I have had the pleasure(?) of living through the following:

  • Getting two problems (ABS light and Airbag light were both stuck on) with our new-to-us 2005 Town & Country fixed only to find another problem (2 radiator fans refused to turn off when car was turned off). Had to disconnect battery overnight to turn off fans and prevent battery drainage. Took said vehicle back into the dealer who promptly and courteously fixed it. Again.
  • Finding out that the family dog (who just yesterday started limping–refusing to set any weight on her left, front paw) has Lyme disease. $200+ later and doggie is now feeling much better, apparently.
  • Beating head repeatedly against same problem at work for a week now is still not yielding any noticeable results, other than in softness of head.
  • Compiled 2.6.17-rc4 kernel from kernel.org in an attempt to prove that same palm-pilot-related kernel crash existed in upstream kernel. After several iterations of fun and frivolity and make-kpkg’s and reboots, discovered that it does not seem to after all, which means that the problem must lie somewhere in either 2.6.15 or in the patches that ubuntu has made to it. Yay! This is, I think, the last major show-stopper from me being able to run Linux on my powerbook. About the only large annoyance now is the lack of Flash. Oh–I’ve decided that manually downloading QIF files and importing them into MoneyDance whenever I need to balance the checkbook is not such a horrible thing (refer to earlier post about MoneyDance, IBM’s PowerPC Java, and the inability to do OFX transactions).
  • Started listening to Switchfoot’s Nothing is Sound CD. It’s pretty good. I think my favorite song thus far is the simultaneously deep and also infectiously make-you-want-to-scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-too track, “Stars”. I will say this, though, and I mean no disrespect to Switchfoot, nor do I know anything of their contractual obligations or personal lives…. But this CD seems on an initial listen to be less hope/God-focused than their previous CD, The Beautiful Letdown, which was REALLY, REALLY good. I’ll not say much more because I’ve honestly not listened too closely, nor have I dug up the lyrics from the new CD yet. But I do hope that the Switchfoot guys are still as focused and passionate about God as they were in previous years. I also sincerely hope that their record label hasn’t pressured them into producing a more commercially-palpable product for the sake of being more commercially-palpable. It is a good CD, though, and I do like it. Here’s to you, Switchfoot, my home (town) boys. =:)
  • Finally watched Jet Li’s latest film, Unleashed, and I was REALLY impressed! It was very artfully done, all around. I mean, it had the bad language that my TV-G couldn’t seem to filter out (no closed captioning on the DVD??), but other than that, I think it was a pretty good movie. It was certainly the best all-around martial arts movie I think I’ve ever seen. Morgan Freeman was (as always) excellent in it. His father figure role provided stability, peace, and focus for the entire film. Without him, I don’t think the film could have gone the distance. And Jet Li took some very brave steps in this film to try to grow in his abilities as an actor, and he pulled it off fairly well! I swear, Jet Li is the best martial artist that I have ever seen on film. I know I’m committing heresy here, but I would put my money on him over Bruce Lee (duck), Jackie Chan (sorry Jackie baybee!!!), Steven Segal (pfaw, yeah, like that’s even a challenge), Jean-Claude van Damme in his prime (*twitch*), and anyone else I’ve ever seen (hmmmm, David Carradine???). So, go put the kids to bed early, rent Unleashed, and enjoy some kick-butt fight scenes, a really touching story, some seriously M.Night-esque tense scenes (Victoria taking off his collar, anyone??), and the absolutely best close-combat fight sequence that I’ve ever seen.

Gorillaz – Dare Video

December 4, 2005    Category: Music   No Comments »

gorillaz_dare_1WOW!! This has to be the coolest video I’ve seen in years!! The art and animation is absolutely gorgeous! And to mix it in with the intentionally out of place live singing head… BRILLIANT, I tell you! Genius, I say! =;)

The song itself is awesome. Catchy beat, great execution, love the strings, love the vocals, dig the synth, love the deep grinding base lines!! Fantastic! But the video…. WOW. So incredibly cool.

gorillaz_dare_5I’ve had the song on my laptop and Clie for 2 days now and it’s just about all I’ve been listening to, interspersed with Pink Floyd here and there. =:)

Did I mention how cool the video was???
gorillaz_dare_4Seriously, the video makes the song so much cooler. As I’m listening to the song, half of the smile on my face is coming from the quirky, well-done video.

