Looking at the boxes for both the Major and the Minor (the full and in-ear models, respectively), you can already tell something special is going on. Let’s start with the Major.

The Major’s box has a small seam running about 2cm from the bottom of the box, with just two small clear decals holding the top to the bottom. No fuss, no muss- just remove or slit the decals, lift the top, and voila!

The Major makes it’s entry in reclining fashion, so you can see all the small details that went into it. Knurled bronze tip, the iconic cabinet grille cloth covering the inner speakers, the Marshall logo on white above black Tolex- it’s all the little details you’ve become used to with Marshall amps remixed to powerful effect. And once you plug them in, they fit nicely but not too tight or bulky, provide a great , tight bass and crystally highs for a driver so small, and weigh up incredibly light- folding up neatly to slip into a backpack or laptop bag and still leave some room. I’m probably going to use these as my main headphones for general listening henceforth. They’re really as clean sounding as they are elegant. The bass isn’t hip-hop subwoofer low, but a tight, rounded punchy bass that sounds great across a reasonably wide span of styles. Thumbs way up.

Now, on to the Minors.

The Minor’s packaging is even more curious from the outset. The box itself has a little hook loop for carrying (nice), hinting at something of distinct interest within, and apparently opens in a clamshell format. By pulling off the small decal, the top opens and slowly reveals the headphones within. But not in a static fashion- although the surface holdilng the earphones themselves starts out flat…

… as the box opens further, it tilts forward ever so slightly to give a smooth final touch to the presentation.

The little details on the Minors are just as cunningly well-placed – the iconic gold-capped knobs-that-go-to-eleven form the outer surface of the in-ear units, and the knurled brass cable tip is a knock off of the ‘vintage OEM’ style. The microphone fidelity is clear, and the talk/play/pause button is easy to get to in a rush. Innovatively, these ‘in-ears’ don’t actually stick IN your ear, but clip inside your ear’s ridges to hold quite tightly. So tightly, in fact, that a MMA workout and jog couldn’t rattle ‘em loose – and I’m a person who has never had success with stock in-ear headphones – always finding them fitting too poorly to use in real active situations. These, however, have now become my workout workhorses. Their fidelity is reasonably good overall with a tight low midrange and clear highs, but suffers a reduced bass response as they are technically ‘out of ear’ headphones and don’t seal the ear canal to afford a tighter low end. All told, the Minors are still several cuts above any standard earbuds and probably on par with many mid-range over-ear headphones to boot.

As I’d hoped, Marshall took their legacy of high-quality audio and built upon it with the stylistic retro product design and engaging packaging make the experience as exciting as possible from the moment you crack the seal of the box to the first downbeat of the music you crank through them. This is how a product goes from good to great – by not missing ANY of the fine details.

Kudos to Marshall for making these headphones an absolute dream from start to finish. I haven’t had that much fun cracking open a pair of boxes in a long time. To read more about the Marshall Major and Minor (and pick up a pair yourself), just head over to marshallheadphones.com. I think you’ll be equally impressed.

• Relaxation can be incredibly difficult for type-A personalities, but not entirely unattainable.
• There is never an end to odd jobs one can find to do around, within and upon one’s home (assuming, of course, you are not a renter).
• If you stare at any cloud long enough, you can watch it make far more than one shape.

I can, of course, take life way too seriously at times. Just not right now.

