An Open Letter to Vaynerchuk

Open Letter to Gary Vaynerchuk.

Hi GV. I’ve been watching your show for sometime now, and while I can’t say I’ve been with you from the beginning I have gone back and watched most of your shows. I’m not 21, and I haven’t had much if any wine. But I’m doing what you did, I’m trying significant flavor profiles week by week and am building my palette. Its something I never would’ve thought to do. You made me think of it.

And its not just me, You’re making everyone think about there wine. How we drink, why we drink, drinking what we like, not listening to others. Its not us thats coming up with these ideas, it was you. You are more than just a wine taster and critic. You’re a teacher. You’ve been teaching to try new things, to get out of the box. And as you you’ve said this is changing to wine world. A wine world that has predominately been held in oligopoly those Sir Gary Vaynerchuks of the wine world.. But you’re breaking those barriers, and claiming that oneself it the only authority to your own palette.

You say at the end of every episode,”You with a little bit of me, We’re changing the wine world”. While this may be true, can you believe before saying, “You with a little bit of me, WE’VE CHANGED THE WINE WORLD”. In the next seven days I don’t think you can.

Gary Vaynerchuk. You’ve done a lot for us. Informed us, Taught and Entertained Us. You can’t leave now. You can’t leave for a long time. You’re revolutionary, and one day it’ll be know. Gary Vee and the Vayniacs, changed the wine world.

The engadget podcast is dead

I have some seriously sad news. As most of the readers of engadget know by now, the podcast is dead. It was the premier tech/gadget podcast and was produced by some of the best writers and most knowledgeable people in the business, Ryan Block & Peter Rojas. And while there are many, many good tech podcasts such as TWiT, Diggnation, Cranky Geeks, and Webb Alert, none will compare to the quality and knowledge of the Engadget Guys.

Long Live the Engadget Podcast

New Content , New stuff

Sorry for any subscribers to the RSS that I haven’t updated in a while, a lot of exciting stuff has been happening and this blog had to go on the back burner. I won’t be trying to play catch up with any of the news before this weeks stuff. Anyways to the news.

Morgan Webb of G4’s X-Play has started a new Rocketboom type video site, but its actually relevant. Well produced its a great way to get daily tech news quick, right before work or class.

Find RSS/iTunes subscriptions over here

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]

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.

Loneliness

Me and someone, who I had not seen it quite sometimes (but had wanted to, never had the courage), had a conversation, where we had discussed how life was so far at college. I topic of loneliness had come up. She had asked why I was lonely, to which I simply replied “I don’t really know. I just feel lonely”. I lied, I know exactly why. Not my parents or my belonglings.But I miss seeing my friends every day. The people who had given me comfort. I enjoyed laughing with my friends (including this one,even though she is new to my friends, she is no less). Most of all, I miss this feeling of connection. Some sort of mysterious and mystical feeling of having someone by your side and watching your back. That feels good for me. But I don’t have that. None of my friends are always going to be with. Mostly because they are doing other things, but also, I think they want to move on. They either never really wanted to be my friend or are rather bored of me (can’t blame them but still). Gather from this what you will, but when it really comes down to it, I miss having a companion.

The Integration Problem and a call to the Open Source Community.

I’d like to preface this by saying I’m not a developer. I don’t claim to be one, and as much as I understand development and how its done and should be done, I can’t do it. I can code python and thats about it. I’m just not a true developer of sorts. However let me also preface this by saying, I know software. I know good software, bad software and just about everything in between.

Now, Apple did something many Mac users take for granted in OS X and thats the development of the Core API’s. With Core Data we have this amazing systemwide tool called Spotlight and the ablility to share content from one program to another (the iLife Browser). With Core Video we can get amazing video preformance and effects from iChat and iMovie, the same with Core Image. And now with Core Animation, applications and bring a whole new level of just usablity and interaction possibly (if developers have really good architects) totally new ways to interact with a desktop or possibly even get rid of the WIMP paradigm, and have a more Star Trekkian interface. Now with all this when will we see Photoshop plugin into Core Data so that its Scripting feature can search for the 10 viewed photo can apply a filter. When will see Firefox take advantage of Core Animation (or as it where Camino). Probably never. But how long until Safari uses it. It most likely already does. So many Compelling Third Party applications exist but how many are really taking advantage of things like Core Video. I can’t think of any. But so many things can be done with Core Video.Improve an interface like Sony Vegas and use Core Video and integrate that with Core Data and iLife so you can import iMovies, that would blow the pants off iMovie and create real competition.

I guess the real issue is that with so many great APIs and ease of use we don’t see so many great Open Source Apps specifically for the Mac platform that take advantage of Core Data/Image/Video. And now with animation it should only be a matter of time until some generates a scripting language that allows really easy renderings of things like the “City of Music” commercial or of the albums that get sucked into iPods or PC’s or maybe a video of a PC spinning with the music rushing inwards, but it shouldn’t be long. Unfortunately it probably won’t every be done because for some reason the open source community won’t develop great products for the Closed source community. A Native version of aMarok that integrates into Spotlight and iLife would be awesome. However it won’t ever be done.

PS: I will say this. Camino does an excellent job of integration. They are a model software creator.

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.

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.

I’m at the Apple Store

I’m at the Apple Store wrting this post on a Black MacBook. Its really hot, in temperature, not like hott (Stupid Paris Hilton always saying HOTT with two frickin’ t’s.) Anyways there are emo people.

More Music

I found a great new band Stereo Total

People & Me

Monday’s will be photos of mine that i have uploaded to Flickr