Love it.
gorillaz_dare_7Now, warning…. The band itself and their CD’s don’t rank up there all that highly, as they are neither kid, family, nor clean-language friendly, so I can’t recommend anything else by them. But this song and video just made my week.

I’ve long-been wanting a nice WYSIWYG editor for my WordPress blog. And, let me just say… there’s not one that I could find for Linux, which both sucks and is honestly quite a surprise. And yeah, I know there’s a partial resource in kdepim 3.5, and I had it on my TODO list to look at helping to finish it/get it working, but that’s obviously not happened yet. Oooh! Maybe that can be the itch that I need to scratch! But anyway, I’m sure I missed this killer app in my searches and there is, in fact, one out there, but I sure as heck couldn’t find it.

So, it occurred to me that I now have one of those… how do you say… commercial operating systems (that being the lovely and talented OS X Tiger), and that there just might be some neato little blog editors for said lady. And indeed, there are. I’ve found Ecto and have decided to give it a spin.

It’s nice!

Although, I can’t imagine myself ever in the place in life where I’d joyfully fork over money for the pleasure of using it, it is a well-done little application, and it does indeed do WYSIWYG blog editing. I think that the length of time that I’ll use it is directly related to how long I can use it without having to pay money. Which brings me to the point of Open Source development on OS X. It doesn’t seem to have caught on nearly as well as I would have thought. I mean, the idea of developing software just because you love doing it and are fine with sharing your source code and applications with the world without feeling obligated to charge people for the privilege doesn’t seem to be nearly as prevalent on OS X as it is on BSD/Linux/etc. Bummer, that!

Also, there are a couple of pet peeves I have with iTunes.

  1. First, it doesn’t do nearly as good a job as Amarok of watching the directories that it’s supposed to be. If I add songs to my directories outside of iTunes, it doesn’t know about them until I restart iTunes. And there’s no “rescan collection” that I can find, unlike the one that is readily available in Amarok.
  2. Second, it doesn’t have a cover manager like Amarok does, from what I can find. This plainly sucks. It looks like Apple actually wants you to manually put in the cover art for each album?? No thanks. I can go get a pet rock if I want that boring of a hobby. Or maybe this is intentional–Apple wanting to make it as easy to get all this working if you use only the iTunes store, and as difficult to do it any other way?
  3. This is a third bullet item, having nothing to do with iTunes at the moment. It may at some point, but it doesn’t right now. Actually, there’s something odd that Ecto does with ordered lists, like the WYSIWYG and code get out of sync or something. Ick.
  4. Oh, I know–Lyrics. iTunes doesn’t do Lyrics?? Amarok does, and does it really smoothly.

Blah! So, I spent some time last week and got Amarok up and running through Fink in OS X. And it really, really, really works well!! Really really! I was expecting the same level of weirdness that one sees in Linux when trying to get Windows-ish things to work, but it all just worked flawlessly. Sound works fine, although it seems that amarok only wants to use esdsink for its engine, which seems odd, but multiple apps can still access the sound card, which is important (and problematic in Linux on most cheap sound cards) so there’s nothing wrong here. Maybe I’m just more comfortable with that which I’m used to, but I find Amarok a nicer interface to work with. So, seriously, two thumbs waaaay, way up, Amarok guys and gals!! =;)

And lastly, I’ve been jonesing for some Pink Floyd lately. Out here in Rhode Island, I’m without all of my CD’s, etc., so I went and found some songs from my favorite Floyd CD, Delicate Sound of Thunder. I am always amazed at how intricate, emotional, ahead-of-their-time, smooth, and experiential Pink Floyd songs are. I surely hope this isn’t one of those signs of me getting old, but I am still drawn to their songs, lyrics, arrangements, and musicality as much as I was 10 years ago+. My favorites from this CD are definitely:

  1. Learning to Fly
  2. The Dogs of War
  3. On the Turning Away
  4. One of These Days
  5. Comfortably Numb
  6. Run Like Hell

Awesome, awesome music. Makes me wish I could have seen them live myself. =:) Oooh–also, One Slip from A Momentary Lapse of Reason is awesome!! =:)

And with that, I bid you, fare reader, adieu.

