Yes, nocturnal creatures are insane, and I am proof. I was supposed to go to sleep about two and a half hours ago, but I did what I shouldn’t have and hopped on the computer. Because I went to my office, I am now a user on last.fm, and I’ve stayed up to listen to too much music tonight. I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I made a post about the service. Needless to say, I’ll be tired in the morning, but not quite as tired as Brad is (I hope) :~( And the best part is that tomorrow, er, today, is Friday, so I go to work at 7:30 instead of 9:30. w00t!
Monthly Archive for January, 2006
I’ve finally signed up for an account at last.fm, which is a social music site powered by audioscrobbler. Clint and Hersch have been using the service for a while, so I figured I could jump on the bandwagon now.
Much like the many other social networking sites on the internet, last.fm associates its users according to interests. In this case, last.fm introduces you to other users with the same musical interests, or even recommends other music that you may like. Unlike sites like Amazon.com that recommend things according to your purchasing habits, last.fm makes recommendations according to your listening habits. My listening habits will show music that I have not purchased on Amazon, so it should provide a wider set of data than Amazon has collected.
As listen to more music through iTunes, the iScrobbler plugin will upload meta data to last.fm, keeping track of what music I have listened to and how often I have listened to it. For those of you making the leap from my last post to this one, don’t fret. I can easily turn the iScrobbler plugin on and off, thereby allowing me to exercise my right to privacy that I find so important.
Once I have listened to more music, my last.fm list should show some real information in my sidebar. In the meantime, you can look at my profile on last.fm.
I was browsing RSS feeds on My Yahoo! page this morning, when I came across Rich’s post appropriately titled WTF??? Let me quote what is relavent in his post, while leaving out just enough just enough that you will still go and read his post:
…he responded to the concerns people have with respect to the government spying on its citizens. His response was that we had had this debate about connecting dots, but now people are criticizing him for connecting dots. Yeah, well, no. The criticism, to extend the metaphor, is that the government is collecting more dots without the protections the constitution is supposed to afford.
Yes. While I am OK with government agencies connecting dots they already have, I am not too fond of the idea that they want to collect all of the dots. I don’t buy into the bullshit that having all of these dots (mostly irrelevant to terrorism, I’m guessing) is going to somehow help the "fight against terror." When the enemy du jour stopped being communists, it became drugs. When it stopped being drugs, it became terrorists. In the future it could be people who drive hybrid vehicles or don’t drink alcoholic beverages, because some future President has ties with BP and Miller. The government’s collection of all dots sounds like all of those distopian stories you read in high school or in sci-fi paperbacks.
Sacrificing some of our personal freedoms for a false sense of security was a giant leap backwards as a country proclaiming to be the home of the free. I don’t feel that the government should be in the business of collecting private information on its citizens on the chance that it could lead to something. If there is probable cause to need such information, get a warrant. Until then, leave us alone.
Update: An article at Business Week spells out how mathematicians are using data to make computer models of us as shoppers, patients and potential terrorists. I found another article that talks about how we do not live in a perfect world. Information about our past purchases and past political speech can be used against us by those in power. I have to find the URL to link to the article. Check back tonight.
I just read on digg that Paramount has approached Patrick Stewart about Star Trek XI. While I would be excited about another movie with the TNG crew, I’m not going bonkers about it just yet. Stewart has some reservations about being in the movie.
Stewart said, "…[T]hey told me it was still two, three or four years down the road, by which time I would only be able to sit in the captain’s chair and not have the energy to get out of it!" Stewart is getting up there, at 65 years old.
The article at IGN also goes on to say, "The loss of Picard and Data could undermine audience interest in such a film, but perhaps Riker will get his chance at the captaincy after all." I would have to agree that no Picard and no Data could make a very uninteresting TNG movie. Also, I don’t know what it is, but I never really liked Riker. There was always something about him that made me think he was too much of an ass to be second-in-command of the Enterprise.
So, Paramount, if you happen to be reading fan reaction to the possibilities of another Star Trek movie, I would suggest not making it if you can’t fit Stewart and Spiner into a well-written story.
I was perusing tech sites today to find out about Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld Expo. I started to get really annoyed by the number of typos, misspellings and grammatical errors I found in many articles. I know that I am not infallible when it comes to spelling or grammer, but I make an honest effort to eliminate incorrect use of the English language in my writing. That does not seem to be the case for online journalism, if you consider the sometimes terrible writing to be journalism.
