May 05, 2007

Today on the way home I was pleasantly surprised about this adhoc free
public wifi that rode along with me from Montgomery to Balboa Park. The
Bssid changed between stations. The thing that stuck out was the signal
power. I had a solld half signal bar all the way down. Comparing it to
wifi rail which is usually a quarter bar at best. I hope to find out
how I can get on their beta list.

Update! This show has been moved to May 20th!

Hey I just landed another gig next weekend from 10am-2pm on SUNDAY, May 13th at the Kensington Farmer's Market.

Since I've just got oodles of time, I'll probably be going through my whole set. (25+songs)

I'm bringing my sister up from LA to keep things jamming in-between my sets.

We might even perform a few songs together. We definitely will since we get an extra week to prepare!

Anyway come by and say hi, if you're in the neighborhood.

If you can find your way up to the stores along the Arlington, you've found it.

If you take Bart, take the 7 bus from either Berkeley or North Berkeley Bart.

Hey I'm covering the FMARS Sim Mission for the Mefeedia Blog.

Just put up my first post.

I'm quite excited about it!

more soon!

Update 5/7/07 - ok too hard to find a phone that meets everything? or just who cares?

Haven't heard from anyone :-)

Peeps!

My phone from 2003 is literally falling apart now and the time has come to move into the modern age for me.

My cell phone can't take pix or vids and can receive text messages, but can't even send them!

I need to know quickly which phones are best and why, so I can make a good decision.

I don't really want to spend a lot...but I'll spend what I have to to get something decent.

Now I want:
-video capabilities
-video upload capabilities (don't want the vids "trapped" in my phone)
-digi pic (always comes with vid anyway)
-pic upload
-texting...

anything else I need to include?

Thanks in advance for your usual great advice.