Sorry guys

I’d like to take this time to apologize. I haven’t been very diligent or responsible for my posting or promises. I do have legitimate reasons however, it isn’t going to change anything. I’d like to take this time and tell everyone (all 3 of you), that my posting will be more diligent and of the highest quality. This coming year looks to be the golden year of technology, the web, and connectivity, & I look forward to telling you about it and my opinions on it. Thanks!

Today is the best day. EVER!

Today EMI, the largest record company, announced that all of it’s music will be sold DRM free on the iTunes Music Store.On top of that, they are raising the bitrate for all tracks sold. This is simply a boon for digital music everywhere, as Warner, Sony, & Universal will follow suit, they just have too to keep up. And before that indie labels such as Tooth & Nail, A&M, Fueled by Ramen, will follow suit.

read the engadget blog post here

via engaget

[update: I have since found out Tooth and Nail is a subsidiary of EMI]

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, What I’m thankful for.

Most people would think, I’ll just say my new MacBook Pro (Which is true, I’m quite thankful that I now run Mac OS X 10.4.x). However there is so much more.

First and foremost I’m thankful for my faith and religion, for the strength it has provided me in the harshest and hardest of times.
Secondly I’d like to thank Charles Babbage/ Ada Lovelace. You guys were the forerunners for what I’m using right now. And then I’d like to thank my family and friends. Not to say you are less than Ada Lovelace, you are certainly not, but I think that I would not be telling people what I’m thankful unless it was for Ada Lovelace.
And now in no particular order:

Srinivasa Ramanujan, Pierre de Fermat, Andrew Wiles, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Issac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, & Bernard Reimann. You guys were/are pretty freakin’ awesome.

Metallica, Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor), Slayer, Panic! at the Disco, Norma Jean, Five Iron Frenzy, Daft Punk, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, & Alice in Chains. Wondrous Music!

Eugene Atget, Ansel Adams, David Hockney, and various other photographers. You show the world as it is

Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci. You show the world as it might be.

Bill Gates, Kevin Rose,Tim O’Reilly, Linus Torvalds, IBM, Engadget & Weblogs Inc.,Google, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Shigeru Miyamoto, Cliffy B, Bungie, John Carmack,Valve, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, Sony, Nintendo, & Apple. Thanks for making technology, gadgets, and computing my life and for creating gmail.

George Lucas, Tron, Steven Spielberg,The Wachowski Brothers, Kevin Smith, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves. Great Movies.

Douglas Adams, Micheal Crichton, J.R.R Tolkien, Robert Ludlum, Charles Seife, R.L Stein, & J.K Rowling. Great Reads, and interaction at an intellectual level.

My best friends (H-dog and K-dog). Thanks Brothers, good times.
All the people I’ve met at college, especially my R.A.

Peace

Thanks People

Life Sucks

Life pretty much is the largest waste of time.
Look we’re going to die, we can’t stop entropy (mathematically we can, however it has since never happened). WE shouldn’t exist. Yet we do, and what happens. Dumb stuff.

Nothing in life is worth all the other fills the time voids between. Love, love is a lie, create by those who wanted more. Happiness, happiness is mirage for those who believe love. Love is the cause of all unhappiness.

And I’m unhappy.

Pictures

Always have backups of your pictures. Those are memories you can’t get back. I lost some very good pictures of people I care a lot about, and now they are gone and left me. Like a dream I once had.

Just keep backups.
And Backups of Backups.

Forgotten Blog

No, I haven’t forgotten about this blog, I’ve just been busy. In fact I’m writing this post on break from writing a critique. Lots of great things have been going on. I’ve made some friends here at university and already have stories I’m not going to forget (Waffle House+Drunk People= Funny and Scary). Parisian Internet Radio is infinitely better than US internet radio, mostly because it has more variety.

I have a fascination with London and Paris, mostly because I’ve been to both, and throughly enjoyed myself (well not so much Paris but thats because I didn’t see only the greatest museum of all time). I love Daft Punk a French House styled band. Lord Byron is my favorite poet, and as I love computers Ada Lovelace is my hero, in a non-hero sort of way.

