You know your brain is a little fuzzy when you are listening to Alison Krauss + Union Station, and you hear a nice fiddle solo, and you think to yourself, "Huh, that's a nice bit of work. I can't seem to remember...who plays fiddle for Alison Krauss again?"
Uh...
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Ah...resolution
My friend/tenant/private banjo instructor* loaned me a 17" flat panel display today, which I immediately connected to our Mac mini. It had been running a ridiculous 13" CRT monitor that came with a Windows PC I bought in 1999, so you can imagine the difference. I'm not good at math, but I think it's about a zillion pixels and twenty or thirty square feet better.
So I decided to try using the desktop to generate my sermon slides in Keynote, and I don't know...after three years of using a laptop almost exclusively, I could get used to this kind of screen real estate.
Just thought you might like to know.
*How many people can say they fit all three of those roles in someone's life? Nice work, Ben.
So I decided to try using the desktop to generate my sermon slides in Keynote, and I don't know...after three years of using a laptop almost exclusively, I could get used to this kind of screen real estate.
Just thought you might like to know.
*How many people can say they fit all three of those roles in someone's life? Nice work, Ben.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Too busy to be bloggin'
I'm preparing a sermon this week, so naturally I'm busting with topics to write about. If I get around to it, here are some things you might read 'round these parts. (If I were really narcissistic, I'd ask you to vote for which one you like best, and then I'd write that one. But I'm not.)
1. Why I'm about to break off my browser affair with Camino and go back to loving only Safari.
2. My thoughts on today's new offerings from Apple, including a revamped iPod line, movie downloads at the iTunes Store, and the sneak peek at next year's big item, the "iTV."
3. The long-awaited "how I made a birthday cake shaped like a guitar" post. (Ha ha, Google searchers, this post isn't any help to you either!)
4. Why Derek Jeter should be the AL MVP this year.
5. Tips for recent switchers to OS X (promised and not yet delivered).
1. Why I'm about to break off my browser affair with Camino and go back to loving only Safari.
2. My thoughts on today's new offerings from Apple, including a revamped iPod line, movie downloads at the iTunes Store, and the sneak peek at next year's big item, the "iTV."
3. The long-awaited "how I made a birthday cake shaped like a guitar" post. (Ha ha, Google searchers, this post isn't any help to you either!)
4. Why Derek Jeter should be the AL MVP this year.
5. Tips for recent switchers to OS X (promised and not yet delivered).
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Apple laptop battery recall
Check the iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 Battery Exchange Program to see if your laptop's battery is included in the recent additions to the recall list. (MacBook users probably need to use Google to find a different page.) Mine was on the list even though it was recently replaced for another reason, so I'll be getting a new battery, which is just fine by me. My battery life is still really good, but a brand-new one is always welcome.
And before you say anything, haters, remember that this is a Sony issue that affects both Apple and Dell.
And before you say anything, haters, remember that this is a Sony issue that affects both Apple and Dell.
Jouez au tennis?
I've been watching a little U.S. Open tennis this year. I always liked Agassi, so I wanted to catch some of his final tournament. Today, I've been drawn in to watching Andy Roddick's match against Mikhail Youzhny. Roddick holds the record for serve speed at 155 mph, and he's hit 140 a couple times today. Impressive.
I was sitting here watching the match, and I thought to myself, "You know, I always disliked Roddick, but he's really not bad. He's fun to watch. I wonder what my problem was." Then they showed some footage of his 2003 U.S. Open win, and I remembered what the problem was.
It was those stupid trucker hats. Sweet Betsy Ross, what a stupid trend that was.
I was sitting here watching the match, and I thought to myself, "You know, I always disliked Roddick, but he's really not bad. He's fun to watch. I wonder what my problem was." Then they showed some footage of his 2003 U.S. Open win, and I remembered what the problem was.
It was those stupid trucker hats. Sweet Betsy Ross, what a stupid trend that was.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Movies, your computer, and you
With an eye toward the expected debut of the iTunes Movie Store (or whatever they'll call it, if anything) on September 12, and in light of recent reports that put the price of most titles at $14.99, The iPod Observer has an interesting story: "A new two-part report from The Diffusion Group shows that 23% of broadband-connected consumers would pay US$10 per download for movies from the iTunes Music Store, while just 14% would be interested in paying $15 each."
First of all, I'm not sure how much stock we can put in this study. What a consumer says is the right price for a product that hasn't even been released yet might be very different—yes, perhaps even 50% different—from what that same consumer will pay once he or she actually has to make a decision about whether or not to buy. Once upon a time, I thought the idea of putting video capability on an iPod at all was sort of silly until I downloaded an episode of LOST and watched it on a friend's iPod. (Incidentally, a new iPod is also rumored to appear at the September 12 event, and it's likely to be even better-equipped to handle video content.) And for what it's worth, I have always said that $10 was the price point that could entice me to buy, but that $15 seemed like too much, considering what I could do with a DRMed (OW! my rights as a consumer!!!) video file. But there's no telling what people will be willing to pay when their mouse pointer is hovering over the "Buy Now!" button. Fifteen bucks might actually work.
