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Liz Phair Discography

Trying to track down a track list for the copy of Liz Phair’s bootleg album, Girlysounds, I came across a local guy’s Liz Phair discography site. Probably the most complete site I’ve seen yet, if you’re a Liz Phair fan.

Unfortunately, my copy of Girlysounds doesn’t sync up with any of the ones he has listed, but he has all the lyrics linked in the songs, so should be able to figure it out, just have to take the time to listen to the album. Which I won’t mind doing at all. 🙂

Best X-Box 360 Preview Yet

HardOCP has the best X-Box 360 preview I’ve seen yet.

While I’m not a fan of the color or the aesthetics, I am very intrigued by the new X-Box Live features, and the rumors of Media Center integration. HardOCP’s article also touches on the ability to plug in a portable MP3 player or digital camera and stream content right to your TV through your X-Box – pretty cool stuff.

The Future of Gnome

There is a brouhaha stirring on Planet Gnome, the aggregator web site for the blogs of Gnome developers.

First of all, I’d like to say, I am not a programmer, I am only a user, and I choose to use Gnome as my desktop.

I will save for another post why I choose to use Gnome on Linux, but suffice to say, I’ve been using Linux and Gnome on and off for almost 8 years, and this last year or two, almost exclusively on my personal desktop, and longer than that on the my productivity box for email, IRC, IM and storage.

A little background: Edd Dumbill kicked off the conversation a few weeks ago when he said his Gnome hacking had slowed because of lack of fun, and lack of direction of what language to code in within Gnome.

Everyone, including the big names like Havoc and Miguel have weighed in, and there have been some really good points made about the different development languages (mostly Java vs Python vs Mono/C#).

Alex summed up what the major vendors will do:

  • Novell will continue to ship Mono because it has a vested interest in its perpetuation.
  • RedHat will continue to not ship it for the foreseeable future, because they have a vested interest in not being sued.
  • Ubuntu and everyone else will eventually include Mono because users want the apps. And no matter what, the handful of apps I’ve half-started writing are all in C#.

And Paul Drain summed it up the best:

but in the end:

  • the end-user will eventually demand quality applications written in both of these languages on the desktop. And that’s the key for me. I’m just as freaked out about the Microsoft patent issue in Mono / C# that could raise it’s ugly head some day. With that said, most of the coolest and innovative applications that are being written right now for the Gnome Desktop are in Mono / C#. From Tomboy for notes taking (and let me tell you: keeping track via Tomboy as I rip my CD collection with one note on missing discs, another note on scratched discs has been a lifesaver) to Muine for listening to music (It blows Rhythmbox away in my opinion) to F-Spot for managing and tagging photos. All of these applications are applications I use daily, and just work. (Thank you Ubuntu Universe repository). I look forward to using Beagle in the future for desktop searching. In fact it was Beagle & Dashboard a few years ago when Nat was first brainstorming around Beagle that really grabbed me and sucked me back in to Linux.

I want innovation in the desktop, and applications that just work. Those, combined with Gnome’s remote desktop features, (and my passion for free software development) keep me using Gnome every day.

The horror that is Blade III

I watched the travesty that is Blade III last night. Oh, how the mighty has fallen.

Blade I & II we’re good comic book adaptions of an interesting character. Not great movies per se, but good action, decent one lines, and interesting plots. All three were written by David Goyer, but with Guillermo del Toro, who directed the second one, moving on to Hellboy (and it’s sequel) they gave the director’s chair to Mr. Goyer. We’ll blame him for this horrible piece of work.

What did Blade III want to be? A horror film? Because the last half tried to do that. A hard-boiled mystery of what the vampires were up to? An action flick?

The only saving grace was Ryan Reynolds – his humor and lines were the one spark that kept the movie interesting. The only other things I appreciated were the nods to Blade II through the anatomy of “Dracula” and the vampire dogs, and some nods to past movies.

Other than that, the cinematography was horrible – the scene where Blade is on the roof chasing the baddie, and the camera pans (and later, they did a similar pan around Blade) was bad, the pacing of the movie, especially after the attack on the compound, and the dialogue was terrible. Early in the movie when Blade & Whistler are talking before the FBI storms in, it’s as if Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson aren’t even trying – their acting is wooden and all the chemistry is gone.

And what happened to Parker Posey that she would sign up to do this? The indie flick queen of the 90’s is in this? What a waste of her talent.

If you appreciated Blade I & II for what they were – mindless action movies with an interesting take on vampires, stay away from Blade III. Worse than the Matrix Trilogy, it will leave you with such a bad taste in your mouth you won’t want to watch the first two ever again either.

This week in music

This week’s purchases:

  • DVD:
  • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (I dig Wes Anderson of Rushmore / Royal Tennenbaums directing fame)

  • In Good Company

  • Music:

  • New Order: NO (Was out of stock last week, but they had it this week)
  • Weezer: Make Believe (Great album, listened to it 3 times already – much more similar to their first disc, than their last disc, Maladroit)
  • Depeche Mode: The Singles (25-30 & 31-36). Released a year or two ago, the follow-up to the box sets released 10 years ago. They have multiple (sometimes up to 7) versions of the same songs from their 7″ and 12″ singles releases, with unreleased remixes and live tracks. A must for the collector, though they break the bank. Unfortunately, I got home and realized I don’t have 19-24. Grrr.

