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Circuit City and Civil Rights 2007-09-02 12:40:43 I just read about Michael Righi’s adventures in civil rights (via boingboing). Basically he did two things, first he refused to show the checker at the exit of the Circuit
City his receipt and later he refused to show his license to a cop (that he called) - he stated his name and would have stated more, but it is not in the law that he has to show his papers.
The post is pretty interesting and I always like reading about people who have more convictions in their rights and more balls to stand up for them than I do. That is, I apparently value convenience over my civil rights more often than not - while I am pissed at the increasing war on my rights, I personally do very little to actually fight back. Sad, I know. So I am always pleased to see others doing that dirty work.
But I am of two minds on this Circuit City
bit. I completely understand that he was well within his rights (I presume that he was) and I further understand that checking receipts and bags presumes your guilt and Read more:Civil
, Rights
Bag Attack: All The King’s Men 2007-09-02 09:11:35 Just came across the maxi/midi line of bags by Aussie brand, All The King’s Men. Of course I dig that limited edition grey and orange one. Looks nice, it’s got a good schtick, which I appreciate, in their airline belt buckle fastener as well as the attachment of the strap to the sides, nice detail. They are also pretty light, especially for a laptop bag, the midi’s clocking in at 1.4 pounds.
(via notcot)
Everyone’s gunning for Apple 2007-09-01 12:47:50 Huh, looks like Apple
’s the big bad in town. Everyone’s out to get them! The biggest of the big bad is the iTune’s music/video store. People have been trying to take it down forever with no such luck. I wonder if they’ll eventually be successful. I mean, with Universal not renewing their iTunes contract and NBC doing the same it could open the door for competitors if they really pull their content off iTunes.
And then in addition to all the various existing music stores, you’ve got Amazon opening one and Nokia, too. I’m pretty sure I read about another couple coming online with various schticks, MTV dumped Urge and is joining up with RealNetworks. Verizon’s getting in on that gig to distribute that content on mobiles. Sure almost all or all of them are destined to fail, but it’s conceivable with so much arrayed against them on the content production (in as much as the major labels are content “production”) and content distribu
Top 8 Posts from August! 2007-09-01 09:23:40 August. Gone. Wierd.
Can you believe it’s September? I can’t. What happened to summer? Oh, well, if you want to know what people read on this here blog during the month of August, leaving their immortal mark, here’s the top posts that I posted last month.
8. Medellin, Colombia the new Paris
7. Ed Colligan replies to Engadget
6. Time Warner customer service is really the worst
5. Palm Foleo, it’s not a smartphone, not yet a laptop.
4. Review: PassPack (v Clipperz) - passwords on the iPhone!
3. Some thoughts about Amazon’s Flexible Payment System
2. Now that I’ve got an iPhone (dumped my Treo)
And the most read of the month? I know you’ve been waiting for this…
just a little longer…
1. Poor Palm.
Read more:August
Afternoon Uhhhhh…. Om nom nom nom 2007-08-31 15:37:52 Heh, spotted this over at youvert, Om nom nom nom. Um.. it’s a site where people draw teeth and eyes and the letters Om nom nom nom on pictures to make stuff look like it’s getting eaten. It’s stupid, but I guess no stupider than lolcats and strangely compelling in the same way. It’s important to read the eyes for their expressions. Anyhow, foolishly they don’t let you link directly to a particular picture, or indeed let you grab the picture you want, so you’re just going to have to take a chance and head over there.
Read more:Afternoon
Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft… 2007-08-31 14:38:47 I couldn’t help this one. Fake Steve pointed out this CNET piece with Microsoft
talking about the first service pack for Vista. So I’m reading it and whatever, it’s kind of a basic piece, talking about SP1, Vista’s disappointing uptake so far, maybe SP1 will drive some corporate adoption - pretty much a boilerplate piece.
Then I get to this quote:
“Frankly, the world wasn’t 100 percent ready for Windows Vista,” Corporate Vice President Mike Sievert said in an interview at Microsoft’s recent partner conference in Denver. “That has changed in a very material way in the past six months.”
