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04.30.04 but before i go, be sure to check out this review of this weekend's mega-mini-epic tv movie nightmare, 10.5. hysterical. # our dsl went down for the count earlier this week and we bailed, opting for a (wow-faster) cable modem. so far so good, although i don't pretend to believe that one communication conglomerate is going to be easier to deal with than another. but the speed...wow! right now i'm getting ready to leave for coachella, so you can think of me all weekend, baking alive in the desert sun (103 degrees, natch). here's hoping radiohead can really make it. yikes. # 04.26.04 i'm checking email and catching up on the web from the coffee shop around the corner from our apartment right now. our dsl has been out for two days now, thanks in no small part to sbc, one of the cornerstones in the axis of utility evil (SBC, AT&T Wireless, Comcast). so i had to come here to get my fix. so be it, since our apartment is the same approximate temperature as the griddle in a fry kitchen right about now. i love warm san francisco nights, but our apartment is something of a sauna on days like this. # 04.24.04 have you, like me, been wondering what the infamous dan g has been doing at his job as an almost architect? well friends, i have found the answer that you have all been hungering for. how's dresden, dan? # today is national astronomy day. save the hubble! that is all. # 04.22.04 if i told you all of the things that are great about my new job, it would just sound like i hated my old job. which isn't true. so i'll just tell you that i love it. i know i made the right decision, and that feels good. # 04.19.04
tim o'reilly responds (quite well, thank you) to criticisms of google's coming gmail service. i don't want to be a parrot about new technology (i am), but tim's analysis of these criticisms is really spot-on. (then he spins off into technophille fantasy land, but so be it.) # the observer takes a semi-critical look at happiness. what makes us happy? and why are we, as a culture, so damned depressed all the time, when life's so much better than it used to be? i mean, when was the last time your family was stricken with cholera? # the times has an interesting (though not terribly new) story on mickey mouse. it's interesting to realize that the poor mouse has been sucked of any life he might have originally had. he's not a character anymore, he's a logo. as the times points out, mickey's got declining relevance to kids today, who don't know him from a powerpuff girl; what context can disney present him in if he doesn't have a character, a back story, or any kind of humanity? # apple rebuffs real's request to open the FairPlay copy-protection standard used by the itunes music store (and more importantly, the ipod). first mistake of apple's new music dominance. i mean, didn't these guys learn anything when microsoft clobbered them in the PC market? allowing users of realnetwork's music services to buy and use ipod's wont hurt apple a bit — especially if they aren't turning more than a few cents on the itunes music store, as they claim. if the idea's to push the ipod (not a bad idea either; it's an awesome piece of hardware that's not receiving any significant challenges from anyone, and it makes apple a pretty penny, if recent financial results are any indication) then licensing to real wouldn't be much of a problem. but if history is any indicator, and in my opinion, it is, then the man with the most pieces of cheap hardware on the market will win the race in the end, regardless of the quality of the alternatives. # 04.16.04 did at&t and cingular already start making the switch? i've heard from a few people that are starting to pick up the cingular network on their at&t handsets around the bay area, # 04.15.04 had these lying around on my hard drive for a while now (actually, these files came off my last pc, i think) but never got around to posting any. these are scans from a very distant relative, depicting my grandfather's youth in pre-WWII branchport, new york. some, of course, are older than that. note the picture of my grandfather, smirking in his uniform. (the men on both sides of my family are notorious for their ears..) my personal favorite though is the trolley ("dancing, electric park, to night").