But to me, the most interesting question around all this talk of a digital video store is not price, but whether or not the market is really as poised for this as we all think it is. The obvious comparison to make is with the readiness of the market for legal digital music sales in the spring of 2003. (Has it really been that long?) So here's an attempt at that comparison.
An easy assumption to make is that BitTorrent has done for illegal movie downloads what Napster and other 1.0 versions of peer-to-peer file sharing had done for illegal music downloads. And indeed, that assumption seems on the surface to be valid: college and high school students (and some grown-ups who are successfully clinging to their cutting-edge digital hipness) are soaking away bandwidth at a rate that consumes about one-third of all Internet traffic.
But there's an important difference, and that's file quality. While Napster and its ilk opened the door to a zillion megabytes of crappy 64k MP3s, BitTorrent has facilitated an addiction in its users to HD video. Even people without HD-TVs watch HD files on their laptops or flatscreen LCDs. This matters. When the iTunes music store debuted, it was an escape from low quality, an opportunity to get (comparatively) clean-sounding 128k audio files with 100% consistency. When the iTunes movie store debuts, it will probably be selling 320x240 video. That's the resolution iTunes video is compressed to now. And even if a new iPod with a larger screen ends up increasing iTunes video resolution, its quality will still be dwarfed by the HD content BitTorrent users are consuming.
Here's an even bigger obstacle in my mind. By the time the iTunes music store went online, iTunes the application, not to mention dozens of similar applications, had already been available for at least two years. "Jukebox" style media players allowed users to "rip" their own CDs to MP3 format. These MP3s could then be loaded onto a user's iPod or iPod-knockoff and carried all around the globe. Legally. (By the way, everyone who thought the legal Napster was going to kill the iTunes store because "Who wants to pay $1,000 for 1,000 songs?!" failed to remember that most music consumers already owned thousands of songs in the form of hundreds of compact discs.)
No such option exists for DVDs. Oh sure, there are applications that will rip a DVD so you can watch it on your computer without having to carry the disc itself, but they are obscure, clunky, and a little shady. They are a world away from the simplicity of iTunes, where you insert a CD, click "Import," and then 10 minutes later, you have a dozen audio files neatly arranged in your iTunes library, files you can search and browse, files you can load onto your iPod, files you can actually use. When iTunes the store went online, it offered users access to nearly unlimited ways of expanding a collection of digital music that they already had. The iTunes movie store will be a good two years behind the iTunes music store in that respect.
My prediction is that this option will never exist with movies to the extent it did and does with music. I'm guessing movie studio executives would inexplicably but predictably hate giving their customers this freedom, and right now Apple Computer is probably too busy convincing these dopes that selling digital movies is in their best interest to try to explain to them how allowing customers to use legally-purchased DVDs more widely would also be in their best interest. But that's just a guess.
But if it did exist, a "movie jukebox" application could get us past the quality issue. Just as I don't mind ripping a brilliant CD I already own to a lossy format like MP3, I wouldn't mind ripping a DVD I already own to a smallish resolution. In both cases, I would be compressing my content to fit onto my computer's hard drive and my iPod. And in both cases, I would have the full-quality hardware should I want to experience it in all its original glory.
And if that application existed, and if I already had my library of movies digitized on my hard drive, I would be more willing to purchase a digital version of certain movies directly, even at a low resolution, and probably even for $15 in some circumstances. Would I buy The Lord of the Rings trilogy that way? No, but I might buy the latest Will Ferrell comedy the night before a plane trip. As of right now, though, I have no frame of reference for that kind of thing.
I'm not saying digital movie sales will be a bust. They'll probably succeed. But I definitely don't see this taking off the way music did, with a billion downloads in the first three years.
Where would we put it?
First of all, I'm not sure how much stock we can put in this study. What a consumer says is the right price for a product that hasn't even been released yet might be very different—yes, perhaps even 50% different—from what that same consumer will pay once he or she actually has to make a decision about whether or not to buy. Once upon a time, I thought the idea of putting video capability on an iPod at all was sort of silly until I downloaded an episode of LOST and watched it on a friend's iPod. (Incidentally, a new iPod is also rumored to appear at the September 12 event, and it's likely to be even better-equipped to handle video content.) And for what it's worth, I have always said that $10 was the price point that could entice me to buy, but that $15 seemed like too much, considering what I could do with a DRMed (OW! my rights as a consumer!!!) video file. But there's no telling what people will be willing to pay when their mouse pointer is hovering over the "Buy Now!" button. Fifteen bucks might actually work.
