This Guy is My Hero

Update: The switch from iWeb also coincided with a switch from Safari to Firefox (for the del.icio.us extensions at first) and I've decided to make flickr my permanent home for photos on the web. This means that the only thing I'm using .mac for is the imap email. Now that I've weened myself off of the service I hear this little tidbit from Reuters: "After a questioner suggested .mac had failed to live up to lofty expectations, Jobs said: 'I couldn't agree with you more. We'll make up for lost time in the near future.'"

Venus and Mars Are All Right Tonight

Every once in awhile I find myself missing my vinyl. My mother had passed down the first albums that I had truly loved when I was still quite young. Highway 61 Revisited had already changed my personality for good by my tenth birthday. But it wasn't until high school that I started collecting albums seriously for myself. At that point I was more of a Paul person than a John person. I loved Wings. It brought back the AM radio days of being a child in the seventies.

I don't actually remember when and where I bought Venus and Mars. I know I bought it used and as it would have been over ten years old so the stickers and poster were long gone. I probably bought it as a cheap single for "Listen to What the Man Said" a song that had spent some time on the radio and still got some soft rock airplay in the eighties. But there were all kinds of gems I had never heard before: "Venus and Mars", "Rock Show", "Magneto and Titanium Man" and my favorite "Spirits of Ancient Egypt".

A couple of months ago I started missing this album. I gave my records to a friend for safekeeping years ago. She is notoriously hard to pin down so I haven't actually seen any of them for over a decade. Now Venus and Mars is just obscure enough to make finding tracks on a P2P difficult which is usually my cue to check on itunes for the odd tracks. Of course I ran into the Internet Beatle Wall as none of their music existed in a purchasable electronic format. I found a couple of the songs on a share site but not all of my favorates let alone the whole album which plays well as a single piece.

Cut to this morning when after prolonged negations the iTunes started selling unprotected, high quality music files including much of the Wings catalog. I shy away from buying music. Until the music industry stops suing their fans for the sake of "starving artists". I want very little to do with them. They could stop peer to peer tomorrow and it still wouldn't make me give them any of my music. I'll listen to what I've got till they change the business model. But when one of them makes a move in the right direction I willing to send a little love their way.

It wasn't easy though. Apple's servers are getting hammered right now. I've never had a more difficult time downloading from Apple. Not even last February when everyone was jockeying to be the billionth iTunes download. If that is any indication it would seem that Apple and EMI have made the right choice to stop making it difficult for people to enjoy the music that they pay for. The wonder of it all, baby.

Top 10 – Why Blogger Kicks iWeb's Ass

It hasn't yet been a week since I abandoned my previous blog and moved from using iWeb back to blogger. Already though I'm a much happier and productive blogger.

1. Unlike Apple's iWeb, Blogger just works
2. Updating a post on Blogger takes seconds instead of minutes on iWeb.
3. When I forget a period and have to edit a previous post it does not re-create every page I've ever written. (see #2)
4. Moving between my laptop and my mini is effortless because Blogger is accessible from the Internet. Iweb requires the master domain file to be moved between computers in order to use a different computer.
5. If you lose your current domain file you can't recover your site from Apple's servers. Blogger emails me every post including the media automatically which for me means all my posts are saved locally on two machines and remotely on Apple and Google's servers.
   
6. Space is no longer an issue. With .mac I had 1GB to share between my web site, pictures and email. Google is limiting the photos to 1GB and nearly 3GB for email. Of course all of that extra space doesn't come cheap. Apple charges me $100 a year for that 1GB while Google kicks back the 4GB for free.
   
7. I got to use all of the widgets and code I wanted to. I have my flickr badge and my lastFM widget and my del.icio.us tags and feeds on my page and it all took less than a minute to set up. Apple's plug-ins pretty much constitute a counter and a link to Apple.
   
8. Blogger lets me change themes on the fly. If I want to change to way my whole site looks I just change the theme. With iWeb that meant recopying every entry into the new format one by one.
   
