Holidays, RSS, James (UPDATED)

(Scroll down for update.)

Belated merry Christmas and seasons greetings to all, even you godless secularists! Posting has been light in recent days since the Missus and I have been about our holiday tasks. We're enjoying this new baby of ours quite a bit and entertaining guests and visitors. Internet activity has been mostly limited to using Skype video to show off the little tax credit to remote family.

Regular posting should be resuming shortly.

Meanwhile there have been problems reported with the RSS feed for Spacetropic. This is new since I switched to Blogger Beta. If you are having trouble please take a moment to email me and let me know which feed-reader software you are using - I hope to have the problem fixed ASAP.

And farewell to the godfather of soul James Joseph Brown Jr.

American music is unimaginable without him. Soul, funk, rap - it would hardly exist today in the same form, and his incredible discipline, musicianship and energy should be an example to every aspiring star. Today I heard an interview with (Cincinnati native) Bootsy Collins talking about how joining the band with James was like going into the military - while everyone was freaking out in the late 60s and 70s with hippie clothes and long hair the James Brown band demanded pressed shirts, neat tailoring and shined shoes. And if you missed a few notes or watched the girls in the crowd instead of keeping your eyes on James for the cues he would dock your next damn paycheck.

Rest in peace Mr. Brown.

Update: All newsfeed (RSS) readers, please use the newly revised feed, located here. You may need to copy the link into your newsreader. This should eliminate some the problems I've been having, and it will remain current even with changes that may happen to this website.