The Last Candle

Here’s your update!

I finally finished the gallery of First Homebrew pictures, which was technically ready about two weeks ago but never got finished. And now: it is. Five new pictures, ending the homebrew saga. Enjoy.

Posts on Kingdom Hearts and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind incoming. Maybe something on the Clarke case if I can’t restrain myself. (Buddha, give me strength.)

Today’s theme:

I’ve cheated my way to a trio of free iTunes. It’s probably lucky for my checking balance that I don’t have access to a credit card to buy music. Instead, I have to peer underneath a bunch of soda bottle caps in the supermarket like some deranged paranoid in order to get my fix — which actually costs 41 cents more than just buying the song directly from the iTunes music store. Alas.

The iTunes music store has hardly any power metal, much to my displeasure. (Kamelot’s Karma, but not Epica? Sad. But it’s something, at least.) My bet’s on something to do with the label my fav’ artists are under aren’t legislated by the RIAA. But, whatever. The problem remains when I plug in “Blind Guardian” and punch Search and get ZERO HITS. Not acceptable.

The good part about iTunes? It is easy to use. It is strangely fun. MacOS X isn’t in my weekly usage (monthly, yes), but the iPod and now iTunes are, and Apple sure does have a knack for an intuitive interface. In the case of the iPod, during the early days I found that if I needed an action, the first button I pushed usually did that action. The idea before moving the finger was “hmm, that just feels right” — intuition. And bingo, it worked. Of course, competitor Rio Karma only has one button other than the play controls, and it’s nice and red. Nobody’s talking about the intuition of Rio, however, so I suspect it does something single-use or is plain stupid. Update: The Rio Karma does indeed have a second “misc” button, lurking in the upper right of the player.

So the iPod is nice, but with iTunes we’re forced to use the mouse, which leaves the interface to on-screen. Not only interface, but iTunes has to make you want to buy music, which might come down to a few things: convenience, supply, and exposure. It has to be easy. It has to be affordable. No excessive DRM or restrictions, like streaming-only or X listens per song. (The company that introduces that be damned. DAMNED.) I like not only a decent selection of stuff I’m familiar with, but a large selection of everything. Let me browse and sniff and choose to my liking, introducing myself to new corners and facets of the soundscape. This is supply and exposure, the availability of a service. Convenience makes the gettin’ fun or a chore. And iTunes does these things well.

‘Sblood, I sound like I’m trying to be serious about this stuff. Anyways, I found out today that Target sells prepaid iTunes cards, so I can stop supporting crappy cola and still get my iTunes. Chomp.

Okay, so it’s not a post about the rest of my Spring Break (in short: I saw Anthony and Paul and it was fun), but this cracks me up. If you’re not a Firefox user, be enlightenment to a (very) minor power of the best browser on earth. For the rest of you: get Firesomething! With all the recent name changes in the browser’s past (Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox), someone decided to make an extension that generates a new name of its own after a short interval! The name combines a hip adjective such as Moon, Web, or Super with a large array of animal names like zebra, narwhal, or oyster. You can add adjectives and beasts, too. Right now, I’m not browsing with Mozilla Firefox — it’s Mozilla Firequail.

Jesu bless the open source movement and its infinite bounty of software from dorks with free time and a sense of humor. One of these days I’ll do a recommended list of Firefox extensions just to show y’all how great this browser is with extensions next to the excellent standards compatibility, cross-platfrom support, and massive allowance for configurations…

Courtesy of Drum Mania, 3rd Mix, it’s the Spring Break 2004 summary! (And the crowd goes wild.) Sorry, no mentions of beaches, babes, and events that I will resent for the rest of my life. (And the crowd leaves.)

Now that I have the attention of the bored…it was a really exciting Break. Days 1-3 had three-fifths of the family at a New York ski resort called Peek’n Peak (in a condo owned by Paul’s parents, no less!) learning how to fall for the amusements of our instructors. Ma and Pa took to the skis (pronounced “shees”), while I tried my feet at snowboarding. After the scrapes, bruises, smarting feet and constant curses against gravity, it was very, very fun. The slope we were instructed and stuck to after lesson was a relatively small incline (#17, Little John’s Jaunt). After an hour of learning how to not fall by instructor Joe, who was very patient and very helpful, I was let free to tumble down the hill on my own. And once you got past the not falling part, these moments were rock, through and through. There were only a few people on the slope, and it was overcast and snowing slightly — perfect conditions for a newb like myself. So it was getting on the lift (trying not to get plowed over by the chairs), riding up (the only part where you could be pretty sure you wouldn’t fall), getting off the lift (trying not to fall), and zipping down the hill (likely falling in the process). Those moments of zipping across the hill, snow and cool air in your face are easily worth the scrapes and cuts of the learning process.

Day 4, Tuesday, was spent driving back from New York and getting ready to assemble the new hardware I ordered. And Day 5 was spent wrestling with the new case, CPU, heatsink/fan, and motherboard. I’ve done full case component installations before, but never with so much stuff in so small a space. My previous computer case was a full tower, and the replacement was a midtower, so I had significantly less room to manuever. It was like trying to position puzzle pieces using only your thumb and pinky finger at times. I also made the decision to buy a CPU without cooling and install it myself this time, which was much more stressful that it should have been. Here I was messing in a cramped space with a cooler that was bigger than my fist, trying to jam it on top of this core-exposed processor, with thermal grease jamming up and smearing everywhere and my hands shoved up against the power supply and a myriad of cords. This cooling had to be done somewhat competently, since I planned to overclock the processor, and I ran the risk of ruining this equipment without a warranty to fallback on. So I stumbled, sweated, and installed.

And here I am on the new machine in my harem, “Metropolis.” Current CPU status: 1.8 Ghz @ 2.2 Ghz, 1.6V. Graphics quality of Uru at a good framerate: absolutely fantastic. CPU temperature is 45C, which is evidently hotter than it should be considering the voltage and cooler, but still below the warning point of 50C. Still, I have some extra thermal grease, so I have plans to take the next weekend and clean it up and reseat the cooler to see if I can increase the cooling some. Also, Unreal Tournament 2004: Special Edition on DVD in a neat metal case: ordered. I figured that I needed to celebrate the new hardware. Gotta get it worked in!

Next post: music and good friends.

In just six short hours (made much shorter by an already deficiency in sleep), I’ll be getting up to embark on that great excursion of breaking my fast. And then Spring Breaking. Word.

The trip home this year will include: A trip to New York (new pictures), time with the little pig at home (more new pictures…mostly public relations shots), computer assembling and testing, trips to unknown lands east of Ann Arbor, and a lot of studying that I’m not looking forward to doing, but will be much better off to have done. Whew. No time to relax! Must sit back and work with utmost diligence!

In conclusion, I must implore you to watch Sockbaby. Directed and written by the original creator of the Earthworm Jim cartoon, Doug Tennapel, Sockbaby is full of stylized weirdness, action better than any zero-budget filmwork has any right to be, and some excellent, irreverent humor. Sham bam bamina — go forth and download.