So, I’m late getting my year-end lists out. But it’s the end of a decade, so cut me some slack.

Before I get to 2009, here’s a recap and revised history of the best albums of the decade.

2000

Doves – Lost Souls – Album
New Model Army – Eight – Album
PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea – Album
Shelby Lynne – I Am Shelby Lynne – Album
South – From Here On In – Album
U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind – Album

2001

Ash – Free All Angels – Album
Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour Of Bewilderbeast – Album
Joe Strummer – Global A Go-Go – Album
Magoo – Realist Week – Album
Ryan Adams – Gold – Album
Spiritualized – Let It Come Down – Album
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Album

2002

The Anniversary – Your Majesty – Album
David Bowie – Heathen – Album
Doves – The Last Broadcast – Album
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots – Album

2003

The Alarm – In The Poppyfields # 1 – #5 – Album
The Decemberists – Her Majesty The Decemberists – Album
Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People – Album
Joe Strummer – Streetcore – Album
Over The Rhine – Ohio – Album
Regina Spektor – Soviet Kitsch – Album
The Stratford 4 – Love & Distortion – Album
T.S.O.L. – Divided We Stand – Album

2004

Bad Religion – The Empire Strikes First – Album
Dungen – Ta Det Lugnt – Album
The Explosion – Black Tape – Album
Green Day – American Idiot – Album
Leatherface – Dog Disco – Album
Mission Of Burma – ONoffON – Album
Tilly and the Wall – Wild Like Children – Album

2005

Against Me! – Searching For A Former Clarity – Album
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene – Album
Gorillaz – Demon Days – Album
The Kills – No Wow – Album
Reigning Sound – Live At Goner Records – Album

2006

Cat Power – The Greatest – Album
Defiance, Ohio – The Great Depression – Album
The Hold Steady – Boys And Girls In America – Album
Lilys – Everything Wrong Is Imaginary – Album
The Riverboat Gamblers – To The Confusion Of Our Enemies – Album
This is My Fist – A History of Rats – Album
The World / Inferno Friendship Society – Red-Eyed Soul – Album

2007

Against Me! – New Wave – Album
Bishop Allen – The Broken String – Album
David Vandervelde – The Moonstation House Band – Album
Fake Problems – How Far Our Bodies Go – Album
The Gaslight Anthem – Sink Or Swim – Album
The Innocence Mission – We Walked In Song – Album
The National – Boxer – Album
The World / Inferno Friendship Society – Addicted to Bad Ideas – Album

2008

Cloud Cult – Feel Good Ghosts – Album
The Dutchess and the Duke – She’s The Dutchess, He’s The Duke – Album
Fucked Up – The Chemistry Of Common Life – Album
The Gaslight Anthem – The ‘59 Sound – Album
HiFi Handgrenades – Carry On – Album
Poi Dog Pondering – 7 – Album
Street Dogs – State of Grace – Album

Strange Creatures of the Office, Part One

The Feeble Shark
There are dinosaurs walking the halls. You probly know who they are. You’ve spotted them by their strange target-shaped marking on their back. A bit harder to spot are the Feeble Sharks. Predators that were once the top in their league, and still may be, but they have hit their evolutionary peak. They can do nothing new, they are sharks. They still are fearsome in what they do, but what they do is becoming less and less relevant. Their inability to evolve means they become more and more feeble over time. Beware, they think they are fierce and tend to bite a lot.

Tiny Dinosaurs
The Tiny Dinosaur could be thought of as a freak of nature, but there are far too many of them wandering the halls to be a fluke. These Jr account execs and designers who are being brought up disregarding digital thought are young, foolish and past their prime before they even get moving. Sadly, they will end up in the marketing department of one of your clients, and you will have to deal with their lack of vision again.

The Evolving Predator
People who understand the cycle of learning. People who accept that the wise old man concept is dead. The once lifelong cycle of craft and understanding has been reduced to a cycle that occurs more than once in a generation. Those that know they are the top of their game, and allow for a new path of learning to spawn from that are our key players. One who will accept they are a novice, and add new knowledge to their own, and let their abilities expand. Note that age is not a factor in this species, and they tend to be more uncommon than they should be.

My grandpa (I called him Paga) taught me three essential rules to life. He never stated these as life rules, but they work well.

Rule #1. If you want to catch a fish, keep your line in the water
Fishing is boring, especially for a kid who’s not catching any fish. Paga was a master fisherman, not flash or with the best gear, but the guy that brought home buckets of fish. On one particularly boring day, while I watched him catch fish after fish, I asked him his secret. He just said “Keep your line in the water.”

Be patient, keep at it, focus on the one thing you want to do.

Rule #2. Work til the job is done
Once when I was about 12 or so, my brother and I went with Paga to one of the apartment buildings he owned to clean up the yard. Rakes in hand on a hot summer day, my brother asked “what time will we be done?” Paga’s response : “When we’re finished.”

Everyone talks about working hard, I’m more a fan of get things done.

Rule #3. Play each hand like it’s a winner
Ah euchre, the game of kings and fools. Despite the hand, or the score, Paga always seemed confident in his hand. And if it turned out to be a bad hand, there was another right after it that would be better. He played them all like winners, and occasionally put the “Whammy” on the other team’s cards to mess with them.

It’s the hand you have to play, play it like you’re going to win.

Thanks for the advice, Paga!

Emanuel Moreno
1920 – 2009

So, Bambuser never really hit as big in the US as it did overseas. Mainly, because we went from a StarTac to an iPhone almost immediately. There was no obvious progression in the availability of cool mobile tech.

I’ve set up my account (http://bambuser.com/channel/tigerstripe), and will start doing the small vid broadcast from time to time. Usually when I’m too lazy to type.

Here’s my first broadcast:

Best programs lately : Evernote, EventBox and Ecto.

Make your life better through shareware.

Also note that Entourage is NOT one of the preferred E apps.

View Awesome Record Stores, North America in a larger map

I’ve been keeping a google map of the finest record stores in the U.S. North America.

I’m sure there’s dozens out there I don’t have shown, but these are the ones I’ve personally visited.

Check it here