Apple's new OS: Tiger OSX

I just got done watching the majority of the Apple keynote that Steve Jobs made at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Needless to say, I'm pretty impressed with what they have done with the new Mac OSX Tiger. At first, I thought it was just some minor tweaks here and there, but if you actually watch the demos on the video, the stuff they have done is pretty amazing. Unfortunately it's not available until the first half of 2005, but that will allow for a lot more features to be added.

One of the new features is called Spotlight, where it uses the technology from the iTunes search engine (which is extremely fast) and has incorporated it system-wide to apply to all files, and even a few applications. And as he demonstrated it, he showed us an example of how it picked up meta-data: it picked up some tiny writing on a PDF file of a map of California and brought it up in no time. It's like Google, only for everything on your computer, including some applications, and ANY data held within the file.

The other thing that would make things much, much easier for reading the amount of web content that I do is called RSS, or really simple syndication. Basically, it takes a website and boils everything down into text that can be used by a newsreader program. What this allows you to do is browse the text portion of the most recent updates to many websites in a fast amount of time. It's like reading a newspaper written in book form, without all the funky formatting, the advertisements and photos and bs, it's just text and headers. I think some offer a small degree of photos, depending on the settings. Anyway, they have built it right into Safari instead of having a separate program to do it, like NetNewsWire (they are probably going to be mad about this [on edit: they aren't]). The best part is, it's searchable. Now why is that significant? Because RSS is always the latest (and only the latest, depending on the feed) information put on a website. So you could search for all the most recent (and that means in the last 24 hours up to a week or so, depending on the settings) articles from websites for anything. When Steve Jobs did the demo, he looked up Cheney and tons of stuff came up because of his recent use of the F-word. Not only that, but you can save searches, and every time you check the RSS feeds, you can do a search for Cheney, or whatever you want. This sure would be helpful for my business class because we're doing a big project that requires recent articles to be a part of our presentation. Searching for "international trade" across hundreds of RSS feeds would make life very easy. So since that is something that will advance RSS and Atom even further, I've incorporated both RSS and Atom feeds for my site on the left-hand side menu bar. This is mostly for newsreaders like NetNewsWire (for Mac) and things like PDA's or iPods, things that you would only read text on. Since I'm updating this site more, I figure that putting a link up to it wouldn't hurt. You know, in case someone might need it.

Feelin' Kinda Patton on iTunes

I'm not sure if this was because of my request to Apple or my email to Patton Oswalt himself, but either way, you can download Feelin' Kinda Patton from iTunes here.

It just came out today, so I downloaded it with literally just minutes left before I had to scramble out the door for work (the true beauty of the iPod/iTunes marriage: it downloads/transfers fast, and it's portable) and listened to it on the way to work. It's funny as hell. Highly recommended. The part where he talks shit about hippies and 80's metal bands is worth the CD price alone.

[iTunes is available here if you don't have it.]

Re: Coke is Disgusting

After I put up the last post, Coke is Disgusting, I went to the grocery store. While I was checking out, I noticed that a very horizontally challenged woman (read: fat lady) wandered in line right behind me. Being curious since I had just posted something about how disgusting Coke is, I wondered if she had any soda in her choice selection of grocery items. Among the carbohydrate-laden cart (a wholesale size box of crackers and LOTS of bread items), I noticed four 12-packs of cheap cola. I'm almost being rude looking into her cart, but I couldn't help it. After I had checked out, she had all her groceries ready for checkout. When the cashier grabbed the 12-pack of soda she had put up there, she said, "I have SIX of those." Underneath all that other stuff lurked two more 12-packs of cheap cola than what I had originally counted. When she said that, I stood there confused for just a second. The guy was already done with bagging my groceries. When I turned around, the bagger looked at me like, what are you doing, get outta here! I said thanks and left.

I couldn't help but thinking something like this photo. Well, maybe not the naked part.

Coke is Disgusting

As much as I've ever tried to like it, I just can't stand to drink Coke. I remember when I went with my family on a tour of Meremac Caverns in Missouri, and the guide had pointed out that there was an acid that is used to form the stalagmites/stalactites that is found in a beverage that we drink all the time. Then the guide asked us if we could guess what it was. I was trying to think...what would I drink that has an acid in it? Then my dad yelled out, "Soda!" Not that it was a defining moment for me, but I've always hated anything carbonated that was really sweet. I've never liked Coke, except with rum or whiskey in it.