# 04.12.04 i'm not usually much for those productivity enhancement applications that people like to install on their computers. you know, the ones that run in the background and do this or that silly thing that probably wasn't included in the original OS for a damn good reason. i never find much use for them. but i was reading this article over at o'reilly on "launchers" for os x and i discovered quicksliver. and i have to say, this is a damn cool program. ostensibly, it's a quick-launcher for your applications, so you can find and open programs quickly, without having to load them all into the doc or without having to go to the mouse. but i've been using quicksliver as a kind of finder-alternative, jumping directly to the folder i want, without having to go out to the finder and mouse to it. and i'm enjoying the ability to search the address book, my bookmarks and perform basic functions (sending email, im, google search) with a few simple keystrokes. i'm shocked how much i like this program. # 04.10.04 what what what a fucking week. it's been a long while since i've indulged myself in one of those oh-so-bloggish blow by blow journal posts. so:
# 04.09.04 i'm a little sad today to see that pitchfork has given a lukewarm review to the first LP released by dolorean. i saw this band before i heard them, and i'm glad that i did, because pitchfork isn't entirely inaccurate in their evaluation (great effort, but not terribly memorable). i too felt that the album was a little flat; it's a very beautiful, simple folk-infused sound, but it doesn't exactly stick to your ribs. but it was clear when i saw these guys opening for east mountain south that they had developed their beyond what they put down on this album. they had added a lap steel instead of the cello that appears on the record; the extra twang was just what these songs needed to balance them and pull them up and out. and as a band, they were great; their sound was tight and they played together, five men all of the same mind. singer/songwriter al james was (besides being a super super nice guy) humble, honest and equally in tune with his band and his audience. as a group of musicians, they pulled together a very rich, very open sound, something that was (like al himself) honest and humble. listening to dolorean live was like being invited into the songs; they weren't trying to impress anyone, just to play really fucking well. in all truth, it was one of the best shows i have ever seen, without question. made all the better for me, because i came with no expectations. which is how i suggest you approach this album, if you can find it. al was telling my friends and i how much trouble they were having getting the album placed in stores (even independents) so i suggest you check the album out on itunes if you can't find it nearby. but check it out. # have you heard the raveonettes? yes, it's another "the" band. but they're quite awesome. i went with some friends to see them at bottom of the hill, one of the best clubs for shows in the city. they put on a really great, solid rock show. and they rocked out better than anyone i've seen recently. i mean, these guys can throw out a massive, beautiful wall of indie rock noise. it was totally simple, fuzzed out guitar rock, and it was great. plus, i got to see kate's picture on a screened tile mosaic on the back wall of the club, a moment from her local rock fame etched out right in front of me. very cool. # listen to the new album from wilco online now. the album's release has been pushed back to June 22, due to front man Jeff Tweedy's recent rehab situation. i haven't finished listening to the album yet, so i will withhold comment. here's hoping it's as pearlescent as yankee hotel foxtrot. # i'm sure everyone's seen the chicken thing. still, i have to post this thing. i mean, yes, the chicken's head is one of the scariest things i have ever seen, a la the scary rabbit in donnie darko; but still, this is a fantastic example of how companies can exploit the internet for clever, targeted viral marketing. when something's this well thought out and this funny, it stops being advertising. it becomes something that increases your awareness of the company sponsoring it without making you feel creepy and exploited. # 04.05.04 yes, it's true. i have an eye infection. not an eye inflection, which i might find a way to enjoy, but rather an eye infection. not pinkeye, which is quite a relief, but still something equally uncomfortable and nasty and completely unattractive. i feel blurry and gross. clearly, i spoke too soon (see below). additional: i also learned today (thanks, web-md!) that eye twitches are totally normal. # 04.03.04 do you ever have a really great day? one of those days when nothing really happens, yet everything seems to go right? yeah, but i've been having a lot of those since monday. today was a great one. i woke up earlier than usual for a saturday and went out to meet kate. we wrote for a while at one of the coffee shops in her neighborhood, because saturday's are better days to write, when your mind is fresh and still your own and isn't polluted by the voices of the day, of work and of the city. after that, i got a haircut, which must rank right up there in my top ten things to do. i just love the whole experience, made that much better by the fact that i have a great hairdresser (should i say stylist?) who i enjoy seeing. and i felt great about the cut, because i'm growing my hair out right now and it's really reached a point where i feel good about it just recently, when i can stop worrying that i need a hat and can stop feeling self-conscious about it. tangent: i come from a family that holds their hairdressers in a different place than most. my mother's hairdresser died suddenly last week. my mom had been seeing vickie for as long as i can remember; she was quite definitely a friend of the family, someone i can comfortably say we all felt close to. i'm not sure i want to go into detail, more because i couldn't do the story justice than out of any discomfort. vickie was unaware of her illness until it was too late, and died days after being admitted to the hospital, just minutes before my mother arrived to see her. needless to say, it upset my mother (all of us, really) something terrible. i came home from the haircut to an empty apartment, which i tried to scrub clean, blasting music and making a fool of myself dancing alone. when jessie came home, we went out to have a lovely and perfectly satisfying thai dinner. now i sit, waiting for kate, with whom i am going to see fojimoto, who i have been anxious to see play live since i first heard them playing at kate and jen's wedding. it should be a nice cap to a great day, bleeding into another and then another. i hope i'm not being presumptuous, but from here it feels like they might go on forever. # 04.01.04 simpson's on strike! # newsmap is an interesting exploration of visual aggregation of information. what the site essentially does is provide a ranked treemap visualization of the moment's news from around the world, based on the beautifully (if not always completely appropriate) impartial google news site. if only the story excerpts were a little easier to read, i think newsmap would quit decisively be agreed to have the better format for quickly viewing the news of the moment. the visualization really helps immediately gauge the importance of each story in the context of the rest of the current news. what a great interface idea! # « March 2004 | archive index | May 2004 » built with movabletype |
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