What am I doing here again?

I was just poking through my archives here (they seem so stale!) and discovered that I haven't done anything serious to this page in over a year! My Gawd what kind of korrible person must I be? No, it's not that bad.
I've been horribly busy what with the new job and all. And it's not even remotely connected to technology, so the creative spark is mostly extinguished. Every now and then it pops up and burns the fog of the day off and I think "Hey, I should do something." I don't usually. However, I think I'm going to have to learn a bit of Java. I've been using Konfabulator and most of the Widgets are U.S. centric. So, I need to adapt some to point to Canadian sources, like the weather. That's important. WIl I do this? I don't know. At least the idea is there, i have the source code, I've got an instruction book. I just need some time and motivation...
I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Bah, six months. No Post. Bad me. Well, work does that to a guy. Especially when I'm not actually working in an industry that is blog conducive. While thinking about the solid waste problems of the world (my world, at least), blogs are websites are about as far away from my mind as can be. Not that that's really any excuse.
So, I've seen a lot of bad movies, some good movies, been on a lot of killer rides, listened to a lot of music, looking forward to more killer rides. Rides are on my mind. And I still haven't got a camera, so no love on the video front. Working on it, though. Birthday's long gone, so I gotta front it for myself.
so... if anyone's going to Whistler drop me a line... missing it desperately...
'til next time, roll on

Sorry. Been away for a while... well, at least mentally. Either that or it's my short attention span acting up again. I've been thinking, gosh, what can I do to make this more fun? And playing video games... Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 and Gran Turismo 3 when I should probably be out pounding the pavement.

And to satisfy my short attention span, I've also been pondering what to do with this space now. I've been thinking about RSS feeds. More pictures, too. But lacking a camera, that's not really going to fly.

software of the week: Konfabulator. This is super sweet for all you Mac heads out there. It's a java runtime environment that allows you to run a whole pile of little teeny tiny apps right on your desktop. Called Widgets, these apps act as calendars, access stock quotes from the internet, allow you to monitor your system, play games, whatever... check it out, it's worth it.

Photos have been coming back from Mars since the January 2 landing of Spirit. Check them out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Until next time...

I'm having a rollcking good time following the SCO-IBM lawsuit going on right now. It's funnier than Dilbert. There was an article in the Globe and Mail yesterday that RBC was changing the terms of the deal in which they invested $50 million into SCO. Made me feel kinda dirty to be Canadian, that RBC thought enough of SCO's chances against IBM to give them money. Actually, the part of the article that was particularly funny was the use of the phrase "surprise legal victory" in reference to the fact that the judge made SCO state exactly what parts of the Linux codebase were the parts that violated the contracts between SCO and IBM. Now, this seems rather obvious to me... but hey, I'm not a lawyer. It would seem obvious that it was incumbent upon the plaintiff to prove violation. SCO managed to find one case in the whole of U.S. contract law that stated otherwise. IBM came armed with a whole stack of cases supporting their side: that SCO turn over what they know. The judge was not very kind to SCO. Groklaw has the court transcript.

And what is with Darl's brother arguing their case? That's just too funny

The Great Race to the Bottom
Steve Jobs made a comment last week during Apple's analyst meeting. He said that the iTunes Music Store is currently not making any money, but it might be nice to make a little bit of money. Sounds like they never really intended to make any money with it. Given the economics of distributing music digitally over the web, nobody should be making any money. Sure, the iTMS distributes in AAC format, so they've got a bit of a differentiating factor, ie. you need an iPod if you want to carry the tunes around with you. The competition (MusicMatch, Napster 2.0, etc.) have chosen Microsoft's WMA format. Again, a minor differentiator. You choose the service you use based on what type of player you have.

The catalogues of music are a little different, but for most of us, if there's something we really want that isn't on our service of choice, well, we'll either go to the local record store or grab it off of one of the P2P networks. So, I don't see catalogues as being a huge differentiator either. So, where does that leave us? With the format and the players. The iPod used to have this market to itself, and a lot of critics will tell you it still does (me being one of them). The problem, however, is the truckload of cheap devices and the continuing downward pricing on components. So, if you don't have a player tied to your music, you're hooped as a music service. hmm...doesn't sound like too great a business to be in...except for all the VC money.

The Italian Job
A rollicking good time. Charlize Theron, Marky Mark, Seth Green, Ed Norton, Donald Sutherland...I mean, how can you go wrong? It wasn't an overly intellectual movie, but then I wasn't expecting that. What I was expecting was some action, a bit of intrigue, some things getting blowed up real good, a stylish sense of humour and some reasonable acting. The Italian Job delivered on all points.

GTA 3: Vice City
...the continuing saga...
So, not being a hardcore gamer, I'm merrily playing along, following the missions, like I figure I'm supposed to, until I got stumped. So, I tried it again. No luck, still stumped. I let my finger do the walking over at Google to find some help. Got it. "Using your rocket launcher"...rocket launcher? huh? "Run to the car dealership, which you should own by now"...huh? I quickly realized that I had totally screwed things up and pretty much needed to start all over again. So that's what I did...new game...right back to the beginning to do it right, following the instructions here.

Yoink! Today is a glorious day! I just submitted my final project for my MBA. It's all editing from here on in. The content is done. Now I have to focus on finding a job. Right, I'll get on that soon.

The life of a student means watching a lot of movies. So, here's a brief run down of the ones I can remember from the last little while:

Kill Bill: Tarantino gets his fetish snack on in this flick. The first chapter of three. Think, okay, so one of Charlies Angels decides to get out, but Charlie turns out to be a freakin' psycho...This film lets Tarantino totally fetishize on music, kung-fu and fashion. It's impeccably cast and the characters are awesome. Oh, and the blood guysers are sweet.

About Schmidt: Jack Nicholson finds himself old and retired and doesn't know what to do with himself. Really well done. A nice character exploration, and considering how many people are out there about to retire, you better watch it.

House of 1000 Corpses: Rob Zombie does a take off on "A Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Totally twisted and gruesome. I'm not a big horror fan, but this had some pretty funny moments, in a sick kind of way.

Heathers: A flashback to my ill spent youth...The three most popular, beautiful girls in the high school are all named Heather and they terrorize the lesser beings. It's no wonder Christian Slater wants them dead...

Okay, enough of the movies. I've been reading a blog lately, Clay Shirky, good stuff. Gotta get back to it now...

update on the iTMS pricing in Canada: it seems that puretracks.com is offering tracks at $0.99 CDN, so iTMS will have to match that price. Mind you puretracks is Windows only shite, so I can't directly confirm that this info is true. The whole site is Windows only, sux.

Okay, some thoughts on what the iTunes Music Store in Canada might look like: Apparently, negotiations are underway with CMRRA. This bodes well for an announcement soon, I hope. Now, I was just poking around trying to figure out what kind of pricing they might propose. Here's my thought: if they follow the same formula as with iTMS in the States, then downloads will probably cost about $1.25 CDN which, as of today, is about $0.95 USD. Pricing might be as high as $1.39 CDN ($1.05 USD). These estimates are based on current CD prices between $14 and $16 CDN. Hopefully, we'll get a discount on retail, hence the low estimate, but maybe not, hence, the high estimate. Whether these bear any resemblance to what may transpire is entirely unknown, however you can be sure it won't be $0.99 CDN ($0.76 USD!), unless Apple manages to cut a sweet deal with the CMRRA and the CRIA. One can hope.