Rotorglow

"What Blogger stuff, you ask?" Well, the stuff that has gone before, random blatherings and such, is somewhere else. I've taken some pictures. Oh, and some more pictures, and even more pictures. And then there's the moblog to contend with.

Whew!

Pic!

Ever tried living without any technology that's under 50 years old? Me either. But someone did. Great stuff.

I fucking love this game.

Is 7 months too soon to ask for my 6-month review?

Visio 2003 is not nearly as horrible as any other version of Visio I've used.

Even over Terminal Server.

I can't seem to stop laughing.

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One good minute can last me a whole year.

I've owned the 2LP of The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads since 1984, but I can't tell you how wonderful this expanded masterpiece of a 2CD is.

Rhino Records is a national treasure. To say nothing of Talking Heads.

Good stuff, but long.

The fact is, the market for DRM music is nascent. It remains to be seen whether any DRM-protected media format will be a long-term success. The entertainment industry certainly hopes so; consumer advocates certainly hope not.

If consumers revolt against DRM, and protected media slowly fades into oblivion, Apple has lost nothing. The iPod and iTunes have embraced unprotected audio files from the beginning.

But assuming that DRM-protected media takes hold, history indicates that one format will dominate the industry. The three major contenders now are Apple, Microsoft, and RealNetworks � and it�s generous to put RealNetworks in the list.

Is it any wonder or surprise that Apple would like to be the company that wins?

A blonde walked into a bar, and asked the bartender for a double entendre. So he gave it to her.

(And no, this isn't another post about a double entendre.)

Seems one of my cans of root beer sprang a leak in the cabinet over my desk at work this weekend. Big mess. Super way to start the week, too.

Back to Iraq 3.0

I've been reading Christopher Allbritton's blog from Iraq on and off for the last few weeks. It's amazing to have an unfiltered view from the ground.

Subject: Amos has sent you a private message

...as the saying goes.

I'm starting to feel the annual late-summer angst that has plagued me since I was in elementary school. A lot of it is simply an echo of all the times the summer ended and I had to go back to school, which for a significant part of my life I absolutely hated. There's something about the occasional crisp evening in August, and the incesant yammering of back-to-school sales (starting ever-earlier, of course; I saw some in July this year) that just gives me the creeps.

Now, I haven't personally been in school since 1992, so this particular edginess is a pretty silly thing to still be suffering from. Plus, the weather can stay hot for weeks to come. But various people close to me college are academics, and my parents have been forever, so there have been plenty of opportunities for this late-summer jitteryness to be reinforced. And I've helped that along too, by allowing myself to succumb to it.

But there it is.

Have you actually watched a spider in action, once its web has caught something? It's pretty amazing.

A spider had set up a pretty elaborate web outside my window, but it didn't seem to be snagging anything; in fact the spider was in the same position at the center of the wb for so long I thought it was dead. When I saw it moving around this evening, I decided to turn my bedside lamp around so it would shine out the window, through the web, and attract some bugs for the spider.

Inside of an hour, some big honkin' bug had been snared in the outer part of the web, and the spider was working on wrapping it up in a Coccoon of Death. It spun the hapless varmint on a thread, like a pig on a spit over a fire. The spider did that for a bit, then checked out the condition of the web, and resumed its post at the center.

I kept expecting other bugs to be caught, and expected the spider would have plenty of other things to throw on the grill, but not many were drawn in. Three hours after I turned on the light, the spider had moved the quite dead (I'm pretty sure) bug toward the center of the web and was working on eating it. Or sucking it dry, or whatever.

For a while, the spider left the bug an inch or two from the center, visiting it occasionally. (Like a cheese plate?) But it had the bug at the very center, and was clearly relishing it.

Like I said. Amazing.

12" PowerBook survives fire. (Link via Gizmodo.)