Kevin Purdy

Sarah and Samuel Beam, on-stage at Asbury Hall/Babeville, Nov. 12, 2008. Photo by LibraRonin.

Iron & Wine is one of the very few music acts the wife and I have Absolute Agreement on, so we snapped up tickets to their Nov. 12 gig at Ani DiFranco’s Babeville, a.k.a. Asbury Hall, as soon as we knew about the gig.

Samuel Beam walked onto the stage of the renovated church hall, looked out from heavy eyes and said, “Wow. I didn’t know there were this many people in Buffalo.” At that moment, it seemed a bit like … everything anyone’s ever said about Buffalo after spending some real time here (or so I tell myself). Listening to it now, though, it seems more in line with his general shyness and modesty, to see that many people lining the halls of the arching space.

I teased PlayedLastNight.com a bit about the literalness of their releases, but, one week later, you can preview, buy and download the whole 18-song, 1-hour-35-minute Iron & Wine set from that show. The basic $9.95 package gets you MP3 files with a 160 kb/s bitrate–decent enough for headphones and non-audiophile enjoyment. $3 more gets you (via email, two days later) FLAC files that haven’t lost any audio quality in compression.

Quick tip on the sly: One YouTube user has posted three full song videos from the Asbury Hall gig. Consumer-cam quality, but pretty neat angle.

Tags:   Buffalo · music · video3 Comments

Nine things to like about the Nickel City

So the New York Times gave Buffalo’s architectural treasures the feature treatment on Sunday, detailing our city’s beautiful contradictions and breathtaking buildings. We’ve got projects designed by architectural progressives who had brilliant designs on the future, while the modern city itself … well, that’s another 40 posts or so.

They also put together a pretty great slideshow with original shots of Buffalo’s prettier parts. With a smidge of work in Picasa 3, I patched those shots into a few wallpapers for those who might dig such a thing.

They’re in 1680 x 1050 resolution. If requested, I can post more/different aspects and sizes. To download, right-click on the links below and choose “Save Links As” or “Save Target As,” depending on your browser.

• NYT Buffalo Architecture 1 (Guaranty doorway at center, spaced, with drop shadows)
• NYT Buffalo Architecture 2 (Guaranty doorway at center, less spacing, no drop shadows)
• NYT Buffalo Architecture 3 (Skyline shot of Ellicott Square Building at center, spaced, with drop shadows)
• NYT Buffalo Architecture 4 (Skyline shot of Ellicott Square Building at center, almost no spacing )

Comments and improved version links are welcome.

Tags:   architecture · Buffalo · photos · Things I Really Like1 Comment

Zilly Rosen of ZILLYCAKES in Buffalo, NY, builds a likeness of presidential candidate Barack Obama using 1240 cupcakes., originally uploaded by shastio.

Politics aside, that is some serious devotion to a cause. A five-frosting, delciously decadent cause.

Tags: No Comments.

I was a contributor at Buffalo Buffet, the Western-New-York-centric food blog run by my good friend Andrew Galarneau, from its earliest inception.

Buffalo Buffet, however, is no more. Now the focus is wider, the posts meatier, and the site a bit more agile and active. I’m helping him launch One Big Kitchen, and so far, it’s been a great learning experience, and a good deal of fun.

Right now, I’m managing the “News Bites”–little links and tips, updated nearly-daily, in the left-hand sidebar–and helping out with a lot of the back-end design and WordPress tweaking. In the not-too-distant future, I’m hoping to get some seriously juicy posts up over there, and inviting anyone with similar passions to do the same.

Got a tip, an awesome food link, or an inkling to write your own gastro-post? Email me at kevin [at] onebigkitchen.com.

Tags:   announcements · blogging · food · One Big KitchenNo Comments.

It was, for lack of a better word, art.

The tagline of The Soup, possibly the only show on the E! cable network that won’t ruin your day, is that they watch it all so you don’t have to. In these times, that is no small service.