So this past week, I had decided to take the edge off after a long week at school and work. So I go into the kitchen, get some ice, and poured some rum into a glass. I open the fridge and grab the Coke that had been sitting in there for about a month and a half from when I had bought a 12-pack to mix with drinks. Anything that sits too close to the vent in my fridge has a bad habit of freezing (I know, I should adjust that). So the can froze and then the top burst, leaking soda all over. I looked at it when I first noticed it, and I put off cleaning it for a couple days. Today I cleaned out the bottom of my fridge and this is what I found on the glass pane by the crisper:

That is what Coke looks like after it leaks and sits for a few days at the bottom of your fridge. It had the consistency of cold pancake syrup. To think, that's what your body has to process when you drink soda. Usually the argument is Coke vs. Pepsi. Consider me nonpartisan in that debate. I hate all sodey-pop equally. I'll take my water, tea or coffee. Ironically, I don't mind a Red Bull now and then. But I could never drink it like most people drink soda.

For anyone who likes a healthy caffeine drink, I read in Men's Health that they recommended the energy drink Invigor8 which is supposed to be good for you. I tried it and I like it. It tastes a lot like V8 Splash, but with caffeine.

Affirmative What?

Something that ran through my head today...

If you have black AND white parents, thereby making you mulatto, do you still get all the benefits of affirmative action?

[I've been reading a book entitled In Defense of Elitism that examines social programs such as affirmative action and compensating "oppressed" groups of people instead of allowing the old adage, "The best man for the job gets the job." I'm guessing that they give them the benefit of the doubt.]

Patton Oswalt

Since I browse the Jim Goad Netjerk Lounge (click lounge on the left of his site) a couple of times a day, I have come to like a comedian named Patton Oswalt. After reading his many posts over there about his comedian/non-comedian stuff, I noticed a recent one about his new CD that comes out Tuesday June 29th called Feelin' Kinda Patton that he is promoting by saying, "Christians Hate Me, Now It's Your Turn!" He has two sample mp3's [one] [two] from it on his site so you can preview it. Since he actually answers his own email, despite being fairly well known, I figured I'd ask him in so many words if he was going to have his new CD on iTunes. He replied that he would look into it. So with any luck, people will get to purchase Patton Oswalt's first comedy CD on iTunes. I will be buying it next week either way, but I thought it would be cool to have it on iTunes, just to get a wider audience base. Besides that, I really try to promote iTunes considering some people I have met don't even know what it is.

Anyway, Patton will be on Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, and Loveline next week. This is probably the only reason besides Seinfeld that I'm going to keep my new TiVo for Mac, the EyeTV, because once in a while something good might actually come on TV that I want to record.

Reading the diary/blog entries on his site, I found this to be the funniest one, where he addresses his short absence from the site:

"Yes, I know. I will try to stay on it. YOU try doing regular diary updates when you've adopted two adorable black kids, are writing an opera, and are caught in the coils of opium addiction."

Gmail4Troops.com/WilWheaton.net

I read on WilWheaton.net about a website where you could put up your Gmail invites for troops, called Gmail4Troops.com. Within ten minutes I had a taker, Joey Niblett from the Army. I still have 3 invites left.

As you may or may not know, Wil Wheaton was the child actor who played Gordie Lachance in my all-time favorite movie, Stand By Me. He runs a great, updated-often blog over at WilWheaton.net.

In the bonus features on the Stand By Me DVD, it is still chilling to hear them talk about River Phoenix, especially when they refer to the part of the movie where his character Chris Chambers dies and you see him disappear, in the last scene of the movie.

Addicted to Starbucks

On the first day of my Intro to Business class, we had some political/ethical debate over larger corportations in America, mostly about Starbucks and Wal-Mart. One girl went on some ethical rant about Wal-Mart, saying that they have bad practices about the way they conduct business, but she was not really specific. Then someone brought up Starbucks. So we got into a discussion on Wal-Mart and Starbucks. The teacher wanted to point out exactly what commodity means, which is basically something that is needed by people, like toothpaste. Starbucks, however is not a commodity, although I think technically it is. A commodity is something that can be sold in a free market, like coffee or toothpaste, regardless of whether it's a luxury or necessity. I think he should have made that distinction, instead of the commodity example.

I can already tell that the teacher is big on capitalism and a free-market economy. He assured us that no matter what, that as long as we stay ahead of the game and keep ourselves educated, we would almost be guaranteed a decent job somewhere.

Slightly off topic, someone brings up the fact that there is a study out that claims Starbucks has more caffeine than perhaps most regular coffee you would buy in a store or get at a gas station. I think my body knew this already, because I have been addicted to Starbucks coffee for a while now. But I can't tell what it is, whether it's the caffeine or the bold taste. I've tried numerous times switching brands and I just can't do it.