9. While five days is not enough time to call Blogger more reliable I do know that every time I do a security update on my computers I'm not going to lose control of my website.
10. Blogger is simply more intuitive to use. Whatever I've wanted to do I've found the tool close by and easy to use. (see #1)
    

The thing is, I didn't want to write this post. I'm a crazy Apple fanboy. I replaced the Brita filter on my kitchen sink with the iWater which only dispenses the Apple cool-aid. I put up with more than a year of frustration with iWeb, wanting it to work, waiting for the cure-all update, waiting for Leopard , waiting for the new iLife. Instead of getting better it got worse. So I got out.

Clowning Around in Japan

My old high school buddy Mike "Funnybone" Ianneo has taken a gig in an amusement park in Japan for the summer. From his travel blog it would seem that he's having the time of his life. I have a funny feeling that this may open up a whole series of globetrotting events for him.

UPDATE: Mike emailed me back last night when I asked permission to use one of his pictures here. I was right, he is loving it there. He just signed on to double his contract to six months.

My Movie Collection

I have updated my public list on the imdb to reflect the current state of my movie collection. I'm rather fond of my set up with several external hard drives all plugged into my mac mini and accessible through itunes. I have all the original poster art in itunes too so it is a real pleasure to flip through all the movies. I like sorting by year to watch the history of film go by. Beginning in 1920 I only have five years where I don't have at least one movie to represent. Anyway you can use the link to the imdb in the new "Where I'm scattered on the Web" section on the right side of the page.

Aw, Poor Dumpster

In response to my poking fun at Kansas my mother redirected my attention to the fact that their town has been flooding this month. She sent me to the Salina Journal for some video and I found this one on YouTube. It's long but I just love the concern shown for the flooded dumpster about one minute in.

Weekend to Thrill at the Castro Theater

The Castro Theater is doing a Classic Bond Memorial Day Weekend. Last night John and I saw Dr. No and Goldfinger. Richard "Jaws" Kiel was there signing autographs and giving out headlocks. This was my first visit back to the Castro since moving to the city. I used to the Stanford Theater for old movies at least once a week but have cut down my theater visits in this last year. I've been priced out. $20 to take my self to the movies with popcorn and a drink (an integral part of the movie going experience for me) just seems like a harsh deal. It's all a matter of scale. $10 at the Stanford gets you two movies large popcorn and a large drink. At that price I was going around fifty times a year. Twice that (or more) for a movie in the city and I'm going about 10 times a year. Movie houses are getting less than half of what I'm willing to pay them because their price per viewing is so high. For $25 bucks Netflix sends about 30 movies a month to my house. That's just a better use of the old resources.

Anyway the movies were great. There was a live stunt show on top of the movie from The Stunt People. Actually they were pretty good. Overall a very entertaining evening. I'd never seen either on the big screen and the Castro has a very big screen. Tonight my favorite Bond, "From Russia With Love" is playing. I just might hop on muni after work. We'll see.

Ah, Women–the Cinematic Version

Thanks to Karen for this link.

Ah, Women

Zombies Invade Union Square

I spent most of my day off yesterday at home. When I did venture out it was to the west to see Pirates on Van Ness. So for the first time in over a week I was not in Union Square at all during the day. So I missed this years Zombie Invasion. Crave has the story of the invasion hitting the Apple store with some pretty good pictures. I did venture by the Apple store on my way home from the movies (I'm agonizing over buying a mighty mouse). On my way back up the hill I passed a guy whose face was covered in blood talking with another guy on Stockton. I remember thinking, "I hope the zombies are in town or that guy really needs to go to hospital".

Sad News From the San Francisco Zoo

Last month I wrote about my visit to the zoo on one of those cold overcast days San Francisco is known for. The zoo was a little sad that day with most of the animals opting to stay indoors to escape the damp and the cold. It was also my first trip to the zoo since the elephant had died. I guess to me seeing the elephants just seems to be an essential part of a zoo trip. There were a few highlights to the day. The bears put on a hell of a show, playing a rousing game of tag. The lions decided that it was the right time for some afternoon delight. We joined the crowd late but the hippos were having the time of their lives just by getting hosed down. Word came yesterday that Puddles the zoos longtime elder hippo died after not adapting to temporary housing as they moved to expand the hippo habitat. Puddles had been at the zoo for forty-three years. That's older than me so he was there when I took my first trips to the zoo some thirty-four years ago. Sad news.

