Off the Rails by Rudy Sarzo Now Available At Amazon.com

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I received an email yesterday from someone letting me know that Rudy Sarzo’s long awaited book, Off The Rails is now available at Amazon.com. The book chronicles his time with Ozzy Osbournes Blizzard of Ozz band, featuring the late great Randy Rhoads.

From what I’ve heard, this book is a one of a kind. I actually headed over to Borders yesterday to pick it up, only to find it listed in their computers as out of print. I guess I will have to forego my need for ‘immediate satisfaction’ and wait for Amazon to deliver it.

Rhoads fans have been waiting a long time for this release. I’ll let you know what I think once I get it.

WordPress 2.0.5 Released

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The folks on the WordPress team have released version 2.0.5 of the WordPress Blogging Application. This release includes around 50 bug fixes one of which was a missing index on the posts table. I just upgraded and the site performs much better now. I had always thought that the site ran a tad bit slower after the 2.0 upgrade, but for some reason I just figured 2.0 was doing so much more than the 1.x versions. Didn’t even think of looking at table indexes.

Mark Jaquith has also put together his list of change files and corresponding archives containing only the changes from 2.0.4 to 2.0.5, along with a patch file to upgrade your stuff directly. I opted to download from the WordPress site.

In any event, according to the release announcement, there are some security fixes in this release as well. As I do with every release of WordPress that contains security release, I am reminding you not to be lazy and get your site upgraded as soon as you can. The performance improvements alone are worth it.

Now … off to see if they fixed that “posting from Flickr mangling CSS thing” …

SVK Tutorials now under Creative Commons License

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After quite a few requests by people to use the SVK Tutorials for various things, I’ve decided to license them under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. This license includes commercial use of the works.

After all the work I did seeking permission to play independent music on the podcast, and finding it so much work given an already busy schedule, I realized that I’m actually causing the same level of frustration for people when it comes to the tutorials. Obviously people have found them useful enough to ask to use the content — and I never say no — so why make it such a difficult process?

I’m really glad that these have been useful to people and it makes perfect sense to me to release them on this license.

So have fun with them and stop asking me for permission to use them. 😉

Eddie Graphics Arts Project

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Photo by rbieber

Brother Ed’s Iron Maiden picture from sophmore graphic arts class (circa 1986)

While I’m on a Maiden kick this morning, why not post this cool graphic arts project my brother Ed did sophmore year in high school. This was all hand drawn. No tracing or anything. He was pretty good for such a young kid.

It seems like yesterday. Its hard to believe its been 20 years.

Sadly, all I have left is this picture. The actual paper disappeared over the years.

I Had Forgotten How Much I Liked Iron Maiden

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I was a huge Iron Maiden fan in the 80’s. I had quite a few of their albums and was I guess was one of those people who got extremely energized when listening to any of their albums. There was just something about the way the music was put together that I really liked.

Yesterday we went on our usual weekend mall trip and while browsing at FYE saw the album A Matter of Life and Death, the bands latest release. I’m not sure why I noticed it, except that someone Jonna works with had gone to a show in Chicago and she was telling me that he was rather disappointed in that they played more new stuff than old, and he didn’t recognize any of the music.

I couldn’t imagine being disappointed at a Maiden concert. They were actually the first concert I had ever gone to, at the now defunct Poplar Creek in Chicago, on the Powerslave tour.

This, coupled with our visit to the King Tut exhibit inspiring me to pop Powerslave on in the car last week has had me jonesing a bit for some new Iron Maiden.

So, this morning I logged into iTunes and grabbed the new album. I have to say, I love it.

The band sounds better than ever. I had forgotten how much Iron Maiden had meant to me back in high school. I remember spending hours learning songs like Number of the Beast, Phantom of the Opera, Wasted Years, and Hallowed Be Thy Name, still one of my all time favorite Maiden songs.

This morning has been pretty satisfying, music wise. I’ve grabbed all of my old Maiden CD’s and ripped them into iTunes. Those I’ve lost, that I really had the urge to hear again, I’ve repurchased (with a subsequent backup – just in case).

For those who were big Maiden fans back in the day, check out this album. If nothing else, it will inspire you to pull out the old stuff and give it a listen.

Movies: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

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Kelsi, Jonna and I went to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning today. Kelsi had never seen the original, so this was a brand new experience for her. Her choices were to either see this with Jonna and I, or to attend a fine viewing of Employee of the Month (the Dane Cook movie) with the boys. She picked this one, and paid dearly.

Despite the pretty bad ratings the movie is getting on Rotten Tomatoes, I actually enjoyed it. I’m sure Kelsi would have too, if she could have kept her head out from under my jacket, which I generously loaned to her during one of the first “hard to watch” scenes in the movie.

This time around, you see the origin of the Hewitt family, along with the first group of kids they wound up killing. R. Lee Ermey reprises his role as “Sherriff Hoyt” and is, once again, excellent. That “Full Metal Jacket” feel to his character fits perfectly into this story. Kudos to the casting folks for getting him to play this part.

I enjoyed this movie much more than the Exorcist prequel that came out a while back. There was obviously some thought that went into this one and it winds up complementing 2003 remake very well. The thing I enjoyed the most is that the filmmakers successfully answered the biggest questions I had about the original movie ‘lo those many years ago:

  • Is Sheriff Hoyt really a sheriff?
  • How did he lose his front teeth?
  • What was Leatherface’s career before becoming the most feared serial killer in movie history?
  • How did Uncle Monty lose his legs?
  • What do these guys DO with the bodies of their victims (aside from wear their faces)?

All of these questions and more are answered in what amounts to 84 minutes of absolute gore. If you get queasy at graphic violence, you might want to sit this one out. I found this one to be actually less gory than the 2003 remake of the original, but it’s still pretty hard core and there were a few areas of the movie which made me uncomfortable. When it comes down to it, as I get older I find it harder and harder to watch slasher films. None the less, it did what it set out to do and I thought it was a good way to spend an hour and a half or so on my day off.

Lean Principles from the Source

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I’ve started reading The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker. I’ve figured that as my curiosity peaks on Lean Development and Lean Principles in general, I might as well go to the source.

Chapter One opens with a quote from Fujio Cho, the president of Toyota Motor Corporation from 2002. I read the quote and thought I’d post it up here.

We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn’t understand and therefore, we ask them why don’t you just go ahead and take action; try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn’t like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise up to the higher level of practice and knowledge.

Toyota is thought of as one of the most process oriented companies around, and yet they still acknowledge that you do not know everything up front and build that into the process. A book that starts out this way has got to be one interesting read!

Dad Takes Kelsi Driving

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Photo by rbieber

We have two kids with drivers permits right now and yesterday was the first time I actually took Kelsi out.

Overall, she did really well. I don’t remember being as nervous when I started driving as she was, though I’m sure I was. Thankfully, she felt comfortable driving with me, as it seems I didn’t freak out too much.

It’s so weird to hit this milestone. There’s nothing that makes you feel old like watching your baby grow up. Where did all the time go?