So, my birthday is coming up on April 6th. My sister Lisa keeps bugging me asking me what I want. I have no idea. There is nothing at the top of my head that I want. I have no ideas for her. I could go with the generic gift card to Best Buy or somewhere, but I don’t really buy anything from anywhere anymore. I really am at a loss for what I want. One good thing is my b-day falls on the first day of Fort Zumwalt’s spring break, so I won’t be working on my birthday. I’ll sleep late and chillax a little. I might have to call some friends and go out that night. Maybe hit up Ameristar or chill at the bar near my house, Kokomo’s. Last year, I hung out with Heather and my friend Mike, who shares the same birthday as me, at Kokomo’s. Mike is now living it up in Chi-town now so I bet he’s got some nice plans. Most of my friends live in other cities now so it makes it difficult to see them and make any kind of big plans. I shall give it some more thought.

No, not because I’m a rapper named Mims, but because I’d changed my site to this sexy new theme. The front page is still basic format as the changes I made a few days ago, just using a new theme. (and yes, it took me like 2 or 3 hours to mod that front page when it would have taken Kristin only like 15 minutes. Oh well, we learn as we go along I guess). And I must say, it would have been so much harder to do this if not for having my own web server and wp install on a usb stick. No uploading, just saving and refreshing. Very nice.

I have set a goal for myself. It is quite an ambitious one. One that will take lots and lots of time. While listening to Jaguar Skills’ mix 1979-2006 I decided to obtain all 800 songs he used in his 46 minute mix. These are some of the best songs in hip hop history. Let’s hope I can get them all. The newer songs will be easy, especially since I already have them on CD or mp3 format. I’ll keep updating my progress in this long task. If you are interested in what songs are in the mix, in order, they are:

King Tim III (Personality Jock) – The Fatback Band
Sugahill Gang – Rappers Delight – The Sugar Hill Gang
Rapping & Rocking The House – Funky 4+1
Zulu Nation Throwdown – Afrika Bambaata And The Cosmic Force
High Powered Rap – Crash Crew
8th Wonder – The Sugar Hill Gang
The Breaks [Long Version] – Kurtis Blow
Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll – Vaughan Mason & Crew
Monster Jam – Spoonie Gee & Sequence
Apache (version) – The Sugar Hill Gang
That’s The Joint – Funky Four Plus One
Genius Rap – Dr. Jeckel
Super Rhymes – Jimmy Spicer
Heartbeat – Taana Gardner
Rockin’ It – The Fearless Four
The Message – Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
Buffalo Gals – Malcolm McLaren
Scorpio – Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five
Magic’s Wand – Whodini
Read more

speaker Many of you may recognize the name Cut Chemist from the superb hip hop group Jurassic 5. He’s also worked with Ozomatli and ska band Less Than Jake. He recently came out with his first full-length album entitled The Audience’s Listening. The album is an amazing blend of samples and scratching taking you on a trip through some music you probably haven’t heard before. I really enjoy this album, and this song The Garden has some great samples in it. This isn’t rap, it is hip hop. For those who don’t know the difference, turn on the radio and listen to what’s being played. That is rap. This is hip hop, or at least one aspect of it. So give it a listen and check out this amazing album.

[audio:http://pieceofshep.com/audio/04-The-Garden.mp3]

So, you might have noticed some changes in the way the site is laid out. Or maybe you didn’t, who knows? Anyway, to tell you a bit about what’s going on, I have moved my blog from the sub-directory of /blog/ to root. I wanted all my blog post permalinks to stay the same though, so I added /blog/ to the custom permalink structure. This makes more sense to me for the next thing I did.

I wanted a static homepage and for blog posts to appear on the page /blog/. I assumed when I tested this that the permalinks would then be /blog/whatever/structure/i-want/. This wasn’t the case. It was using mikeschepker.com/permalinks. I figured since blog posts would appear on a page that the permalinks would have that page in it’s structure. That is why I had to add /blog/ to it. I think it makes more sense to do it that way as well. Why have a page for blog posts but not have that page in the permalinks?

The static homepage was not created by me. My good super-awesome friend Kristin built and styled it for me. I just gave her the general idea of what i wanted. Big shout outs to her for be the most awesome chica I know.

The projects page is no longer around, instead you can go to my home page and look at the categories to find the websites, scholarly works, and WordPress works. The feed problem of not redirecting /blog/feed to mikeschepker.com/feed/ seems to have fixed itself because both are redirecting properly. How? I have no clue. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it breaks. Let me know if anything is broken and I will try and fix it.

Thanks again Kristin!