As I've been rewriting most of the Rancho DeNada pages, I've been thinking about the internet and its evolving role in the American family. I think we're about to get to the point where the internet moves beyond on online phone book, atlas and catalog and becomes something very useful- a way to stay connected in a hectic world. Here's why.

When the internet first came into the nation's consciousness, it was a place to send email, which was new and novel at the time, and a place to explore- like an online text based adventure game. Emails oddly enough replaced more phone calls than letters, since most heavy letter writers (such as everyone in my extended family over 50) didn't embrace the internet. So what was intended to connect people had the opposite effect. People simply used email rather than the phone. It was fast and cheap, but very impersonal.

Then there was the world wide web. For early users, it was fun just to be on the net looking at a page created by someone far away. I remember late one night back in the mid-nineties I found myself chatting on an IRC program with a fisherman from Japan. It was pretty amazing at the time.

The problem was that content (or more specifically the web pages that displayed it) was very, very hard to create and so expensive to maintain that the big media companies pretty much controlled the distribution of information. The internet was becoming an online newspaper, but there was no reasonable way for the average person to create, maintain and distribute content. It took me hours and hours to create the original version of Rancho DeNada (which would look like my 3 year old's coloring book by today's standards), and every update was painstaking. I caught lightning in a bottle when I created ACCBoards.Com back in 1996. At one time we were doing 2 million hits a month. But when the dot.com bust happened and the internet advertising revenue model vanished overnight, I had to affilate with a network just to keep the site online.

Now, things have changed. There are so many applications that allow developers and writers and truck drivers and housewives to create professional looking content and publish it immediately (Blogger being one of the best for non computer types). Lots of families now have year-round, current "Christmas letters" in the form of a web site or family blog. Here is the best example I have seen (I don't know them- I found their excellent family blog on Feed Map), but there are many others, including, to an extent, this page. One or two families that are connected in some way create a family blog and link to each other. Before you know it, the thing gets legs and there is a little neighborhood of family web sites. It isn't just limited to families either- photographers, bird watchers and banjo players can do the same thing. Add some photograph serving by flickr to the mix and before you know it, you've got something really cool. Fred Wilson has a neat post today about the scalability and leverage of the new internet. Good post by my favorite blogger.

These interconnected pages make it easy to keep in touch with your neighbors as well as people you know in other parts of the world. I grew up in South Carolina and live in Texas. As anyone who knows me will attest, I am a terrible correspondent. I don't call and I don't write (and I am not proud of it). But I do update Rancho DeNada, so someone across town or across the country can see what we are up to with the click of a mouse.

And maybe the best thing about it is that these pages make it easy to stay connected on a meaningful level with people you care about. They even inspire people to make phone calls, or plan camping trips or do something else that groups of families can enjoy together. Finally, the web becomes a way to stay connected. That's what Al Gore created it to do in the first place.

There are some turnkey solutions out there, Yahoo!360 being one I have experimented with. And while those sites are great for someone who hasn't the time or inclination to build a site from the ground up, they are not flexible enough for a lot of people, myself included. I want a free standing site where my imagination is the limit and I can make every little corner the way I want it to be. But whether you want to build the whole thing or use an existing platform, the choices are there. And most of them are free.

Later this week, I am going to start a survey of Houston blogs and we'll see some real examples of what I am talking about.

Now if only our friends would create some sites we could link to.

I have posted another A-Z installment on the Err Bear Music page. It's a Blues Rock number that pretty much sums up my high school activities.

Remember that we have hundreds of full-length MP3's for your listening pleasure on the EBM page.

Here's a musical version of what happened today. Set to the tune of Leon Russell's most excellent Shootout on the Plantation.