A Little Dig at My Kansas Readers

I came across this tonight from the reDiscovery Institute. I think it was more timely last year before the right wing school board got kicked out. These guys lay the sarcasm on pretty thick but then again some of these anti-education types have got it coming. Simplify, simplify, simplify. A universe with only 4 elements just seems so much more streamlined. I wonder what else we could simplify? One political party maybe. Surely one religion. And one all powerful commander in chief.

Kansas has been getting some help in other quarters on this topic. Listen to how biologist P.Z. Myers reacts to a South Carolina science fair winner. Still the grand prize has to go to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Just what we need, a 27 million dollar investment in making our kids worse in science. Like we needed any help doing that.

"Watch Like a Pirate" Day

I had just been kidding around when I signed off with the "watch like a pirate" comment, but right before the movie started at the AMC Van Ness the entire row in front of me filled up with young people in full pirate regalia.

It was a fun movie. Better than Spiderman and much better than the second one. More sailing this time and not so much messing around with fruits.

They run ads all during the breaks which I actually don't mind. I hate waiting in a movie theater staring at a blank screen or those horrible slides for dental school. The thing I noticed was that you could do a little marketing research just by listening to how loud the crowd was during each ad. If they were making a lot of noise they weren't paying any attention. If my premise is correct then I wouldn't want to be in network television. The audience tuned out all of the tv ads. They paid more attention to General Electric telling the world how environmentally conscious they are. Of course a subject like that required (and got) superior production values.

Bottom line on Pirates of the Caribbean is a solid thumbs up. It was worth the $8.50 matinée price and I probably would have gone $10.50 and not felt too bad about it.

Choices

I just found out that Bank of America is giving away free admission to a bunch of museums throughout the month of May. I just switched to BoA a couple of months ago and am very happy with their online offerings. Their billpay site is far better than the site I had tolerated at Washington Mutual for years. So finding out that they are giving away local museum tickets should make me happy right? Well no, actually I'm a little annoyed. May has been the month that I've set up all my automated billing, which means I've been on the BoA site every couple of days and never heard a word of this. I had to get it off of the Consumerist web site.

So the choices are:

1. Staying home and messing around with my computer and websites until I go into some form of shock.
   
2. Walking down to the MoMA and getting the last two hours on BoA.
3. Wading through the crowds for some opening day Pirates of the Caribbean goodness.
   

I think I'm going to declare this "watch like a pirate day" and get out of my apartment for a while.

Computer Mania Continues

I continued to work on setting up my laptop until after three in the morning. I was so wound up that I couldn't get to sleep for another hour or so. So did I sleep in and wake up balanced and refreshed? Of course not. I woke up at six-thirty and immediately tried to figure out why the settings I made in firefox before I went to sleep were no longer there. Hours go by like this. Once again I forget to eat anything substantial. If only I could keep my diet to tea and sunflower seeds I could keep the pounds off. The problem is that I'll eat nothing but until I get wacky in the head and require cheeseburgers.

Since Blogger doesn't really like Safari and Firefox does get along with del.icio.us very well, I've spent most of my time customizing Firefox and getting it to sync between my two computers. I took the screen shot above to show off my latest piece of computing happiness the all favicon toolbar. I know it looks obnoxious and is probably slowing down my browser but I just love having all my sites right where I can see them. The name of the extension that does this is Smart Bookmarks Bar. You can see that I've got my favorite fifty or so sites bookmarked on it.

The website that is on screen is the is the funniest thing I found all morning. Check it out here. It is included because I just hung up the phone with my ever encouraging friend John whose reaction to me saying that I've started a new blog was to ask if I could not make it so boring this time. Bite me John.

Rebuilding the Lacbook

It's getting late and I haven't eaten anything. I am suffering from that particular kind of mania that strikes me when I'm working on a computer issue. Tonight I am re-formating the hard drive on my laptop. It's my own fault I guess. This morning while messing around in my keychain trying to save my iWeb site I hit the wrong check box and before I knew it my keychains and all forms of using .mac were lost on that computer. Actually I'm not that unhappy with doing the re-format. I had transfered everything over automatically from my mini and had brought all my desktop settings and programs over to my laptop. I had all sorts of bizarre programs and settings especially since the mini had all my settings and programs from my ibook. All of this means is that there was a lot of garbage on it I didn't really use or want.

