I think I'm paranoid

Actually, I'm sure that I'm paranoid. At least I come by it honestly. But if I were a country that wanted to do harm to the U.S. (or, say, Kang and Kodos), I'd be drawing up the invasion plans as we speak. Between the market, the wars, and the election... I dunno. We seem to be a little preoccupied.

Good thing Sam's finalizing our dual citizenship paperwork next week. Y'all can start bidding to be our spouses. Space is limited.

The Bailout is the new Patriot Act

Kneejerk reaction to a crisis.

Gets pushed through congress without being read or scrutinized.

Makes a terrible thing even worse.

Journalism at its best

I quit my job yesterday.

You Don't Have to Take My Word for It

The San Francisco Chronicle describes the Avett Brothers' sound as having the "heavy sadness of Townes Van Zandt, the light pop concision of Buddy Holly, the tuneful jangle of the Beatles, the raw energy of the Ramones."

I'm a bit late in recommending their 2007 album Emotionalism, but you should check it out anyway. It's not really the style of music to which I would normally be drawn, but it is good. Very good. It needed to give it a couple of listens and let it grow on me, but now I listen to it all the time, and love it every time. Genre-wise it's kind of confounding. Certainly there's folk there, some good old fashioned rock, punk rock elements. . . whatever, just listen to it. My favorite track is probably "I Would Be Sad," but apparently I'm the only one 'cuz I can't find it online. Here's a youtube link to "Paranoia in B Flat Major." If you like that check out "Pretty Girl From Chile," then just get the whole album.

The Midnight Organ Fight has got to be the best euphemism I've heard since bumpin' uglies. As good as the euphemism is, the album, by Scottish outfit Frightened Rabbit, is better. It reminds me of how I felt listening to The National's Boxer, although I think this album is even better. And I really liked Boxer. I think "I Feel Better" is the single, but I like "Keep Yourself Warm" and "The Modern Leper" more. Again though, you're really better off with the whole album.

Why can't Apple make a good program... for Windows?

Now, this isn't something that effects Logan or the Samjamin Goldsmith Apparatus (Benuel?)... but Apple makes terrible, terrible programs for PCs.

As the longstanding founder of a non-profit that fixes the computers of my friends and family for free (cough cough), I — unfortunately — still have to deal with iTunes, QuickTime, Safari, Apple Updater and a half dozen other useless, processor hogging PC processes and programs.

It isn't that the software is different on a PC. The function and layout is more or less the same. The problem is that Apple programmers, well, think different.

They don't, for instance, have incremental software update packages. Which means that, when iTunes brings out a new version (that's pretty much all the freakin' time) you have to download and reinstall the ENTIRE program... and QuickTime too. (And for a while, Safari... but I digress.)

They also don't see a problem hogging your entire processor. Windows is, if nothing, a bloated, poorly-optimized OS. And yet, iTunes PC makes it look like an anoxeric ballerina. One time I clocked iTunes 7 taking up 40% of the processor and about as much of the RAM on a newer Core 2 Duo PC with 2 GBs of RAM. You might be wondering, what was iTunes doing? As far as I could tell, nothing. Just shuffling from a music library... but it was enough to nearly freeze the PC.

Finally, they don't seem to see a problem installing six seperate processes that automaticaly start when you turn on your PC. iPods and iPhones are great, but do you really want to make everyone install a helper for each both? Why not have those helpers install when they first plug in one or the other? Also, why does iTunes even need a helper? It's slow as hell (see above). And those other helpers and update processes... yeah. Maybe that works well on a Mac. But on a PC it just sucks.

Fortunately, you can turn off most of the worthless processes. Even so, iTunes will run slow and you'll want to shoot yourself every time it freezes.

Of course, it could all be part of the Switch campaign.

Stuff white people like.

Judging by my time in central Pennsylvania:

John McCain.

Second verse, same as the first

Hey diddle diddle...

It's a first. I have a nursery rhyme stuck in my head.

For the last day, I keep thinking: and the dish ran away with the spoon.