New New Order, Still Excellent

October 20, 2005    Category: Music   1 Comment »

new_order-waiting_for_the_sirens_call I was listening to Dish Network’s “EuroStyle” channel the other day as I was working from my living room and I heard a new song by New Order, called Krafty. I was a bit surprised, as it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a new New Order release. So I had to investigate. Investigate I did, and what I’ve found from their new Waiting for the Sirens’ Call CD is really, really good stuff.

I’ve always loved New Order, and as they’ve been around for the entirety of my music-listening life, I’ve liked them for a good long while. But the last album of theirs that I bought was Republic, which, as I see now, was 12 years ago. WOW! Dang I’m getting old! =:(

This new CD, though, is very good. I believe my favorites are:

  • I Told You So — love the beginning, the bass, the driving beat, the smart lyrics, the old Gibson guitar reminiscent of older New Order songs.
  • Morning Night and Day — sweet bass and guitar!! =:)
  • Krafty — I love the lyrics for this song, and the music itself is quite good. Reminds me a bit of Regret from Republic.
  • Guilt Is A Useless Emotion — very nice blending of Electronic, acoustic guitar, good vocal harmonics too.

All in all, I am very happy with the music. The band has never sounded better. In fact, I think this is definitely my favorite New Order release ever. I’m sure you’ll read all kinds of Joy Division nuts who insist that the best is far long gone, but I for one disagree.

If you like or have ever liked New Order, you definitely owe it to yourself to give this release a listen and purchase. Excellent job, guys.

joshkasper-armor Now downloading the newly-released OpenSuSE 10.0 GoldMaster discs. Gonna do a clean install and see if I still have any problems. *fingers crossed*

Tomorrow, I have a most-of-the-day Bible Quiz event with the whole family (my two daughters will be quizzing and my wife and son will be helping officiate and I’ll be coaching my eldest).

If I have time tomorrow eve, I need to clean up the crappy cinderblock mess in my basement, hang new drywall over it, put the corner piece up, mud over that, wet-sand, mud, etc.

And then there’s the whole #12 thing. Hopefully going to finish that up on Monday, though it’s definitely not something that anyone should think about rushing through.

Right, and once I make it through those hurdles (well honestly, while I’m going through those hurdles), there’s still the ever-pressing other issues of life.

*sigh*

Stress level: 12 out of 10.

Oooh–almost forgot…. I went with K and Sarah and Amanda last night to a VERY cool concert at LCBC (Until My Heart Caves In Tour) where we enjoyed 3+ hours of Superchic[k], Sanctus Real, Audio Adrenaline, Kids in the Way, and Pillar. My hearing is still trying to come back to me. =:)

Also, my bro just had a new board come out!! Congrats Josh!! =:)

Oh–and I’m sick. =:/

beyondTheSea I had this one sitting on my desk for 2 weeks at least from Blockbuster online rental. I had read somewhere that it was good, and I have always absolutely loved Bobby Darin’s voice and style. But I was not prepared for this amazing movie.