The Cast
Punkin......Cassidy (her lifelong nickname)
Bub Head....Raina (also a nickname)
Dodo........Me (this is what the kids call me)
The Bears...Cassidy, Delaney & Raina
Lucky Dog...Lucky Dog

***
Punkin and the Bub Head are fighting
About a day camp in the neighborhood
The Punkin never learned how to do what she's told
And Bub Head wishes she would
Dodo said the Bears are for lovin' not fighting
But that didn't clear the air
'Cause Punkin's still acting
Like she lives in the jungle
While Bub pulls out her hair

The Punkin got the 'tude
The Bub Head got the treats
Dodo's an easy mark
So they both run to me
It's a shootout on the plantation
It's so hard to understand
Why are some people so hard headed
Neither one's the villain
The last one to bed
Is the first to call
And using mean talk
Gets you nowhere at all
It's a shootout on the plantation
Heaven help Lucky Dog

And the threat of no sleepovers
Enough to cause her blood to freeze
But the Punkin's still growling
Like some feral beast
And doing just what she pleases
Bellaire's lonesome daddies are tuned into
Their TV shows
Trying to find a safe place to hide
Before the volcano blows

12 years ago today, I married a sweet, beautiful, wonderful woman. She has done a great job of putting up with me.

I am lucky to have Raina, and though I don't tell her that enough, I know it.

We got married in Fort Worth on June 26th, 1993. My old and dear friend Carter Via married us, with (mandated, by whom I'm still not sure) help from Barry Bailey, then the minister at the church where the wedding took place. Barry later ran into a bit of trouble.

The rehersal dinner was held the night before at Billy Bob's.

I have owned a lot of computers. I have built a lot of computers. Several of them had iomega Zip Drives in them, including the one I am using now (which I built).

At least half of the Zip Drives I have had just stop working at some point, either via the infamous "click of death" or via some mysterious and irritating failure to read any of the disks. Given that the whole idea behind these devices is to back-up data, I'd say that's a pretty unacceptable failure rate.

The Zip Drive in my current computer suddenly can't read any disk. And once one of these drives dies, you can no longer eject the disk without using the paper clip trick. If they are going to keep selling these crappy drives to the unsuspecting public, they should at least put a paper clip in the box.

So here's my computer tip for today: never, ever, no matter what put a Zip Drive (or any iomega product for that matter) in any computer you build or buy. CD and DVD recorders are cheaper and more reliable and flash cards are smaller.

These sorry devices should have been recalled and destroyed years ago.

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play.

Tyler - The Hollisters (The Land of Rhythm and Pleasure)
Country Melody - Robin and Linda Williams (Nine 'til Midnight)
Down in Her Arms - Robbie Fulks (Let's Kill Saturday Night)
Sad Songs and Waltzes - Willie Nelson (Shotgun Willie)
Dancing Shoes - Dan Fogelberg (Nether Lands)
I Miss You - Harold Melvin (Collector's Item)
So Long, Harry Truman - Chris Smither (It Ain't Easy)
Chinatown Shuffle - Grateful Dead (Steppin' Out)
Hilltop - Map of Wyoming (Trouble Is)
Gotta Have Tenderness - Glen Campbell (Galveston)

Cassidy is now a published artist! One of her drawings appears in a new children's book called Just Me. It is a really neat parenting book written from a child's perspective. I have read almost all of it and it is both touching and informative. It's not written by a child- it's written by a wife and mom from Houston. It is very well written and highly recommended, for both the words and the art!

Here are pictures of the cover of the book and Cassidy's drawing that appears on page 62.

I have posted another A-Z installment on the Err Bear Music page. Remember that we have hundreds of full-length MP3's for your listening pleasure there. If you use Windows Media Player as your default MP3 player, the MP3's will stream when you click on the MP3 link.

We bought the house next door a month or so ago. After much unnecessary delay thanks to the City of Bellaire, it was demolished yesterday. That big ol' Hyundai Excavator levelled the entire house in less than a half hour. Then it loaded the remains into big dumptrucks that hauled it away. It was really fun to watch.

After we move the fence and do a little landscaping, we'll have a nice yard to run around in.

Three reasons you should tune into Rancho Radio right now:

1) We have done a major upgrade to the web page and the server. We now have a real time "Last 10 Songs" playlist on the web page. We also have a current, active playlist of 275 of the best alt. country and Americana songs you've ever heard (that's 18 hours worth) . We are now broadcasting in MP3 Pro format, which results in increased fidelity.

