Wednesday, January 31, 2007

wife in a bucket

in an improbable turn of events, jane donned a hard hat and set about the blue-collar way of life for a day as part of her new job at socal edison. having the attorneys spend time in the field with the linemen and other workerbees is supposed to give them valuable perspective i suppose, and it seemed to work in jane's case. she had no problem hanging with boys for a day and genuinely seemed to enjoy the experience, the highlight of which was the ride in the "bucket". check it out!

Monday, January 29, 2007

"clean" in what way exactly?

stumbled across this little gem while perusing the itunes store tonight. i'm about done with my richard clarke ibook "against all enemies" and am in the market for my next book to listen to while running in the morning.

so, you tell me, how does a song named "crazy mothafuckas" earn itself the "clean lyrics" label? is it only for ppl who can purchase the song but not read the name its name? or maybe the word "mothafuckas" has so permeated our vernacular that we can now drop it in polite conversation?

jim: "how was your weekend, bob?"
bob: "oh thanks for asking jim, the family and i went to the lake to go on a picnic. it was a splendid time! how was yours, mothafucka?"

what's even more offensive than our man krazy baldhead's little opus is that people are actually buying the paris hilton album (look in the right margin). dammit people, you'll only encourage her. and even worse, we'll end up with more "star" albums from people with zero talent and lots of $$$ to pay for production to cover up their complete suckification. if tom cruise does an album i'm moving to myanmar...

Saturday, January 27, 2007

banff saturday


happy saturday and greets from lovely banff in alberta, canada. i'm getting a little boarding in after finally finishing my chapter in the crimeware book-- phew! still a little more editing to go but so far so good. none of that matters today though, going to go shred lake louise with my brand spankin' new burton custom x board that my santawifey scored me. it's freakin' fantastic, slicing thru snow like a hot knife through butter. yeehaw!

just a few music notes: picked up the latest tony allen CD (lagos no shaking) along with "infinito particular" from marisa monte. i can't believe i slept on her for so long! great brazilian tunes. tita lima sounds pretty good too, stumbled into her stuff while checking out at the counter and yapping with the cashier. i'm still really enjoying cee-lo green's compilation "closet freak", he's easily the most interesting performer to hit hip hop in some time. great stuff on his comp but i'm a little surprised they missed some of the stuff from his solo album, like "suga baby" which was pretty solid.

off to the slopes!

Saturday, January 20, 2007

goopymart

alright, so i've been pretty lame about posting lately. just too much on my hands at work and personally. i'm just about through doing a chapter in a colleague's book on "crimeware" though so will have more time to write for fun soon. i'll pass along some of the unedited chapter in a later post, it's coming along nicely but slower than anticipated.

nonetheless, wanted to pass along a little happenstance discovery lately: the art of goopymart! stumbled across these guys on flickr when checking out a blog about korea on a sucky conference call. just wacky, fun artoons. the site is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goopymart/

i've whipped up the following wallpaper for my desktop from the art, sort of a "homage collage" if you will. feel free to download if you'd like (you'll have to click on it to view it at it's "real" size and then download i believe).

Sunday, January 14, 2007

happy mlk day

wanted to take a moment to share a superb quote from the late martin luther king jr.:

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968), Strength to Love, 1963


what a powerful statement on where we stand as a nation and a world. as we whittle away at the mysteries of the universe and are emboldened by the accomplishments of our race we are simulataneously losing our faith in a higher power which long has anchored our morality. this is not to say that even now religion and faith have not contributed to the rationale of people committing great evils (jihad anyone?), only that we have an increasingly slippery grasp real purpose-- why we are here and what we intend to accomplish with our existence. i think developing this since of purpose goes along ways to curing the misguided men problem.

further, i believe we have also lost our wonder at how absolutely magnificent the world is. i was pondering this as i read jostein gaarder's the solitaire mystery and reinforced this while visiting my beautiful new god child laney yesterday down in orange county. as she smiled and looked around in fascination it was a reminder of how fresh everything once seemed.

anyways, just a few mlk day thoughts kicking around my melon. hope you take the time to develop your own today or tomorrow.

Monday, January 08, 2007

tigger buck-wild & dangerous animal jobs redux



















oh boy. who's left to trust when tigger steps right up and delivers the smack down on adoring fans? dark days indeed my friend. check out the pic above. you can just make out disneyland mayhem like none other-- the cuddly tigger character has clearly had enough of this kid's shenanigans and hits him with a paw to the head. mind you, it has only been a short time since tigger was implicated in a breast touching scandal back in 2004. he was exonerated, but what would pooh say about all of this? i say any teenage boy who complains about getting beat up by a disneyland character has bigger issues to worry about than residual paw marks.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070107/ap_on_fe_st/tigger_trouble_5

ok, so if it wasn't bad enough to have tigger on the rampage again, now we have yet another person stepping up to arm wrestle with the hand of fate. saw this little gem on my yahoo's most emailed fotos. isn't this precious... lady who helps animals recuperate faux-kisses with a lion she helped save. lady, no matter how many thorns you plucked from his paws that lion will eat yer fool head if he gets the munchies. just ask roy. just ask steve irwin. if you still need a kiss tia, check out match.com en espanol. previous dialogue on the topic of dangerous animal jobs included below: http://apocalypsejelly.blogspot.com/2006/09/zymotic-benjamin-crump-dangerous-animal.html

