/mark [mark husson]

Nothing New

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:34:00 +0000

If you read this site, wish that it was updated more, and wonder why I don't post much anymore, you are not alone. I wonder those same things too. I think that at least once a day for the past two weeks straight I have thought about this site, wanted to write a post, but just have nothing to write about. I feel like I haven't been creative for a long time now. I haven't drawn, painted, photoshopped, coded for fun, anything like that since probably last year. And it's June. I feel like I used to do that kind of stuff all the time.

I have been able to relax quite a bit now that the wedding is over, and all the thank-you notes are all sent out and everything, but maybe I have been relaxing too much. I've thought about redesigning this site, but with no good content, it seems like a waste. I tried to revive some old greasemonkey scripts I wrote but the changes made to greasemonkey since I stopped following it's development make it difficult to work with.

I'm glad Nick has got internet access in his condo now, it will be good to be able to chat with him in the morning and evening. Sara, Nick, and I have started trying to figure out the weekly Filmwise Invisible quizzes over email and we actually got all of them this week.

That's all for now, I'll get back to working on how to make this site interesting again.

"How can a train be lost? It's on rails."

iPhone 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:23:00 +0000

Being an iPhone 1.0 owner (thanks again, Nick) and hearing today's iPhone announcement I have to say I think I am coming out ahead in this deal. I will get every single feature of the new iPhone. The only difference is that my "over the network" internet speeds won't be as fast and my location (GPS) information won't be quite as accurate. The nice thing is that I rarely use my internet connection "over the network" as I am almost always on a wi-fi network and the location-based look-up in the current iPhone is amazingly fast and accurate.

It's funny how we'll be able to do over the air iPhone updates, music and video downloads, and software purchases, but not over the air podcast updates. That's the feature I want.

For all the people that waited for a 3G iPhone, I'll bet they're glad they waited, they are getting an awesome device at an amazing price (it is a third the price of the original iPhone at launch), but to those who already have one I think we are getting all of the benifits with none of the obseletion regret.

Friday Night

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 25 May 2008 00:10:00 +0000

Friday night I drove down to my friend Todd's apartment in Parker to see Tyler who was in town from Durango for a friend's wedding. It was actually south of Parker, roughly the last turn before you get to New Mexico. Todd, Tyler, Jeff, Jason and Dean were all there when I arrived and so was an old dorm-mate from CU, Aleks. Aleks is a Russian kid I met my sophomore year at CU. He was 21 at the time and could therefore buy alcohol, a vital role in the college dorms. He was a Junior that year. I ended up living on campus my sophomore year because I didn't have that many close friends after my freshman year and not being a huge fan of Boulder at the time, I didn't want to live by myself. I hadn't seen Aleks since probably a year or two after I left CU, so that was pretty cool to get to hang out.

Late into the night, after some thimble sized jello shots and metal puzzle games, Aleks and his cousin went to the store and bought some Tostinos pizzas. The problem was Jeff and Todd's oven doesn't work. The broiler did though. And so did the microwave, the toaster, and the bar-b-que. The first pizza, they decided to cook in the turned-on-it's-side toaster. It was pretty burnt, I didn't have any. The second pizza from the broiler was burnt with some gooey dough, I didn't have any of that either. The third pizza, however, that was cooked on the grill, thrown in the broiler, and finished up in the microwave. I had some of that and despite the burnt cardboard and charcoal taste of the rock hard undercoat of the crust, it was pretty good.

It was a pretty fun night hanging out with everyone, telling old jokes, listening to Tyler put down other's career decisions in order to defend his married life, waiting an hour for Jeff to mysteriously come out of his bedroom, watching Jason finally separate two pieces of a metal puzzle, and finally seeing Todd's place. I just hope this isn't the last time I see Tyler for three years.

Napster Mp3 Store

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:34:00 +0000

With apologies to Mark Reeder, my first attempt at using the Napster store wasn't a pleasant one. I went to buy the new Islands album from Napster and was presented with this message:

Sorry, at the copyright owners' request, the following [2] track(s) are not currently available for purchase. Click "Continue" to view available tracks and proceed with your purchase.

Yeah, I really dont want to buy 10/12ths of an album.

