Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

I'd gotten an invite for Google Music a month or two ago but hadn't done much with it until recently. The other day I logged in again and started playing with it again. Here's a few notes for those who are interested in that sort of thing. Here's the short version: Google Music is cloud-based music streaming service, which you can use to upload (I hesitate to say "store" for reasons I'll describe later) and playback MP3s. You get to store 20,000 files, apparently regardless of size. Right now it's in Beta with limited availability (get in line and wait for an invite). It's similar to what Amazon recently launched and what Apple seems to hope iCloud will be. I don't want to call this "cloud storage," because, although you can upload music to play back, there's no way to natively download it - so you won't be using it to back up your music collection. So far it's a one-way street. That being said, I've seen a coup...

Woot has a short video editorial on the subject of Martinis, to which I say, as a confirmed Martini drinker, "A - freaking - men." Preach on, brother Beetle!

Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 8, at age 70. Most people will say "huh," upon hearing his name. I'd argue he had a much greater influence on modern computing than the late Steve Jobs. He developed C , the most widely used programming language in the world, while working at Bell Laboratories in the late 60's. He still has a home page at Bell Labs . While originally written to be used to create the Unix operating system (which Ritchie also developed, along with Ken Thompson), C is now used for writing software for computers, embedded devices, smart appliances, cellphones, consumer goods - everything from operating systems to applications to device drivers to...well, you name it. The beauty of C is that it can be compiled for any number of different platforms. C gave rise to an number of variations and spin offs - C+, C++ (I'm not making this up) as well as directly and indirectly influencing the structure and syntax of a host of other modern programm...

Since I worked from home yesterday I ended up deciding it would be a good idea to upgrade my iDevices to iOS 5 the very first day it was available . Remind me to never do that again. Not surprisingly, everybody on this side of the space-time continuum made the same foolish choice. My first attempt to download the upgrade started by helpfully informing me it would take around 23 minute to download...then 29...then 38...  Which was bad enough except when it finished, iTunes gave me a terse little error message that said, "there was a problem downloading" blah, blah. Son of a bitch ! After several failed attempts (each longer than the last) I Googled the error message and speculated my anti-virus software was not playing nice with iTunes. Thank you Kaspersky. After disabling it I started the download process again, (it took about 90 minutes) and finally got my iPad updated. The whole process, with backing up, restoring, etc, took roughly 2 and a half to 3 hours. Note ...

I confess I know very little about the Occupy Wall Street protests that seem to have sprung up of late. What I do know is confined to what I picked up scanning a few headlines - a notoriously dangerous way to look for information. I don't really know what the point is (I have my suspicions), how many people are involved or exactly where the protests are taking place. I gather that, while they may be noisy, they aren't violent - or else I'd have seen lots of headlines. One banker is quoted as saying the protesters are, "a bunch of whiny people who are lazy or incompetent." Given Wall Street's antics over the last several years, having a banker call someone else whiny, lazy and incompetent seems the height of unintended irony. As I was reflecting on all this, I thought of when a bunch of right wing right-to-carry protesters a couple of years back decided they needed to make their point by coming with weapons to a rally in a national park . Let's assume...

I have to hand it to Netflix: they may be witless, but they aren't complete dunderheads. After the tidal wave of criticism from their customers and a free-falling stock price, they've figured out that just maybe they should not split the streaming and DVD-by-mail businesses asunder. CEO Reed Hasting (how much longer will I be able to make that statement?) posted on the company blog today that: It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. Bravo - that man must have an MBA. So, again this plays out more and more like the saga of New Coke . By the way, in case you've forgotten how that ended, Coke actually gained market by re-introducing Old Coke, er, Coke Classic. Other than looking clueless by tampering with a classic, the whole "fiasco" solidified Coke's place in the market. So who's to say how ill-advised all this seems in th...

My good friend, guitar-playing buddy and occasional debating partner The Whited Sepulchre posted the NPR Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Book list with annotations (I guess there is a lot of this going around) and challenged folks to do their version of the list. Despite his occasionally loathsome political opinions, the WS is extremely well-read (and now a published author !) so I found his list fascinating.  I used to read a lot of sci-fi when I was younger; not so much now. A lot of authors I enjoyed when younger I find tiresome now. Anyway, here's my list. 1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien I'm sorry - I've tried to read this probably 2 dozen times and never got any further than the first 30 pages. My first attempt was when I was 13, my last was when I was in my late 40's. Hugo Dyson, one of Tolkien's contemporaries is reported to have exclaimed : " Oh god! Not another fucking elf! "during a reading by Tolkien. I feel his...

Just saw that Apple founder Steve Jobs passed away today. Sad but no shock, given his medical situation these last few years. I was never much of an Apple fanboy, but there's no denying his impact on the world of computing. Facebook is currently awash with comments about his passing. I'll let others argue about his "genius," as well as his failings. Though the Apple II and MacIntosh were groundbreaking devices, we may find that the iPhone (and its various offspring, including the iPod touch and iPad), ends up having a bigger impact on modern life, since it popularized the truly portable, hand-held personal computing device - something that could end up making desktops and laptops niche products. A fascinating life, well-lived. The world will be a less interesting place without him.

So Apple finally announced the iPhone du jour yesterday. Am I the only one out there who feels slightly underwhelmed? Okay - these are the features most prominently displayed on the Apple website: Faster processer - nice, but I never felt my 3GS was cripplingly slow. Meh. Better camera - nice, but it's still a camera in a phone, with all the limitations that come with that. Slightly more compelling but still - meh. Siri - voice commands. I tried Siri before Apple bought it and never found it all that useful. A gimmick. Note to Apple: I'm saying "meh," now - is there a command for that? iOS5 - this is actually the most interesting thing being trumpeted as part of the new phone. Oh wait - I can get it as a free upgrade to my current phone in a few days. More on that below. iCloud - sounds like this is an iOS5 thing. See above comment. So I'm not seeing any reason to rush right out and replace my old 3GS. The biggest complaint I have with it is that battery...

You've got to hand it to the Koch Brothers (America's most secretive gazillionaires) - they really do believe in free markets. I guess that's why they see no issue with selling millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism, according to a Bloomberg Markets investigation . Of course, they were careful to do this through various foreign subsidiaries they owned. Is it okay to stab our nation in the back, as long as the Invisible Hand is holding the knife? The Bloomberg article references numerous examples of the Kochs' general disregard for the law, including lying and outright theft of resources from federal lands (which means they are stealing from me and you). These are the people bankrolling numerous Libertarian and Tea Party organizations.Why dirty your hands when  you can outsource the job? By the way, Koch's consumer brands include Lycra fiber and Stainmaster carpet. Georgia- Pacif...