• There is not a musical instrument known to man that I will not attempt to master, or at least wrestle into submission, when given the opportunity.
• Although I fully realize it’s long-term economic ramifications, I’d give up my job and gigs in a second to be a full-time dad. Fatherhood is the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time. Who knows…
• I can’t wait to see how chill I get after 5 more weeks of this.
• I haven’t turned on a ‘real computer’ in a full week (except for the one powering my studio, and then only to record stuff).
• You really can be more creative when you’re completely uncluttered or distracted. But you can also get cabin fever much faster. Finding myself ‘out for inspiration’ more often than actually writing, but my writing time is now much more focused and at least 3 times as productive as when I’m working the day job. Dizzamn.
• Removing due dates from all my to-do lists actually resulted in them getting done a LOT faster. Maybe it’s the reduced time pressure, but that’s an interesting and cool trend.
• Getting my inner Hunter S. Thompson out and exercised last week will help me get back to my inner, and much healthier muses. But it has been fun to blow it out a bit.
• I’m really glad I decided to take this sabbatical at it’s own pace. Getting back to roots is beautiful.
• How Des and I created such an amazing little boy in our son, Devin, is beyond me – and more in the realms of miracles and/or divine providence. He amazes and inspires me daily.
• Although I’m not going to waste much time thinking about it now, I’m really going to miss this sabbatical when it’s over. A lot.

And now, back to the slacking. Cheers!

It’s clear that I’ll be working on some personal music but I have consciously avoided thinking about it beyond one overriding goal – to wade through the last decade worth of half finished (or less) ideas that I’ve written, and recorded to varying degrees. As I’ve been mostly playing on other people’s material or projects it’s been a pretty diverse decade, but I honestly couldn’t tell you much more about what’s in that pile ‘o ideas as it’s stuff I documented in quick momentary flurries of inspiration – and didn’t spend much time with overall. The idea was that I’d eventually come back to them and finish each and every one – though at this point that obviously never happened nor was it likely to unless I made a concerted effort to set aside some time and do something about it. I guess that’s what sabbaticals are for, eh?

The hope is that either I find enough gems in that pile to justify finishing out a demo, or horrify myself into writing something better. So I’m going to call it creative semi-block- I guess when you’re starting with a surplus of ideas it can’t exactly be a tabula rasa type of situation. But given I have little memory of or faith in those ideas at this point, it is a bit unsettling. Here’s hoping the combination kicks me in the ass the right way. Keep posted.

That being said, it’s time for a change, partially motivated by the impending ‘migration’ of my Adobe blog to a new Movable Type framework. I’m not particularly happy with Movable Type in general, and much more comfortable with WordPress or Drupal, so although I already did merge in some of my old Adobe blog posts here a while back (just look for the ‘Adobe’ tag), I may be doing it officially soon, and dusting off this default template with one I’ve been puttering on for a little while now.

While I figure out how this will all shake out, I might very likely be temporarily distracted with this.
Pls don’t hold it against me.

I’ve been using this randomly on conference calls lately, too. Enjoy

For years, I’ve gotten used to interacting with high-tech/web colleagues via social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and the like, but the deeper life connections being made within Facebook are just too strong to avoid. Staying in touch with industry colleagues is great- don’t get me wrong – but the depth and breadth of connections on Facebook trump any of the other social sites hands-down.

So- I’m probably going to find myself posting on Twitter less and less, and Facebook more and more (especially as FB can send Twitter my status updates anyway). Interesting.

Update: screw that- I’m testing out WordPress right now to see if it’ll work better for me.  So far, the import in WP 2.5 is working like a champ, and aside from losing my tags seems to have migrated everything pretty well.  We may be moving to WordPress in short order.

Well, movin’ on East, that is- just over the Bay Bridge. The Maxwell Park area of Oakland to be precise, a nice little neighborhood in the foothills near Mills College that’s neither too upscale or too ‘hood. This is the curb shot I took last month when we were doing the inspections. Only real change is that it’ll be sporting a new roof when we move in, otherwise it’s pretty much in fantastic condition with a lot of little areas to improve along the way.

Apologies that I’ve been really lax in blogging lately, but between an infant son, insane Q4 work schedule at Adobe and the property hunt with it’s subsequent collaterla negotiations/escrow bullshit I’ve been really stretched the last few months. We actually kicked off the offer a week or so before Thanksgiving, and will close this coming Tuesday- I’m feeling comfortable posting about it now as the heavy lifting’s complete, our money’s safely in the escrow account and the paperwork was all signed as of yesterday morning. We’re going over for the final walkthru in a few hours this morning – and to measure some rooms/walls/doorways for the movers – but it’s all over except for the movin’ now.