To Mark's and Napster's credit, the homepage is way better than when I reviewed it (it no longer looks like a gigantic banner ad) and the UI of the web application has tightened up quite a bit. I also heard you can't view available tracks without an account and can't use Safari at all on it, both of which aren't good features. The album I bought this morning from Amazon Mp3 was $8 and Napster had it for $10 (with all tracks included this time).

For now I will still be using the Amazon Mp3 store as my first destination, iTunes Plus tracks as my second and then I will check Napster.

The Scotch Whisky Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:54:00 +0000

If you ever decide to visit Scotland, namely Edinburgh Scotland, I have one piece of rock-solid advice for your trip: do not go to the "Scotch Whisky Experience."

The Scotch Whisky Experience is a tourist attraction, right outside Edinburgh Castle on the Royal Mile. Let me give you the highlights. You go in, pay like £9 ($18 USD) per person and then wait in a room for the tour to start. After a while, a nice Scottish lady comes in and gives you a shot of Scotch, in our case it was the exquisite and rare Dewars (yes, this was Jon Favreau's drink in Swingers). Then you watch a video produced in 1994 of an American "tourist" (you know he's a tourist because he keeps taking pictures of crap with a gigantic camera with oversized strap) who takes a sip of scotch to be transported back in time to see how whisky is made.

That goes on for a while. The second part is the tour guide pointing out parts of a diorama with a wand.

The third part is another hokie video of a "ghost bartender" who floats out of a bottle of whisky projected onto a piece of glass to give the ghost effect.

But the finale... the finale is a theme park style ride where you sit in a whisky-barrel-mobile cart that goes on a track at 0.25mph through "the history of whisky." It was like It's a Small World but with whisky.

The whole thing was like it was made for a 7 year old, but you had to be 18 to drink any whisky, it was just awful and lasted forever. So there's my Edinburgh advice: don't go to the Scotch Whisky Experience.

The UK!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:26:00 +0000

We're in Edinburgh, Scottland Airport right now about to fly to Dublin to finish up the last part of our honeymoon. We started in London and stayed there for a few days. Everything has been pretty awesome so far, including a drunk Brit on the London Underground, and a crazy hotel manager that was also our server and receptionist. Look forward to writing when we're back! Bye!

Getting Married

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:25:00 +0000

Just a quick post to say that I am getting married today to the most amazing woman in the world and I am incredibly excited. I'd better get ready for the wedding tho. And not forget the rings. Can't forget the rings.

What a Bug Report Might Look Like in Real Life

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:07:00 +0000

Steps to Reproduce:

1) Enter your bedroom
2) Open your closet. Look at your blue shirt..
3) Close the closet and lock it.
4) Try to open locked closet without unlocking.
5) Now unlock closet but don't open it.
6) Go outside and open your garage.
7) Come back to your room, open your closet.

Result: Your blue shirt is not there anymore. It should be.

I recently read that a good bug is like a good magic trick. You clearly know what should be happening but for some reason (magic), it's not.

More likely than not, someone stole the shirt while I was in the garage but I had no idea.

the bus driver tried to rearrange my face

noreply@blogger.com (sara) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:39:00 +0000

Well first of all – let me apologize for not having posted in a while. I know that Mark’s tech-y posts have, uh, “kept you going,” but I’ve neglected the loyal /mark readers and for that, I am deeply sorry. I also feel like I should have probably been posting more regarding all of these wedding shenanigans (what a great word!), but sometimes when I’m home – I try to get away from planning a bit.

Today’s post is regarding my/our “winning” week. I’m know some of you have heard about this, but details may have been a little fuzzy – so here goes.

Yes, my face did run into an RTD bus. Yes, I do have some bruises. Yes, I am okay.

Here’s basically what happened – I was sitting on the 16th Street mall ride heading back to work and the driver who was “new” and didn’t know that when a light starts turning red on the 16th street mall – you keep going . You don’t slam on the breaks – especially with a lot of people standing. I was not expecting this sudden stop (why would I?) and my face decided it would like to become one with the brochure rack attached to a plexiglas divider. Needless to say it hurt. Pretty bad. Pretty F#@KING bad to be honest. My arm wasn’t too impressed with the events either.