Ah, hah! It is the world’s fault that Vista hasn’t done well. It wasn’t that there were no compelling reasons to upgrade to it, that many “vista ready” computers couldn’t handle it, it lacked drivers and was even not compatible with some key Microsoft products… no… the world simply wasn’t r
On Apple and my new iMac 2007-08-31 09:47:57 So, still on light posting duty going into the long weekend. The computer’s mostly set up - everything I actually need is pretty much in place. But I have some beefs with Apple
now. Apple tries to be so consumer friendly, everything puts on a nice face and pretty pictures but just like the company itself, the OS never tells you what it’s actually doing. This is fine when everything goes just right, but less fine when something goes wrong. Which it always does.
Take, as an example, the migration helper - when I turned on the machine for the first time it asked if I wanted to bring over all my old stuff, so I said, sure. Firewired my old machine to my new one and away it went, for like 6 hours. Of course the status bar said 24 hours remaining, 8 hours, 14, jumping around like crazy - you know that we here are opposed to numbers that go beyond useless to actively wrong, they should get rid of it and just give a percent remaining, maybe even total amount transferred or somethi
Breakfast Links: Akihabara, Rentometer & Flying Car 2007-08-31 06:27:42 Apparently there’s a new craze sweeping Tokyo - kegadoru or Injured Idols (via tokyomango). Girls wearing surgical coats or maid outfits are totally out at the Akihabara maid cafes, now you have to be sporting eye-patches and bandages! This one’s a little … odd, to me. One cosplayer describes the confusing appeal:
One guy into the injured woman look told me that the reason he likes it is because he loves the idea of seeing a thin woman’s body wrapped in bandages because it looked kind of like bondage and made him want to protect her from harm.
I mean… equating bondage to protecting from harm? That’s gotta be a first…
Moving on to something a little more mundane - if you’re wondering how you’re doing with your rent a new site, rentometer comes to the rescue. It lets you type in your address and your rent and lets you know if where you are on the rent scale in your neighborhood. I guess it looks at other people who have tried to fi Read more:Breakfast
, Flying
On copying 2007-08-30 11:52:18 There’s been a little buzz going around about Nokia’s latest prototype phone and their statement:
“I don’t know what is copying and what is original but if there is something good in the world, we copy it with pride,” said Anssi Vanjoki, head of the Nokia multimedia division
Everyone’s making a little fun of it. But really? Is it a big deal? Is it even a regular deal?
Is it new that some technology looks or behaves like a previous one? That it takes features from a previous one? It’s how things move forward, everyone, we build on what works in the past. Should Apple now be the only one with a multi-touch phone? Everyone else has to go innovate on their own and this whole branch of invention should be left as the sole domain of Apple? Didn’t Jeff Han work on multi-touch before Apple? Did Apple copy Jeff?
I’m sure if there’s patent infringments that Apple will go after Nokia, but really, it isn’t going to be OSX and the
Breakfast Links: Dog Hit, Vatican & Memory Test 2007-08-30 06:33:37 Ok this is pretty awesome - turns out in Mexico City a top police sniffer dog was stolen while he was being checked into a plane. That’s right, he cost one druglord a few too much and he got the dog stolen - Rex IV was replaced in it’s cage by a puppy (which was discovered at the other end of the flight). The best part of this was that the dog was part of an elite Mexican drug squad! He was an elite dog! Rights to the movie coming soon. The good news is that they found him in a park a few days later - the bad guys couldn’t bring themselves to kill a dog and the fuzz were onto them so they just tied him to a tree and ran. (both via schneier)
Speaking of flying - this would never have happened if the elite drug squad was flying on the Vatican
Airline! That’s right! The Vatican is launching a budget airline (via gridskipper)! More exclamations!! If you wanted to fly the friendly skies, how much more would you rather fly the holy skies?? More question marks?? That&r Read more:Breakfast
, Memory
NBC. Panic! Panic! 2007-09-26 09:52:48 Poor, poor NBC. First they screw up their digital distribution strategy and start running around making all sorts of fuss and noise and not really accomplishing much. Now after the start of their big premiers it seems they are panicking some more, who though it’d be possible?
