suck my blogk

is very pretty

so i’m blogging this from my fancy new imac mini. the mac to make all of the people like me “switch".

so far i’m impressed. It’s completely silent, setup was easy, it worked with my digital camera without installing drivers or software. No monitor drivers needed for the dell 17 inch display that was graciously donated to by jeff.

i had a few crashes with some of the ilife apps, but i think we’ll get past it soon enough.

for now, i’m just a mac newbie . . . . more on this later

-hubb

The iPorn.

The thing is, I’m really not into porn that much. I do feel that storage based media players are the way to go, mainly because everything else that has been proposed as a “subscription” basesd service seems to either get shut down or ends up sucking.

Take napster for instance. I subscribed. I played the hip-hop “radio station” pretty regularly, but it seemed like they had maybe 20 artists signed up, and i kept hearing that missy elliott / wyclef song. To this day, if i hear that song, you will see me get horizontal like the jetta linebacker to either smash the device playing the song or to hit the next button.

the only thing that can save us from bad music, is just by limiting access to it.

We’ve dealt with this for a long time now. Take public radio for example:

You’ll be listening to some old Weezer tune, or perhaps some Elvis Costello, and then all of the sudden you’re listening to the sounds of the amazon, mixed down with some tribal drums and a guy chanting about george bush, bean curd or some shit like that. Public radio has been it’s own worst enemy for a long long time.

The funny thing is, the iporn is probably not that far off. Apple has targeted the entry level flash players with their shuffle. Is video next?

-hubb

It Pays to Discover . . .

that we have automatically reinstated your account because some dickfart register.com decided to try to automatically renew my domain.

Look people, don’t sell me credit protection, don’t sell me “auto reenroll” and i’m definitely not interested in buying any jewelry or vacations. Just charge me your 20 percent a month, and when i’m done paying your asses off, i don’t want to hear from you and your low balance transfer rates.

It seems that my account was magically exhumed and resuscitated, and just for shits and giggles, I had to go through the same 20 questions I suffered through when i first canceled the account.

I have to admit, that if i had just thrown the mail away, as i was about to do, i would have this 4000 dollars of credit just hanging out there for me to “Discover” when i apply for a car loan or mortgage. Look. Americans are in debt. Banks are rolling in the high interest rates (collecting 12-25 points, paying 3-5), the last thing we need is some program that will kindly give us back our old card, or perhaps raise our credit limit. . . . . Congratulations!

No.

What americans need is a short term loan for the times in life when cash is either not safe (travel) or when we simply can’t pay for something that we NEED (hot water tank, furnace, new starter for the car, imac mini). When we lay down the plastic, we realize that there will be some interest. THAT’s where you should make your money. Not by preying on 18 year old college freshmen with free t-shirts and 25 percent interest rates. Gee, lets see, what freshman won’t take his or her 2000 credit limit and go blow it all in a couple weekends at niagara falls? Sounds like experience talking.

Since i’m on this rant, I’d like to send a giant FUCK YOU to mastercard. Not because they’re charging me 18 percent on all my purchases (from 2001), or because their company is inherently evil, but because they blatantly ripped off Swingers.

The scene where Mike calls Nikki and gets cut off by her answering machine. All i can figure is that they actually purchased the scene, because they didn’t even bother changing the names.

Insanity.

Oh, on a much lighter note, the Samurai is down for a bit. Not sure what it is, but it stranded my ass this morning.

I’m headed over to Media Play to get my reserved copy of GT4.

The thought of 500 cars, online play, new tracks, better graphics, the list goes on. I’ve already submitted my non-adjustable request for the rest of the week off . . .

Melanie, i’ll catch ya in a few weeks.

Check back tomorrow for my initial review.

-murd

Thank you for your inquiry to MasterCard International.

I’ll hit ya on the first.
-c

Automated responses are stupid. I’m kind of curious what the “ej” stands for. There can’t possibly be a person that answered this email. I’m going to reply to just see what they say.

I’m headed to the apple store at 10AM tomorrow to attend the garageband workshop. Should be exciting.

