Published on
April 28, 2004 in
Music.
Tags: apple.
I just picked up The Cure: Galore – The Singles 1987-1997 last night from the iTunes Music Store. I also picked up some various songs by The Foo Fighters. Unfortunately one of the songs is something they are giving away this week as part of the 1-year anniversary.
On the same note, Apple released iTunes 4.5 today for both Mac and Windows. The two absolutely coolest features in this release are the ‘Party Shuffle’ and the link buttons to pull up the artist, album, or song in iTMS. The first is obvious as it allows you to rearrange and mix the playlist to suit the mood. Now, you may be questioning my second choice. I would have too until I found the following little trick in the Apple Discussions:
Option-click the iTMS link button and it will constrain the view as if you had selected either the artist or the album in the browse window. This can be really cool if you are listening to a song and want to find more like it, but don’t want to have to go scrolling through hundreds of entries in the browse window.
Published on
April 19, 2004 in
Software.
If you’re interested in a instant messaging client for Mac OS X that supports all the majority of the networks, is open source, and is rapidly evolving, check out Adium. Don’t let the duck fool you, this is a great piece of software with a dedicated development team.
I love its configurability and its reliance on the Safari webkit for window layout. This makes everything much more configurable and the client really aims to be a light app that will be part of your desktop at all times and look damn good doing it.
Published on
April 19, 2004 in
Music.
Tags: funny.
I splurged Sunday after seeing The Punisher by going to Best Buy and purchasing a couple of CDs: Drowning Pool – Sinner and the Punisher soundtrack. What was surprising about this was the Drowning Pool CD was $13.99. I never pay full price for CDs (always on sale, cheap internet deal, or used). However, that damn song Bodies is so catchy 
If your curious what the tie in from the song to the title of this entry, check this out. I just was in the mood to check out the rest of their songs and for Punisher, I just love soundtracks. Unfortunately, Sinner contains quite a few similar sounding songs. Not bad, but really only average. On the other hand, the Punisher soundtrack is better and has been rather fun to listen to. I especially like a song by Mark Collie called “In Time”. This song is used in the movie and has a nice sound to it.
I wish Wind-up Records would go ahead and place their artists on iTunes, but they don’t seem to want to at this point. They signed artists such as Evanescence, Creed, Drowning Pool, etc. Oh well, eventually they will make the move considering more and more people are buying music online and particularly through Apple.
2 out of 4 stars
I went to see The Punisher today and it was pretty good, not great, but enjoyable. The whole movie has an old west kind of feel to it as there are scenes that feel like a gun slingers’ standoff. Thomas Jane does a really good job of portraying the burning regret, anger, and depression that historically has gripped the Punisher character. John Travolta is not exactly what I wanted in the villain role. He is obviously devious and willing to do what it takes, but the final sequence between Frank Castle and Howard Saint is a little anticlimactic, but maybe that is just due to lost of freakin’ carnage prior to the scene.
Fun ride that contained the comic books emotion and violence, but it really isn’t that intelligent of a movie. Better than Daredevil, but the other recent comic book films outrank it…
Target.com takes 10% off with no minimum required via coupon code “TCAPRLDSCNT2″. As of this morning, this coupon works on Apple’s iPod MP3…(more) [dealmac]
I thought I would post this as I know some people have asked me about getting an iPod cheaper, as I got mine at 10% through a different deal. Hope someone can make use of this…
I have been toying with the idea of setting up something like this for the past few weeks. I haven’t been able to find much in the way of good places to discuss music and concerts around the Triangle area, but it may just be that I haven’t found what already exists. So, I thought I would throw this post up just to see what people thought. I toy with PhpBB every so often and this took about 5 minutes to setup. Now, I may send it all to /dev/null in the next few days, but I am curious if anyone would find a webboard to discuss music at all interesting…
[UPDATE]
As expected, I ended up taking down the Triangle Jams website. I don’t think it would garner enough use and probably would be a time-sink that yielded very little benefit to anyone. Oh well, maybe the next idea will have more merit
3 out of 4 stars
I totally forgot to post my review of Hellboy Friday night. I really enjoyed this film. The first half was better than the second, but usually the revealing of who the character is and a history of how a character such as this evolved can be damn interesting. Ron Perlman did an amazing job as Hellboy and he just looked perfect compared to the pages of the comic I have seen. The comic value of the acting and writing was wonderful as it carried the full effect of the ego-driven sarcastic character that this is.
I think Guillermo del Toro held well to what I know of the original material as well as adding just enough of a stylistic effect that everything seemed just beyond reality, but not so far as to be wholly unbelievable as the Batman sequels were.
All in all, it was a very fun showing and I really hope a sequel will be made.
Yes, I have been away for a while and for that I do apologize. Life seems to have gotten a little hectic lately. Not that this is a surprise or an excuse, I just got out of the blogging habit.
However, I think the follow response to a rant by Eric Raymond, Daring Fireball: Ronco Spray-On Usability, must be read. You don’t need to agree with all of the points, but what is brought up is worth consideration.
I do believe usability is often ignored by OSS developers, but I guess that is why I am working under Mac OS X at this moment I will definitely agree with the contention that truly skilled interface design is an art. However, I don’t know if I would say Desktop Linux is drastically behind, possibly just slightly behind in its user interface at the moment. With the right emphasis that could change radically and quickly. I do have my doubts that emphasis will be put in place any time soon, but it is useful to look in the mirror occasionally and see if the reflection is what is wanted. Both GNOME and KDE have both grown up a lot in the past few years and I can see changes that make them more useful, but I am afraid that both projects (as they are the best desktops offered under Linux) may be far enough behind that they will always be a few steps behind in the mix. Thus preventing widespread desktop adoption.
Take this for what it is worth, simply my views on someone else’s views on someone else’s rant 
I would prefer Linux/*BSD servers everywhere and Mac OS X on the desktop. I would choose not to be a zealot if that damn reality distortion field weren’t so damn inviting…
