Even though I’ve had a WiFi network installed in my home for about six months, today is the first day that I finally managed to bring my laptop outside and work while lounging on my deck. This is the life.
I recently noticed that the European digital-music download site OD2.com is short for On-Demand Distribution. They couldn’t very well go around with the acronym ODD, so they went with OD2.
Whatever. Looks like the European launch of the Apple iTunes Store creamed OD2 in the first week. On one hand, it’s kind of sad to see the digital-download scene be practically owned by a single vendor (Apple), but the Apple fanboy and stockholder is happy about the development. I’ve browsed the iTunes Store once or twice, but despite their huge catalog, they didn’t have anything I wanted. No Spock’s Beard or The Haunted, only the “Greatest Hits” of Genesis and Elton John. What gives?
Not that I’d buy anything anyway: if I want an album, I’ll pay the extra couple of bucks to get a professionally printed CD with cover and liner notes, with full CD quality and no DRM attached. I almost never want to buy singles; I’m strictly an AOR kinda guy.
I just tweaked my SpamAssassin settings on my mail server, and in waiting to see if they will take effect or not, I’m in the peculiar situation of hoping that I’ll receive some spam mail soon. Odd.
A little more than a month ago, I started subscribing to The Economist, which is chock-full of insightful articles from around the globe and hands-down the best magazine for world coverage. The Chicago Tribune recently gave it the score of number 3 in their 50 Best Magazines list.
However, since it’s a weekly magazine filled with lots of words, I’m often having a hard time keeping up with it. In the mornings and late evenings, I’ll often be carrying the latest issue around the house, just trying to finish it up before the next week’s issue arrives. I’ve already learned to skip certain articles, like the ones talking about the British Parliament or Turkish elections, but even with that there’s a lot to keep up with.
It’s a great magazine, but sometimes I wish it came bi-monthly instead of weekly!
Last year, I managed to pick up the excellent double-album Testimony by Neal Morse, which is such a stupendous album that it’s 123 minute total running time goes by too quickly. It’s hands-down the best Christian album I’ve ever listened to. Excellent musicianship all around, and lyrics that are honest and extremely personal. When he sings “I never felt so out of place in all my life” describing his visit to a friend’s church in Sing It High, or “I am broken” in I Am Willing, I know it’s coming from the heart because I’ve felt those same feelings myself at times. The fact that Mike Portnoy, of Dream Theater fame and possibly the best rock drummer performing today, plays drums on the entire album makes the album even more special.
Now I hear that they’re back in the studio recording another album! See Neal Morse’s online diary for more details about the new project.
Since Mark doesn’t ‘get’ Gentoo, and having become a satisfied Gentoo Linux user over the past six months, I figured I’d respond publicly as to why I like Gentoo.
For those unaware, Gentoo doesn’t distribute anything in binary form; they distribute the source code, and you compile it for your machine. There are a number of scripts which make this pretty painless; two commands, and the emerge program will download, recompile, and install all the latest updates for me. This may take a couple of hours, depending on the number of updates, but it doesn’t require much work from me.
The Gentoo advantage as most people see it (including Mark) is
Most binary x86 Linux distributions have code tuned for the Pentium II (i686, as gcc sees it) and above, although they restrict their instruction set to the 386 base set so it can still run on ancient machines if it wants. But with Gentoo, you can use the full instruction set of the i686. In practice, this should give you a performance boost, but really by how much? Unless you’ve got a program that uses the SSE instruction set, you’d probably be lucky to see a 10% performance boost.
However, there are a couple of other advantages to the Gentoo system that are often overlooked:
Gentoo users who wax poetic about the 10% performance boost for their custom compiled system are probably just fooling themselves; the real power of the system lay in the other advantages that a source-only distribution can give you.
Apple just released Airport Express, which is something I’ve been hoping to see for a while now. It’s a device that, among other things, would allow me to stream music from my laptop to my stereo using my wireless network. Sweet! As a bonus, the unit also serves as a relay for my current wireless network, extending my range in the house. I can also use it as a portable wireless router, and get wireless whereever I can find an Ethernet jack. More sweet!
One cultural thing I’ve noticed while in Fresno is the sheer number of donut places around here. A quick check from the Yellow Pages shows 45 donut shops in the area! Only one of those is a chain (Krispy Kreme); the others are all locally owned. At home, I think there are only three or four donut shops to speak of; you pretty much have to go to the supermarket if you want them.
Likely much to the chagrin of my wife, I’ve been indulging as the Fresnans do, eating donuts every morning for breakfast while I’m here. Yeah, it’s bad for me, but so what?