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Ok, here is the first of two small pieces. I'll probably have to take photos of the larger pieces. These are both collages.

Holy cow! Maybe should not have let the cat out of the bag on that... I have quite a few framed posters (mostly transit/train related) but also a framed poster of Stuart Davis' Super Table (from right around the time the Terra Art Museum went out of business and they were giving them away for free. * I don't have anything that is strictly jazz-related on the walls. I also have a few original paintings, mostly abstract. I'll try to get some of them posted. * They were giving away unframed posters for free, just to be clear.

I think I'll be able to make that matinee -- it's at the Chicago Cultural Center at 2 pm. Sweet! Thanks so much for the head's up.

What an annoying, navel-gazing review. No point in hating the book reviewed -- not the writer's fault they picked such a ditz -- but I will obviously need to find another source to find out if it is any good. Review continues

I guess actually 4 days (Jan 20-23) at the Jazz Bistro, but still that's pretty decent. I am partly waiting to see if he manages to get Chicago date around then. Anyway, I'll post in the appropriate thread closer to the time.

Ya know... I had my music spending under control until I came back last month. I bet I've spent more on music in the last month or so than in the previous 7 - 8 months combined... On the plus side, I have co-workers randomly stopping by my office just to chat and see what's playing. Too true. On the flip side, when I feel the need to part with some CDs (and I am very close to that now), this is a good place to offer them before practically giving them away at Reckless (or Dusty Groove). Totally unrelated, but Vijay Iyer is going to be doing a week-long stand in St. Louis in January. If you haven't heard him live, you should check him out. I'm trying to come up with a plausible reason to make the trip down...

Thanks for bringing this to our attention (at least those of us who don't have it). I read through the entire related thread and while I trust Chuck that the K2 monos sound better, it seems both are now out of print so for $4.30 this seems like a no-brainer (for someone who doesn't have any previous versions). I wasn't planning on getting this at all, since I have the Riverside box, but at this price it is worth it for the two extra tracks (also curious about the Monk-less jam). Of course, while I was at it I got one of Newbury's Art Pepper Hollywood boxes. I gotta stop coming around here.

Congrats!!!

My son really likes the ABCs and No. Not quite as grabbed by 123s. I find that I can listen to the Science songs over and over, moreso than the other albums, so I will try to put this one on heavier rotation. Barenaked Ladies also have a children's CD called Snacktime with some good songs on it. Yeah, it's a real trend, though some of the best collaborations were back in the day on Sesame Street.

Maybe mentioned in another thread, but I didn't see it. TMBG have been keep very busy, releasing several children's albums. I am particularly fond of some of the songs on Here Come the ABCs. Anyway, they've just released Here Comes Science. I suppose it might be controversial in that they take a strong stand for science and a bit of a swipe at ignorant people (sort of like the same people that would be offended by the new movie about Darwin: Creation). Here is the opening of Science is Real: Anyway, leaving this aspect aside, I think this is a very catchy collection. For my taste, it is the best of their four children-oriented CDs. If one does order this, I would definitely get the version with the DVD (same with Here Come the ABCs). They have a new recording of Why Does the Sun Shine that leaves the refrain more or less alone but stretches out the rest of the lyrics (making them a bit easier for children to follow). More interesting is that this is immediately followed by Why Does the Sun Really Shine In the video, John Flansburgh tries to keep out the original song from playing while singing this: I also really like Meet the Elements and What is a Shooting Star, both because of the lyric contents and the music. I would definitely check it out if you are at all interested in TMBG (or are a middle school teacher )

Well, I see that there is a current eBay listing with an listing price of $150 but no bids so far (this is listed as a cassette version and for local pickup only, so I suspect not going to do so well). Over on AAJ, they seemed to settle around $400 most of the time, but that was 5 years ago, so pre-Recession. It would probably go for somewhere in the $200-500 range unless you can interest a Japanese buyer...

Strange title, never heard of the author, not very impressive cover. Therefore it far exceeded my expectations, & I endorse it highly. Compelling writing IMHO. I'm happy a friend suggested that I read it. There's already a sequel of sorts called The Gourmet. BTW, the UK cover is nicer. I don't know how much more I would pay for that, but between the two, that's the one I would opt for.

Agreed. I managed to miss out on a used copy at a (long-gone) record store on Belmont (I think I was doing something daft like waiting until I had written a paper to reward myself). Fortunately, they still had a new copy at a fair price, and I thought about it for a day or two and bought that. This was around the time they were being phased out. A few months after this, I noticed the Borders on Michigan Ave. had one, but that was the last I've ever seen in a store.

Let us know how this is. It's one I'm definitely thinking of picking up (in about a year when there are scads of remaindered copies ). I finished Kirn's Up in the Air. Not a deep book by any means, but pretty entertaining. A bit of a twist at the end which doesn't feel total gratuitous. I imagine that's in the movie version, but it will be a while until I find out. I gave up on Jeter's Noir. It was ok for what it was (sf written as noir), but I am really trying to clear out a lot of books out of my house, and have started dropping books that aren't grabbing me, particularly if they are long (this is nearly 500 pages). Jeter was actually the guy called on to write sequels set in the Blade Runner universe (the film far more than Dick's vision). So I started this instead. A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien It is a lightly fictionalized story of a boy growing up in Hollywood with movie star parents, who are fading and unstable (are there any other kind). This is how the first paragraph ends: "Oh what a world it was! Was there ever so pampered an ass as mine?" The voice is detached, ironic, jaded, etc. As I've gotten deeper into it, it reminds me of Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries. If you liked that, you will probably like this.