Beyond the Sea really affected me in a deep and profound way. I find that most intelligent movies do this to me, and I’m not really sure why, but my whole being is touched by movies that have powerful themes like Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Vanilla Sky, Signs, Road to Perdition, and many others. My mood, thinking, and perspective on my life is challenged when I watch movies like this, and Beyond the Sea is another one to add to the list now. I think it is the deeply moving, intelligent, thought-provoking movies that I watch that I can identify with that affect me most. I was not able to communicate exactly why this is so to Lynn last night at midnight, and I rarely am able to put into rational thought what this effect is, but I’ll try to make some sense here. I suppose that as a result this will be partly an attempt at a movie review and partly a peek into my soul. =:)

Beyond the Sea is an excellent movie, which I very much recommend, for many reasons. First, the subject material is fascinating to me. Bobby Darin had one of those unique and distinctive voices, styles, and personas that I always admired, still enjoy, and never really learned much about. Beyond the Sea is the story of his life, told through his eyes–both as a child and as a grown-up. And I will try not to ruin the movie or his life’s story but Bobby Darin had an amazingly difficult life! He had rheumatic fever and was not supposed to live past the age of 15. He had lived his life not knowing who his father or mother were until he was well into his 30’s. He married this amazingly beautiful woman who he sought after with all of his heart (I identify with this part, since I fell completely in love much the same with Lynn).

He was amazingly noble and chivalrous, and there is a part in the movie where Bobby Darin is trying to cope with his just-married wife who is terrified of living/being married/sleeping with Bobby, and Bobby tells her this story about a knight who was protecting Lady Guinevere and laid his sheathed sword down the middle of the bed and told her that he will never cross over that sword–that she was the only one who could cross over it and touch him, even if it took a thousand nights. WOW! I’m getting all teary-eyed just now remembering the scene. What amazing love!! I identify with that kind of love!! That’s the kind of love that I know God, my Heavenly Father, has for me and all of us. That’s the kind of love that I feel in my own heart for my wife Lynn and our three beautiful children. I would give my own life to protect them and love them.

Bobby Darin was an AMAZING performer and artist. He was constantly driven to be a better person, a better artist, never satisfied to do what everyone else was doing, never content to do what he’d done before. I totally identify with that! That is why I have such unrest in my job right now. That is my nature and personality. That is why I push myself so hard. That is why I am involved in the KDE project and several other Open Source projects. That is why I stay up until 3 in the morning and write code, fix bugs, solve problems, figure puzzles out.

Bobby Darin also found that in the middle of his life, his life was not what he thought it to be. He had marital problems. He was so driven to be a success in music that he sacrificed his beautiful wife and children for it. He left them and lived in a trailer home on the side of a mountain at one point. How tragic!! I can identify here too with life not being all that you’d hoped it to be. And I see a warning for myself and my family here too–a realization that the same forces, personality, and drive that Bobby had exist in me, and that if they do not remain in balance, my family and life could be destroyed too. I pray with my whole heart that this does not happen, and will continue to strive to keep these forces in balance with God’s laws and the needs of my wife and children. But the warning is there nonetheless, and it is a visually powerful one and utterly tragic in the movie.

Secondly, the movie itself is extremely well-crafted. Visually, it is stunning and captivating. It is intelligently thought out, beautifully choreographed, very wonderfuly acted, extremely well-put-together, has an amazing soundtrack and score all throughout and it is well-filmed. It is movie-craft at its finest, in my book. It has its rough language spots, to be sure, but this little beauty has made that problem much less of one.

Beyond the Sea was produced, written, and directed by Kevin Spacey. And, of course, Kevin Spacey played the part of Bobby Darin, and did all of the dance numbers. But what I was absolutely stunned by was Kevin’s voice. He actually sang all of the Bobby Darin songs himself. WOW. You just simply must hear the great job he did. It was, in a word, perfect. Kevin Spacey’s voice is phenomenal, truly, and he did great justice to Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea. I cannot imagine another singer’s voice which would have done it as well. And this was a big surprise to me, since I had no idea that Kevin Spacey had any kind of musical background at all. I had always pictured Kevin Spacey as a completely different kind of actor from his other movies, and when I first saw that it was he who was to play Bobby Darin, I thought that surely the movie wouldn’t be that good. I was very wrong. =:)

Beyond the Sea was a 5-year labor-of-love project for Kevin Spacey, and apparently there were some major problems along the way. Yet all involved kept at it, did not quit or waver, and as a result, Beyond the Sea exists and exists beautifully. I am really surprised that I have not heard more about it. It is a great movie–entertaining, intelligent, thought-provoking, deep, beautiful, and rich. Go see it.