Fear its gripping, Sadness is hell, and hell is fear. Therefore sadness is gripping

Its like the title to an Emo song, you know how they have those super long titles that make no sense. However mine does because it is in fact a piece of mathematical logic. I’ve just added a tag to this post, “How lonely are you”. Although i’ve stated this before, I’m quite lonely, and not matter where I look, no one really wants to be with me. I found one friend I know is going to be awesome, and I have my room mate, but what about those of the fairer sex. Those of such etherealic beauty and magnificent personalities. Am I that bad of a man, as to not gain anyone. It seems to me that so many others can just get a girl and at least have them say “hi” to them. Today I said “hi” to someone I stood in line for 2 hours with and took a picture and she didn’t even acknowledge me.

Maybe no one wishes to be with me. My friends are gone ( or wish to leave), my family couldn’t be any farther away from me in the non-literal sense, and I can’t get anyone to fill those shoes.

Forever lonely
Forever Fearful
Forever Gripped

da mac (book and or book pro)

I’ve used the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros a few times now, and well honestly I have to say, I’m fairly impressed with the new MacBook Pro. I just wish it were $200 dollars cheaper, for the 15.4 inch version (If you guys have noticed, college student in desperate need of a computer). There are however a few features i would like to see on the MacBook that are standard on the Pro version. The light-up keys and auto-dimming function is something that any user will appreciate. And if there was some dedicated graphics processor, maybe an ATI X1300
or X1400 something lower end no doubt, but dedicated nonetheless. Those are two things I would absolutely love to see on the Macbook.

Flickr Photo of the Day Announcements

I’ll put up yesterday’s but not saturday’s or Friday’s. I’ll put up today’s also.

RSS for “non-techs”

For the most part, the people who i wanted to understand RSS, and tried to explain it to them, probably still don’t get it. This should be much easier.

Mac Book Pros, educational discounts, College, and various other gadgets

Long post title simple idea. I’m seriously considering getting a Mac Book Pro, pending a few major and minor caveats.

1) Firstly the software I’ll need day to day. Now I know in the majority of my classes Mac OS X will be shuned. I can deal with that. I can still open word docs, powerpoints, and excel files. And if they give me an Acess database, i’ll tell them to wait a few minutes and boot into windows, no big deal. The problem comes with third-party software. There just isn’t a big following of good open source software. No good note taking applications. No good note taking applications (Stickies in Dashboard don’t count), no amazing email/pim application (the iLife suite is lacking some serious things with e-mail and PIM, mainly a standard three pane interface with Mail.App and having iCal, Mail, and Address Book as one app. Most likely a marketing move).

2) I have to mount an install file? what the hell is up with that. I have to mount install files but Its difficult to mount NAS devices? Not cool at all.

3) Podcast support in iTunes shouldn’t require iTunes Music store to be activated, it should just download the enclosures through Safari’s RSS integration.

4) The battery gets freakin’ hot when plugged in, not usable as a laptop then and probably detrimental to the battery as it is Li-Ion.

5) Two Button support either eludes me in Windows or rather isn’t there.

6) That damned Beach Ball.

7) Why are they so damn expensive for the low end Mac Books that are aimed at students. Students want to have $800 notebooks, most of them can’t afford a $2000 Mac Book Pro, or want the smaller form factor. When Apple can easily bring the cost down, why don’t they? Because of the software, the whole iLife suite and the great integration of iLife and the rest of the mac system mainly through the Core Data API (and its main frontend Spotlight)? That should be the value add, what really holds on to the customer have, after capturing them with the style and low price ( Sub $1000). Educationaly Discounts don’t help much for the low end.

These few things not only bug me right now about getting a notebook from Apple but always have been the impeding factor for my purchase.

moblogging @ its not so finest

moblogging is now for me feasible but rather impracticle(there is no spell checking). But if you must know, I probably will end up moblogging a few times.

AP Scores

AP Biology = 5
AP Statistics = 5

HTC Wizard

Also known as the T-Mobile MDA for T-mobile USA, or more recently, my new phone. Expect a post on the device and Pictures, up later today.

I’m Up on Engadget

Everyone should check engadget. I sent them a tip and its on the front page. Check it out

Engadget and the rest of Weblogs INC.

I don’t know for sure, but I believe Engadget and Engadget Mobile are both down, or loading very poorly. OH!, what will us gadget lovers do.

