Hawksley Workman performs in the CBC studios – four songs in real audio
Mozilla Firebird browser tip: Ctrl+K will focus the cursor in the in-toolbar Google search box (Ctrl+L does the same for the location bar)
If you are interested in the Gnome Desktop for Linux, there’s a good presentation about Gnome by Michael Meeks of Ximian/Novell from the Linux World Expo
I don’t need more flashing lights in my life right now
I just came back from a grand tour of all establishments (that I know of) here in Charlottetown that sell car CD players. My sigfinicant other recently bought a used Toyota with a dud CD player. We like the factory default — it’s simple, it has a volume knob, it doesn’t light up live a rave/disco/acid-flashback.
As it turns out, factory default car CD players seem to be the only ones available that aren’t totally X-treme®!
I’m having a similar problem with replacing my cell phone. It seems that color screens on cell phones do two things (and only two things, as far as I can tell): 1) suck up the battery faster, and 2) obscure system icons with crappy photo-realistic but unintelligible icons.
Anyone who has tried to buy sneakers in the last few years knows that unless you are a go-go dancer from Mars, a mountain climber, or some kind of space athelete, there are no shoes for you.
I can understand that “dudes” want to buy wacky stereos for their dude-mobiles. I also understand that flashy lights might help sell products when they are sitting next to a bunch of others on a store shelf. However, is there not a market for simple and elegant user interfaces? I am not asking for much — from the last I’ve seen, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Subaru, etc, all have relatively simple factory default stereos. Why can’t we buy these after-market?
Are substance, value, and usability — factors that come into play after the purchase, not during or before — always going to be drowned out by flash and featuritis — which make their impression at the time of purchase, but let you down afterwards? Of course, I dont’t mind that these wacky products are out there — I just wish I could still get something simpler.
I don’t need more flashing lights in my life right now.
(by the way, if anyone knows where you can buy a used factory default toyota CD player in Charlottetown, please let me know)
Mammoth: noun, adjective, and beast
I’ve posted here before about how the randomness and lack of context of the headlines on CNN.com often have disturbing/hilarious result. On any given day, the list of “Top Stories” headlines can almost always make me laugh out loud.
Today was no exception. Early today, one of the headlines read:
Mammoth skull found in a gravel pit
A few hours later, during which someone at CNN must have noticed the unindended brilliance of this headline, it was updated to the more accurate, but less hilarious:
Skull of mammoth found in a gravel pit
In case you are actually interested in the mammoth skull, you can check out the story and get a bonus “artists rendition of a mammoth”.
Rolling Stone interviews Justin Frankel of Nullsoft (winamp, gnutella, etc.)
Acts of Volition Radio: Session Four
The fourth session of Acts of Volition Radio is here. This session is based on songs and albums that are particularly well recorded, produced, or engineered.
A collection of particularly well recorded, produced, or engineered tracks. Recorded Wednesday, January 21, 2003 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 49min.
Session Four Playlist:
- Sandbox – The Garden Song
- The Watchmen – Brighter Hell
- David Usher – F-Train
- Age of Electric – Enya
- Poor Old Lu – Ring True
- Hole – Awful
- Cush – Heaven Sent
Also, a reminder that Acts of Volition Radio has an RSS feed of it’s own. The next session is going to be all about great guitar songs — I’m looking forward to it.
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RSS Feed
Free the Boring Keynote!
Last year, a rag-tag group of cardigan-wearing psuedo-intellectuals put on a conference and posted video of the sessions (however low quality) on the web for free.
This week, at the LinuxWorld Expo in New York, the Chairman of Novell gave the keynote address, and I can’t find video of it online anywhere.
Boo.
Applications Versus Documents on the Web
It has always bothered me that while the web has well defined standards for defining documents, much of what we do on the web isn’t about documents at all. Rather, it is much more like traditional application development.
Ian Hixie, Mozilla hacker and Opera Software employee in Norway, is also bothered by this, and plans to try to do something about it.
This would be a difficult task, but it is worth watching.
A vulnerability in Internet Explorer allows spyware to get at Mozilla Firebird