Got a new iPod?

Decent advice for anyone who got a new iPod for Christmas.

And yes, they're right: the iTunes Store is quite slow right now.

Christmas Eve Greetings

Hi everyone.

Seven days ago at this time, Tracey and I were barreling southwest across Ohio in hopes of getting to Cincinnati in time to see the Over the Rhine Christmas concert. (We arrived in time.) I still haven't written about that, and I will, but for now I am preparing for tonight's Christmas Eve service at Artisan. It's been a busy week of getting ready for Christmas, filling in at the cafe, and all three of us being sick at one time or another. (Currently, me.) I hope to write again in 2006, but if not, I'm sure there will some nice surprises in store in the new year.

Christ's peace to all of you.

Mini music reviews

I was driving home from Wegmans with Abel this morning and listening to my iPod, which was playing the most recent music from my "Purchased" playlist. I thought it was a shame that no one could hear my astounding, insightful comments on each song, but then I remembered that's what blogs are for: boring other people with your stupid opinions. So here are the five most recent songs I got from the iTunes store. (I even put iTunes links in for you. Ain't I nice?)

"Eyes" by Rogue Wave: I first heard this song in the NBC show Heroes, and later noticed it in the Just Friends soundtrack. It's probably been used elsewhere and everyone knew it before me, so I'm not cool. But it's a delightful little song, just poppy enough to be catchy, just indie enough to sound interesting, just breathy enough to keep you from taking it too seriously.

"Jingle Bells" by James Taylor: Free from iTunes last week. Overpriced. There are a few white dudes I'd trust to turn "Jingle Bells" into eight-bar blues, but James Taylor is not one of them.

"Silent Night" by Sarah McLachlan: Now this is what you do when you're a famous singer and you want to cover a song everyone knows. Don't monkey around with the melody too much. Just give it enough inflection to communicate your signature style without abusing the original melody and lyrics. Sarah McLachlan nails it here, and if you like her style, you will really like this interpretation. (Currently free from iTunes.)

"Here Comes Santa Claus" by Elvis Presley: I'm a Beatles man, not an Elvis man. But this song was played incessantly (using the passive voice to avoid incriminating someone named "My mom") during the holidays in my house as I was growing up. And it really latched on to me, and I had to go buy it at iTunes. If you want a great example of the weird amalgam of folk theology and Christmas mythology that was the 1950s, here it is. Let's give thanks to the Lord above, 'cause Santa Claus comes tonight!

"Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt: Apparently, songs used to "rhyme." And apparently, female singers used to be able to sound sultry and seductive through vocal timbre and phrasing, and without mentioning their anatomy. Huh, who knew?

Merry Christmas

From my heart to yours.

Excellent summary of emerging church

I'm sometimes asked what "emerging church" means. Of course, everyone has a slightly different answer to that question, but for those who are interested in a serious answer, I highly recommend Scot McKinght's notes from his lecture at the Fall Contemporary Issues Conference at Westminster Theological Seminary. (The context of the presentation makes his thoughts especially useful to people who come from a Calvinist bent, but it is an excellent, excellent overview for anyone, not just WTS types.)

I don't know if it exists anywhere in an HTML format, but you can grab the PDF of it here. It will be well worth your time.

Update: The PDF is no longer on the server. If you are interested in it, I grabbed a copy. Leave a comment here that includes your email address, and I will send it to you.

Winds of change in the digital music biz?

From the Wall Street Journal Online (via the Daring Fireball linked list):

"The music industry has long resisted selling music in the MP3 format, which lacks the copy protections that prevent songs from being duplicated endlessly. But now, Blue Note Records and its marquee artist, jazz-pop singer Norah Jones, are selling her latest single through Yahoo Inc. as an MP3 -- despite the risk that it may add to piracy problems."

This was going to be a post imploring you to go buy this track, please! so the record industry sees demand for digital music without DRM. (DRM is useless at stopping piracy and just annoys people who really want to buy music legally.)

But.

But I couldn't find the song anywhere on the Yahoo! Music homepage. Then I searched for Norah Jones and found the link on the artist page, but clicking it didn't do anything. Then I searched for the song by title, and it wasn't among the top five search results for that title. (Does Yahoo! Music really want me to buy this unprotected song?) Then I expanded the results and finally found a functional link, but I had to stop because you can't just buy the track as an item; you have to download the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, and it's the same deal at the iTunes store, and I might have been willing to do it just to support this idea...but it's Windows-only. So no thanks, I guess. Winds of change? More like a fart in the wind.

Not being a total fanboy (or a stockholder), I'm perfectly fine with a model that is better for consumers than it is for Apple's profits and stock value. But once again, I am struck by the fact that Apple's success in the marketplace is not due to their willingness to strive for the "fairest" solution for consumers. Rather, they have been successful because they are adept at creating the simplest, most accessible user experience.

And when it comes down to that, I am more than willing to accept a basic DRM scheme as a tradeoff.

USB adapter for 2 Gen iPod shuffle

Glad to see that this only took a month to develop. Ain't capitalism great?

(Via Macworld's almost always excellent Mac Gems Weblog.)

Macaroni and cheese

We had a friend over for dinner tonight, and I made macaroni and cheese from scratch. Among the ingredients were these high-fat delights:

An entire stick of butter (plus some more to grease the casserole dish)
2 cups of whole milk
A half a pound of cheese

Not for the faint of heart...or the lactose intolerant. It tasted good, though.

Very cool Mac game

Mac using readers: do yourself a favor (if you haven't already) and go download the trial version of Ambrosia Software's new game, SketchFighter 4000 alpha. A simple but addictive 2D spaceship shooter game, its graphics are all based on pen-sketched spaceships and aliens, like you drew in your notebook during math class in school.

The little touches, like an erasure smudge after a big explosion, make the game feel very cool, but what really hooked me was the graceful controls of the ship. It's controlled like the ship in Asteroids, except not maddeningly frustrating. Those who share my view on that classic video game know what I mean by that: to me, Asteroids never stopped feeling like your first time on ice skates. But in SketchFighter, I felt more like I was a pro hockey player, flying backwards, ducking around the alien bugs, and zooming around corners. The gameplay is top notch.

And to top it all off, Ambrosia Software is based right here in Rochester, New York. So check it out!

UPDATE: Oh, I almost forgot! This game has the absolute coolest tutorial ever. Download it just to do the tutorial.

Worth reading

From Peggy Noonan's most recent column:

"'That's not what I asked you' is a sentence straight from cable TV, from which many Americans are acquiring an attitude toward public and even private presentation....Because of this style, no one in America has been allowed to finish a sentence in the past 10 years. And it is not confined to cable but has spread to the networks, to government, and is starting to affect regular people, encouraging in them a conversational style that is not friendly or graceful, but depositional.

This has not contributed to the presence of grace in our public life. And too bad, because right now and for the next few months we'll need grace more than ever."