Disaster Recovery Mode, Shop Talk and Crossmodal Detour

Disaster Recovery Mode
My hard disk crashed. Thankfully my mac was still covered under AppleCare so after a couple of trips to the Jacksonville Apple store my machine is back and badder than ever!
There were three things that saved me:
1- My iPod and Target Disk Mode (TDM). I backed up the most important things with space leftover to my iPod, then Target Disk Mode let me save everything else to another machine. I was fortunate that TDM worked!
2- MediaFire.com. The ability to remotely store, in unlimited space, backups of backups. Useful for when the backup laptop took a dive! TDM also saved that data.
3- Foxmarks. None of this ever happened as far as my bookmarks were concerned.

I'm still in the process of restoring my machine to former glory (desktop picture, etc..) and once that's done naming it; new hard drive after all.

Shop Talk
Recently I've been given to talking more shop. I devised a unique (I think) revenue model for online publications and with the help of a few friends I'm going to move on this one. It invariably leads to technical considerations which divert thought to things like system architecture and implementation tools. So far I'm leaning toward the almighty open source platforms (Unix/Linux, Apache/Tomcat, Java/PHP/MySQL) but am considering Ruby on Rails and Groovy on Grails; thus talking shop. Also I discovered a tech blog from a former coworker which adds fodder to all the shop talk.

Crossmodal Detour
I've heard it stated that "no art is ever finished, only abandoned". Unfortunately I can't attribute that quote to anyone but I've related to it ever since I started writing my little tunes. However the endless tweaking stage is drawing nigh and the new Nominal Topic album now has a title (you guessed it): Crossmodal Detour. Its release will coincide with the launch of NominalTopic.com which is to be the album's companion web site; layed out like a CD (remember those?) and jewel case print size ready graphics for those inclined. More news to follow.

Nominal Topic

Nominal-
Etymology: Middle English nominalle, from Medieval Latin nominalis, from Latin, of a name, from nomin-, nomen name
Date: 15th century
Existing or being something in name or form only <nominal head of his party>

Topic-
Etymology: Latin Topica Topics (work by Aristotle), from Greek Topika, from topika, neuter plural of topikos of a place, of a topos, from topos place, topos
Date: circa 1569
The subject of a discourse or of a section of a discourse

Nominal Topic; more the name of a project than the name of a band despite the linked title. The MySpace page has been severely neglected due to writing more tunes; so new material is on the way. Compositionally and stylistically the album is a bit of a departure (although the latter to lesser degrees). While a tune like The Media Equation off of Context Switch was based on Zimbabwean Chimurenga music, from which many artists have borrowed heavily, this latest one (name under review) has more of a vintage-vibe feel (think Bob Mould meets Stereolab) but still fun (active rhythm sections). The album as a whole? You tell me.