I love using the Amazon Cloud player both on the cloud and with music downloaded to my phone.  I have been expanding my music library a lot this year.  Here are some of my favorite albums I became aware of this year.

Watkin Tudor Jones  - "The Fantastic Kill"
South African white guy rap who keeps changing his name.  He used to be Max Normal, then Watkin and becomes the Ninja in Die Antwoord with Yo Landi

Die Antwoord-" $0$ "
Check out some of their videos.  Evil boy, enter the ninja and rich bitch.   They sort of both embrace and are satirical with their South African white trash kind of presentation.

Tim Exile's-" Nuisance Gabberet Lounge"
Seems like a haphazard dj thing but isn't at all.  He is a great innovator, creator and teacher of his craft.  Also seems like a very nice nerdy guy.   I keep playing this one over and over for some reason.

Tune Yards - "WHO KILL"
What a voice.  Her song Powa builds into the winner for sexiest song of the year for me.

Afx- "Analogue Bubblebath" and "Hangable Auto Bulb" (love the song Laughable Butane Bob)

James Blake- Four albums: " CMYK"  Also" Klavierwerke", "James Blake" and "Enough Thunder"
Very unique stuff that is very well thought out.

Tinariwen-I love both their albums I have  "Tassili" and "Aman Iman: Water is life"
I don't know how to label them, North African rock? blues? with soul.

 Boubacar Traore- "Marcre"
Old school song writer from Mali  Wiki

Squarepusher- "Go Plastic"
Listen past the first few minutes of the first song.

I also like all of these a albums a lot but find myself just adding them to a my random mixes rather than listening to them as a solo album.  If you plan to ignore all of these I would encourage you to at least look into Amon Tobin.  Jazz meets electronica.

M83- Hurry Up We're Dreaming
Deer Hunter Halcyon Digest
Boards of Canada- Music has the right to children
Amon Tobin- Supermodified and Permutation
Four Tet - There is Love in you
Youth Lagoon- The year of hibernation

Don Cherry's Piano Desk

Why don't down hill racers use fat bike rim and tire sizes?

What do you ride when 6'9" 235lbs.  Nolan from the MTBR fat bike form rides this.  This bike is a beast.  Notice that is a big fat larry on the front looking so much like a regular old tire.

 The rim cut outs are very nice.

Moonlander

I want you.  
 I want you so bad.

Pic from http://fat-bike.com/

From a great site I found called Street Art Utopia.

Fun ride near Gifford Lake

 Minnesota River down by Chaska

 I love my little frame bag.

 They are doing a lot of work on this trail. I think it will go to Belle Plain in a more formal fashion in the future.   Looks like they took out a rail bridge over the river at one spot.  This one has the tracks off and was a bit nerve racking to ride over when icy.  Scary to look down through the big gaps while ridding over it.

 Crooked face that does not convey the fun I had.

Hard to see in this pic but Gifford lake is on the right.  The marsh land was frozen just right to ride over.

Winter Bike Expo

Freewheel winter bike expo in Minneapolis was a great event. I thank Freewheel, Surly, Salsa and whoever else made it happen. I really enjoyed it and learned a ton. Lots of nice people and I keep questioning myself but I am pretty sure I counted 48 new fat bikes in one room. Wow. I couldn't even get them all in one shot. Rode two sizes of both aluminum Mukluks, tow sizesof the necro pugs and one Moonlander. What I learned is I love them all. Mukluks have a taller head tube feel and my current pugs, the necro and the Moonlander all ride very similarly. Any doubt I had about the moonlander being my next bike is gone.   I really enjoyed all aspects of the event I attended. The talk about the Arrowhead 135 was great. People interested in winter cycling and fat bikes specifically are a diverse, low key and friendly bunch that I feel proud to be a part of.

If you are in the market for a laptop/tablet computer I wish some one would buy the android based ASUS Transformer Prime when it comes out in mid December.  I don't need one an really want to at least buy it vicariously through someone I know.  Looks like it will be super functional especially with Ice Cream Sandwich operating system coming soon to it.  Yes that is the same software that will be on my likely next phone the Galaxy Nexus (prime).   Other than your soul being completely in Google's hands I think this will be a fantastic combo to merge all my media, calendars, phone, apps, books, soul debt etc.   These same things can certainly be done a lot of creative ways already but these two products really seem unique and to be getting a lot of attention by the android world which means they will also be on the front end of new software and rooting/hacking/bug fix like info.  My HTC incredible was a little like this when it first came out and I have had a year and a half? of being glad I was on the front end of the amazing and wonderful android/smart phone wave. 
 I am primed for the next wave.