MPsan

A rainy night in Guatemala, one year ago. Only the gays have enough sense to carry an umbrella, apparently. Who could possibly be taking this picture? I have no idea.

Photos are nice. I hope you read my blog in an RSS reader or Google Reader or something, because this blog page is really ugly now. I wanted to kill the sidebar, so that pictures can be bigger and look nicer.

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Here's a hot tip from a really cheap guy who loves music: if you are still buying your digital music from iTunes, you are paying too much. Have you checked out the Amazon.com mp3 store? It is awesome, and I have yet to find an album that isn't cheaper there than on iTunes. They have a new, basically unbeatable sale every day. This week they had the new Killers album up on its first day of release for just $3.99. Yesterday they had the new Coldplay EP, "Prospekt's March" for only $0.99. Eight songs for only 99 cents!

Another really awesome example is this 50 albums for $5 each sale that they have going on right now. 50 of their picks for the top albums of 2008 on sale for only $5 each. Lots of cool stuff like Jack Johnson, Coldplay, Death Cab, Vampire Weekend, Beck, Radiohead, Sugarland, Paste Magazine's pick for the best album of the year - She and Him's "Volume One," Fleet Foxes, and the "High School Musical 3" soundtrack. OK, that last one is maybe just for me and Liza. Oh, and the Avett Brothers. I know some of you out there are just devoted to the Avett Brothers. I don't really know them, but I sure liked the sound of the previews that I heard from "The Second Gleam" album. And for $5 maybe I'll take the risk...

One more tip: if you scroll down the page and click on "See all Top mp3 Albums," it will show you a list of the current 50 bestsellers - a good way to see what's at a discount, since that tends to drive up sales - and each album's price. Do that and you'll see that the new Copeland album is available for $3.99, as is "Oh, Inverted World" by The Shins. And "A Charlie Brown Christmas"? $1.99. Deals, steals, everywhere.

You have to download a little tool in order to get mp3s from the site, but it takes like 60 seconds and no effort whatsoever. You can set up the tracks to play in your iTunes or Windows Media libraries. Oh, and I'm totally not making any money for this endorsement. :) No referral credits or anything. Just thought you might want to save a little money too.

Currently Listening to:
"Sleep Through the Static" by Jack Johnson