Chris plays ddrums
In about two hours we ended up laying down five tunes (bear in mind the goal wasn’t a professionally isolated studio recording).
My SRC Barker
Sunday was a great time, and I look forward to the next Vitamin Funk show whenever that may be. We’re toying with the idea of setting up a show or two in State College around Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know if that comes to fruition.
Among the many things to accomplish before leaving State College, one that a beer taster should seek is to get their name on a plaque in one of the bars downtown. Zeno’s Pub offers this opportunity as a reward for savoring 80 different beers. To take the challenge, all you need is a dollar which gets you the famous Zeno’s passport. I’ve been here for almost seven years now, and decided on July 4th that it was time to start the quest.
The majority of pages in the passport list beers from the United States, Canada, England, Germany, and Belgium to name a few. There’s also a healthy list of beers from Pennsylvania breweries. A number of the beers throughout are common to most Pennsylvania bars (Molson, Guiness, and Yuengling for example), but the list is full of bottled surprises that – at least in this town – can only be purchase at Zeno’s.
Some of the beers on the list are seasonal, and may not make it back to the Zeno’s tap for some time as they are known for their selective and broad tap rotation. This won’t stop you from completing your 80 because the back of the passport has a few blank pages for tasty craft brews like Bell’s Expedition Stout and Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo.
Upon completion of the passport and getting your name on a plaque, you also get a Zeno’s tshirt. If you really want some name recognition, I’ve heard you can get your name on a red plaque by drinking 80 beers in 48 hours.
Since starting my passport, I’ve completed 16 out of 80 beers. Listed in approximate drinking order, they are:
My Zeno's Passport
Any on the list above not specified as bottled was on draft. Stay tuned through the year as I continue down through Zeno’s beer selection. Any beer suggestions you have for my passport are welcome, so long as they are actually available at Zeno’s.
Last week I encountered a limitation with using externals in SVN. It shows up when you are using the svn:externals property to bring a folder into your working copy, and when the folder you are bringing in uses the svn:externals property to bring in another folder whose path is no longer valid. In my case, the problem was caused by the second external referring to a path with an absolute link instead of a relative link – the absolute link was no longer valid.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say you have a project called Pizza which has the svn:externals property set to bring in a folder Pepperoni from revision 4500. The property looks like this:
-r 4500 http://server_name/meals/pizza/toppings/peperroni Pepperoni
And let’s say you want revision 4500, because the head of the trunk is at 4900, and features that were added to Pepperoni between 4500 and 4900 do not apply to the new Pizza project. The unique thing about the Pepperoni project is that it has subfolders for different spices and flavors: Salt, Pepper, and Smoke. The Smoke folder happens to be using the svn:externals property, and it looks like this:
-r 3222 http://server_name_old/meals/pepperoni/spices/smoke Smoke
Again, you want revision 3222, because features that were changed between 3222 and the 4900 (the top revision of the trunk) do not apply to your Pizza project.
If you noticed the difference in paths, you’ll see the external for the Smoke folder is using an old name of the server. Sometime between version 3222 and 4500, the server’s name changed from ’server_name_old’ to ’server_name’. Because of this, when you commit your Pizza project (with the svn:externals property set to bring in Pepperoni), the subfolder of Pepperoni, Smoke, which is being externalled in at a second level, will not see the old server name.
Because the svn:externals property applied to Pepperoni occurred back in time (at revision 3222), you can only correct the invalid absolute path by copying revision 3222 of Pepperoni to a branch, and adjusting the externals property to use the new server name. You wouldn’t want to keep it in the trunk as you’d lose the changes made between 3222 and 4900 (the head).
The URLs I show in the svn:externals above are absolute. In Subversion 1.5, relative externals were introduced, which allow you to external in a folder without naming the server. Here is the correct external, which uses a relative path to the repository root (without the server name):
-r 3222 ^/meals/pizza/toppings/peperroni Smoke
Using relative links with the svn:externals property will prevent broken external properties that happen as a result of dead (invalid) paths.
Hounds of Soul - August '09 Flyer
The nine piece band features a four piece horn section and includes members who have performed in State College and Altoona area bands such as Cliff Turner and the Afterburners, Cootie Brown, and SouthWEST.
If you are into funky music and like wings, come out to Boalsburg to see State College’s funkiest horn section. More information for the event can be found at the Tussey Mountain webpage. The band will also be performing at 8:00pm this Friday night at the Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair.
Playing with Cootie Brown at 4th Fest
On July 4th, Cootie Brown played at Central PA’s 4th Fest, which, come to think of it, was probably the biggest stage I’ve played to date. YouTube has some brief footage of us in front of Beaver Stadium.
A few weeks ago, I played my first wedding reception with Vitamin Funk. Towards the end of our set, a trombone and sax stood in with us, and we started into a blues instrumental. Also at the reception was The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian. During the blues jam, he hopped on stage with us and wailed on the harmonica! I saw him play for the first time last year with David Grisman at the State Theatre, and have been listening to their folk recordings ever since. To say the least, playing music with him was surreal.
Throughout the summer, Dirty Superb has been playing about once a month at Pleasant Gap’s Red Horse Tavern, and we are going to be doing our first gig at Bar Bleu this week in State College. We are also now playing as backing musicians for Gina Riggio, and will be joining her for a set at the Bar Bleu show.
And finally, State College’s funk/soul/Motown band, the Hounds of Soul, will be making their debut this week at Tussey Mountain WingFest. If you enjoy the music of the 60’s and 70’s, and are into the powerful horn lines of Tower of Power and Blood Sweat and Tears come check us out!
Here’s August’s schedule so far:
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November is National Novel Writing Month, and this year I'm a participant. On November 1st, I will begin typing 50,000+ words in an effort to win the NaNoWriMo challenge, and of course, have my own book.
To see my current word count, check out my NaNoWriMo user page. |
