Author: Jamon Abercrombie

Another one bites the dust – or joins the rest of the married population

Jamon AbercrombieJune 27, 2007Leave a Comment

One of my good buddies and former drummer, Clifton, is taking the plunge into marriage.

They didn’t send out traditional invitations, but instead we got a CD in the mail with documents and this slideshow video.

One of my first experiences with Clifton was spending a week on a mission trip with him, his brother Clayton and my former electric guitar player Scott McNew. This wasn’t your typical mission trip. We were in Playa del Carmen (Cancun-ish), Mexico. We stayed in a hotel on the beach, bused into inner-city Cancun to work, then bused back in the late afternoon … then spent time at the beach and in the ocean – we were suffering!

Anyway, we all four stayed in the same room in our cushy beachfront hotel. One of the most memorable times from the trip were at night when we would watch Sony Entertainment Television, which aired sitcoms like Seinfeld, The Drew Carey Show and Third Rock from the Sun … all overdubbed in Spanish. It was a blast!

Clifton, Scott, Rob and I (occasionally Clayton ran sound) spent the next 4 years traveling around leading worship and playing concerts and festivals all over the place until Jen and I moved to Kansas City. We’ll still get together for some events here and there, but now that the crew is getting picked-off one by one, all that free time is getting ready to go away.

Rob is next. He’s getting hitched in December. Clayton, Scott say when.

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MyDesk Contest @ TheWonderfulNoise

Jamon AbercrombieJune 01, 2007Leave a Comment

My submission in the “Submit Your Desk” contest hosted at TheWonderfulNoise.com.

First off, camera phones don’t seem to take very good pictures in unfinished basements. That’s right, my office/desk is in an unfinished basement. Now, my desk itself doesn’t have much to it – a couple of computers, some monitors, a printer, some half-full St. Louis Cardinals cups, a few notepads, etc. BUT, how many people out there actually have their office in an all-concrete, unfinished basement with the water heater and furnace only 10 feet away?

Of course, I’m not a total Milton. I am in my own home. I have a TV, PS2 and a couch down here that I can use if I need a little break. 🙂

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Internet radio – your way

Jamon AbercrombieMay 31, 2007Leave a Comment

Pandora Internet Radio

If you haven’t caught on to this yet, you need to. I heard about Pandora maybe back in January-ish from a developer friend of mine while I was in Kansas City. It’s great. Feel free to check out my Pandora stations.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Setup a free account
  2. Create a “station” – simply choose either an artist or a song
  3. Pandora will search the database for this artist or song, and start playing
  4. All songs/artists in the Pandora database have musical stylings attached to them. As a song starts playing you can choose to either give it a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Thumbs down will eliminate that song from playing again on that station.
  5. As you vote up and down, Pandora will begin to learn your musical preferences in each of your stations (you can create multiple stations)

That’s pretty much it. You then just sit back and enjoy the music. You’ll hear songs and artists you’ve never heard of before, and you’ll hear songs and artists that you really want to … but, you have to do your part in voting on the songs Pandora serves up.

I’ve got five different stations right now, only four that I really spend time in:

  • Worship Radio
  • David Crowder Radio
  • Swing-Rock Radio
  • Buddy Guy Radio

I started a station by seeding it with artists like Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall, Hillsong, David Crowder, Rueben Morgan and Passion. It’s now learned (over a bit of time and voting), and now it’s serving up a ton of other artists in the same line of music (Vicky Beeching, Darlene Zschech, Geoff Moore, Decemberradio, Todd Agnew, Barlow Girl, Delirious, Telecast and even lesser-known artists like Josh Bates, Brandon Heath, Jesse Daniels and Sam Perry (2pts to whoever knows who Sam Perry is … awesome!). It’s even served up some Sister Hazel, Hootie and Better than Ezra.

I started my swing rock station by seeding Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I’m now getting them plus O.C. Supertones, Five Iron Frenzy, MXPX, Relient K and more.

I started my Buddy Guy station with … well, Buddy Guy. I added B.B. King and Big Jack Johnson. I’ve got some great Blues and Jazz coming out of that station!

It’s great! Of course, I’m on the internet all day while I’m building web sites, so it’s easy for me to just hit it and go. I’m absolutely addicted to it. It’s great!

Try it out. Play around with it. You’ll get hooked.

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