The 2nd driver (the trainer to the new guy) explained that his boss was coming to the scene. Well with his boss came at least two ambulances, two fire trucks and about eight cop cars. This was quite the site and it was all for me. I mean, I am totally fine with it being “all about me,” but geez! The paramedics checked me out and decided that it would be best for me to go the hospital – just in case I cracked my face and needed the doctors to “put Humpty back together again.” The doctor (who was really awesome and made me feel so much better) decided that I was fine and to just watch for changes in my vision, as well as a concussion. They sent me home.

But – on the way home Mark and I decided to get Wendy’s. We both had a frosty (which I’m pretty sure was the culprit) and got food poisoning! FOOD POISONING!!! What god did I piss off? RTD accident and food poisoning all in one day? Anyway – Mark and I are now able to eat solid food again. Thankfully.

I Want a New Google Reader Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:32:00 +0000

I thought of a great idea for a new feature for Google Reader. Being obsessed with reading feeds like I am, I often get done with all of my unread items and then feel sad and alone as there is nothing more to read and I don't know what to do. So my idea is this. When you get done with your unread items (or any other time you wanted), you could go to the "Browse Recommended Feeds" area, but instead of getting a list of recommended feeds or seeing a bunch of items from one recommended site, you would actually start reading all your recommended feeds as if you were subscribed to them. That is, you would start reading one item from this blog followed by one item from a different site, etc., all in the river-of-news style. You could still click on the feed name to see all items from that one site, but otherwise it would be an amazing time killer and site discovery tool.

Things I Got Done This Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:27:00 +0000

As the "holiday" weekend comes to a close I am feeling very accomplished. I got a lot done and thought I'd list what I did.

Sara and I cleaned the house. It's not very out of the ordinary, but it makes my list bigger. We cleaned it so we could have Jared Sarah, and Quin over for dinner, which, yes, was lovely.

We met the photographer at red rocks to go over some good photo-taking areas and ideas with him. One shot we decided on will feature me posing bare-chested with an axe.

After going to two other pastry shops and being completely disappointed with their willingness to make our cake the way we want it, we came across Child's Pastries who had the best price, taste, and design ability and we ordered our cake.

Every time I decide to wash my car, I find out that it's going to snow within the next couple of days so I don't end up washing it. This has lead to me not washing my car for about six months. By this point, you could scrape the magnesium chloride off with a spatula. Well, I bit the bullet and got my car washed, waxed, vacuumed and was actually amazed by how good it looks.

Friday night we decided we should do our taxes so we can get any possible refund before our honeymoon and right now they are done, sealed in an envelope waiting to be sent out. Combined we will receive a very descent refund which will help us with our soon-to-be-incurred wedding-and-honeymoon debt.

Even though we finished watching Love Liza about three and a half weeks ago, it has been sitting sealed next to the TV since then. This weekend I realized we haven't actually returned it and will be sending back the movie tomorrow morning. I now realize that I *am* Netflix's business model.

Finally, for no good reason, we started going through all the boxes in our storage room tonight. By the end of the night, we had cut our storage volume in half. Thankfully, there is a bunch of stuff going to goodwill, but sadly, there are tons of VHS movies going to the dump including but not limited to One Crazy Summer (thanks michael), fightclub, office space, a few star wars trilogies, a few indiana jones trilogies, and many more. Sad to see them go.

A New Cell Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:08:00 +0000

I got a new cell phone. Actually, I didn't get it, it was given to me by my friend Nick. Nick moved to Midland, TX about a year and a half ago to take a job there and was recently offered a position in Dubai. Well, he took the position and moved there this last Saturday. Nick has an iPhone but won't be needing a US-based cell phone over there as I think will have a company phone for all his phoning needs. Well, he did something that is sure to go down as one of the coolest things anyone could do for a friend and ended up giving me his phone. He said it was because he knew I would use it to it's fullest, and I hope to come through on that.

The iPhone is actually better than I expected. I never thought about it, but it is a little computer. It does 90% of what I do on my computer most of the time. If I need to pay a bill, or look up when my next hockey game is, or look up some news, I don't need to go get my laptop, I can do it all from the phone which is incredibly nice. The phone part of the phone is also amazing compared to all the other crappy interfaces and menu hell that I've had to deal with before.

I am also trying to resist the urge to flick, pinch, and slide my fingers on my trackpad when I'm on my laptop.