Friday, January 05, 2007

good biz week article on the sad state of digimusic

"Right now the fact is that pirated music and pirated movies are actually worth more than the movies and music you buy," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group. "I can't think of another product that is actually worth more stolen than if you purchased it."

what a fantastic quote! he poignantly reflects the madness of the digital music market today where legally purchases tunes and "fair usage" leaves you with a decidedly inferior product. that's certainly not the case with black-market watches, fashion, etc. the article talks about how apple is using DRM in a monopolistic fashion to extend their early lead in players to digital music. and since they have already acquiesced on protecting the crazy RIAA margins (around 70 cents wholesale cost per song), they're also sheltering them and have the RIIA as their cheerleaders. blecchh.

my take: it doesn't matter over time as the us mkt becomes a smaller and smaller portion of worldwide sales and other countries make no effort to enact/enforce the same copywright laws we have in the us. apple's ipod will also become a much smaller % of overall players over time, look at what happened to sony walkman over time and the recent mkt share gains by sandisk's mp3 players.

link to the rest of the article is below:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2007/tc20070105_896787.htm

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

strange deadfellows

james brown, gerald ford and saddam hussein all die away in the course of a week. anyone see a connection here? i don't, but that's never stopped people in desperate need for entertainment from cooking up really improbable conspiracy theories. and in this spirit, i offer the following absurdity... (with a tip of the x-ray superspy goggles to jane and doug for the ideas and indulging my nonsense)

************
saddam gets notice that it's all over. he's to face the baghdad gallows for his crimes against his ppl. desperate to escape his fate, he mentally scrambles for something that might offer him chance of reprieve... then it comes to him: gerald ford had pardoned richard nixon. maybe, just maybe by appealing to the oldest, perhaps most revered living president in the us he could usurp the american-led hanging decision and convince a weakened GW Bush of a pardon for the deposed leader. it was worth a shot.

this is where secret al qaeda operative james brown comes in. a long history of erratic behavior, police run-ins, and songs like "payback" and "super bad" should have tipped us off. “the hardest working man in show business” was also working behind the scenes for a terrorist cell in america. saddam figures that if anyone can get an audience with gerald ford, it's the godfather of soul. he places the call and james accepts the mission.

jb has no problem getting ahold of the ford family. anyone with his record of substance abuse has a direct line to betty. the meeting is arranged and james readies his appeal for saddam's life, flying out to meet gerald at his home in rancho mirage, ca.

the meeting goes smashingly, james wins over gerald and convinces him the best thing for the iraqis and the american public is to peacefully tuck saddam away in jail somewhere and avoid adding more violence on top of an already bloody debacle.

this is where it all goes wrong. the secret service had been keeping a close watch on gerald ford's residence and james' visit did not go unnoticed. before gerald can take action on his agreement with james, the agents sneak into his home and subject him to repeated listenings of the kevin federline album in order to keep him from upsetting the current plans for saddam's execution. his will broken, he passes away under the aural assault.

james nearly manages to make a clean getaway. he traverses the country all the way back to georgia and would have been ok, had he not stopped in a diner along the way. james' years of substance abuse and passion for french fries had left him in a fragile state. working behind the scenes (and in the kitchen), the secret service injects his order of chicken-fried steak with a perilous, additional load of transfats.

the affects were nearly immediate as the artery clogging baddies established a strangle-hold on the godfather's failing system. the grim reaper had him at a nearby hospitol, extinguishing his life and saddam's last hope of escaping the hangman's noose.
***********
so there you have it. not only were their deaths intimately related, but they are also connected in no small way to kevin federline, al qaeda and a substance more deadly than nerve gas itself, the ghastly transfat.

digimusic thoughts & notes

in no particular order...

- the new windows media player (11) is stellar. there's nothing mindblowing about it, just a collection of little usability features that make it really easy and visually appealing. for example, it auto-grabs album art, flexibly and visibly arranges a music library, and when burning it creates folders by album and artists automagically. again, nothing crazy but it's fast and has a bunch of slick features. i'm using it now instead of itunes.

- easy means around itunes DRM: just burn your little mp4s to disc and then rip them back off as mp3s. no muss no fuss. why bother cracking the crypto??? thanks to kun cuz for this no brainer trick.

- and i have to say i'm increasingly impressed with the breadth of music offered on itunes. apple has done a nice job including some pretty obscure stuff in their catalogue. from fat freddy remixes to old susumu yukota, they have it covered. not bad...

- the criminals in the recording industry are keeping a lid on their wholesale digital music prices, which are likely absurdly high (67-70 cents per track). so now instead of suing their customers to try and make digital music go sway, they're squeezing the margins so thin no one can make money off it. from an industry that was found guilty of price-fixing CDs, this should come as no surprise to anyone.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070103/003127.shtml

-oh and this isn't to say they aren't suing ppl still-- allofmp3, the russian walmart of pirated tunes, is now their fave target. this is certainly not without reason, as allofmp3 is completely illegal by us laws but claims they're peachy by russian standards. either way, it always sounds a little funny to hear the recording industry up in arms since they've collectively systematically overcharged their customers via price-fixing, sued their customers, rootkitted their customers via DRM with software they didn't properly licensed (sony), screwed their partners with ultra-slim margins, etc.

boohoo. in the software industry we write off a portion of our revenue to piracy and routinely sunset products as well as change biz models, get over it.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DOWNLOADING_MUSIC?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT