Month: January 2006

So last night I’m sitting at my desk listening to some Groove Salad and I notice the music is sounding just awesome. Like, it sounds so much better than it ever has. I’m really enjoying it and I can’t figure out what the deal is.

Then I realized I had dropped 2 tabs of strong acid a few hours before and it was really coming on strong.

Okay, not really.

What I realized is that at some point during the day iTunes had gotten switched into it’s new Multiple Speaker mode and the music was coming from my laptop (with it’s shitty little speaker) and my stereo (with it’s giant awesome speakers) at the same time. I normally play my music through my stereo but because of how huge the speakers are they are both to the right of my desk and I don’t get any stereo seperation. Now I was getting mids and highs from my left side on the laptop and lots of lows, mids and highs from my right side on the stereo.
So I messed with the volume on the stereo and laptop a little bit and eventually got it to where I absolutely could not tell where the sound was coming from when I was sitting in my computer chair.

You’d think that someone who spent as much time listening to music as I do would have done something like this years ago but it just never came to mind. Now my mind is awash with buying dozens of Airport Expresseseses and putting speakers all over my house synchronized to the same source. Man, that would kick ass. Normally when I am working elsewhere in the house I turn up my bedroom stereo (We’ll take it slowwwww) to deafening levels so I can hear it wherever I am. It would sure be nice if there were just speakers strategically placed about every 2 feet in the house.

I think this post stopped having a point about two paragraphs ago. I’m just bored. But hey, hooray for iTunes Multiple Speakers support. It’s hot.

Oh, there was another thing.

You know the old thingy “Build a better mousetrap”? Saying, or whatever… Anyway, I decided I can do it. I’ve studied the wily house mouse and I know his ways, and his weaknesses. If you’d like to get in on the ground floor of this venture please send checks with lots of zeros after non-zeros and we’ll work something out.

Shit, “The Call of Ktulu” just came on.

I love this picture.

For Sale:
12″ Apple Powerbook G4 1.0 GHz, 768 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, 3 Year Apple Care Agreement

It’s in great shape. It’s had the LCD and hard drive replaced within the last year under Apple Care, so they are basically new. Minor wear on the case but very, very little. It’s spent most of it’s time on my desk or in a padded backpack.

Two batteries included. One is pretty worn but the other is less than a year old.

Looking for $1500 but will work on the price. Apple Care itself was $349.

Drop me a line if you are interested.

I’m gonna brag a little. I love my car. I love it, love it, LOVE IT. It’s a blast to drive, looks hot as hell and I just love it.

Aparently the guys from Top Gear do too; and that’s sayin’ something.

I had this great idea today where I would make a site where you could put in all kinds of criteria about a phone you wanted and it would show you all the goods.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to write a site like that.

Fortunately someone already did.

When the iTunes Music Store was first released I was firmly against it. I’ve always been proud of my CD collection, for whatever reason, and I didn’t think that buying an album, for not much cheaper, online was getting me the same amount of product. Primarily my beef was that some day when Apple goes bankrupt, or the iTMS (iTunes Music Store) gets shut down I wouldn’t be able to listen to my music any more. With CDs that can’t happen. The cat is out of the bag. If I woke up tomorrow and every CD player in the world was destroyed I could still build one and listen to my music.

Eventually I discovered JHymn and used it against some iTMS files I had gotten for free (from the store) and it worked. Stripped the DRM off with no reduction in quality. That opened the floodgates. The iTMS is insanely convenient. I get an urge to listen to something and a few clicks later I own it. A few minutes later with JHymn and it’s mine forever, no matter what happens to Apple. You can argue that Apple could close the AAC format, or make iTunes not play unprotected files, but that cat is also out of the bag. We know how to decode AAC into a stream of samples so as long as the file isn’t hindered with DRM my music is safe.

As of iTunes 6.0 JHymn is broken. It’s been an ongoing battle. DVD Jon has been fighting that battle since the beginning but a few things have changed in his life and iTunes 6.0 hasn’t been cracked. I can’t blame the guy. He moved from Norway to San Diego and got a high paying job. Chances are good that if he cracks iTunes 6.0 he’ll go to jail.

So with that my dilemma is back. I’ve bought a few albums from iTMS since JHymn was broken, but I’ve hesitated over quite a few more. More and more I go over to Amazon and buy the CD and wait for it to get shipped. It’s a shame, because nothing satisfies my impulsiveness like iTMS but I don’t like to accept the risk that if something happened to it I would lose access to, possibly, hundreds of dollars of music I purchased.

So what’s the point of this post? Just to let Teh Intertron know that I’m opposed to DRM too. I’m not the only one, by far, but I thought I’d go ahead and add my voice to the chorus.

And one note before people start frothing at the mouth. Note that I talk about buy, and purchase all over this post. I don’t steal music. I never have and never will. I believe in paying for what I use and I always do. But I also believe that once I pay for something I should get to use it for as long as I want to. I don’t rent a CD when I pay the money at the counter, I buy it, no matter how often someone tries to redefine the terms of the transaction.

Well, I have a New Years Resolution.

I want to unzip Charlize Theron out of that latex body suit she wore in Aeon Flux.

Pretty good flick. Lots of gratuitous violence, and plenty of eye candy. Not a whole lot of content, but plenty entertaining.

That’s not really my New Years Resolution. I do have one, but I’m gonna keep it a big secret! Oh how exciting!

The NYE party was big, big fun. We killed the keg of punch and put a solid dent in the Wheat. And had to have pissed off my neighbors something fierce. JoLynn came strapped no regrets with tons of party gear, including horns, so at the witching hour we stood on the front porch counting down, screaming, setting off party popper things, spilling Champagne and blowing horns like crazy.

Here’s to another good year, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of sinnin’ to do in the next 12 months, so I better get started.