Quite honestly, the insane real-estate valuation in San Francisco city had us considering other options that may actually net us some return downstream, as with 3 bedroom houses in the city limits ranging 800k-1.2 million, (with the low end being really low-end) there are a lot of neighborhoods just outside the city that have a lot more turnaround potential aside from finding some sucker dot-com profiteer to pay 30k above your purchase price for a closet-sized 2br flat you really just upgraded the kitchen on.

By the way, I have to give major thumbs-up/props to Redfin, which we used originally as a property listing service, but ultimately netted us 2/3rds of the buyer’s agent commission back as a refund as we did most of the hunting work thru their web site/service. Pretty cool real-estate shopping experience- I got new listings with my coffee each morning, we culled ‘em down to a short list to check out, then did drive-bys ourself before getting a Redfin local agent (Elan Chertock- a great guy who we’d actually met long ago at a gig, no less!) to set up actual tours for a small fee. Once we made an offer, another agent (Jim Holt) jumped in and basically made the rest of the process painless. The extra legwork during the hunt on our end was a bit more draining than having an agent hunt for us, but getting that ~12k of commission back after close will more than pay for my time, honestly. Can’t speak highly enough of my Redfin experience so far, that’s for sure.

Anyway, it’s kinda nice to be out of renting again, although rent control is nice if you’ve gotta do it. We’ll be moving on December 29th, just in time to crack some Dom Perignon on New Years’ Eve. I’m sure Jan 1st I’ll be off and running on my first project- rewiring the office. W00t!

Working from the home office on Wednesday, I was feeling a little achy and tired around noon, and then found myself drifting during a phone call later in the afternoon. About 4pm or so I was throwing up my lunch violently (a home-made turkey sandwich) and running a fever around 103 or so. Game, and match.

I hit the sack early last night after taking some Tylenol to break the fever down to around 100, and got up at my usual 6am with every intent of making it in for the early meetings. At which point the round two bell tolls. Again, I’m praying at the porcelain shrine and running a 103 fever. Call in a sick day and turf it hard back in bed. Aside from an emergency ring from Heidi to talk about the subject of a rapidly-approaching video shoot, I got pretty much the entire day to rest it off, and I needed every minute of it. It’s now 8pm and I’m finally down to 98.7 degees, and feeling like a normal – albeit drained and haggard – person again.

Ironically, Des and Devin have been fine throughout. I purposely segregated myself from the Munch the first day to make sure and not infect him, but broke with decorum a bit more today as Des needed the help. Egads. I think I’m going to be right as rain tomorrow, but right now it’s all about maintaining the status quo.

And the cycle goes on…

Now I’m not complaining, mind you – Devin’s well worth the effort – I’m just saying. You really can take your freedom for granted before having a kid. As wonderful and life-changing as it can be as new parents, we certainly have a healthy level of respect now for those areas of our lives we took for granted beforehand.

Parental pride is going to be difficult to maintain, cause Devin’s just such a damn cute kid. Now we’re not sure, but are reasonably certain he’s already said his first word as of 2 months, and it was a surprising one – “elk”. I had no idea he was so literate with his wildlife, but after a few days of surprised looks between ourselves, Des and I finally figured out what it is he’s saying. Every time he feeds – without exception, he just keeps saying his new word over and over (with his mouth full, no less)…

elk
elk
elk
elk
elk
elk

Now we’ve no idea where he’s seen an elk here within the San Francisco city limits- or even less how he was able to learn to speak it’s name, but clearly our boy’s a genius. Or a naturalist wunderkind of some sort.

Or something.

Nothing like migrating 3 drives (with a combined 800GB of data upon them) over to a new storage cluster to eat up your machine for a night. But at least my iTunes library will have some elbow room now, with 2 spanking-new terabytes of storage to expand on…