-murd

I’m basically not allowing comments that include a link.

So.

-murd

Thank you for contacting MasterCard International.

Regarding your comments about the latest Priceless commercial and its
similarities to the motion picture “Swingers", you are correct. McCann
Erickson, the agency for MasterCard, requested and received permission to
use the scene from Miramax which owns the rights to “Swingers”. In fact,
the agency contacted Jon Favreau to ask him to direct the spot, but,
unfortunately, he was in the middle of shooting and editing his new movie
and couldn’t do it.

Thanks again for contacting us and we hope you continue to enjoy
MasterCard’s Priceless commercials.

Best regards,

MasterCard International
Customer Service Center

Well, i’ve been schooled by an automated response.
This is a very sad day.

Or something.

Anyhow, i figured i’d post a quickie on one of the things i use the mini for.

I recently moseyed on down to the “indier than you” mecca that is the apple store radiside. I ended up learning a cool trick in itunes from one of the employees there, but i’ll get to that later.

I purchased a radioShark from griffin for about 60 bucks. The radioShark is essentially a “Tivo” for the radio.

You can do time shifting, which lets you rewind or pause live radio. . .. pretty nice. It works, but it’s not really that usable because it doesn’t auto-skip past commercials or anything. it’s good for recording however.

so on to recording . . .

You can record live radio “instantly", or if you are using time shifting, go back to the beginning of the song and record it up. Obviously the quality of the recording is only as good as the source, so you get something similar to a 128kbps stream quality-wise (audio buffs please correct me if i’m off). The file can be saved either in AIFF format(editable) or AC(something) the apple compressed format used with iTunes.

They also have a very fancy

it’s how you use it right¿

So the mini has been with me for almost a month now, and i wanted to talk a little bit about one of the things i use it for every day. . . .

It seems that there is this phenomenon called podcasting which is esentially a subscription to an internet audio program that’s transfered to the iPod for listening. Griffin has created a product that lets end-users “podcast” local radio broadcasts. It’s the radioSHARK.

So here’s how it went down:

I mosied on down to the “indier than you” apple store in radiside, pa. I was checking stuff out and getting some help at the genius bar, and i noticed this baby on the accessories rack.

It claimed to be able to record live radio, timeshift, as well as schedule recordings. Best of all, the files generated by radioshark would be instantly available in iTunes. Score, 69 bucks, out the door.

The software is actually not bad. The interface is pretty simple, letting you add presets and crap. Here’s what it looks like:

Timeshifting is pretty straightforward. Pause, rewind, fast forward. It uses the machine’s disk for cache. I didn’t experience ANY performance problems while timeshifting, but then again, i’m not doing anything crazy.

The nice thing about timeshifting is that you can go back to the beginning of a song, and then create a seperate recording of that song. Clutch. I used this method to record “Night Becomes Day” by Citizen Cope just a few minutes ago. We’re not talking CD quality audio, but it’ll do. Talk radio is where this technology shines. . . .

The real reason for buying this was the scheduled recording . . .
There are a few talk radio shows that i like to listen to, but can’t always catch. POW.

It will record in either AAC or AIFF for those that want to edit-down the commercials. I record these shows in the 64kbps AAC setting on “lowest” quality, and the audio sounds fine (talk radio). The radioSHARK software automatically adds the recording to the iTunes music library (mac only) and can even throw it into a playlist for you.

Super, so now i can listen to Loveline at work.

What about stern?? Welp, i’d not be able to listen to it until the next day . . and it takes me probably 4 hours to get through the 2 hour loveline show, so stern would be too much.

Here’s the whole setup with the shark fin and the ipod.

bueno

oh, i named the mini “woo". If you can figure out why i named it woo, post a comment. the first correct response gets this beautiful 8x10 of a moose shipped to your door.

-murd

Sobchek

Maude

Lebowski (injured reserve)

Donnie (pocket pc), Marmot (ipod)

Hence Woo.

Sorry it’s been so long since i’ve posted.