I watch this show every week, without fail. If I’m away, I set my DVR to record it Saturday and Sunday, as a fail-safe, because for all the easy targets–the Kardashian/Lohan/Abdul bloc, the reality non-shows, Cee Dub’s Dutch Oven Cooking–those brave scanners of cable culture ofen find something truly amazing. If Dadaist morning shows don’t do it for you, try Willard Scott’s Today-Show-sponsored madness.

It’s one of those wonderful accidents of television, like Space Ghost Coast to Coast in its prime, when nobody at the network has yet noticed how weirdly brilliant their tiny little show has become.

Tags:   cat eating spaghetti · Things I Really Like · videoNo Comments.

I’ve got a piece in this month’s insert to The Real Deal, a New York City-based magazine that covers real estate news, about how Buffalo managed to escape the recent credit and housing downturns. Titled Buffalo stays cold — and calm, it details how the conditions in Western New York’s economy and the character of the city itself have kept over-eager flippers, predatory lenders, and other market-crashers (mostly) at bay.

It’s kind of a big deal for me, being my first print published outside the Buffalo-area market (and not on my main squeeze, Lifehacker). It also generated a bit of discussion over at Buffalo Rising. Here’s a standard writerly caveat for you: The story goes much farther than the headline suggests.

Tags:   Buffalo · clips · real estate2 Comments

Photo by surrealist303.

Before heading out on a week’s vacation, I had to point out the awesomeness of “The Munchie Box,” picked up by my friend Andrew at Buffalo Buffet. The “standard” size costs about 5 British pounds, comes in a 10-inch pizza box, and includes doner kebab meat, nan bread, chicken tikka, pakora, onion rings, fries, some kind of slaw-type salad, and two kinds of sauce.

I mean, seriously. We in Buffalo have Jim’s SteakOut, Mighty Taco, and roughly 6,387 bars open until at least 2 a.m. serving beef, wings, and all kinds of so-terrible-it’s-fantastic food–not to mention Nick Tahou’s just a short hop away. But it seems a challenge has been issued, one involving whose populace can find the grease-soaked bottom of the culinary barrel first. Let’s get to work on this when I return, shall we?

Tags:   Buffalo · food4 Comments

A ThinkPad, a cat that doesn’t understand personal space, coffee, and water–vital parts of my morning routine.

My social-media-savvy (and skilled) fellow Lifehacker Tamar Weinberg did the yeoman’s job of getting the whole editorial team to spill what we use in discussing, planning, researching, and writing the site. My own picks and preferences are about halfway down the page–they’ll stand out for all the Linux gear (plus the open admission to using Vista without a pistol to my frontal lobe).

Tags:   geekery · Lifehacker · navel gazing1 Comment

Brian Ibbott, creator and host of the long-running, ground-breaking music podcast Coverville, agreed to chat with me last week, and the Q&A is posted at Lifehacker.

It was really weird, in a great way, talking one-on-one with a voice I’ve been hearing for years–on car trips, during dish-washing sessions, over the occasional jog, and in other spots. But he’s very candid, very honest, and didn’t mind when one of my questions went for more than a minute (which got axed in editing, by the way.

Tags:   geekery · LifehackerNo Comments.

If you’re a return visitor, you might notice that I’ve changed the looks of this place. Let me tell you, it’s a lot more fun than house decorating, but it involves just as many challenges.

For those who follow WordPress minutiae, I made the move from the PressRow theme, designed by Chris Pearson, to Cutline, which Pearson also worked on. PressRow hadn’t been seeing any updates in a long time, and I find that managing sidebar “widgets” is a lot easier than manually embedding “plug-ins” on the sidebar.

The sad part? What really pushed the upgrade was the new WordPress iPhone app, which requires an up-to-date installation. I don’t know when, exactly, I’ll be away from my computer, with a wi-fi connection, and in need of writing a quick post, but, hey, what kind of tech writer would I be if I didn’t prepare for the pretend data-pocalypse?

Here’s an exclusive, exciting sneak peek at the late-night fun involved in re-building a site to fit the Cutline theme!

Tags:   announcements · WordPressNo Comments.