The Quixotic Engineer

This winter I took a course called System Software. In it, we learned a neat programming language called Perl. Perl was handy for that class because it happens to be very good at parsing text, and we used it to write a simple compiler. Being the pragmatic kind of person that I am, I immediately began to think of ways to use this new found skill, and the opportunity arose in a rather roundabout way.

You see, I have what I’d describe as a fairly large collection of music (roughly 18.6 days worth according to iTunes). This sometimes causes problems when I’m out shopping for CDs and I can’t quite recall which ones I already own. iTunes is able to export a list of your music as an XML document, but you end up with a large unwieldy file with roughly 15 lines per song.

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Cover versions. Most bands try them. The results are usually bland, pedestrian and completely unoriginal. Every once in a while, though, you come across a cover that completely changes the way you look at a song; something daring that makes major changes to the instrumentation, pacing and tone.

I recently stumbled upon one such cover, and it inspired me to write this post. The song “Just”, originally by Radiohead, is a great alternative rock track that features terrific wailing electric guitars and plaintive vocals. That is until British artist/producer Mark Ronson decided to inject it with a syringe full of groove.

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Montreal is a fantastic city in the summer; it has four universities downtown, a great selection of bars, clubs and venues, and a fairly unique mix of English, French, and a thousand other languages. With the F1, Just For Laughs, Francofolies and (most importantly) The Montreal Jazz Festival in town, there is no shortage of fun things to do.

I got to sample three of my personal favorites iconic Montreal institutions yesterday, so I figured I’d write about them:

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