2) We have a new playlist each week, chosen from our library of over 26,000 songs. We've spent all of our spending cash on records since around 1969, and you can enjoy all of that music with us.

3) Rancho Radio is totally free.

Take a listen, and if you agree that Rancho Radio is the best alt. country station on the net, tell your friends about it.

I can barely remember anything about my father. He died on November 14, 1968. I remember watching Combat with him in the very room we're standing in above. I remember driving to Virginia with him once. That's about it.

Most of what I know about him is second hand- things I've read or been told. He was a fighter pilot in World War II. Flew off of the Intrepid and received a DFC and 2 Air Medals. They are in a frame in our Media Room. I have a book on World War II with his picture in it. He was a pretty good golfer. He smoked too many cigarettes.

I don't know if he had a good sense of humor, or what kind of music he liked. I don't know if he liked to dance or what kind of beer he drank. My kids have some vague idea that I had a mother, who died shortly before the oldest was born. My dad is nothing more than a picture they've seen once or twice. I'd tell them more about him, if I knew more.

It's not something I think about a lot. Maybe once or twice a year.

I am not a huge Southpark fan, but I know a cool thing when I see it. And creating your own Southpark character is pretty cool. Give it a try.

Cassidy and Rachel got out my guitars this evening and decided they were going to learn how to play them and form a band. Here's a shot of their first jam session.

Hopefully, they'll become famous and record all of my songs!

Thanks to the magic of the WayBack Machine at the Internet Archive, click here to see what Newsome.Org looked like on February 29, 2000. It's interesting to see that the date code at the top still works and returns today's date!

Somewhere around here I have an old copy of the first web site we put up back in 1996. It's pretty frightening by today's standards, but one of these days I'll post a picture of it.

The other day I mentioned that I was going to write on Podcasting.

I knew what I thought the limitations were, but I wanted to take some time to consider the benefits. Today, Fred Wilson, a smart and interesting father and venture capitalist, whose Blog I read literally every day, wrote an excellent post about the great potential of Podcasting, and why he thinks it will become a bigger, more mainstream thing. He said it better that I could and he even addressed some of my issues. It's a good read and actually made me slightly more optimistic about the possibility of mainstream acceptance.

But I still have some concerns. Here are the 5 reasons I believe Podcasting will not be embraced by the masses:

1) It's simply too hard to create one. I built the computer I am typing on now from scratch, and I wrote almost all of the pages that comprise Newsome.Org. I used to write computer games (in Basic, way back in the late Eighties) and was briefly a game designer for a small software company. In sum, I am the neighborhood computer geek. And I haven't the slightest idea how to create and distrbute a Podcast. Yes, I could spend a few hours and figure it out. But even if I did...

2) While it is much easier to download and listen to a Podcast (I use iPodder for that, and I expect there are plenty of similar programs), it is more effort than the average person is willing to devote to listening to music/talk, etc. when there are so many other alternatives. I have smart friends who still have trouble sending and receiving email. Podcast listening is simply not something that non-computer geeks are going to learn how to do. I and certainly a few others will certainly go to some effort to access a Podcast that we can't get elsewhere (such as the excellent Podcasts produced by my friends at Compadre Records), but in general it's easier to get the same sort of stuff somewhere else. So I figure even if I did create a Podcast, very few people would have the desire and ability (it takes both) to listen to it. And even if they did...

3) Podcasting raises the very same issues you have with sharing other music files: the priority challenged folks at the RIAA (a better site to get the story is this one) will eventually get around to putting most of the independent Podcasters (and perhaps even some of the listeners) out of business. If I can't download a song from Napster (meaning the original one, not the current sad reincarnation), what makes me think I can download a bunch of songs strung together in a Podcast. So that leaves people like Compadre (who own the rights to the stuff they use), marginally appealing talk shows, and public domain stuff. And even if the big boys get into the business...