For instance:
I've bought a specialty coffee from a diner down the street called Hills Bros. Coffee that you can only order through a restaraunt supply company, so I bought a can from the diner directly. I didn't like my home-brew as much as I do however it is brewed at the diner.

I've bought Folgers, which I used to like, but now I can't stand.

I've bought Don Franciscos, which isn't too bad, but it's not my favorite.

I've bought some Ethiopian coffee at Costco a month or two ago, but it was gross.

I've been to a lot of coffeehouses, but none of them compare to whatever it is that I find gratifying about Starbucks coffee, not the place. But I don't think it's the caffeine issue, because I only drink one, maybe two cups of coffee a day, and I don't "crave" coffee in the middle of the day. And I don't like any other brand of coffee. But if I go for more than a day or two without a good cuppa, I definitely crave it. So, I'm mildly addicted. Ok, I admitted it.

Here is a story that backs the claim that Starbucks has more caffeine than most coffee. From the article:

"Scientists say that means it's easier to become physically dependent on caffeine if you're drinking Starbucks."

Go figure.

Here is one that says that Starbucks does have more caffeine, but the actual caffeine content changes from cup to cup, depending on certain factors.

Here is an article that says basically the same thing the first one does, claiming that Starbucks and other specialty coffee places have an average of 56% more caffeine than doughnut shop or gas station coffee.

Regardless of whether or not it's the caffeine, the taste, or my guess that it's both, I'm not stopping. And I've also made up my mind that I am not wasting my money on what my tastebuds consider second-rate coffee. So let me go dig up the French roast and fire up my espresso machine...

For my general rant on coffee culture, click here and here for the second part.

Downloadable William Gibson Blog

We tossed the idea of making William Gibson's blog into an easily downloadable format on the William Gibson forum for a while. After having a simple epiphany of realizing I don't need Adobe InDesign to create PDF files, I can just export Word files as PDF files, I decided to take on the task of converting 9 months of post-Pattern Recognition blog into a chronologically correct PDF file for easy downloading and portability.

Here it is in three formats:
PDF file - 1.6mb
Rich Text file - 2.1mb
Text only file - 296kb

The Forum that no longer exists...

The EZboard forum that I ran for a few months expired last weekend. As I recall, no one, including myself, had posted anything to it since April 2nd, and scarcely before that. So I just did the right thing and let it expire. The other main guy posting to it went on a trip to Egypt, and I figured that if there was something I wanted to post there, I'd just put it on my site.

What's on my iPod?

Here is the complete listing of every artist, album, and song on my iPod. Not everything on my computer is actually on my iPod, but most of it is. For instance, the William Gibson audiobook for Neuromancer that you can find at the Aleph, is not on my iPod because there are 8 sections, all of them 40-50 minutes long each. That, and a lot of B-side music for albums that I only listen to a couple songs aren't on there, just to save space. My computer has 2819 songs, would play for 8.5 days, and totals 12.42G. My iPod has 2531 songs, would play for 7.5 days, and totals 11.2G of music.

The other thing is, I went through all of my CD's last weekend, (which total up to approximately 372), and I put just about everything I knew I would listen to on my computer. I would say that I only have maybe a little more than half of the total on my computer at the moment, and slightly less than that on my iPod. So what happened to the rest? Well, some of them I bought and I just don't listen to. Some of them are complations that turned out having a couple of songs I initially liked, then just gave up on. A lot of those are soundtracks, too. Most soundtracks that I own I do not listen to. There are some interview disks, some of it is horrid classical, and some of it I bought as compilations just on a whim that turned out to just suck. So, to make a long story short, about half the music I own I actually listen to. Then there's that whole thing of how you change music preferences as you get older. I won't say my overall style changed, but some of the bands I used to like I don't anymore. And there's some, like AC/DC, that I will always love. Back in Black was my first tape, and I still own it.

As you can see, it's scratched up where it's went into the tape deck so many times...ah, the good ol' days...

And as you can see, the times have changed...

What I listen to now is about the same size as that tape...

...but it can hold 500 times the amount of songs on that AC/DC tape.

Faux Steve Jobs' weblog

Apparently, Steve Jobs' weblog that I referred to here is fake. At the bottom of the page is says, "A parody." It's funny, at any rate. I'll admit, I thought it was real for a while, until the thing where it was talking about Gwynneth Paltrow naming her daughter Apple, by saying,

"Congratulations to Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin who gave birth to a baby girl.. named... Apple. All members from Coldplay, Chris' band, own PowerBooks and iPods and record on Macs. Let's see if Windows fans respond by naming their babies Microsoft."

