The Warcraft Dance Sources
Link: http://www.devilducky.com/media/62406/
Link is to a video that superimposes the World of Warcraft dance routines over the source material.
(Via Nodwick)
Palm Foleo
Link: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13059
I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. It's basically an ultralight
portable with Treo connectivity running a Linux OS and solid-state storage.
Guess I'll keep an eye on the discussion forums to see if someone comes up with a convincing use for it.
Fun with Bluetooth audio
While the concept of Bluetooth is great, I have to say that frequently the implementation of it is pretty poor. Perhaps it comes down to a misunderstanding on my part, but for something that's supposed to be simple it's sure not reliable or easy to get going outside of the most common usage.
Mix tapes
Alas, what with all those copyright and intellectual property issues these days, the mix "tape" is basically dead. That's too bad -- I always thought it was a great way of introducing friends to a selection of music. Get those tunes wandering through their heads and spread the word, so to speak.
Colour blindness simulator for OSX
Link: http://www.michelf.com/projects/sim-daltonism/
This is an interesting one. "Sim Daltonism" is a simulator that tries to show how people who are colour blind see the world. The concept is relatively simple: a small window contains a colour-corrected version of whatever the mouse pointer is over that simulates what a colour blind person would see. As there are multiple forms of colour blindness, it has multiple settings including four red/green ones.
Fast Food: the promise and the reality
Link: http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm
Link is to a quite amusing comparison of fast food meals with the advertisement photo directly contrasted with the delivered product.
(Via Kottke)
Bye, Spots
Link: http://www.spots.ab.ca
Since 1995 I've been using a Calgary ISP called Spots Interconnect. For the first few years, I used them exclusively for dialup access and webpage hosting. They set up an ISDN connection for a trade show I arranged and gave us free access to it; it was the first real exposure I had to setting up networks on the Amiga, indeed on any platform.
The Police's "Synchronicity"
Presumably as part of the upcoming tour, all of the albums by the Police have gone on sale in their remastered form, and quite cheaply too -- about $5 a disc. I've taken the opportunity to upgrade the couple I already had and fill in the holes.
As I listen to "Synchronicity" again and enjoy the superb musicianship and song writing, I have to ask: why "Mother"? It has to rate as one of the least listenable pieces of music ever committed to tape. It mars the album and actually takes away from the whole. It serves no purpose. Why, oh why, was it put on there, and why was it kept? Surely someone in the mastering process could have stood up and told the band "Uh, you know, this really isn't very good."
The singles from the album every one knows: "Every Breath You Take", "King Of Pain", "Wrapped Around Your Fingers". Each one is a classic. "Walking In Your Footsteps", "Synchronicity I" and "II" are all superb. "Tea In The Sahara" should have been a single but it's too gorgeous to have worked well in that format. Even "O My God", "Miss Gradenko" and "Murder By Numbers" are good songs. Somehow though, that one appalling little song wrecks the entire album for me.
Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I've now removed the awkward song from my MP3 version of the album. It's a better option than the old one of remastering a play-copy of the album without "Mother". It flows cleanly and well now. Ah, bliss.
First Apple, now Amazon
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/technology/17amazon-web.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
The first chink in the DRM wall was when Apple's iTunes store started selling EMI's music in a non-DRM'd format (albeit at a markup.) Now Amazon is joining the fray selling the same catalogue. This is good and I hope other music distributors and recording studios follow suit.
On the side, it's interesting that Amazon, known primarily as an online bookstore, is described as:
the Internet’s most successful seller of physical CDs
I can easily believe that given that I buy almost all of my CDs via them these days due to pricing and the depth of the catalogue.
(Via Matthew Yglesias)
Travelling with gadgets
Periodically I'm sent on business trips to miscellaneous locales, some far flung, some a little more domestic. As such I'm frequently looking for ways of meeting my gadget-mania. This is what's I've chosen at the moment:
I've heard that before, but where?
Recently I was listening to a track on a three CD Manfred Mann's Earth Band compilation called "Odds And Sods". The listing called it "Don't Bring Me Down (Castles Burning)". It's a great track and seemed very familiar. Since this was a live version I figured it probably was just a different recording so looked for the album one. I didn't find one; this was apparently the only available recording of the song by the group. A cover version it had to be given the compilation's billing as a rarities collection.
Farewell, Fedora
Over the weekend, the motherboard on my LINUX file server croaked. Fortunately, however, not the harddrives. I therefore constructed a cunning plan: instead of rebuilding the Fedora system, I would move to a standalone NAS which would be rather less of a pain to maintain. It would also be considerably less-featured but that would be a problem for another day.
Appeal to patriotism
I live in what used to be Ralph Klein's riding here in Calgary. With his retirement, the seat is open for someone new so the political machines are getting warmed up.
Tolkien's "The Children of Húrin"
I really only have one question about this: will it be even less readable than "The Silmarillion"?
Of course, it could be as dull as the "Books of Lost Tales". "The Hobbit" was a classic; "Lord of the Rings" was a rather fine read. After that, the Tolkien oeuvre is a little hard going.
The Saga of Bob
I'm well aware that many computer geeks have, shall we say, limited interpersonal skills. Generally speaking though, you keep those ones away in a closet somewhere and do not make them customer facing. That rule normally applies within companies as well as to external customers.
