There’s more? »

While I can readily rattle off a couple without thinking about it, I had to look at my meager CD collection to remind myself what’s in it. It was enlightening and yet pretty depressing given how dated it is - but my moral outrage at the RIAA is to blame for that. As I mentioned to Jim, New Order’s “Waiting for the Sirens’ Call” was the first (and last) new CD I bought for myself in I can’t even remember when, with Crowded House’s “Woodface” and The Finn Brothers’ “Everyone is Here” picked up used at Amoeba a couple of months ago being my last purchase.

Of course, going through my iTunes library is an interesting exercise. Every once and a while I’ll have an overwhelming need for random songs that I’ll buy from the iTunes Music Store - in fact, I just bought Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” last night after watching the latest episode of Supernatural (is anyone else getting into this X-Files-ish show that has arguably the best soundtrack on TV right now?).

So all that said, I’m not sure if the following list is a “Top 10″, rather than a “Weird Nostalgic Top 10 Because I Haven’t Bought New Music In Who Knows When”. In no particular order:

	“The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” - Genesis To be honest, I’m really just referring to Disc 1. I love it so much, I rarely if ever listen to Disc 2 - heck, if someone played #2 for me, chances are I wouldn’t recognize it. The dexterity - for lack of a better word - of both the lyrics (”The cheerleader waves her cyanide wand, there’s a smell of peach blossom and bitter almond” always gets me, for instance) and the music - hard to beat, especially by today’s standards.
	“Big Generator” - Yes OK, this is a weird one - almost 100% nostalgia here people. Coincidentally, this was a gift from Jim back in middle school. I put my trusty Discman on repeat for the longest time listening to this one. While there are much better examples of Yes music out there, there’s just something about the crispness of the sound to the 90125 follow-up that I continue to find alluring.
	“Berlin Cabaret Songs” - Ute Lemper Yes, another curiosity. I had read about the English version about this in some snooty magazine (no Sean, it wasn’t Keyboard Magazine) back in 2000 I think and tripped over the German version when I was in Dallas both for work and visiting a friend. Pretty cool album - and it’s nice for another reason: I don’t get to hear much German these days…
	“Itaipu • The Canyon” - Philip Glass Lord knows a lot of people would debate that Philip Glass would be the odd duck (I still crack up when thinking of The Simpsons’ gag on Glass). While Jim introduced me to Glass, Chris pointed me to this particular CD if I recall correctly. I don’t have nearly the depth of appreciation either of my friends have for Glass’s work, but I have liked what little I’ve heard. The choral performance always sends chills up my spine. (Jim, I was debating on putting Koyaanisqatsi on the list, with an affectionate nod to your threat to pour molasses into my speakers when I pushed my little Bose 201’s to their limit that night at NMH - but Itaipu won out in the end)
	Eponymous - Peter Gabriel This one was a hard one. I was debating primarily between “So” (yes, it’s pop, but still all-good), “OVO” (a lot of really interesting and funky stuff - although disqualified because of the first track) and “Us” (mostly due to memories of Berlin). “Passion” was also a strong contender, but I guess the strong links to his Genesis roots in his first solo effort somehow won me over.
	“Get Ready” - New Order Honestly, this is a cheat since “Rock the Shack” does have me reaching for the skip forward button, but I listened to the rest of the album incessantly for weeks on end. Still can (with the aforementioned exception).
	“Exit Stage Left” - Rush Maybe a cheat since it’s a live album (I’m thinking we can all agree that a greatest hits collection should not find its way onto a list like this), but classics played really well live should get the respect they deserve.
	“Title of Record” - Filter This is kind of a surprise - well, it’s always been a surprise, I suppose. Maybe it just taps into some wellspring of rage or something, but I always feel a little better after listening to it. Cheap therapy I suppose.
	“Heavier Things” - John Mayer Also a bit of a shocker to be on the list - but no surprise that it was a gift from a female (Teresa). All the same, I have to admit that there isn’t one clunker on there. Maybe the “in touch with your feminine, sensitive side” yin to Filter’s angry yang?
	“Volume 3: Further in Time” - Afro Celt Sound System You know, when having an intellectual conversation about music and my tastes, I would’ve never thought I would include anything that had bagpipes in it. That said, they do a lot of very interesting things - with a funky edge no less. Yes, it was Peter Gabriel’s guest appearance that caused me to buy it, but the rest of the album - including Robert Plant’s contribution - certainly keeps me listening.