[update] – Engadget is back up. Thank the gods

Mac Book Pro

I’ll buy a Mac Book Pro probably under a few conditions

1) I can get it around $1800 (Possible)
2) The next gen Mac Book Pro has no Heat Issues like Burning a hole through my pants
3) Runs Leopard and has Merom
4) It fully supports a right-click
5) some explains to me how to properly uninstall a program

I’d get a Mac Book Pro if these things we’re somehow magically placed in my lap. Or some dumb saying like that.

Why Apple makes me sad

Apple is a business that makes me quite sad. They have a great product, Mac OS X, but there are so many issues with what Apple does in terms of Hardware and Software that quite irk me.

On the hardware side there is mostly their notebooks (Yes and the iPod which is a beast of its own). Now yes there new Mac Books are fairly economical, but the Mac Book Pros are exorbitantly overpriced. Yes they have a few interesting features and the design is rather nice, but nothing that warrants the sometimes $1000+ over the competition, its ridculous. On top of that First-Gen Apple products simply have huge flaws in them. Now look at there Mac Books and Mac Book Pros, they have serious heat issues, so much so in the manual they say “do not place on lap, may cause burns”. When I pay that much money for a “portable computer” I would like it to actually cool my lap not heat it up, if I were going to pay $3000 dollars. And I’m sorry but all the white, and monotone is not very interesting after the first 4 minutes. If you wanted to be really creative take, approach the iMac the same way the Xbox 360 does it, or have at least 3 different colors or something. Apple (like anyone at Cupertino is reading this), if you are marketing towards the Youth demographic, allow them to add their own personality to the machine, sell Swarovski kits, and faceplates or something. The whiteness is almost like a walled garden solution. I understand that other laptop companies don’t do any sort of true customization, but if you want to be different, shouldn’t you Apple?

The same goes for there Software. Look iTunes as a piece of software is okay, but the iTunes music store, I’m sorry, DRM is not my style. And if I subscribe to a podcast, like engadget’s why should I have to have acces to the music store enabled. Let me use it like Banshee or Amarok. And add support for FLAC and OGG, you tout your Open Source roots, give back and contribute if you can (which you can). And Jobs dude, do you like the beach or something, get rid of that damn Beach Ball, make the software a little bit more optimized it isn’t that hard for you geniuses (hah i made a really geek pun, hah a geeky pun is a gun, BANG!). And when a user hits X and closes an application, close the application, kill the process. Add something to minimize to the dock, don’t assume we want that piece of software open. Change the dock, people don’t want ever app on the dock, and we don’t want to open up finder to open an App. And Build an uninstall wizard, other wise the configuration registry is going to be full of junk. And My biggest gripe. Okay, so Apple you’re finally x86, release your software for anyone to us, not just for use on Apple Machines. Get out of the hardware business and compete with Windows and Linux like they do. Ubuntu isn’t known for sexy laptops, its known for a super stable operating system.

As for Apple’s Open Sourceness, don’t steal ideas (XGL and Window’s Aero) and then say ooooo look at us we are doing something based on Open Source, when many a times you are stealing there very ideas and only slightly improving upon it. If you want something truly innovative, look at the BumpTop ( I can guarantee, that Apple will have something like this).

I know most of these things have been said before, but It irks me that Simple things like Auto-Playlists in iTunes isn’t out of the box, you have to install a third party app to get iTunes to do it. And why doesn’t the iPod support higher bitrates? Because the user experience is what Apple wants you to have, not what people necessarily want. Apple if you open up just a little more to people creating their own experience, you will make Microsoft run for the high grounds. Its as simple as that.

Times Square: Flickr Photo of the Day

Originally uploaded by Air Milikay.

Heres todays yesterday’s is coming tomorrow or thursday. Thats just when i’ll have the pictures ready. Sorry dudes (and dudettes)

ugghhhh

dudes (and dudettes), I’m sick. No its not the World Cup (though I think its going to be Brazil and Germany for the finals again, maybe Columbia but thats because my peeps be from there), I got dehydrated after having WAY to much caffeine. You know what sucks about wordpress, I can’t moblog (mobile Blog) so you won’t get a live coverage of my College Orientation Unless i can get either a Lappy (won’t happen unless merom comes out tomorrow) or Minimo supports AJAX. Well until then peace and I’ll put all the other crap (Flickr photo and some other stuff) up later.