Monday was very disappointing for NBC. All three shows didn’t do terribly, but didn’t do particularly well either. Chuck and Journeyman both did much worse than the premiers in the same slots last year. Heroes, was the winner in it’s slot but had the same size audience as it’s debut last year. Not surprising after Heroes’ dismal finale last season. So now? They’re putting both Chuck and Journeyman (although not Heroes) back on the iTunes Music Store. Seriously. Despite the 3 other directions they’ve got at their disposal (NBC Direct, Amazon Unbox and Hulu) they’ve gone back to the only for pay digital distribution system that has any reasonable audience.
They&r Read more:Panic
Mini Review: Hotel Chevalier by Wes Anderson 2007-09-26 08:14:28 UPDATE 3: Well, now that the credits are right there, that song is “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” by Peter Sarstedt. It’s on the youtubes. It was his big #1 hit in ‘69. And I was close with the lyric, it’s “With your carefully designed topless swimsuit / You get an even suntan on your back and on your legs”. Which, you have to admit, is a pretty great thing to say.
UPDATE 2: Sam just pointed out that the short film is now available fo’ free on iTunes. Nice.
UPDATE: Oh, I totally forgot, but the scuttlebutt is that HotelChevalier
will be available for free download on the iTunes music store sometime today. Not now, though. Sad.
So yesterday eve I was perusing Gothamist and stumbled across their posting of the Hotel Chevalier screening at the Apple Store SoHo. Not only was it a free screening but Wes, Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman would be there, too. So I rounded up the troop and we headed down. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camer Read more:Anderson
, Mini Review
Breakfast Links: Lego Millennium Falcon, Magna Carta FS & Manifold 2007-09-26 06:30:14 Lego has just released their biggest set ever and happily it is the Ultimate Collectors Millenium Falcon
! The price tag on this bad boy? $499.99. That some serious scratch - the Lego shop optimistically has set a limit of 5 of these per customer. I wonder if people really were like,”I got 5 g’s burning a hole in my pants… Man, I need 10 of those!” Gizmodo shows pictures of the unboxing - it’s got 5,000 pieces and a 4 pound manual. Someone I know ought to get one and put that bad boy together. Blindfolded.
So, who knew this? First of all there’s 17 original versions of the MagnaCarta
? Somehow they’re all original despite the fact that they come from the reigns of 3 different kings? At any rate, the most important one about to go up for sale at Sotheby’s! Ross Perot, the owner, is expecting a sale of $20-$30 million on is $1.5 million original purchase price 2 decades ago. Not bad! I guess that’s why he’s a billionaire. That a Read more:Breakfast
, Millennium
, Magna Carta
Review: Amazon’s MP3 store 2007-09-25 14:43:31 UDPATE: Just read this on DF but Amazon
has obliged Radiohead and is only selling their albums, not individual songs. Nice! Go Amazon!
Huh, so Amazon just launched their MP3 store. I’ve been curious about how it’d be, Unbox - as awful and exclusionary as it is made me wonder how Amazon’s execution would be for MP3. I need not have worried, the two labels on Amazon (EMI and Universal) are going the DRM free route, so Amazon was free to make their system as good as they wanted it to be. Unencumbered by DRM it lives up to my high expectations for the boys in Seattle.
The main drawback to their MP3 store is the lack of content, with only those two labels right now they’ve got 2 million songs vs. iTunes 6 million. Still, it’s a lot of songs. Hopefully they’ll start working with the many smaller labels that would like to get their stuff up DRM free - which Apple still is denying, despite the DRM free tracks they currently sell. This is an honest to goodnes
Reviews: Chuck and Heroes Premier 2007-09-25 08:08:34 So last night marked the beginning of tv premier week. First two up that I care about were Chuck
and Heroes. Both of which I thought were, ok but disappointing. Some mild spoiling ahead, probably, so if you haven’t seen the shows and plan on it, read on at your own peril.
Chuck’s the story of Chuck, works at the Nerd Herd (a tv reality Geek Squad) and leads an all around uninteresting life. Through various mechanisms he becomes invaluable to the spook community. Hijinx. First off, apparently parkour is the new chase scene. The show basically starts out with an homage to that great parkour movie District B13 (which you should watch if you haven’t already), done reasonably well. The show itself, though, didn’t really impress me much.