Land Line

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:31:00 +0000

Tonight we finally got a home phone number. We have been in this house for over a year and have never needed one, but sometimes our cell phone coverage (my cell phone coverage) is spotty within the house and drops all the time and rarely works at all in the basement. So I suppose we did need a land line. The problem is we couldn't justify $30+ a month for something that we wouldn't use too much.

After talking to a coworker, we decided to get a home phone through Skype. It works just like a regular VoIP phone does, but there are all kinds of other cool benefits to having it tied to a regular Skype user account. So for the first time in 7 years, I have a home phone number and because it only works out to about $6 a month, I am pretty pleased.

Last.fm is Looking Like the Winner

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:20:00 +0000

So, over the past few months I have been looking for a good way of listening and discovering music on the mac. I said that what I wanted in a service was to:

Listen to Personalized Radio (ala launchcast, pandora, etc.)
Listen to any Song or Album I want to whenever I want to. (like YMU, Rhapsody, etc.)
Do both of these things on a Mac with little effort. (and have a price relative to YMJ)

With that in mind, I made a serious effort to use the following services:

Yahoo Music Unlimited (via VMWare Fusion)
Napster
Rhapsody
Last.fm
Pandora

Well, after using all of those services, I think that I am going to get behind last.fm, especially in light off their announcement today. In essence, the announced that they are going to start a subscription service that will let you listen to music on demand as much as you want. The funny thing is that on October 17th I said:

"Why doesn't Last.fm just charge a few bucks more a month to let you listen to music on-demand? That would be ideal."

Well that's what they are going to do, so I couldn't have asked for anything better. The also already have a great personalized radio service, plus a native OS X client (which they say will be updated to support this new service) that doesn't crash if your browser crashes like the other "online services" do. Last.fm also has been keeping track of all the music I have listened to for the past 3 or so years and has an interesting (albeit unexplored by me) social networking aspect to the site.

Also, if you didn't read it, they now allow anyone to listen to any song or any album on their website for free up to 3 times. This is awesome. This means you can decide if a new album you are interested in is worth spending the money on by listening to the whole thing first.

Not much more to say other than I am extremely excited for what last.fm has in store in the near future, and instead of waiting around for Yahoo's cryptic hints to pan out, I am fully getting behind last.fm, I just hope they get a big enough backlog and low enough price to make it all worth it.

How to Cancel Phone Book Delivery

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:47:00 +0000

Do you want to cancel your phone book delivery? Stop the yellow pages from being delivered? So did I but I couldn't for the life of me find out how.

Our phone books go from the front porch to the recycling bin in the back, never even stopping in the house. With the Google, GOOG-411, and all the other non-out-of-date ways to look up phone numbers I have no need for a big phone book that wastes tons of paper.

My sister-in-law, Kat came through for me. She found the phone number for Yellow Book that you can call and request to have phone book delivery stopped for your house. The number is 1-888-492-8721. I had to be transfered to the distribution department but I talked to a nice lady who removed my address from their delivery system. She also informed me there was no way to stop delivery online, you have to call.

Hopefully this information is helpful to you and if you don't use your phone books, save a few trees, stop the delivery for them.

Virtual Reality Could Be Easy on the Wii

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:33:00 +0000

When I saw this video, I was completely blown away. This is a video of a student who uses a normal Wii remote with some infra red sensors (like on the wii's sensor bar) and hooks them up to a simple 3-D program to create an amazing virtual reality experience on just a normal TV. Watch the video and see how game developer's for the wii could easily implement a mind blowing one player first-persom virtual reality game for the Wii.

The Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:06:00 +0000

I am going to suggest that everyone stop using the term "the internets" to be cute and clever. Not because it isn't funny. It sure did used to be funny. No, I think people should stop using the term so that it doesn't turn into another "nucular".

If we don't stop using it now, people will stop realizing it is being used as a joke and then it will end up in the dictionary as an acceptable substitution for the original term.

Knowing What You Don't Like

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:55:00 +0000

A few months ago I was talking to my cousins at my other cousin's wedding and we started talking about music. After a while, they asked me if I liked a band called Breaking Benjamin. I looked at them confused. They asked if I really didn't know who Breaking Benjamin was and I told them that I didn't. Since then I have heard two songs from this band and made my judgment pretty quickly that I didn't like them at all, but I'm sure to my cousins everyone else at the table, it looked like I was totally out of the music loop and that I was pretty unaware of current music.