4) There will eventually be ads. As I discussed last week, ads are killing traditional radio and real time (as opposed to TIVO'ed) television. Once people start trying to monetize Podcasts, ads will kill Podcasts too. As an aside, ads are also the biggest buzz kill on independent internet radio stations like Rancho Radio. In fact, if I can't dream up a way to broadcast Rancho Radio without the ads, I'll probably take it off the air, again. But even if I could handle the ads...

5) I am over 40 and no one over 40 uses an MP3 player and earbuds as their primary music source. I have serveral MP3 players, but except for the occasional long airplane trip, I never use them. If I walked down the hall at my day job listening to an MP3 player, people would think I had lost my mind (often they do anyway, but for other reasons). Like many people of my generation, I do a large part of my music listening in the car. I like to burn a bunch of MP3's onto a CD-R and pop it in my CD player. It's safer and anyone riding with me can hear the music and talk to me at the same time (if I had earbuds in, they could do neither). Yes, I occasionally burn a Podcast onto a CD-R and listen to it in the car, but that's simply an extra step that the average person will not take.

In theory, Podcasting is a great idea. And I'll continue to listen to them occasionally. But I will be surprised if Podcasting is ever embraced by the masses. I hope I'm wrong.

I have posted another A-Z installment on the Err Bear Music page. Remember that we have hundreds of full-length MP3's for your listening pleasure there. If you use Windows Media Player as your default MP3 player, the MP3's will stream when you click on the MP3 link.

I syndicated Newsome.Org this evening. Those who prefer can now read the site via a newsreader. The link is at the bottom left of the page and looks like this .

I enjoy photographs, but I have never bought a book of them, and I have never bookmarked a web site just for the photos...until recently. Thomas Hawk has a great web page that is very much worth reading for the digital media discussion alone. That's why I started reading it regularly. But I have found that the true joy of his page is his amazing photos. A thousand of my words could not do justice to one of his pictures. Bookmark Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection. I promise you'll look forward to going there every day. I certainly do.

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play.

Boy from Tupelo - Emmylou Harris (Red Dirt Girl)
Snake Mountain Blues - Townes Van Zandt (Live & Obscure)
This Town - The Go Go's (Beauty and the Beast)
Everybody Needs Love - John Holt (70 Oz. of Reggae)
Devil in a Sleeping Bag - Willie Nelson (Shotgun Willie)
Metal Firecracker - Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road)
Sangria Wine (Live) - Jerry Jeff Walker (Brewed in Texas)
Lullaby - Loudon Wainwright III (Attempted Mustache)
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Band (The Band)
Little Misguided - Newboys (Newboys)

I added a completely new playlist to Rancho Radio this evening. Lots of great Alt. County songs, including cuts by The Coming Grass, Dumptruck, The Videlias, Shy Dragger, as well as some more familiar tracks by the Grateful Dead, Robert Earl Keen and Son Volt.

Best cover: Townes Van Zandt doing "Racing in the Streets"

Hard to Find Gem: Raging Fire's "The Marrying Kind"

Please tune in and tell me if you like what you hear. Even better, tell your friends about Rancho Radio.

I've started a new thing on the Err Bear Music page. Each week or so I'll pick one song, working though the alphabet from A to Z, and write about it a little bit. When someone plays me a new song, I am often curious about how the song came to be, what inspired it, is to autobiographical, etc. So we'll take a spin through the alphabet and see what turns up.

As an aside, it amazes me how often I forget what inspired me to write a song. I've talked to other writers (including a few who wrote songs you hear on the radio) and it seems like I'm not the only person who has that problem. Worse case basis, I'll have a resource to look to when I forget more.

With the rebirth of Rancho Radio, I've been thinking about radio, and internet radio in particular. I believe, as others have written, that traditional radio is dead. I haven't listened to an over the air radio station, even for a few seconds, in over a year and a half. Like most people I listen to music mostly in my car. These days, I either burn a bunch of MP3s on a CD-R or listen to XM Satellite Radio (Particularly Webb Wilder's shows on Cross Country). I've talked to a lot of my friends about this and it seems most people who care about music even a little are trending the same way.