Online music, breaking the mold

August 9, 2005    Category: Music   No Comments »

uhp_150 I must admit that I am very impressed with a some of the songs that were sent to me in the latest MP3Tunes e-mail sampler. Dragonfly by Universal Hall Pass, for one, is suprisingly enjoyable! To quote their Mercury album page…

An album aptly named for it’s ever-morphing musical backdrops with extremely adventurous songwriting, a unique voice, and lyrical content covering truth, coyness, charm, and mythos.

The lead singer’s voice is REALLY interesting. It reminds me a bit of Nelly Furtado, Superchic(k), and Portishead, all at once. Combined with some fairly complex and eclectic arrangements, the songs combine a diverse set of influences and the outcome is a unique, pleasant diversion.

amir3_150 The second tune that I absolutely had to buy was Desert Flower by Amir from his Rumba Gitana album. It is an absolutely gorgeous Spanish guitar number. I am an absolute sucker for the acoustic guitar and always have been. And this song is truly one to be listened to with a tall glass of blueberry tea, with the lights off, gazing into the flickering light of a lone candle. Wow. Peaceful, serene, and beautiful. Quite a nice way to end one’s day.

So, reviews aside, this is the first time that I’ve bought any music from MP3tunes.com, and I did so tonight for a couple of reasons.

First, the music that I mentioned above is REALLY good, and 88 cents per song is pretty cheap–cheaper than Apple’s iTunes store.

Second, I wanted to support the artists who are making said good music.

Third, I really appreciate the philosophy and direction that MP3tunes is going and want to support them in their efforts. They don’t try to limit me as a buyer on what I can do with the music I buy, and this is how it truly should be. The fact that the big record companies haven’t gotten a clue to this yet baffles me. Besides that, the website is nicely done, and it’s dead simple to buy the music you want and download it. Also, they’ve done things the right way and not tried to limit their web interface to Internet Explorer, for example. Nice job, guys.

Fourth, I really like the approach that MP3tunes is taking with the artists they work with. According to their About page, they focus on

High rev-share to artists, with artists keeping almost $6 of every CD sold and almost $.60 for each song. Even the superstar artists don’t command that kind of royalty!

Pretty cool approach! Artists can do a lot better for themselves by this kind of arrangement, one would think, than with the current situation with those big record companies, at least from what I have seen/read/heard.

Now, I had checked out MP3tunes.com before–when they first launched–and quite honestly, I was horribly underimpressed with the selection they had, so I didn’t even think about buying anything. And maybe you had this impression too. But, if you care about freedom with the music you buy, if you care about supporting artists who are doing a good job and willing to let you listen to the music you buy however you want to listen to it, then you should really go check out MP3tunes.com. Look around, listen to some of the free samples, and go buy something. Put your money where your mouth is. =;)

itunes This is absolutely the coolest Open Source thing, by far, this month. In fact, it might be the coolest thing I’ve seen in a couple of months. Jon Lech Johansen (you might remember him as the guy who largely made it possible to watch those pesky little DVDs that you paid good money for on the Operating System you choose) has done it again.

Apparently, my head has been in the sand for the last several months, since SharpMusique is a (very nicely done!) C# port of the python-based PyMusique application. What is PyMusique (and subsequently SharpMusique), you ask? Why, nothing more than a free working Open Source interface to Apple’s iTunes store!!!

Does it work? Absolutely!! And well!! And thanks to Novell/Miguel/countless thousands of Mono developers, this C# port (SharpMusique) runs perfectly well on Linux!

What does all this mean? Well, I can tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that Apple is getting robbed or anything. All this interface does is allow me to browse Apple’s iTunes store from Linux, log in, search for music, purchase and download songs, and… well, that’s it. And, as a matter of fact, I did purchase a $.99 song tonight–Kutless – Strong Tower – Take Me In, from Apple’s iTunes store, through the SharpMusique application, on Linux. And, I happen to think that this is how it should be. In fact, I’d be quite happy running Apple’s own iTunes application in Linux, if they’d just provide me one.