It's been four years since I've listened to music on the radio, but in that four years I have probably listened to more music than any other time in my life. Last week I left my iPod in the house (it's usually in my pocket) and I had to listen to the radio to and from work and while doing other normal driving. I wouldn't have thought so before last week, but I am completly dependant on my iPod and the music that I like. It was a bad few days. It was like being stuck in the back of your parents car in high school while they have their station on.

It did have one really good advantage though. I now know the names of several popular bands that, when brought up in conversation, I can say with confidence that I don't like. Seems like it would be a good thing for me to do a few times a year.

Lexie Grace Husson

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:04:00 +0000

I am thrilled to say that late Thanksgiving night, my brother and sister in law had their third, beautiful daughter, Lexie Grace Husson. So Kat (my sister-in-law) was supposed to be induced on the 3rd of December, but by the time we got to my parents house on Thanksgiving, Kat was there and she was already having contractions. By 9pm or so, the contractions were escalating and so they left for the hospital. By 10:18pm the baby was born.

Now that all sounds really nice and quick until you realize they didn't have enough time to give Kat the epidural. That is just about the most awful thing I can think of. I suppose they didn't want to waste it either, so they ended up giving it to my brother. It seemed to calm him down. Sara and I got the good news a short while after and visited them the next day. Sara was banking on a blond-haired baby since they have a brunette and a red-head, but it turns out that Lexie Grace has dark black hair, and a fair amount of it.

I am thrilled to have another awesome niece, this one is the youngest like me, and look forward to watching her grow up. It was pretty neat to actually be there when Kat knew it was coming and know what was going on. You can see some pictures of Lexie on my flickr account and some more on my brother's.

Music Service Review: Napster

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:47:00 +0000

So in searching for a good music service on OS X, I decided to give Napster a try. Napster just released a new version of their service that includes a full web interface which works cross-browser and cross-platform. I signed up for a 30 day trial and liked it, but not enough to keep and pay for the service.

Fist, the interface is actually petty nice. It's well laid out and works pretty much how I would expect it to. The only 2 things that seem strange visually are the status bar at the top (shouldn't it be at the bottom of the app?) and the search box has electric blue text nad looks very strange and out of place.

I am torn because while I love that it is a full-fledged web app (something I have wanted for a while), the more I used it, the more I sort of wished it was its own application. One reason this is bad for me especially is because I am a web developer so I clear my cache a couple hundred times a day and crash my browser upwards of a dozen times a day which isn't good for trying to listen to music that plays in the browser. A nice compromise to this might be something like running Npaster in Mozilla's Prism so it can be it's own app.

I wish it would handle search a little better. I accidentally had it on "song search" or something but thought I was on "artist search" and searched for a band. All it said was "No Results". It would have been nice had it said "No Results in Songs for 'Mates of State' but there was 1 Artist Match" with a link to the artist or artist search results.

What disappointed me most was the lack of a good "Personalized Radio Station" like Yahoo's LaunchCast or Pandora. I tried to use Napster's "Auto Playlists" but they were, for the most part, really bad recommendations for similar artists. The other problem with the "Auto Playlist" Idea is that the kinds of bands I like vary quite a bit which I think that can be said for most people. Ben Folds is nothing like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah who is nothing like The Streets but I love them all. I would try to listen to the auto-playlists but their recommendations were always pretty bad, even in the same genre.

Maybe to get the most out of Napster I need to treat it a little differently, like build up my own music library and listen to that on shuffle, but I can already do that with my iPod. What I want is to listen to music I like as well as music that I might like, recommendations mixed in to stuff that I know I like. I can't really get that with Napster, at least, not that I found. Also, I really think Napster needs a better homepage. Napster.com looks like a banner ad. It is way off-putting. Look at some other product pages from around the web: Apple product pages, Firefox, Delicious Library, etc are well done. I would never even want to try Napster just by visiting the homepage. How about screenshots? Also, there are so many old pages
lying around the web for old features and out of date features for Napster. Reading these pages I really thought there was a radio player in Napster Online. Took me an hour googling to find out that is is maybe only a feature for the desktop software and even at that, maybe this feature doesn't exist anymore. I wouldn't know. Didn't say anything in the help either.