The problem is of course that I start working on these issues and I can't stop. I don't even take a break to eat. Which is dumb and makes me crazy and I realize that it's five minutes to twelve and I'm starving and batshit insane, listening to Supertramp and thinking hey this sounds pretty good.

A Face From My Past

This is a reprint from my iWeb site. I thought I would include it here because I don't want to ever give out the address to that site again but there are some people that I still keep up with that remember those times.

While idling googling my past, which I do from time to time, I came across notice that Bill Skiff, the father of my high school girlfriend had passed away last summer. Bill had been a manager of a couple of different cab companies in San Francisco. I dated his daughter for half of my junior and most of my senior year. He was one of those classic S.O.B. types, a little too in your face for my taste and had a real difficulty listening to anything anybody else had to say. Still, he was a good guy to have as your girlfriends father. He knew all sorts of people and edges, got me my first job, taught me how to bowl. There was some fun times back then. Then again it was a weird time for everybody. For Sheri and I, it was to be expected, we were in high school and didn’t know jack shit. about anything. For Bill it was a transition as his kids were growing up and his marriage was falling apart. I still remember helping his wife empty the house while he was at work the day she moved out on him. Apparently she wasn’t the only one that had a problem with him. Anyway, rest in peace Bill. God or Satan, it doubt it matters, I imagine you’re talking either of their ears off.

Yes, I guess I Am

Well I made one last attempt to get my iWeb site to publish without giving me errors and spiking the comments. Not only did I fail but I managed to wipe out my keychains on my laptop and now my laptop won't sync back up to .mac. Apple is not on my happy list right now. The problem with that is that for the most part I'm a pretty cynical person. Usually Apple is the only one on my happy list. Now I just have a very long sad list. Wait, there is still Lupica and their day-brightening Earl Grey Renaissance tea that I pretty much drink whenever I'm not sleeping. I'm going to make another glass right now. Ah, yes, that's better.

This week I've decided to revisit del.icio.us. I had played around with the service about a year and a half ago and really didn't get into it. Mostly I think because I hate labeling things. This presents a bit of a problem since I love having things labeled. (Yea, I know, welcome to my world.) I had been struggling with this with my Devon database until I simply stopped using it. (I still use Devon to write and store my stuff but I don't saving all my clippings there anymore) And I wanted a better way to share what I was reading and thinking about. For a little while I had used Newsvine. I like the way Newsvine is set up and it does everything that I would want a social news site to do. The problem is I have with it is similar to my main problem at my job. Randal from Clerks hit the nail on the head when he said "This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers." Newsvine would be great if it wasn't for all the people that use it. This goes to two parts of my psychology. Number one, I'm not that much of a people person. Really I don't hate people or anything, it's just that I could really take them or leave them. Number two, I can't stand the flanks of either side of the political spectrum. I'm a moderate because the far left and the far right are completely divorced from reality. It is those people that scream the loudest on the Internet. I just find all that screaming demoralizing.

So that's why I'm liking del.icio.us. Let the content speak for itself. Of course when I tried to integrate my del.icio.us tags into my iWeb site there was no good way to do it, and iWeb had started spitting out errors whenever I tried to publish, and comments were no longer working, and iWeb has always been a pain in the ass to use on more than one computer, and fixing all of this had managed to screw up my laptop. Most importantly this isn't the first time I or a large block of users have had these kind of problems with this program. Well that's it I'm gone. I'm taking my ball (brain) and going home (using a web based tool).

So far so good. I've had to switch back to Firefox from Safari to get the posting form to work correctly but that's fine because there are some very cool extensions for del.icio.us on firefox. Blogger is much better now than the last time I used it. Smooth, flexible, sexy, everything a man looks for in blogging software.

Am I Really Back On Blogger?

After a year of work-arounds and wishing it just worked better I think I'm going to tell iweb to stuff it. My only fear is that I'm going to put my energies into this blog just to leave it when Leopard gets ready to roll around.

Wait I just found out that safari doesn't work nicely with blogger. God I just hate the way that firefox displays fonts on a mac.