Everything was pretty standard. The actors were decent if not inspired, the whacky best friend was whacky, the pretty, pretty lead female role was very pretty and the supporting guy, Adam Baldwin (of Serenity fame) played a kind of si Read more:Premier
Breakfast Links: Missile Base For Sale, Ninja Burglar & Receipt Blog 2007-09-25 06:19:08 Ok, we all know this real estate thing is getting big, but now does this trump everything? Does this signal a top in the market? A Titan Missile
Base is for sale on ebay (via giz) It even has it’s own website. This thing is crazy, it has 3 160′ tall missile silos on 57 acres! It has 16 underground buildings. Read that twice. Sadly all the 1950’s vintage equipment was removed (yeah, no missiles there either) and to get this thing back up to the swinging bachelor pad it was meant to be would cost some millions o’ ducats. But how much just to buy this bad boy? $1.5million. That’s right, for the price of a small 2 bedroom apartment in manhattan, all that can be yours. I swear, I keep finding more and more reasons for me to win the big lottery. When, lord, when’s gonna be my time??
Perhaps I am in the wrong business. Computers are decent money, but NinjaBurglar
y - man, that’s the future (via gothamist). Some dude is going around Staten Island, dres Read more:Breakfast
, Receipt
One wheeled skateboard! 2007-09-24 14:34:20 So you know that I think that things wheeled personal transport is trending to fewer and fewer wheels. Well, here’s another one for the books - here’s a one wheeled skateboard that uses some kind of voodoo magic to work. I’m pretty sure that he says chickens were sacrificed but you can read his page for the exact incantations and dances you need to do to imbue this device with the correct spirits. He has provided these instructions gratis to the world.
This stuff is great, it one ups the Magic Wheel, IMO, and the next step will be to get it so that the deck is fully above the wheel and you can work it more like a regular skateboard. Sweet.
I feel hot.
Woz is… annoying? 2007-09-24 08:23:33 I don’t know if I’ve been reading to much Fake Steve Jobs, but I’m finding the Woz to be a bit annoying. Take this here interview with him that I just read. Ignore his ESL speaking skills and let’s see what he says.
I have the iPhone. I stayed up all night long to get it. I was the first in line in San Jose. I brought a bunch of my friends. I thought it was worth a party.
Actually, no, that’s not what happened. In fact, nearly every fact besides “I have the iPhone” and “I brought a bunch of my friends” was a lie that you refute in the very next things you say in the interview!
I actually had figured out I had been running on two hours sleep a night and I wasn’t going to be able to stay up all night. So I finally figured out I could get there at 4 a.m. but some people had stayed up all night. I didn’t want to be in line and have 20, 50 people cut in front of me. I might not get an iPhone. So I came up with this great ide
Breakfast Links: Geek Lists Edition 2007-09-24 06:36:43 Monday? Art!
Ok, I have a bunch of lists here today. I know the internet, and therefor you, like lists. At least that’s what I heard. On the internet.
Firstly and mostly timely this week there are many television premiers. Of particular interest to me is Bionic Woman and Chuck (although Chuck, much less so). Both pilots are available for free from Amazon, but Amazon hates mac users and I was too lazy to find them elsewhere, I’m just going to wait and see them on the teevee. Another premier that I hated seeing trailers for was Reaper. I still hate it, but might actually give it a chance at some point because the pilot seems to have been executive produced and directed by Kevin Smith?? Although it’s only the pilot and not the series. Who knows.
And then there’s this list of the 29 30 Best Geek
TV Shows of this Generation. It’s pretty interesting, I was gratified to see Freaks and Geeks clocking in at 15. I’m not sure that Veronica Mars and Sliders dese Read more:Breakfast
, Lists
, Edition
Evil Bee Animation 2007-09-23 14:40:33 Came across this short animated piece (via notcot). It is completely awesome. I’m not really sure why it’s called Evil Bee, but you know. It’s quite depressing but strangely uplifting at the same time.
The music is very good and I can’t help but wonder if the group responsible, Menomena, chose their name as an homage to the Muppet Show. Huh, one wikipedia later it seems that it is not.
Anyhow, watch the short. It’s really, really good.
Read more:Animation
A note from management 2007-10-01 14:19:23 So, I will be heading south this thursday on some vacation. I know, yay for me! But stop despairing, this blog will not lie here fallow, digital dust balls rolling lonely around your screen. I have arranged for guest bloggers! Yay, guests! These guests all speak way better english than me and will most likely provide you with posts as incredibly… nay… astoundingly insightful as my posts on baby hedgehogs but also be written with proper grammar. Or maybe not.