Honorable Mentions:

• “Doppelgänger - Curve
• “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” - Sarah McLachlan
• “The Sensual World” - Kate Bush
• “Life on Planet Groove” - Maceo Parker
• “Achtung Baby” - U2
• “The Soul Cages” - Sting
• “Karma” - Delirium
• “Lemon Parade” - Tonic
• “The Yes Album” - Yes
• “Hell’s Ditch” - The Pogues

Of course, there are always others - for instance, any Led Zeppelin album it seems. Can’t go wrong with The Beatles or Bob Marley (although I have to confess a burn-out on Bob recently). Oh, and I reserve the right to change this list at any time. Especially if I ever do get around to doing a proper “Top 10″.

« OK, I’m done

There’s more? »

So once they started this show, I switched back to listening to the local classic rock favorite around these parts, KFOG. This morning the big topic of conversation was CBS’s new show, Love Monkey. Apparently, the Chronicle’s TV critic loved it even calling out the show’s secondary focus on music would be up a “Foghead’s” (a listener of KFOG) alley - although I can’t find that particular assertion in the article. The New York Times’ critic, however, didn’t like it.

Contrasting the warm fuzzies of a new show along the lines of “Sex and the City” or “Jerry Maguire” (or something - anything - more entertaining than random non-celebrity people heaping all sorts of abuse on each other) were some acerbic opinions, mostly offered by Alessandra Stanley of the Times. While there was lively discussion about different aspects of the show, the idea that the stereotypical woman does not like Bob Dylan - and that any woman that professes otherwise just pretends to to please men - was an interesting one.

Music is such a funny thing - you either love it or you hate it. And God forbid if you run into anyone who disagrees with you. Now I will freely admit that Dylan is a brilliant songwriter - someone called in to say that a female friend of his has a license plate cover that professes that Dylan is the Shakespeare of our time. I don’t necessarily disagree with that idea, although I find the medium to express such a romantic notion to be a little at odds with the sentiment. But that said, I just cannot fathom how anyone would agree to allow Dylan to sing his own songs (never mind a group of men responsible for investing gobs of money into a recording contract). This opinion was only reinforced when the DJs took a break and played Tangled Up in Blue.

Listening to a song written so beautifully, sung in a fashion that made me cringe made me wish for someone or some group to record the entirety of Dylan’s catalog - so I could listen to and fully appreciate his work (something I haven’t done for obvious reasons). Then it dawned on me - that might not be an improvement, given the industry’s penchant for getting random unknown groups to perform on tribute albums usually resulting in performances that are so unbelievably sub-par that it makes you wonder why they still do tribute albums. What’s with that?

As for “Love Monkey”, I recorded it on my ReplayTV and just watched it tonight. I have to say I like it. It’s not perfect - I agree with Goodman’s assessment of the supporting male characters and kind of cringe at some of the treatment the show gives women, but it’s entertaining and shows promise. And I’m just happy that I can stop racking my brain as to why Judy Greer looked so familiar - she played the goofy roommate Andrea in Kissing a Fool (a guilty pleasure that is interestingly commented as “Not bad for a crappy romantic comedy starring David Schwimmer” by someone on IMDB).