Now, just so we’re on the same page, I am not talking about blogs. Blogs are not journalism, and I do not think most bloggers think they’re blogs are a form of journalism. Blogs are an informal way of getting your thoughts and ideas to others across the globe. Blogs, for the most part, do not adhere to any professional standards with respect to information verification, quoting or editing. Blogs that act like they’re some sort of official part of the press are only kidding themselves.
Bloggers don’t generally have the time to go chasing after quotes, making sure they have two sources for information and have an editor look over their work before publishing it. I know I don’t have the time to do all of that. Bloggers are journalers, not journalists.
What I have been seeing in my daily reading are news sites that appear to be written by bloggers, rather than journalists. It is not uncommon to see an "article" with errors that go uncorrected. Articles are rushed in order to be the first on the internet to "report" about current events. No matter how big of a site it is that I’m viewing, many articles are poorly written, poorly edited or both. When I see that, I see the credibility of the site diminish, along with my desire to read it. If someone cannot take the time to proofread their work, why should I take the time to read them?
I am disturbed that sites I frequent, such as slashdot, Ars Technica and even CNN.com, publish articles and stories filled with grammatical or spelling errors. Unfortunately, it appears it is more important to be the first rather than the least incorrect. It’s a miracle that kids in school today have any good examples of writing not found on dead trees. I hope that changes as more and more text appears digitally.
This is just a quick post (I hope). I finally got the dining room cleared of my stuff. My monitor is back on my desk. The VAIO is currently installing software to get it back to its full working glory. The second laptop is put away. The iPod has been synchronized after a weekend of the Theaterfest playlist.
Sunday we saw Brokeback Mountain. Before watching the movie, I had only watched the trailer and heard about its numerous nominations in radio ads. I didn’t read the reviews or find out much more about the movie. After seeing it, I will say that it was a beautifully filmed and entertaining movie. It is a love story. The two main characters in love just happen to both be men. The movie shows their relationship as nothing different than any other relationship, regardless of orientation. That being said, I would say you can probably wait for the DVD. Besides breaking ground as a homosexual love story, there is nothing spectacular. Heath Ledger really acts in this one, but that’s about all I can say that’s new.
Tonight we saw Mr. & Mrs. Smith, one I did not see when it was in theaters. I liked that it wasn’t a "deep thinking" flick, and it was chock full of action, gunfire and comedic banter. In the action genre, it’s recommendable. The plot is interesting, and the interaction between Brad and Angelina is, too. You can see from their on-screen chemistry that they fit together. I didn’t know that Vince Vaughn was in the movie, and that makes his relationship with Jennifer all the more entertaining (if you’re into the Hollywood gossip scene).
I’d write more, but I’m tired and have to get some sleep. Hopefully I won’t be tossing and turning tonight like I was last night. I’d like to have at least six straight hours of sleep before I go to my meeting this afternoon. Tomorrow I may post about HIMYM, but I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance; I’m making sloppy Joes for dinner 
The laptop died over the weekend. Chris tried to boot it up, but it just kept restarting. I was able to finally get Windows to not restart when an error occurred, and that’s when I found out the bad news: Windows could not load the boot partition. The laptop wasn’t going to be able to boot, at least not without reformatting the drive. Unfortunately, I hadn’t backed up Chris’s stuff since November, and she had a lot of recent data that she needed.
I first tried using the Ultimate Boot CD to check the drive with no luck. Then I tried System Works, again with no luck. So, I ordered Sabrent’s USB 2.0 to IDE Cable to connect the drive to another computer as an external drive. The cable came in today and I brought it inside at lunch. When I got home, I opened up the box and connected everything together. I couldn’t get another computer to open the drive, but three different data recovery utilities later, I was finally able to recover the data off of the drive.
I did some quick perusing of the recovered files, and I think Chris will be happy when she gets home Saturday night from Theaterfest. I’ve got all of her documents, her pictures and her grades. She was so worried that she would have to rely on a backup from November. Thankfully, things have worked themselves out.
With that out of the way, I guess that means I’ve got to get back to my other work 
But first, I must find dinner!
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