So I might try it again in the future, but for now I will move on and continue my search for a great music program on the mac.

I just hope they start a personalized internet radio feature based on user ratings. That would get me to become a paying customer. Overall though like I said, it's not for me.

Boston, the City not the Baseball Team

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0000

My family visited Boston when I was probably about 9 or so. It was pretty cool, we saw the aquarium, caught a Red Socks Game at Fenway, saw Paul Revere's house, used his bathroom, all the stuff tourists do. This time, I am in Boston for a conference (The Ajax Experience conference) and I have to say that I like Boston much better this time despite not actually being able to explore the city during the day.

The conference is pretty good, one of the best I have been to, but mainly I think that's because the subject matter is the stuff I am most interested in. I am actually not minding the 11 hour days at the sessions, but this time zone thing isn't fun. I have to go to bed before I'm tired and wake up 2 hours early. It will be nice going home.

Aside from the Rockies, the only disappointing thing that has happened here is that I was able to try some super good cannoli they have here from a place called Mike's Pastry. I was told they are addicting and after trying some 2 nights ago I thought they were pretty good but addictive? Not really. Until the maid stole mine. I had bought 2 to enjoy over a couple days. Well the first night I ate one and the next morning I had 1/2 of one but left another half for that night. When I got back to the hotel, the maid had stolen my half a cannoli. You don't do that to a person. I was furious and I felt like I needed to gain the cannoliness back so tonight we stopped by Modern Pastry (from what I can tell, the neck-and-neck runner-up to mikes) and replenished my losses (plus enough to get me through Friday). I have been unfortunate enough to now see that Mike's will ship out of state. This might be bad.

also...
starbucks : denver :: dunkin' donuts coffee : boston

Music Search Thoughts #2

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 06:00:00 +0000

Last.fm is looking to be awesome. Even the free "type in an artist and hear similar music" stations are awesome and could potentially satisfy my personalized internet radio cravings. Their paid version is way cheap too.
Why doesn't Last.fm just charge a few bucks more a month to let you listen to music on-demand? That would be ideal.
Rhapsody is not worth the effort. The trial has expired and I don't really care.
Rhapsody has teamed up with TiVo to allow streaming directly to the TiVo, but that means I would have to want to listen to TV on my 32" tube tv in the basement. It would be nice if I already paid for the service, but not compelling enough to start paying.
Last week, the head of Yahoo!'s Music devision, Ian C. Rogers, basically stated he is giving up on trying to make music accessible to non-windows, non Windows Media Player users. He makes a good point but this pretty much gives up all hope for mac support, Firefox support, iPod support, anything like that.
Today Napster announced they are working on a web-based (and web only) music service. This give me limited hope. I wonder if it will be IE only. I can guess.
If I had to choose a solution right now it would be Last.fm personalized radio + the 25 free listens you get on Rhapsody every month so that I could preview albums before I buy them.

Waiting For My Refund

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:31:00 +0000

It looks like Apple is dropping the price of it's DRM-free mp3's on iTunes (called "iTunes Plus" tracks) from $1.29 to 99 cents. When the iTunes plus tracks came out, I was pretty excited about them. I ended up "upgrading" a track I own and buying 6 more. Yes, I know I was an early adopter of the iTunes Plus tracks, but come on, I bought those tracks only a little over 4 months ago. I didn't think that they would lower the price by nearly 25%. That is ridiculous. If Apple doesn't give me a $2.10 store credit, I might just file a class-action law suit. That will teach them to lower their prices. Assholes.

Star Wars In a Day

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:20:00 +0000

I was hesitant to write about this and reveal just how huge of a nerd I am, but I'm pretty sure that's not too much of a secret, so here we go.

Yesterday, Sara, her dad, and I watched Star Wars Episode's I - VI back to back, chronologically. We estimated it would take us 13.5 hours. It ended up talking us around 14.5. We started at 9am which wasn't easy to do on a Saturday. Over the course of the six movies, I didn't have any revelations, but I did write down some thoughts.

