Right Here, Right Now: 01/01/2010

Uno Dos Pizza (Single Ladies by Pomplamoose)

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Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck - Trick Pony

This is the one she did on Letterman.

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Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck - Master's Hand

Saw the Letterman performance and didn't really get it, but I like this. She'll get a few more listens from me.

The KCRW interview is here.

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No Flash on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad

After the iPad was announced, Adobe employees started complaining (again) that the iPhone family of products don't support Flash.

Quoting myself:

Adobe (apparently) wants the iPad to be about Flash. 3 billion downloads from the app store suggests Flash doesn't matter on the iPhone. It'd probably take 10 minutes to find app store replacements for the games mom plays on the web. That doesn't mean Flash doesn't matter, but I think Adobe needs to pick a different fight.

Quoting John Gruber:

Adobe’s fear, of course, is that #4 (web sites provide alternatives to Flash) is what will happen. And with good reason, since I think it’s fair to say that we’re seeing this happen already. Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow made his little poster showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they’re missing anything because, well, they’re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.

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Guster - One Man Wrecking Machine

(have to follow the link, sorry about that.)

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My San Francisco tweet.

via tweetie

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Sunday Morning Playlist

This is a test of the Lala embedding. I'm curious if it works for you, especially if you don't have a Lala account.

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The Passenger.

And then, something completely different, but not.

Thanks to http://blip.fm/macbikegeek for the links.

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Both Sides Now

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Note to self

While your kids appreciate you rounding their ages up, using the age they will turn this year, your date probably won't.

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Because most of us need the eggs.

"I thought of this old joke, you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says: "Doc, my brother is crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." The Doctor says "well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well I guess this is how I pretty much feel about relationships. You know they're totally irrational and absurd and... but, I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs."

- Annie Hall

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How portable is an AppleTV?

Dear Abby, er, LazyWeb

Can I take my AppleTV to someone else's house and have it work? Or will it freak out if it's not on its base network?

Signed,

Bewildered.

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Cool cloud/sun combo.

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Labels: Mac

Namaste and Madeline Kahn

I started a yoga class last Thursday. Apparently the thing to do after yoga is to offer "namaste" to your instructor. Namaste, to save you the click, means, "I honor you".

The problem is the fake Steve Jobs blog. Written by a business reporter, FakeSteve channels all things Steve Jobs. It's pretty funny, especially if you're a Mac fan. Fake Steve offers a 'namaste' to anyone who amuses or assists him. So, the when the yoga instructor tells us of the practice of offering honor to her and to each other, my mind goes to fake Steve and away from the moment.

It's the same problem I had trying to watch Marlene Dietrich after first seeing Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles.

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Buckets of Rain

The song of the day.

I been meek
And hard like an oak
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke.
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear,
If you want me, honey baby,
I'll be here.

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Fear is not a virtue

http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/2010/01/fear-is-not-virtue.html

"I finally understand Al-Qaeda's master plan, and it's freakingbrilliant. Resenting American technological dominance, they have found a way to end it, convincing us to semi-criminalize technical curiosity and thus lobotomize our culture. I'm just surprised that we're choosing to participate in the plan. I thought we were on opposite sides?…

….

Fear is not patriotic. Fear is not a public service. Fear is not a virtue."

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CrashPlan is a good backup solution for Mac users

Last November I wrote up my current back up solution. I pointed out that my attempt at using the cloud to backup, via a service called Mozy, hadn't worked. My problems included a memory leak (the client ended up taking almost a gig of real ram) and the speed of initiating any user action - configuring backups or launching a backup for instance, was painful. Mozy also sucks a huge amount of computer processing, making the backup process more involved than it has to be.

I wanted a hands-free off-site backup solution and towards the end of last year, I signed up with CrashPlan. My experience has been great; it doesn't monopolize memory or cpu time. And, it's easy and quick to configure.

They're offering unlimited backup for personal use for $54 a year. You install their software, specify which files you want backed up and you're off to the races.

Most internet providers throttle upload speed (i.e. uploading files to the CrashPlan server can take a while, but it's your Cable/DSL provider's fault, not theirs.). So, for not a lot of money, CrashPlan will send you a hard drive and you can seed your backup and mail that back to them. As it is, it'll have taken less than a month to get what I want backed up to them.

Unlike some of the cloud solutions, CrashPlan doesn't care what you send. Applications, movies, pictures, music, whatever is all fair game.

CrashPlan also offers some unique solutions. For instance you can designate a friends computer, which needs to be accessible via the internet, as a backup target. So, I could send a disk to a friend who would attach it to their computer and they'd host my backup, rather than CrashPlan. Or you can designate another computer on your local network to receive your backup.

You can also backup using the CrashPlan software to a local drive, although, I'm not sure why I'd do that, since Time Machine is such a great local solution.

They sell a software update - CrashPlan+, which is only minimally more useful, especially for the cost, but the promotion I took advantage of threw it in for free, so I didn't have to decide.

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Some days are like that.

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The Big Picture: Earthquake in Haiti

Seeing the teams from the around the world rally to help was as
tear-inducing as the pictures of the tragedy.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html

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Not very steady, but you get the idea.

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Jackson Browne & David Lindley - Late For The Sky & These Days

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My First Rock Concert

A current meme in the social nets has people reporting the first rock concert they attended.

I honestly don't recall mine. Dad worked at the University Union in Bowling Green, which had shows in the ballroom*. Dad would frequently work the sound at the shows.

Groups like Three Dog Night and The Association (yes, I'm that old.) would come through. I remember getting a drum stick after the Three Dog Night show. I also saw ~~Louie~~ Louis (yeesh) Armstrong in BG.

Maybe the first one I got myself into was a Harry Chapin concert, also at BG. Elton John came through around that time, but his current hit was a soundtrack for a chick flick called "Friends". I was too cool for that of course. But Madman Across the Water came out next and I was sorry I had skipped his show.

That's right, I went to see Harry Chapin, but was too cool for Elton John.

I'm pretty sure my brother's first concert was when I took him to see Bruce Springsteen at Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento. That's enough to spoil a person. A site I just found claims there were only 600 of us there.

I took Lilah to her first concert, Alanis Morisette, at Cal Expo. One of the nicest venues I've been to, but alas, it was an outdoor theater and the neighbors brought it down. Molly thinks her first concert might have been U2, in 7th grade.

* The ballroom is now named after a colleague of my dad's, Dick Lenhart. The Lenharts were in my folks' will as the family that would get the four of us kids. That will was in effect until about the year 2000, or 27 years after we moved from Ohio. I offer that as an explanation for my own lack of enthusiasm in dealing with life's important paperwork.

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Labels: firstrockconcert

Audrey Hepburn and the War, featuring her childhood drawings

Audrey Hepburn, who appears in several movies I've enjoyed, lived as a refugee in the Netherlands during WWII.

During the Dutch famine over the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people’s limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes or food to eat, people in the Netherlands starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many other Dutch people had to resort to using flour made from tulip bulbs to bake cakes and cookies.

This post has artwork of hers from that time.

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Little Wing - Eric Clapton & Sheryl Crow

Riffing off of Derek and the Dominos 'version' - not surprisingly.
Fun to listen to and watch how Sheryl Crow looks at Clapton early on, when they first start singing. This is why boys learn to play guitar. They want someone to look at them like that.

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