Weeks straight without and missed day and I have to go and ruin it on my birthday. Today on the blog: technology and music; which may be a bad idea seeing as my frivolous posts seem to be most popular – the “me agin the bees” entry a few days back garnered the most comments an entry’s seen in a while. Still, a whopping four comment’s ain’t exactly inspired discourse. Today in real life: more plane-time as Sharaun and I wing it back down south to California and I prepare for three days of work and unpacked suitcases before we take flight Saturday for a week and a half excursion to Florida for Christ’s birthday.
Since I made the transition from IE to Firefox several months ago, I’ve really come to love it. The browser is just better in my opinion, “sleeker” or something. What I really love though, are the extensions that let me do nearly anything I want on top of what FF already does. Lately, I also solved a long-time frustration of mine through the use of Firefox and some additional open-source software. Using the awesome SiteBar server-side application and Firefox’s SiteBar Client extension, I’ve moved my bookmarks from a file on whatever computer I use the most to a file saved on my server – accessible from any computer and always up-to-date. Ever since my early days on Mosaic, I’ve tried to maintain bookmarks on different computers. Now, however, my bookmarks stay on my server and I can get to them anywhere – from any browser (although FF with SiteBar Client is ideal). So, anyway, just another cool reason (aside from real tabs) to take a look at FireFox. I heard IE is moving to true tabbed browsing (not that MSN Toolbar window hack thing) and user customizable extensions also, but Firefox has it now, so I’m devoted for the time being.
Man, talk about a great couple weeks for new music! It’s like Santa Clause dropped down the binaries chimney first of them all. The new Strokes album finally leaks in full instead of dribbling out track by track, The Islands‘ (a post-Unicorns effort) debut album leaks, the new Mogwai album leaks, and an album I didn’t even know I was highly anticipating, the self-titled debut from She Wants Revenge, also leaks – not to mention Ptichfork’s newest fawn-overs, Love is All. Honestly, I don’t know which one to listen to first, second, third. It’s like on The Simpsons when Lisa’s grammar-correcting robot, Linguo, encounters the mobsters and his head a’splodes from the Mafioso-grammar overload. I want to listen to the all at once or something, because they all sound so good. In this sentence, I was going to say something like “… the Islands album sounds particularly good …,” but, after some more ear-time for all three, they all sound particularly good. Time to draft “the best of 2006” I suppose, never too early.
Without trying to sound like a TV addict (it’s gonna be hard, considering the subject), one thing I’ve enjoyed about international travel lately is the ability to download shows I follow for immediate consumption. It’s something I’d never considered before, I either just missed out or caught up on TiVo upon returning. But, with the internet of today – most popular shows are available for full download online within hours of their airing. While I was in India last week, I downloaded several of my faves and cached them away on my laptop’s harddrive for the long journey home. In addition to providing entertainment, I love the quizzical looks I get from fellow travelers on the plane when I fire up last night’s episode of Lost, complete with ABC logo in the lower right corner. With the fat pipes of today, you can grab a show in a time about equal to its running time (a lot faster if you’re privy to a speedier connection) – so it’s a no-brainer to just NZB everything you want the night before you leave for tomorrow’s enjoyment. Ahh… the digital age.
Finally, with a little behind-the-scenes action: The title of today’s blog came from a dream I woke up from one night in India – I liked it, so I used it (maybe it came from the malaria pills). Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- parenting - 2018
- appease problem - 2011
- super whitebread appeal - 2010
- beaten to the punch - 2009
- nickel and dime - 2004
- just plain green - 2004