In alphabetical order by first name, since that’s all you’re getting, you nosy busybodies…
Ben! His hands on knowledge of gear will amaze you. He’s gone through more computers, phones and cameras than I’ve even seen, much less owned. And he has a cute kid, too.
Scott! His oracular powers of insight will delight you with tales of what’s going to work and not going to pan out in the tech industry. He’s got not one, but two cute kids!
Sean! DBA consultant extraordinaire, he&rsqu
Top 8 Posts from September 2007-10-01 11:56:21 September. It came and now it’s gone and made way for October. So, you know what that means. It’s now time for the top 8 posts from september (of those posted in September). For my new readers this is a fine opportunity to see what’s been going on here and for my hordes upon never ending hordes of long time readers now is the perfect time for a nostalgic stroll down memory lane…
8. Reviews: Chuck and Heroes Premier
7. My problem with Google Gears
6. Crocs, Escalators and Japan
5. Apple iPhone credit for us $600ers!
4. Iron Man Trailer
3. Just like Colligan cancelled the Foleo, Palm should fire Colligan
2. Mini Review: Hotel Chevalier by Wes Anderson
Finally… the most read (and most commented as well) post of the month?
1. Blocking Ad-Blockers
Pow.
Read more:September
Online Finance Review II: Mint (v. Yodlee and a little Wesabe) 2007-10-01 10:01:35 I finally got around to checking out mint.com - a new(ish)comer to the world of money management websites. Just so you know where I’m coming from I use Yodlee.com. I really like Yodlee.com. I also took a spin around Wesabe and think it’s pretty interesting and probably better for some people than Yodlee. For my needs, which are pretty much just keeping track of all the various accounts I have, Yodlee is the best. The social networking parts are something I wouldn’t say no to, but definitely not anything I’d sacrifice tracking functionality for, which I believe you do with Wesabe. It’s simply targeted at a different type of user than me.
So, now you know what sort of guy I am. Right? Good. So I was interested to see what all the fuss was about with Mint.com, signed me up a free account and started the investigation. I think the first thing you see is that it’s a beautiful site. I mean, you come to it and they’ve gone to the not very subtle, but Read more:little
Breakfast Links: Lego-Porn, Randomness v. Terrorists & Radiohead 2007-10-01 06:43:49 It’s a little bit o’ monday art fo’ ya.
Lego-porn. And I’m not talking about lego-porn the way the internets like to talk about cool pictures of things, no, I’m talking about pr0n. This site is about showing pictures of those li’l lego guys (and gals) doing bad things. True to its roots it’s replete with broken images and tons of signup links - although, thankfully, it doesn’t hit you with tons of popups. Not that I’d know about that or anything, you know.. Anyhow. Thanks(?) to Poyla for this one.
If that wasn’t random enough for you, perhaps you need to hire yourself some computer scientists? That’s what the good folks at LAX did, after viewing that site they felt an insatiable need for true randomness and hired some U of Southern California guys to build them ARMOR which randomizes the positioning of security at the airport (via /.). Designed to foil the surveillance phase of the bad guys, this system takes in all sort Read more:Breakfast
, Terrorists
, Radiohead
Site optimization: Actual v. Perceived Speed 2007-09-30 10:35:55 The other day I was working with a buddy who was having some difficulty with his site. He had a dark background, but the center columns (with the text) were light. The light background was loading in late because some of the ads on the site were loading in slowly and as a result the site wasn’t legible (dark text on dark background) until several seconds after all the ads loaded. This wasn’t really a good situation to be in - you know how fickle visitors are, turned off at the slightest delays.
The first thing I looked at was the load speed of all the components. Fired up Tamper Data, good ol’ Tamper Data, and watched everything come in. It’s graphing ability makes things very clear and I saw that several of the ads were coming in slowly. So initially I started experimentally paring out the ads - but it became clear that it wasn’t one ad that was the problem but all of them. It wasn’t an option to remove everything. So I took a step back and looked a Read more:Speed
Saturday morning fights! Giraffes 2007-09-29 09:02:30 It’s giraffes! Fighting! I mean, it’s gotta be a wierd set of evolutionary steps that makes animals fight each other by using their heads as big flails. You know? But damn, that looks like it hurts - especially when that one who seems a little more martially savvy keeps hitting the other one in the legs. Still, I’m pretty sure no Shaolin monks ever watched that and were inspired to create no Giraffe Style Kung Fu. Although perhaps that style would be quite unbeatable.