That was true (and funny), but I thought it was weird that Steve Jobs would put that in his personal blog. Either way, it's fairly believeable because it has enough of the Jobs biting sarcasm ingrained in it, particularly when they point the gun at Microsoft.

Too bad there isn't a real one.

Even More Free Music

As if the links to the other three free music sites wasn't enough, here's another one. Amazon has a whole page dedicated to free downloads, but apparently they don't advertise it too much.

[On edit: I don't know what the deal is, but the Amazon server for their free music sucks. First of all, when you hit 'Download Song', it downloads to your download folder, but without any of the tags, so you have to enter those in manually. Secondly, some of the songs I tried to preview first, downloaded the actual 30 second preview to my download folder instead of opening up in the browser. Third, why is the preview only 30 seconds? Fourth, the free downloads area locked up my browser TWICE. Best to stick with the three that I pointed out in the earlier posts. The whole interface is easier, faster, and less confusing.]

QuickTime Virtual Reality

If this doesn't show you how much better QuickTime is than Windows Media Player or RealPlayer, I don't know what will.

Here are two links to some amazing QuickTime VR sites that have a lot of fullscreen panorama VR from all over the world. Of note, this page has underwater VR, and one from the top of Mount Everest. On FullScreenQTVR, there are 360 panorama shots of the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and Mars. There are many more high-quality ones on there, as well.

Definitely worth a look. Dial up users, it might take a while to load.

Here are the links:
Panoramas.dk
FullScreenQTVR.com

More Free Music

In addition to the two sites I posted earlier, Download.com Music also offers free MP3's of pretty much any style you can imagine. On this particular site, just the Rock/Pop section has over 3700 songs in it. And that's only one category.

Rollins on Tavis Smiley

Important update - 8.1.04: I just found a really good program that lets you copy anything that is coming out of your speakers on your computer, with zero loss. So I went to the Tavis Smiley site and copied the show again, this time in high-quality audio. If you can, please update this file, as the audio now is a million times better than before, literally.

UPDATED 8.1.04: Here is an MP3 (10:33/12.2mb) that I recorded tonight from the Tavis Smiley show on KPBS that had Henry Rollins on as a guest. He mostly talked about his recent adventure to Iraq, which was well recieved by the people there. He also noted that he is going on another USO tour to Honduras to visit the troops there doing drug ops. He said the USO lady told him that there hasn't been a USO tour there in over two years because no one wants to go down there. But Henry will. The man is on a mission.

You can now disregard the following that was referencing the old mp3 I had of it:

[A note about the audio: my microphone records fine. Except when I try to record any TV program. I've tried it numerous times with both GarageBand and QuickVoice Recorder, and they have this loud humming sound in the background. For this recording, I used GarageBand and I've managed to tweak it enough so that the loud hum is bearable, but I highly recommend that you turn down your bass when you listen to it.]

Free Music

Webjay.org is a website that organizes free MP3's on the web into personal playlists. They have quite a few songs on there, and it's all free.

Another place to get tons of free music is iCompositions.com for music that was made on the Apple program GarageBand. Most of these are novice attempts at making music with a computer, but there are a lot of quality songs on there. This website has come a long way since I remember it coming into existence earlier this year. The way you view the songs has been upgraded so there isn't so much clicking through stuff. It just automatically loads and you can play it while reading the comments.

[On update: I just dowloaded 32 songs from those two websites and I'm listening to it now. Both sites offer free music, but iCompositions integrates everything (album artwork, song title, artist, album title, and genre) into iTunes for the most part, as long as the person who uploaded it used that information before putting it on the site. The music on both of these sites is awesome.]

Heavy Metal Revenge

I had to post this. This is one of the best news stories yet to come out of modern times. Some guy was angry at the city because he lost some dispute over the local zoning laws, so he builds a fortified bulldozer and wrecks the town and there is nothing anyone could do to stop him. Until it got stuck. Well, every plan has it's flaws, but that guy tore the shit out of a lot of buildings.

You can see the video here.

Rollins

This is a quote from Henry Rollins in his recent book, Broken Summers that I picked up at the spoken word concert I alluded to in an earlier post.

"I guess at the end of one of these days of studio, after so many phone calls and all the wheeling and dealing, I want someone to tell me I am doing good. But there's only the work to do and the mission to accomplish, the rest is that hand holding bullshit which just weakens resolve. I need some more of those Bart Sullivan fucks to inspire me. Confrontation is completely inspiring. Defiance is fuel. Aggression is gospel." - Henry Rollins

That is by far one of the greatest quotes from Rollins that I've heard to date. Bart Sullivan was some guy that had pissed him off earlier in the book.