Fortunately, I know it doesn't mean anything. But still. I wonder what it means.

Hey diddle diddle,
the cat and fiddle.
The cow jumped over the moon.

The little boy laughed to see such a sight.
And the dish ran way with the spoon.

I almost wish it was something else. Just not "I Kissed a Girl." I hate that song.

(Also, fantasy basketball sign-up starts on Wednesday. Email me if you are interested and willing to pay attention all season.)

More scenes from a Utah airport.

In the Black Diamond Expert Flyer security lane, a man, who confessed to have not flown in 30 years, asked an FAA agent whether or not it was safe to bring a Twinkie on board the aircraft.

A profounder question, perhaps, than he realized.

Hide genre while browsing in iTunes 8

I've happily used iTunes since 2003. I think it's great. But, upon updating to iTunes 8, I was rather frustrated to find that the option to hide the genre list while browsing had been removed. When I want to listen to music, I listen to an album by a particular artist. When I want to listen to music by various artists, I make playlists. I've never wanted to sort my library by genera. Ever. Logan is the only one I know who actually utilizes this feature, and he does so by keeping his library pathologically organized--something I'm physiologically incapable of doing. In case you too are bothered by the removal of this feature, this tip is pour vous.

1) Close iTunes
2) Open Terminal.
3) Enter the following text and hit enter:

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE

4) Close Terminal and open iTunes.

You're done! To reverse this operation, just replace 'FALSE' with 'TRUE' in the Terminal command.

PS - Am I the only one who's kind of afraid to activate the new Genius feature?

Does This Make Me a Sadist?

Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)

I promise I won't keep spamming the blog about a consumer product that only 1/4 of non-Goldsmith writers currently own, but there are a couple of impressive applications that have emerged from the SDK that warrant a mention.

Midomi: At some point we have all had a song stuck in our head that we couldn't identify. I remember calling up 107.5 The End to finally put a name to Howard Jones's "Things Can Only Get Better" after AltaVista [remember those halcyon pre-Google days?] searches of the lyrics "whoa whoa whoa" failed to produce any results.

With little precedence, Midomi comes along and solves all of our musical conundrums.

Play any song and within 10 seconds Midomi, more often than not, will correctly identify it. That's it. A simple trick -- but people are consistently amazed by the application. You can even try humming or singing the song and Midomi will make a noble effort in naming the song. Except for Mark's rendition of "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" which would have barely netted him a single star in Rock Band.

In the future there will a growing nostalgia for days when we didn't completely outsource our brains to the internet, but for now Midomi is a neat little parlor trick that should help you identify the Three Dog Night cover in the trailer for that terrible looking Ricky Gervais movie.

Simplify Media: It seems too good to be true. Simply Media facilitates the dream of audiophiles everywhere -- the ability to stream your audio content from your computer to any other compatible device. All of your music. If that wasn't enough, they are working on a script that would also enable you to stream your video content as well. The arms race for portable flash based memory is over before it even began.

Simply Media is not perfect. The interface is a bit clunky and it is an independent application so there is no easy two button solution to change your music settings. And while this would be an amazing application for a road trip, the ability to only stream one song at a time (no download queue) means you might hit a nasty silent patch as you travel through the glorious dead zone that is the Oklahoma Turnpike. Still it is an important step and I think it points the way to a future of decentralized streaming media content. [After all you don't even "own" the music you purchase -- you are just licensing it. Unless you are Michael Jackson.]

One more thing. Did I mention that you can share you library with up to 20 friends? As soon as I get an independent media server, my entire collection will be up for streaming.

Sights and sounds

The following are some of my favorite quotes and pictures of random people from what I saw of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night. There just isn't much more I can say about it.

My dad was like so many of your dads. He worked hard. He lifted heavy things.
--Mike Huckabee

I'm a republican because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.
--Mike Huckabee

China is acting like Adam Smith on steroids.
--Mitt Romney

You can fit more than 250 states the size of Delaware within the borders of Alaska.
--Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii

food for thought:

YouTube didn't exist during the last presidential election. Yikes.