When I read the article about the leak of this ablum online and the band's reaction decrying the sound quality of songs I laughed. What could be so special about the quality of the production that would make a difference? If people really, really want to hear something they will listen and enjoy it. The whole thing made me reluctant to purchase Stadium Arcadium, but I did.

I will not regret this purchase. This album is the best, most cohesive album that the Red Hot Chili Pepper's have ever put out. This album is the best, most cohesive collection of work from any band that I have ever heard. These guys were in their groove and knew it. Which is one of the hardest things to do as an artist.

Stadium Arcadium has 28 brilliant songs on it that are the essence of four musicians and the hard work of the recording engineers and producers.

Which gets me back to audio quality issue that was pushed by the band. I would have been pissed too. Not that the album had leaked but that the quality was not the same sonic fidelity of what was planned for release.

The recording of, mixing of, mastering of and final product is something that brings a smile to my face as I type this. If you are in to percussion you'll find some of the cleanest drum micing that I've ever heard on a rock album. We're talking about the quality usually reserved for spartan jazz traps that rip.

The lyrical content is also the best that these guys have ever put together. Usually their lyrics are less accessible and sometimes frustrating. But the phrases and delivery lend themselves to a wide listener interpretation that makes this album very inviting.

Not dollars! I wish. But we will cross the 100,000 RSS feed hits since the new site went live on April 9th. I am nerd excited.

The picture above is from my homebrew RSS stats app. Nice, eh? It tracks all of our feeds, well the 2 old ones (the one that redirects to Feedburner and the one read by Feedburner) from the last site and the 5 new ones. Since the new 5 have gone live we've picked up on average 53 unique readers of those daily. So from April 9th until today we've gained at least 53 new listeners . . . yes!

How do I know? I'm a stats junkie with enough code under his belt to get dangerous on the tracking tip.

The really big deal is that the website itself is envious of the RSS feeds and wishes them death. The day that I started running the stats to track the total RSS hits and even the unique hits the light went on. The RSS feeds receive nearly five times as many unique visitors in a day than Croncast.com!

UPDATE: It happened.

We've got everything square to hit the road on Friday June 2nd after the man wraps his kindergarten session. Summer officially begins. Now if it will just warm up!

Most of you know we'll be heading off to Denver and Boulder. We know no one out there (I plan on a business meeting or two, so I know those guys) and are looking forward to bumming around. It has been a long time since we did one of these trips and it will be interesting to see how the kids react to it. Especially if we take the Scion xB. Hopefully, this "Slowsky" purchase will work out and it can handle a few thousand miles.

On the way west we'll be taking I-80 which cuts through Iowa and Nebraska on the way to Colorado. If you are near any part of this trip let's meet up. Or if you have any recommendations for spots to visit post a comment here and we can set something up.

there will be no show today. this was the worst weekend of my adult life and got worse last night. i'm sure it ranks high for betsy too. i would have thought the vasectomy would have been worst, wrong.

starting thursday night maggie got sick, friday elliot, saturday morningish like 3 a.m. betsy got into act vomiting and many trips to bathroom for expungenation of all that is evil.

i thought i hade made it out of the jungle and at 5 p.m. last night it fell on my like nell carter slipping on a banana peel. no vomitng for me but the bathroom knows me well and i am etremely nauseous.

look for us wednesday.

Well, it is listed on the Portable Media Expo schedule so it's official. I'll be speaking about my experience starting up and running a podcasting production company, Palegroove Studios, and how other experienced podcasters can do the same through consulting.

What? Tell people how to become your competition? Sort of.

Think about how many web designers and developers there are today. Now, imagine if there were only about 100 in the world that were considered 'experts' and could be trusted to get a job done professionally. Could they handle all of the work? There's plenty of available today for more than 1000 podcasting consultants.

To say the least, I am excited about this opportunity to share some of my ups and downs over the last 1 1/2 years. I am probably more willing to share my downs since there have been more of them, but each one an excellent teacher.

Last but not least, fellow Naperville geek drink compadre and friend, Rick Klau, will be speaking also. He's got duty explaining and evangelizing RSS on the newbie front. Looks like geek drinks will go mobile.