I Never put together the history of Jedi training which goes: Yoda > Duku > Qui-Gon > Obi-Wan > Anakin. Then Luke get's trained by both Obi-Wan and Yoda.
Sara and Paul decided that there are just way too many paths that lead to the dark side.
I like episode 4 even better now, after watching the first 3 right before it, it's especially fun watching Obi-Wan and how he acts and reacts to things.
Obi-Wan says to Luke "I never remember owning a droid," which is completely true, and he probably didn't want to reveal too much to Luke just then.
Isn't calling R2-D2 "R2" just like calling your dog "dog"? Seems kind of mean to generalize since there are so many R2 units.
If i ever build a ship or a battle-station, I think will engineer it so that if part of it blows up, that won't set off a chain reaction blowing up the rest of the ship in sequence. Grievous' ship seemed to be the best at avoiding this engineering blunder.
Why wouldn't the Rebels trying to destroy the Death Star fly straight in at the exhaust port? Why do they instead fly through the trench and shoot it at a 90 degree angle?
When first seeing yoda in empire, it appears he has gone a little crazy, laughing and giggling. Much different from the solemn, resolute Yoda we left in Episode III. Maybe it's lack of seeing anyone for so many years.
Biggest continuity error #1: Obi-Wan says to Luke something like "I took it upod myself to train Anakin when he was a boy." Or something. The problem is that it was Qui-Gon who instructed Obi-Wan to train Anakin.
Biggest continuity error #2: Leia says to Luke something like "[I remember my mother] a little, she died when I was very young." If by very young, she means "seconds old" I guess this makes sense.

Update: I have had 2 awesome comments so far. They are good enough to make them a part of this post:

Nick said...

I was super excited to hear that you all were doing this.

Paul and Sara, believing there are too many paths to the Dark Side is a path to the Dark Side.

The Rebels don't fly straight at the exhaust port because they would be prone to being shot down more than if they are up on the body of the Death Star.

Obi Wan did take it upon himself, really. Qui Gon told Obi Wan to train him, but he had taken upon himself, and ultimately, Obi had to make the decision to train him or listen to the advise of the Jedi Council.

Seconds old is inclusive of the tag, "very young", so I think it works. Also, give here a break, her mother died of a broken heart, as advised by the super smart medical droids.

Broz said...

NOTES ON THE "6":

-Darth Maul = Coolest Sith Lord in the entire universe. Even cooler fighting and looking than Darth Vader. There. I said it.

-Obi Wan never owned a droid (he just borrowed them from time to time), so technically, that is true.

-Generalize a soulless robot incapable of human emotions? Seriously? You could kill R2-D2 and another exact model would take it's place equipped with all the cute whistles and bells that my wife loves. Should we have called him D2, instead? Or maybe humanize him more and call him Carl or something?

-A battle station of the Death Star's size will always need a central power core to sustain fuel and power enough for a small planet. There would be no way around that. Maybe making it unreachable externally via small fighter (a lesson the empire should have learned after the first go 'round) is a better solution.

-Yoda was a tad nutty in Empire but I attribute that to his hermit ways and seeing his entire order slaughtered.

-One could argue that Leia sensed her mother's emotions via the force even though she was only alive for seconds after her birth. Another could argue that George Lucas completely forgot this scene in Jedi when making III.

–Biggest technology error: the disparity between the OG trilogy and the new 3. The biggest blunder (in my opinion) was making the ships in the New 3 WAAAAY to advanced. Take the scene when Han and Luke are in the Death Star control room in IV and any command ship in the New 3. Yikes. I don't buy the argument that the Rebels were flying a junk fleet due to ten years of war, either. With all those diverse ships in the galaxy, are you telling me the rebellion could not find a single tech to get a serviceable yet advanced craft space-bourne?

Music Search Thoughts #1

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:55:00 +0000

Turns out Rhapsody does have a free trial. Good: No credit card required. Bad: trial is only 14 days.
The "instant" playlists are not turning to be a good "radio" replacement. It can generate at most 100 songs at a time and they can consist only of songs you have already rated.
The desktop player claims to have a "Radio" feature but I could not find it in the app and the Help says nothing about it.
I almost forgot about last.fm for some reason who's main product is a personalized radio station, but I spent 25 minutes on their website trying to figure out how I can pay them money to get more out of the service and I do not see a way to give them money, nor a mention anymore of a premium service.