Dallas Petersen

In no particular order, here are a few things I will do this year:

1. Cardio, cardio, cardio.
2. No food with high fructose corn syrup.
3. Finish my board game.
4. Finish my maternal grandparents’ personal histories.
5. Go on a three-day hike with my son.
6. Attend GenCon 2008.
7. Read scriptures with my family every night.
8. Have family home evening with my family every week.
9. Have family home evening with my extended family (both sides) every month.
10. Finish my parent’s 50th anniversary project.
11. Complete my basement’s finish work (caulking and painting).
12. Help my kindergarten-age daughter learn how to read.
13. Build up a year’s supply of food.
14. Learn how to use wheat from home storage.
15. Motivate my kids to take piano lessons.
16. Buy a good HD digicam.
17. Read a good book once a month.
18. Early to bed, early to rise.
19. Study kanji via the scriptures or the リアホナ.
20. Write in this blasted blog once a week (so I’m at least as prolific as my wife or my friend Paul).

Much has been written/said of late about the demise of the album. The typical suspects are the aural wonder twins, iTunes and the iPod. Since the early days of rock in the 50’s, singles have a been a part of the record biz. The mass purchasing via iTunes of the best songs from an album does not a death knell sound for the full album. Certainly, singles are popular, but full albums, that are best purchased and listened to as a contiguous whole, will continue to be made and enjoyed. Here are a few of my favorite beginning-to-end albums (not all are conceptual albums, but have few, if any, weak singles):

1. U2’s Joshua Tree
2. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon
3. Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here
4. Neil Young’s Harvest
5. The Decemberist’s The Crane Wife
6. Radiohead’s OK Computer
7. The Beatles’ Revolver
8. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
9. The Beatles’ Abbey Road
10. Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
11. World Party’s Goodbye Jumbo
12. R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People
13. Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend
14. Traveling Wilbury’s Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1
15. Tom Petty’s Highway Companion
16. The Black Crowes’ Shake Your Money Maker
17. The Shins’ Oh, Inverted World
18. Jeff Buckley’s Grace
19. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours
20. Jellyfish’s Bellybutton
21. Los Lobos’ Kiko
22. Peter Gabriel’s So
23. John Mayer’s Continuum
24. Soundtrack from Amadeus
25. R.E.M.’s Document
26. Sinead O’Connor’s The Lion and The Cobra
27. The Smithereens’ Especially for You
28. The Smithereens’ Green Thoughts
29. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
30. Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions

The times they are a-changin’ for TV and video and the web. Check out this recent article–For successfull IPTV, look to Wikinomics principles–for a good overview of the present and future of TV on the web.

Thanks to This American Life, I’m addicted to the New York Public Radio program, Radio Lab. In a word–with emphasis on the first syllable–su-perb. If you want to learn more about yourself and the world around… if you like listening to well-produced, entertaining programming… or, if you just want to make that 30-45 minute commute seem like a meaningful time of the day, do yourself a favor and start listening to this program.

After nearly ten years of working on this thing we call the “information super-highway”, I finally got a chance to go to one of the pre-eminent conference events in the industry–South by Southwest.

I gotta say, too much build up is a bad thing. I call it the “Forest Gump” effect. Or the “Sixth Sense” effect. Or a more contemporary example, “The Prestige” effect. With all three of those movies, there was so much build-up–you know, “This-is-the-best-movie-ever-and-I-bought-a-copy-of-the-DVD-so-I-can-watch-it-over-and-over” kind of thing–that it never lives up to it. I guess after attending some pretty innovative and informative conferences over my career (UIE is great, btw), I was expecting more. There were a few really great sessions, but too many panels-without-any-direction sessions. Perhaps next year’s SXSW will switch up the format a bit. For more on the conference, check out my friend Paul’s blog.

On the plus side, there was some good swag I picked up–a few Google shirts, a Firefox shirt and hat, and a shirt from Lucky Oliver (which, btw, seems to have a pretty good selection of low-cost, high-quality stock images).