Google Acquires Dodgeball

Ya know, I post this morning about the cool things Yahoo is doing in connecting their users, and how I think Google is doing more around services, and web services than around user inter-connection.

And then Google goes and acquires a company like Dodgeball just to prove me wrong. Ok, they’re not out to prove me wrong, but Dodgeball is the definition of a service that connects users.

If you haven’t heard of Dodgeball (they were getting a ton of press late last year) you need to check the link above and follow it to it’s home page. It’s all about using text messaging via cell phones to connect with friends, and more imporantly, friends of your friends to meet new people. Cool stuff.

Yahoo Music Service Launches

Via Slashdot:

Betanews has the story that Yahoo has launched their music service to compete with Napster & iTunes. Yahoo has quite an interesting strategy in the music business. With pricing 60% less than Napster & Rhapsody ($4.99 / mo with an annual fee), 79 cent downloads (99 cents if you’re not a monthly subscriber) (and at 192k WMA!), a media player that integrates with other Yahoo services with support for other formats, and support for Janus portable players just like Napster2Go.

The first user post on the Betanews story, is a link to one of the developers’ blog, who has a ton of information on the Yahoo service and player.

What’s interesting to me about Yahoo right now is their focus on their users. Including their acquisition of Flickr, the launch of Yahoo 360, and now music, they’re very focused on tying these services together, and user communication between members (look at your friends music list for suggestions, or Flickr tags and friends lists). While Google is focusing on web and desktop services applications, Yahoo is going in a different direction in creating communities, and tools for these communities to share and grow closer together.

Now if only their music engine / services worked on Linux…dammit, I’d buy music online if I could.

TV Stuff

I was disappointed to read in USA Today yesterday that ABC has pulled Eyes for Mays sweeps. I was really enjoying it, it had great humor, a good plot, and good pacing.

24 this season has been excellent. Instead of switching antagonists halfway through, they’ve done a good job with the plot and the focus on the current villian. The latest plot twist with China has been well done. Best of all, what they’ve done with Jack this season has really given me pause as you can see the stress of the job, the effect and toll it takes on his personal life, and how it effects him. I was surprised to read today that NBC is making a strong bid to steal 24 away from Fox next year.

I’m very impressed with Lost, which gives Desperate Housewives a run for it’s money as best new TV show this season. (Worst? American Dad). The plot has been very well done (how long can you have a show about plane crash survivors on an island?), and the way every charater is inter-connected is fascinating. With Lost, you have more questions than answers… (Though I do have some concerns with some of the rumors about casting changes for next season. They’ve focused on 14 of the 48 survivors this season, which gives them the ability to bring in other actors, but it will be interesting to see how the chemistry and the plots will work).

And damn Fox for yanking Arrested Development. Just like Alias, which we’ll get to in a second, the network needs to commit to the show, stick it in a time slot where it can be successful, and drive it. They also need to pick this show up for next season. The comedy in this show is one of a kind.

I’m glad Alias has found it’s viewers being after Lost. I’m all for what FOX & ABC did with 24 and Alias respectively this year, in starting the seasons late, so they can show a new episode every week. With episodic shows like these, that have major plots that continue, breaking them up (like Lost or Desperate Housewives) sucks when you’re waiting a month at a time for new episodes. I was pretty skeptical with Alias at the beginning of the season as they rebooted…again, but Alias has really found it’s voice in the latter two thirds of the season. They’ve kept the Rambaldi stuff topical, Sidney’s sister hasn’t been a bad addition to the cast (not great, but done well), and they haven’t overplayed the Vaughn / his dad angle too much, while keeping Sloane and Jack in the mix as well. Kudos to JJ Abrams and ABC for a good job. It’s sucked me back in as I was about to give up on it.

And Desperate Housewives? I dig it, it’s a good solid soap opera, and I appreciate it for what it is.

Here’s to all the upcoming season finales!

Music Updates

The music server is still coming along. I’m almost done ripping my CD collection, with less than 100 CDs to go. I have about 50 CDs I need to check the tags on that I ripped this weekend that I haven’t updated yet.

From there, I move them on to the backup box, get all the file directories set up correctly (that’s going to take a while), check all the tags one more time, and put them on the web server.

I’ve been ripping my CDs in Ubuntu, with the MP3 debs. Sound Juicer doesn’t have quality settings, so I used GooBox to rip to MP3 at 192k. I use Easytag to update the tags, specifically the year and genre. GooBox unfortunately doesn’t capture the year from CDDB when it rips, and the genre’s are never right.

For whatever reason, whether it’s my DVD-RW is too sensitive, the OS, or the application, some CDs won’t rip, even with minor scratches. Even after burning copies of the CD, and using the burn to attempt the rip, it was no joy. Using my Windows box, I used CDex to rip, and didn’t have any issues, so I have a handful of those to rip as well.

The good news is I’m almost done. The bad news (for the music) is we completed the electrical in the basement this weekend (yay!). Once we pass inspection this week, then it’s a lot of manual labor to get all the insulation up in the ceiling. I’m in Seattle two weekends from now, so the goal is to get that all done this weekend. Fun.