As fights go, this one was pretty leisurely, you gotta admit.
Read more:Saturday
Afternoon Awwwww… Baby Hedgehogs! 2007-09-28 15:49:04
Four. Tiny. Orphaned. Hedgehogs. It would be enough if that’s all it was. But no. No, my friend, that’s not all. They’ve adopted a brush as their mother (their real mother sadly having been killed in a hit and run). The oldest one was found in someone’s backyard gathering up gold coins! The backyards owner was waiting for him to level up, but he never did so they called in the good folks from the Wildlife Park reuniting him with his younger 3 siblings. Ok, I made up the part about the gold coins.
It’s a sad story, at heart. But damn. It’s so freaking cute it makes my teeth hurt. And it’s not the smoothie I just had, or cavities, my hygienist said I had good teeth despite my never going to the dentist. No, it’s just that 2 week old hedgehogs cuddling with a brush is ridiculous.
“There has been a real surge in slugs this year because of the wet weather so hopefully that will mean a good year for hedgehogs too.
Thank god for the surg Read more:Afternoon
Palm Centro, wierd, I kinda like it 2007-09-28 10:11:11 Huh, well the Palm Centro
’s all official and now we know it’s real specs. The wierd thing? I kinda like it.
Sure, sure, it’s still hobbled by Garnet. But that was never in question. Sure, sure, it’s running the same ARM processor that Palm’s been using since the 650 lo these many years. But here’s what I like. At least Palm is trying something new - this one’s shape is fairly different from their Treo line (hence it isn’t branded a Treo at all, interesting…) and they’re going for a smaller more pocketable form factor. An ideal to be applauded.
Also it’s only $100 (although I think I read it’s $299 without 2 yr contract). That’s a big deal, I think, for a touchscreen smart phone. No? Another thing they got right was somehow cramming 320×320 pixels in that small screen - that’ll keep it sharp and god knows more pixels is always better on these screens. And having it rock out on EVDO could make the
Breakfast Links: Chicago is the new UK?, WiMax v. Muni WiFi & Dice Stacking 2007-09-28 06:33:54 So we all know that the UK loves it some CCTV surveillance of it’s citizens, the criminal lot of ‘em. We thought that kinda Big Brother was confined to the loonies across the Atlantic, but it turns out we’ve got some of our very own mid-western loonies. Chicago
has been rolling out “thousands of video surveillance cameras” over the past few years, too! They even have an awesome codename for it … “Operation Virtual Shield.” I feel so protected. And now they’re getting IBM to write some softs to analyze “thousands of hours of video” which will “throw [their] camera network into hyperdrive.” Kick ASS! Who doesn’t love massive computer aided surveillance! Forget worrying about the end of ephemeral conversation, that’s nothing to compare with the end of ephemeral existence!
Sigh. Anyhow, I was reading this Slate piece on why municipal wifi projects are dropping like flies across the country. Which is Read more:Breakfast
, WiFi
, Stacking
Review: Bionic Woman 2007-09-27 14:39:32 UPDATE: The ratings are in and Bionic
Woman did quite well with 13.9 million viewers. It built on it’s lead in from Deal or No Deal and in fact grew even more in the second half of the show. Sweet.
You know of the three premiers I was looking forward to (the other two being Chuck and Heroes) this was definitely my favourite. Which is not to say that Bionic Woman
blew my mind, but it seemed like a very solid pilot to me, they’ve definitely got me watching the show.
It didn’t hurt that BSG vet Arron Douglas (Chief!) made a cameo in addition to Katee Sackhoff’s presence. But beyond that I think it was an interesting show all on it’s own. The scope seems very small, which I appreciate, and it was personality driven. There’s just enough mystery and backstory to keep things together and interesting, but they don’t beat you over the head with it *cough*heroes*cough*lost*.
I think the acting, while certainly not the best was good enough to not be dist
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