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General admission. Standing room only. A combination I do not look forward to in a concert. But if the artist and venue are right, I will endure. And Farrah and I did endure this combination, at The Fillmore, to see Lorde.

I was lucky enough to snag two tickets back when they went on sale a few months ago, before Royals was getting regular mainstream radio play. I don’t know if I’d be lucky to get tickets now seeing how big Lorde has become.  Funny thing was when they went on sale, they seemingly sold out immediately. But I persisted for a few minutes and was able to grab two tickets. 

We arrived a few minutes late to The Fillmore. Friday night traffic going up to San Francisco was ugly as usual. We caught a few songs from the opening act, Until the Ribbon Breaks. They sounded great on stage, so I immediately added a few tracks to a Spotify playlist. After their set people milled around, as usual, waiting for Lorde to take the stage.

The crowd started to fill up as Lorde’s set time was getting closer. The crowd was a good mix of ages, as The Fillmore can be depending on the performer. We were situated in a good spot, center and further back on the floor. Unfortunately, to Farrah’s left, a group of unruly 20-somethings decided to talk and bump around people through the whole performance. One couple just wanted to make out all night.  In front of us was an older couple, probably in their early to mid 50’s. Made me wonder how many concerts do they attend?

Getting back to Lorde -  she performed well for someone who hasn’t performed often on tour. She sounded well, though the bass was on the heavy side, making her voice sound muddled. From another review of the concert, it seems it was her idea to crank up the bass. She had energy, working the stage very easily. She talked between a few songs, using   Thank you, San Francisco, often, which elicited approval from the crowd.

Her set was short, about 12 songs or so, lasting a little over an hour. No encore performed with the lights coming up after her last song. I thought she could have done a few more songs, as her album came out that day in some places.

The annoyances of the general admission crowd are worth it sometimes, especially when seeing an up-and-coming artist. It is always nice to see an artist on the rise, seeing them before they get too big, in an intimate place like The Fillmore.

Other reviews of the show are at SF Gate and San Jose Mercury News and SF Station.

Siri–the semi-intelligent virtual assistant feature–has been available on the iPhone since the iPhone 4S launched with iOS 5. However, Siri did not work with the iPad until the iPad 3 came out with iOS 6, and it still doesn’t work with earlier generation iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touch devices.

That’s just one example of the subversive fragmentation within iOS. While almost every iOS device is running the latest and greatest version of Apple’s mobile OS, the available features and general experience vary widely from one device to the next. The highly-touted Passbook feature works with all iPhones and iPod Touch devices, but not on the iPad. The Panoramic picture feature of the camera app works with newer iPhones and iPod Touches, but not the iPad.

I’ve only been one iPhone model behind, at the most so I would get most of the iOS features of a new update. I always felt the fragmentation issue with Android and iOS was more a developers issue and not a consumers problem.

It is weird to me that new Android phones can come with older versions of Android. When considering an Android phone I looked at the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One.  The HTC One comes with Android 4.1 whereas the Galaxy S4 with 4.2. The difference, from what I understand, is features I would enjoy. I could hold out hope that the HTC One would eventually be updated. But how long would I have to wait?

Enjoy the Silence is one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs. This cover is great!

Cover Version 4 from Kristof Luyckx on Vimeo.

I feel I don’t have enough time during any given day. At least not enough to do what I want, when I want to do it. This is why my blogging efforts have fallen by the wayside.

Wife. Kids. Work. Eat. Commute. Sleep. These are the priorities in order. Wife. Kids. Work. Eat. Commute. Sleep.

Sleep is nice if it can be had. When it is possible, it doesn’t come in consecutive hours, not since the kids were born. I’ve learned to function with chunks of sleep here and there, sneaking in a few extra minutes on the commute to and from work.

Commuting and working are dedicated blocks of time. The commute is not fixed in its length. It can take up to 2 1/2 hours a day. And if there is an incident on Caltrain, add another 90 minutes to that time. I try not to take my work home with me, but my job is easily accessible through any device. This makes it easy to read and answer work issues.