Why? Two reasons. First, traditional radio has a rotation that is both too narrow (being generally set by some suit at the home office of Clear Channel or some other corporate entity) and too broad (there is only rock, alternative, classic rock, oldies and country, whereas XM and internet radio have many subcategories of each). The other reason- the ads. I use a TIVO (which while not as dead as traditional radio, is dying on the vine due to DirectTV's failure to fully embrace it) to watch TV and always (and I mean always) fast forward through commercials. My 7 year old does the same thing (which doesn't bode well for TV advertising's future). I simply cannot stand to hear or see commercials anymore. That makes traditional radio highly unattractive to me. And from what I can tell, a lot of other folks feel the same way.

So, that leaves MP3s on a CD-R (except for long airplane trips, no one over 40 uses an iPod and headphones as their primary music source) or satellite radio in the car and my own music collection (often on shuffle play) at home. But part of the love of music is the joy of finding a great new band or song (I still remember exactly where I was the first time I heard Uncle John's Band). Internet radio has, I imagine, become the primary venue to mine for new music. A long time ago, a lot of it was free, but internet radio stations have to pay the bills too. So now you have to pay for it, which is fine and appropriate, but unless you're filthy rich, you have to choose which stations or services you pay for. Personally, I like Rhapsody (though the fact it was bought by Real Networks will eventually be its ruination) and MusicMatch (owned now by Yahoo, a slightly better bet). I also enjoy independent stations, like the ones you can hear (for free if you can tolerate a few ads) at Live365.Com, the service that hosts Rancho Radio. These stations, created and operated by people who last century would probably be ham radio enthusiasts, provide an almost unlimited number of sub-genres and mixes.

Cost prohibits these stations from getting too big or too popular, so if they are successful they become little listening communities that enjoy the same sorts of music. Nobody is going to get rich off of an independent radio station, but it is a way to connect to others and share (legally) music you enjoy.

At least I hope that's how it will develop. I'd like to see independent internet radio stations follow Blogging (which is only a better executed version of the mid-ninties "internet journal" craze) and Podcasting (more on that later) as the next big internet thing.

More on this later. In the meantime, tune in to Rancho Radio and let me know if you like what you hear.

Ed Bott and some other people I enjoy reading do this once in a while. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play.

I have a lot of (wildly different) songs. Here we go...

1) Ryan Adams- Anybody Wanna Take Me Home (Rock N Roll)
2) Miracle Legion- Maybelline (Drenched)
3) Travis Tritt- Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man (T-R-O-U-B-L-E)
4) CSN&Y- Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (4 Way Street)
5) Bob Dylan- You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Blood on the Tracks)
6) Jerry Jeff Walker- The Ballad of the Hulk (Mr. Bojangles)
7) Nadine- So That I Don't Miss You (Downtown, Saturday)
8) Pinetop Seven- Ten Thousand to Carlisle Came (Bringing Home the Last Great Strike)
9) Doug Sahm- Son of Bill Baety (Together After Five)
10) Lightnin' Hopkins- Woman Woman (Complete Aladdin Recordings)

I could have done worse. There are actually Partridge Family songs in there somewhere.

I took Rancho Radio off the air late last year, after a 5+ year run. It required more time and money than I wanted to devote to a radio station that was loved by a few, but unknown to most. I decided to bring it back for a limted run and see how it does. Here's the new deal. We will have a rotating playlist of 30-50 songs (out of the many thousand in the Rancho DeNada library). We'll change the playlist every week or so and post a note here about the theme, content, etc. It's free and it sounds good.

This week we have a mix of alternative country and classic rock. One of my favorite classic rock songs, Ten Years After's I've Been There Too is included, as are a few by Steve Pride. I added one track from the Ryan Adams album discussed below and a couple by the Star Room Boys. Enjoy, and if you do, let me hear from you. Otherwise this might really be The Last Days of Rancho Radio!

Click here to listen. No special software required. You have to register with Live365.Com, but it's easy fast and free.