Yeah, I used to really like OmniPage, but Caere was bought out and the buzz is that the newest versions are buggy and when you need to download a driver or something you are out of luck. Oh, and they charge you $20 to speak to anyone in customer service when this happens.

Well, AbbyyFinereader Express (which I will probably order) cost about $50 and runs on XP. A bunch of these OCR software packages give you a 15 day free trial, but you can only OCR one page at a time -- which sounds exactly what you are trying to do, so you might go that route. I still don't understand the GOCR well enough to try it, but there is surely a way to get that working on your system as well, and it should be fine for text only -- and it is free. Main bit of advice is to save often (not as big a deal when doing one page at a time).

This is a little out of my comfort level. But I do have a question about GOCR. Does it handle tables at all? Or allow part of a page to be saved as an image (and then embedded into the resulting document)? Those are things I absolutely need before I start monkeying around with learning a new OCR software. If not, I'll just stick with some of the commercial versions. Thanks. Eric

You've got a few choices. Do you still have the page proofs? If so, I would use those. If not, if your scanner supports multiple pages in a scan, then I would probably scan 10 pages at a time -- to avoid losing data due to crashes, etc. I'm in an unfortunate situation, since the scan settings reset for every single job, so in my case, I actually make a copy of the thing I am scanning, then automatically feed them through (this counts as a job). Make sure the settings are at least 300 dpi - 400 dpi is better if the output files aren't too large for your available storage. If you have page proofs, or have already copied the book, I think converting to a TIF file will take 30 minutes, running batches through the scanner (this assumes you have a copier/scanner. Again, do this in installments (no more than 35-40 pages at a time). If you are scanning the book page by page, it might take 2-3 hours (or more if you have the software attempt OCR on the spot -- better to just save the files out and process later). Then you will run the OCR software. If you mostly have text and few or no footnotes and pictures, then maybe 1 day of going through and cleaning up. It could be more. That's a lot of pages. If the scan isn't clean or you have tables, footnotes, etc., then I'd say 2-3 days of intense work. That's my general experience. Yeah, pretty much my advice. This does assume Allen has a multiple page scanner and not a flatbed!

I generally set my scanner to output TIFs, then after the editing and processing I usually just save to Word documents, but some people prefer saving to PDFs. I think the PDF-direct output is for people who just need a permanent record but don't intend to edit (receipts, accounting stuff and contracts tend to fall in this category).

Benny Goodman King of Swing and Swing Swing Swing box sets. These make up the Yale Archives collection of BG. I had two of these on cassette, and it will be nice to have them all together. Also ordered Oliver Nelson/King Curtis/Jimmy Forrest - Soul Battle from DG. Kind of bummed I didn't see it on my last visit on Tuesday and have to make an extra trip (and probably spend even more money).

I used to really like OmniPage (I think I had version 8 or 9). I've heard relatively good things of the software through OmniPage 12, but then the company was bought out and the customer support/service went completely to hell and none of it worked well with Vista (no big surprise there). OmniPage 16 supposedly bites. I'm totally bummed because my home computer finally died, and I can't find the installation CDs, so I have to get new software. I'm leaning towards the ABBYY FineReader. I'm pretty sure that if you buy it (not just use the trial version) you can save out multiple pages. Any insight into this? Second, does it offer a "straighten page" option? For some of my scanned material, I just don't have an option but to try to utilize this feature. Thanks for any thoughts.

Ordered a couple of Jimmy Forrest CDs. I might have ordered a few others, but I thought I might already own them. This has certainly happened before, so it's time to slow down, apparently. Anyway, over at DG, I got the Farmer-Golson Jazztet - Moment to Moment and Jimmy Forrest's Heart of the Forrest with Shirley Scott and our very own Randy Marsh! One copy left of Heart of the Forrest at DG.

No question having Favre gives them a lot more options. Supposedly, he was only supposed to be there to hand off to AP, but Green Bay really focused on stopping the running game (and to be fair did a good job of that), daring Favre to beat them in the air. Of course, he answered in spades. The Vikings' goal line stand (in the 3rd?) was also huge. My wife didn't know who to root for, so hoped for a tie. But the Vikings are clearly the better team. No chance of that. Yeah, Vikings @ Green Bay should be good.

What a huge disappointment. He sets up 3 or four plotlines, and then just ends the story right before the climax. The rest of the novel doesn't make up for this deliberate lack of closure. For instance, I found the refusal to wrap up the plotlines in Murakami's After Dark disappointing, but I enjoyed the rest of the ride. Slightly higher hopes for this.

JazzLoft just announced they had 3 stereo sets come in, so you could try there as well.