I have some very sad news:

In other Townhall news…This will be Nate Skiles last Philadelphia apparence
with the band. It has been a wonderful run
with Nate and everyone in the
Townhall family wishes him the best.

This just came in from Topher over at the Townhall tour management department. Tonight will be Nate’s Last show with Townhall.

He is an amazingly talented musician, and I can only say that he will be missed. He is apparently going on tour with (sh)Amos Lee who will be opening for Dylan.

In his words . . .

“they’re doing all the takin you’re doing all the givin.
The world don’t give you nothing but a place to live in,
and all the rest you’re gonna have to find for yourself,
for yourself.
cuz if you feel you have to please everybody,
you will never be satisfied.”

Good luck Nate, and thanks for all of the great music you’ve played for us.

-murd

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.

In other news, this site sucks.

So i have this friend Nate. I’ve known him since my early college years at penn state behrend.

Nate and I would go to the cheesey concerts the school would put on with the

As some of you may know, I have a great friend in Idaho. His name is Andrew.

He started spending time in Idaho several years ago. Starting as a trail crew member his first summer, he would repair and improve the trails through the national forest. During the winters he was going to school to get a masters degree in environmental conservation or something.

He continued his summer work in Idaho, although the following summer he scored a job as a fire lookout, and manned Hershey Point.

Hershey Point as far as I could tell, was one of the most remote lookout towers in his forest. The tower was on the outskirts of his forest, and he actually had a great view into the neighboring forest. I apologize for not recalling the names of the forests, I tend to miss these details.

At any rate, my visit to Idaho was several years back. I flew into Boise, and drove several hours into the town of McCall, Idaho. The town was seated right between a large lake, and the mountains. I could tell it was predominately a tourist town, but it hadn’t really grown into what you would typically consider a tourist town to be. There was probably 3 gas stations, a grocery store, 10 restaurants and a couple of bars. I stayed at one of the 2 local hotels. From what I can tell most other tourists stayed in rental properties.

http://fiefdom.blogspot.com/
http://www.onebee.com/writing/2005/03/diversion

stormer sent these over.

http://www.wagenschenke.ch
it’s a game.

if you beat 88, you belong here:
http://www.realultimatepower.net

checkit.

I went out with my buddy Nate the other evening for a meal at Don Parmesean’s. It was a decent restaurant, however completely empty for a wednesday night.

The calzone resembled an oversized hotpocket, but eh, it was tastey.

So i have determined that I need a system for purchasing music. There needs to be a way to get music cheaply. I have some prerequisites:

1) if i intend on purchasing an entire album, I should go for buying the CD. Having a non-drm digital copy of something is top priority
2) Used CD’s are fine
3) if i’m going to buy downloadable music , I will use itunes

Nate mentioned secondspin.com as a decent place to get used cd’s online, but since there’s a shipping fee i’d have to buy in bulk.
For new cds, nothing beats best buy or media play, 10-12 dollars first week.
downloadable music . . . itunes (send me your cap codes)

some new stuff. . .

-jack johnson.
on and on, brushfire fairytales, and this. they’re all the same, just different words and shit. It’s good news if you like him.

Anyone who hasn’t heard, Mitch Hedberg passed away from a drug overdose.

I saw this guy at the Byham not too long ago. He was probably one of the funniest guys i’ve seen do standup.

My favorite joke of his:

I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut…I don’t need a receipt for the doughnut - I’ll just give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this. I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would need to prove that I bought a doughnut…Some skeptical friend, don’t even act like I didn’t buy a doughnut, I’ve got the documentation right here…oh wait it’s back home in the file…under “D", for doughnut. -mitch hedberg

Mitch will be missed.

-murd

CS:S

this is what i’ve been doing in my free time lately.

i know it’s kind of lame, but the game is very addictive. You can never beat it, your opponents are humans, you can talk and taunt when you’re dead, and you come back to life every five minutes.

eh?

-murd

so i made it until 4:54 PM before I was fooled.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/tracker.shtml

I guess it looked too legit for my scepticism to steer me clear.

-murd