But to me, the most interesting question around all this talk of a digital video store is not price, but whether or not the market is really as poised for this as we all think it is. The obvious comparison to make is with the readiness of the market for legal digital music sales in the spring of 2003. (Has it really been that long?) So here's an attempt at that comparison.
An easy assumption to make is that BitTorrent has done for illegal movie downloads what Napster and other 1.0 versions of peer-to-peer file sharing had done for illegal music downloads. And indeed, that assumption seems on the surface to be valid: college and high school students (and some grown-ups who are successfully clinging to their cutting-edge digital hipness) are soaking away bandwidth at a rate that consumes about one-third of all Internet traffic.
But there's an important difference, and that's file quality. While Napster and its ilk opened the door to a zillion megabytes of crappy 64k MP3s, BitTorrent has facilitated an addiction in its users to HD video. Even people without HD-TVs watch HD files on their laptops or flatscreen LCDs. This matters. When the iTunes music store debuted, it was an escape from low quality, an opportunity to get (comparatively) clean-sounding 128k audio files with 100% consistency. When the iTunes movie store debuts, it will probably be selling 320x240 video. That's the resolution iTunes video is compressed to now. And even if a new iPod with a larger screen ends up increasing iTunes video resolution, its quality will still be dwarfed by the HD content BitTorrent users are consuming.
Here's an even bigger obstacle in my mind. By the time the iTunes music store went online, iTunes the application, not to mention dozens of similar applications, had already been available for at least two years. "Jukebox" style media players allowed users to "rip" their own CDs to MP3 format. These MP3s could then be loaded onto a user's iPod or iPod-knockoff and carried all around the globe. Legally. (By the way, everyone who thought the legal Napster was going to kill the iTunes store because "Who wants to pay $1,000 for 1,000 songs?!" failed to remember that most music consumers already owned thousands of songs in the form of hundreds of compact discs.)
No such option exists for DVDs. Oh sure, there are applications that will rip a DVD so you can watch it on your computer without having to carry the disc itself, but they are obscure, clunky, and a little shady. They are a world away from the simplicity of iTunes, where you insert a CD, click "Import," and then 10 minutes later, you have a dozen audio files neatly arranged in your iTunes library, files you can search and browse, files you can load onto your iPod, files you can actually use. When iTunes the store went online, it offered users access to nearly unlimited ways of expanding a collection of digital music that they already had. The iTunes movie store will be a good two years behind the iTunes music store in that respect.
My prediction is that this option will never exist with movies to the extent it did and does with music. I'm guessing movie studio executives would inexplicably but predictably hate giving their customers this freedom, and right now Apple Computer is probably too busy convincing these dopes that selling digital movies is in their best interest to try to explain to them how allowing customers to use legally-purchased DVDs more widely would also be in their best interest. But that's just a guess.
But if it did exist, a "movie jukebox" application could get us past the quality issue. Just as I don't mind ripping a brilliant CD I already own to a lossy format like MP3, I wouldn't mind ripping a DVD I already own to a smallish resolution. In both cases, I would be compressing my content to fit onto my computer's hard drive and my iPod. And in both cases, I would have the full-quality hardware should I want to experience it in all its original glory.
And if that application existed, and if I already had my library of movies digitized on my hard drive, I would be more willing to purchase a digital version of certain movies directly, even at a low resolution, and probably even for $15 in some circumstances. Would I buy The Lord of the Rings trilogy that way? No, but I might buy the latest Will Ferrell comedy the night before a plane trip. As of right now, though, I have no frame of reference for that kind of thing.
I'm not saying digital movie sales will be a bust. They'll probably succeed. But I definitely don't see this taking off the way music did, with a billion downloads in the first three years.
Where would we put it?
Monday, September 04, 2006
Lucky 7
On September 4, 1999, Tracey and I were married in a simple but beautiful outdoor ceremony at Letchworth State Park. The seven years since have been the happiest I have ever known.
Tracey is an intriguing person. People who do not know her well find her friendly and warm, a likable person in all observable ways. But only those who are privileged to know her better begin to understand the depth of her personality and the caliber of her character. I wonder how many people who have hiked over 100 miles in Yellowstone in one summer have also made a 350-pound man weep (and he deserved it, believe me). Probably not many. But my wife has. And those are just two events, just a tiny, silly ripple on the surface of waters deeper than even I may ever know. I could write thousands and thousands of words about the ways in which Tracey is unique and special, and for once you wouldn't be bored by my wordiness, but I think I'll hoard that treasure instead. The greatest joy in my life is that I know something of her depth, and that I will be allowed to know more of it as the days and years pass.