But they don’t.

And it’s satisfying that, for the time being, until Apple figures out how to get this to not work anymore, I can choose to browse their iTunes store from Linux, and even *gasp* purchase their music. If I choose to.

It’s nice having a choice. =:)

newsboys-thrive I just discovered the Newsboys’ Thrive CD, and I am really loving it.

“Live in Stereo”, “Million Pieces (Kissin’ Your Cares Goodbye)”, “Rescue”, and “Cornelius” are absolutely brilliant, and have kept me rocking, smiling, and singing along on my drive to/from work for the last couple of days. I heartily recommend this CD to everyone, and will have to look into buying some more Newsboys CD’s now.

I think my favorite song lyrically is “Live in Stereo”….

This field guide’s
Got no soul
Digging for the sacred
In a man-made hole

The soil gets harder
The shovel won’t behave
I just dug myself
Into a six foot grave

I need a new dimension
Got to Supersize
A Jacobean ladder
To a parallel prize

The walk’s by faith
The sight lines lie
How’m I gonna tag along
With one tin ear
And one glass eye
Well I…

Chorus:
I can’t get there from here
When every sense is in mono
Walk by faith, you appear
I wanna live in stereo

I can’t get there from here
Without a God-directed go
Walk by faith, you appear
I gotta live in stereo.

I quit, I fold, I’m done
Trying to scale Everest
Sherpa-less
Ain’t fun

The best laid plans
Are in my other pants
The base camp’s buried
In an avalanche

I need a new dimension
Got to Supersize
A Jacobean ladder
To a parallel prize

The walk’s by faith
The lone wolf dies
But how’m I gonna follow you
With blue man ears
And snow blind eyes?
Well I…

… out of which “the best laid plans are in my other pants” is my favorite, I think. =;)

Good CD!! Go get it!!

Ocean’s Twelve

April 15, 2005    Category: Movies, Music   4 Comments »

oceansTwelveSo, I just spent a good couple of hours with my lovely wifey watching Ocean’s Twelve, and I can recommend it for your viewing pleasure, and thanks for asking. I will say, however, that the first twelve minutes of the movie (pun intended) had me cringing. It sure seemed to me that the movie starts off trying to use as many cliches as possible, and doing so many of the things (The Whole Ten Yards, anyone?) that are done in sequels, which totally and completely ruin the movie, for me at least. One of the most offensive of these aforementioned “things” is the frequent use of the title of the first movie interspersed in the characters’ dialogs. *twitch*

But I can definitely say that the movie gets better. I loved the first movie and bought it (or was gifted it at some point, I don’t remember). I don’t think this sequel is as good as the first one, necessarily, and I think it is not as discoverable as the first one was (I mean, come on–did anyone see anything leading to that ending?), which leads to disappointment in the audience (audience being me). But it was not nearly as horrible as I had thought it would be–what with mentioning “Ocean’s Eleven” more than 5 times in 10 minutes at the beginning of the movie and all.

Overall, I thought the story and dialog was smartly written, and it was enjoyable as always watching George Clooney and Brad Pitt work together. Their dialog and timing was one of the most enjoyable things about the first one, and even though the sequel didn’t seem as crisp in this area (and perhaps it’s because you’ve already seen it exhaustively in the first one). The camera work was pretty well-done, I thought, and I liked the use of freeze-frame moments throughout. I though the opening sequence which ended with Brad Pitt being freeze-framed as he jumped out the window was hilarious. Also, even though the 12-times-repeated long-camera-shot-to-closeup sequences were painful to watch, I think they did get their intended point across as to the thoroughly depressing state of the characters at that point. Not too shabbily done. =:)

Ooh. Before I forget, my favorite song from the movie wasn’t on the soundtrack. It’s the song from the scene where Night Fox is dancing his way through the lasers–you know, the really cool techno French song. Anyway, I found it here, thanks to this thread. Long live the revolution, baybee. Long live Google. =:)

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