Chances are you’ve never heard of Mike Knott. He’s been writing and performing in various bands and on his own for at least twenty years. I would include several of his albums in my Desert Island Discs list.

I’ve written before about seeing him live – an amazing experience.

His latest disc has yet to be officially released and distributed with a label. However, he has produced 500 copies for his performance at this year’s Cornerstone Festival. I didn’t make the festival, but he’s selling off the remaining discs on his site and I was able to buy a copy.

It arrived today and I’ve never felt so cool. The disc was obviously made in a CD burner and was labelled/signed by Mike Knott himself. Then, to complete the indie-rock experience, I put the disc into my CD drive – WinAmp opens up and tells me I’m the first Gracenote/CDDB user to use the disc and I have the honour and privilege of entering the track-listing for all the wannabes and late-comers who jump on the bandwagon long after I did.

I am cool.

“…success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you’re desperately afraid of getting it dirty…”

Salon.com has always been a great site. I’ve enjoyed their Tech section in particular partly due to the writing of Scott Rosenberg – managing editor of Salon.

In the past year, Salon has slowly slipped from my regular morning routine, generally in favour of independently published weblogs. My routine currently includes, among others, Slashdot, Wired, News.com, Scripting.com, Reinvented.net, Zeldman.com, The Register, MetaFilter, Signal vs. Noise, and Kottke.org.

I’m glad to see Salon jumping into the personal publishing world with both feet with their new Radio Userland-based Salon Blogs service. I’m particularly pleased that Scott Rosenberg himself is leading by example with a weblog of his own.

Inspired by others taking credit for vague inventions, I would like to go on record with a vague invention of my own that I suspect will someday be very valuable. First, in case it’s not already obvious, let me be clear that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

The idea is much like noise-cancelling headphones, but rather than sound waves cancelling sound waves, you use various types of radiation to cancel out other radiation. For example, you could create a reverse-microware that would measure the vibration of the molecules in the food, and create an inverse microwave pattern that would cancel the vibration, therefore freezing the product. Perhaps there could be other applications in protecting ourselves from the gigawatts of energy we pump into ourselves every day.

Again – absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. If you know why this might be a stupid idea, I’d rather not hear from you. I’m only soliciting positive feedback.

In a very wired move Wired magazine continues to publish the entire editorial contents of the print magazine online each month. It’s all there – no delay, no catch. Smart move – particularly for situations like this, where I want to discuss a story from the print magazine on a site like this.

There’s an interesting article about the role of ubiquitous broadband on the social structures in the worlds most wired city, Seoul. The Bandwidth Capital of the World, explores how being online is a social activity in Korea rather than an isolated activity, as it often is elsewhere.

The article is particularly interesting if prefaced with Derek Powazek’s book, Design for Community – the art of connecting people in virtual places and Ben Brown’s excellent article (based on a panel at the 2002 SxSW Conference), Taking Online Interactivity Offline.

Also, listening to keyboard-night on CBC Radio Two’s Radiosonic with Grant Laurence. It’s all good. I hope they play Joy Electric.

I don’t own any Apple products, but I find Apple’s marketing strangely entertaining. This is partly due to the fact that the advertising is often very well done and partly because it is just strange.

Apple’s most recent ‘Switch’ ad campaign is no exception (see the ads). While it certainly wouldn’t prompt me to buy anything, I would venture that it will be quite successful. Despite some absolutely hilarious criticism (Flash/Audio), the ads capitalize on a common thread among many computer users – we hate and fear our computers. The cause for this hate and fear cannot be pinned on any one product or platform, but Apple will likely succeed in planting a seed in many minds: “This computer sucks. Apple is better.”

I’m really just trying to justify why I watched a webcast of Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld this week. As always, Steve gave a well-delivered, if not a little creepy, run down of how great Apple is. I don’t blame him – it’s his job.

What caught my attention was a short excerpt from the presentation that Jobs would love for none of us to have noticed. These few short seconds said more than the entire MacWorld conference. While doing a demo of the Mail utility in OS X, something went wrong with Jobs’ demo machine. It’s not clear exactly what went wrong, but Jobs casually leaned over, flicked a switch, and said something about a “backup” machine.

What he did was switch the monitor, keyboard, and mouse he was using to a completely new machine that was waiting in the wings – obviously in anticipation of just such a scenario.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every time you had a problem with your computer you could seamlessly switch to a standby?

I’m pleased (and proud) to be posting from my new house (new to me, at least). A few weeks of rewiring, painting, pulling up old carpet – to reveal some beautiful hardwood floors – and I’m enjoying my new place very much. It’s a small, simple home – exactly what I was looking for.

What did I learn about real estate? I learned some new jargon. I learned that you will be rewarded if you wait for the right place (or I was, at least). Oh, and you might get a bottle of wine from your real estate agent.

Working on the new house, moving, and getting settled have forced me to push back some planned improvements to aov. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it since been a particularly busy summer at work. However, the updates are mostly for my own benefit – so you’re not missing much.

Many thanks to all those who have helped me out with the move and with the new place (especially my family).

There was some talk on this site about what can be called ‘news’ since I was interviewed on local CBC radio about the Northern Exposure petition. Well, I’ve been completely outdone.

Listen to this absolutely hilarious CBC PEI interview with a disgruntled hot dog vendor (RealAudio).

A few key quotes:

Interviewer: “What did you expect when you came here?”
Hotdog Man: “We expected, like, well, what we read in the paper.”
Interviewer: “Did you do any kind of market research before you came out here?”
Hotdog Man: “Not one iota.”
Interviewer: “So just basically going on rumour alone?”
Hotdog Man: “Crapshoot.”

Hotdog Man: “Can you imagine a hot dog cart with no umbrella? Like, how ridiculous.”

The local CBC radio interviewed me about the Northern Exposure petition yesterday. I didn’t hear the interview (it aired very early this morning), but they’ve got a piece about the interview on their website.

I have to admit – I’m a little embarrassed by the coverage. Don’t get me wrong, I love the limelight, and I love the show. It’s just that of all the things going on in my life, this is not something that I’m putting too much thought or energy into. I mean, a petition for third-world debt relief maybe – but for a TV show?

I don’t even own a TV.

And for the record, during the interview I said “literary allusions” not “illusions” as is unfortunately quoted with my comment about how “smart” the show was.

UPDATE: The CBC has corrected the illusions/allusions mixup on their site. Thanks.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The CBC has posted the full interview (4:17) in Real Audio format.