That leaves the time spent with the wife and kids. They are the center of my world, the reason I do what I do. During the week I don’t have the opportunity to spend much time with them. An hour or two in the morning while getting ready to leave for the day. A few hours at night at dinner time than bedtime. At least we have the weekends together.

Eating is done between all of these times.

Setting aside time to write has been tough. I can steal a moment away here and there to jot down a thought I want to explore. Finding the time to think that thought through and writing it down can be difficult. But I believe I need that time, the time to use my brain and stretch my fingers. My writing may not be revelatory but it is mine. It is seething I wish to express, even if it is a trivial matter.

And so I’m making an effort to post more, to write more in this space. It may be a simple comment on a link or a long bitch fest about a day gone sideways. But it’ll be something I want to share. Whether you want to read it is up to you.

I hope you do.

Graecyn is watching sitting back and watching Justin Timberlake’s fifth appearance on Saturday Night Live. I think she’s commenting on his performance.

Mia follows Kaleb up a hill during Kaiden’s first birthday party.

Mia and Kaleb were blowing bubbles outside during Kaiden’s first birthday party. Kaleb decided to walk from the playground and down the sidewalk trail. Mia followed. There was a little hill past an intersection path that Kaleb decided to walk up. Mia followed. Up the hill, they both went toward a house. Kaleb made it all the way to the top. Mia - about 90% before she slipped, causing her shoe to fall off. I was there right behind her to fix her shoe and encourage her the rest of the way up to the top.

Getting down is a different story.

This photo was taken on March 2, 2013.

But rather than tell people they can’t shoot their food — the food they are so proud to eat that they need to share it immediately with everyone they know — he simply takes them back into his kitchen to shoot as the plates come out. “We’ll say, ‘That shot will look so much better on the marble table in our kitchen,’ ” Mr. Bouley said. “It’s like, here’s the sauce, here’s the plate. Snap it. We make it like an adventure for them instead of telling them no.

I guess at some restaurants they’ll help you take better photos, while at others they’ll stop you from taking photos. I’ve never really thought twice about taking photos of the food I eat. But then again, I don’t go anywhere too fancy.

Yes, it’s sexist, but it’s also just weird and sad. Why can a boy walk around with Yoda on his underwear, but a young female “Star Wars” fan can’t? It’s gender marketing at its very worst.

Mia has a Darth Vader Star Wars shirt. If she wanted Star Wars underwear, I wouldn’t hesitate in buying them, even if they were boys underwear.

"I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world," he once said. "The Hallelujah, the David's Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion."

Breaking down Leonard Cohen’s classic Hallelujah. I loved this song, even though it has been so played out in the last several years. If you like this song, you should seek out more Leonard Cohen songs.

Are you looking at me?

We were hanging out in the living room on a Sunday afternoon before baby Graecyn’s arrival when I took this photo. Mia was enjoying a few vanilla wafers and wearing her sunglasses while watching an episode of Dora the Explorer.

This photo was taken on November 4, 2012.

I wanted to take a photo of Graecyn yesterday with my iPhone 4S. I launched the camera app from the lock screen. The familiar shutter image appeared but didn’t proceed any further through the process. I tried again and again, quitting a relaunching, but nothing happened.

I did a hard reset and tried booting into different camera apps I have on my iPhone, but each resulted in no joy.

I did a web search and found that this a problem experienced by some users. I went through the necessary restore steps, even wiping my phone completely without restoring from a backup. The problem did not go away.

I’m guessing it is a hardware issue since it affects all the photo-taking apps I had. We’ll see what the Genius Bar says tomorrow.

Update: Just got back from the Apple Store. The problem was the hardware - the front camera was no longer working. This is one of the things I like about an iPhone, the ability to go to the Apple Store to get it fixed. Where would I go to get my Android phone fixed if I had a problem? The carrier is most likely. I’m not sure their level of service would be the same.

Graecyn Belle was born at 1:50am on November 8. 2012. She weighs 6 lbs 10 oz, and is 19 1/2 inches long, with a thick head of hair like her sister. Mommy, baby, and family are doing great!