I had good reason to smile.
Photo credit to Jesse Sprinkle.
Tracey is an intriguing person. People who do not know her well find her friendly and warm, a likable person in all observable ways. But only those who are privileged to know her better begin to understand the depth of her personality and the caliber of her character. I wonder how many people who have hiked over 100 miles in Yellowstone in one summer have also made a 350-pound man weep (and he deserved it, believe me). Probably not many. But my wife has. And those are just two events, just a tiny, silly ripple on the surface of waters deeper than even I may ever know. I could write thousands and thousands of words about the ways in which Tracey is unique and special, and for once you wouldn't be bored by my wordiness, but I think I'll hoard that treasure instead. The greatest joy in my life is that I know something of her depth, and that I will be allowed to know more of it as the days and years pass.
I had good reason to smile.
Photo credit to Jesse Sprinkle.
Strings
I restrung my guitar yesterday, and for the first time in years, I used something other than Elixir PolyWebs. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It's because Guitar Center (crappy retailers get no links) has apparently stopped carrying them.
I went in on Saturday, knowing I had to play in church on Sunday. After snaking my way through the dopes ripping cheeseball butt-rock riffs on guitars that cost more than six months' rent at Mom's, I approached the counter with the wall of strings behind it. I didn't see Elixirs, so I asked. The salesman said, "Aw, dude, sorry man, we stopped carrying them!"
Huh?
"They like totally jacked the prices on us, man."
Wha?
"Yeah, you know what? You oughta try the new coated strings from D'Addario. They're kinda like the Elixir NanoWebs, but they're, like, cheaper."
Well, I played the NanoWebs a while back, and I didn't like them nearly as much, so I figured I'd just go back to a regular string. I bought a set of Martin SPs and put them on when I got home. I played them last night at church, and let's just say I will be finding a new Elixir dealer in Rochester, or buying them online, or personally walking to the corporate offices in Maryland to buy them—whatever it takes. Gone was the nice round, warm tone. Worse than that, trying to slide a chord shape up the neck without the Gore coating was a squeaky, choppy endeavor. I used to go into Guitar Center to buy strings, and while I was there I would check out other stuff. They won't be getting that type of business from me anymore.
And as for that explanation? Bogus. Retailers operate on margins, and if the wholesale price is higher, the cost is passed on to the customer in the form of a higher retail price. Combine a phony-sounding explanation with a quick attempt to sell me a competitor's product, and I can fill in the blanks. Or at least I can make a guess: either Guitar Center angled for a lower wholesale price from Elixir, and Elixir invited Guitar Center to find out what it felt like to lose a big-name product, or D'Addario paid some big scratch to get an exclusive deal with Guitar Center in an attempt to win "captive audience" customers away from Elixir. Either way, it won't work. I'll be getting my strings elsewhere.
Meanwhile, if you like Elixirs too, buy two sets and get a free Elixir T-Shrit. Details here.
I went in on Saturday, knowing I had to play in church on Sunday. After snaking my way through the dopes ripping cheeseball butt-rock riffs on guitars that cost more than six months' rent at Mom's, I approached the counter with the wall of strings behind it. I didn't see Elixirs, so I asked. The salesman said, "Aw, dude, sorry man, we stopped carrying them!"
Huh?
"They like totally jacked the prices on us, man."
Wha?
"Yeah, you know what? You oughta try the new coated strings from D'Addario. They're kinda like the Elixir NanoWebs, but they're, like, cheaper."
Well, I played the NanoWebs a while back, and I didn't like them nearly as much, so I figured I'd just go back to a regular string. I bought a set of Martin SPs and put them on when I got home. I played them last night at church, and let's just say I will be finding a new Elixir dealer in Rochester, or buying them online, or personally walking to the corporate offices in Maryland to buy them—whatever it takes. Gone was the nice round, warm tone. Worse than that, trying to slide a chord shape up the neck without the Gore coating was a squeaky, choppy endeavor. I used to go into Guitar Center to buy strings, and while I was there I would check out other stuff. They won't be getting that type of business from me anymore.
And as for that explanation? Bogus. Retailers operate on margins, and if the wholesale price is higher, the cost is passed on to the customer in the form of a higher retail price. Combine a phony-sounding explanation with a quick attempt to sell me a competitor's product, and I can fill in the blanks. Or at least I can make a guess: either Guitar Center angled for a lower wholesale price from Elixir, and Elixir invited Guitar Center to find out what it felt like to lose a big-name product, or D'Addario paid some big scratch to get an exclusive deal with Guitar Center in an attempt to win "captive audience" customers away from Elixir. Either way, it won't work. I'll be getting my strings elsewhere.
Meanwhile, if you like Elixirs too, buy two sets and get a free Elixir T-Shrit. Details here.
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