« OK, I’m done

There’s more? »

Well, for all those Mac people looking to have that feature but thought they were burned by spending their hard-earned cash a little too soon, rejoice! It’s not really a hardware thing (it works for the most part on the revs of the current model lines - not so much on earlier systems), but a software thing. If you haven’t updated to at least 10.4.3, well, you’ll need to do that. But other than that, it’s just a little fiddling in Terminal. I’ve played around with it a little bit, but it doesn’t look like the number of applications has an effect on the wake time as I suggested in my comment to this blog post - before putting my PowerBook to “Safe Sleep” when I left work this evening, I rebooted into my personal account and just launched Mail. And yet my wake time increased to 1:07, so I don’t know what’s going on.

So the cool thing is that you can configure it a little bit. For instance, you can configure it to work as it does on the current PowerBooks, i.e. “Safe Sleep” only kicks in when the battery runs down. Or, if you want to eliminate the convenient timing of “Sleep” in exchange for the power savings of “Safe Sleep”, you can do that.

This last option piqued my interest as one thing that has stuck with me back from my IT days at Bates was that “Sleep” mode didn’t park the heads of the hard drive, which made it a bad idea to move your laptop while it was sleeping (if the heads aren’t parked, they can move - which is entirely possible when physically moving it - and moving heads are a bad thing). To be completely honest, I don’t know if this behavior has changed in years hence. Doing a little bit of Googling, I’ve only come across a reference saying that sleep does park the heads on Macrumors.com - the source being in and of itself begging the validity of the statement. Apple’s support docs don’t help much, as they just cite that the “hard disks spin down”, although Apple’s manuals (PDF) warn you not to move your PowerBook soon after putting it to sleep - which implies the heads do park:

Warning: Wait a few seconds until the sleep light starts pulsating (indicating that the computer is in sleep and the hard disk has stopped spinning) before you move your PowerBook. Moving your computer while the hard disk is spinning can damage the hard drive, causing loss of data or the inability to start up from the hard disk.

Needless to say, I’ll ask at the bar when I go to work at the store on Sunday. I’ll keep you posted. Until then, here’s a little added bonus from the Googlefest: A Dashboard widget that will immediately put your Mac into “Safe Sleep”.

« OK, I’m done

There’s more? »

SaveMe - I just installed this cool little utility that does everything in its power to get you to abide by the “Save Early, Save Often” mantra you should’ve already indoctrinated yourself into doing before, during or after that last hard drive crash. Basically, it will auto-save any open documents in any OS X application on a pre-determined interval. Nice extra bit: it’s completely customizable for you to auto-save in PhotoShop every hour, Excel every 5 minutes and TextEdit never, for instance.

Ejector - Actually, I’ve been using this little Menu item for a while now. Very handy if you’re like me who (a) hates navigating down to the Desktop (or through the Finder) to eject disk images, your iPod or other “ejectables” and/or (b) seemingly has the complete inability to get the Eject key to do anything. Just mouse on up to the icon on the Menubar, and select from the pull-down menu what you want to eject.

Tickershock - I don’t know about you, but I’ve been having a hard time trying to really get RSS to groove how I want it to. I’ve expressed dissatisfaction with utilities like NetNewsWire and Pulp Fiction before - namely, I can’t move past the idea that I should be reading a blog (or whatever) in Safari. Speaking of Safari, haven’t been exactly turned on by the RSS implementation there either. A while ago there was a news ticker that I found that piped in the RSS feed from the BBC and felt that despite my ever-decreasing usable screen real estate, this would probably be the best way to go for how I want my RSS fire-hosed at me. If I use a separate application like NNW or PF, I run the risk of never launching the app (yup, Pulp Fiction still remains in my Dock, unused for months). Seeing a bunch of digits suffixed onto the Safari bookmarks toolbar also doesn’t motivate me to move my butt. While placement of Tickershock is customizable, it’s - as you can imagine - somewhat limited. Right under the Menubar doesn’t work too well (interferes with your ability to access windows). Pinning to the bottom is better, but with the Dock in the way, it is also a bit cumbersome. Aesthetically, the best way would be if you made use of Auto-Hide, as that way Tickershock doesn’t weirdly float on top of the Dock. Of course, Auto-Hide is a UI cardinal rule breaker and an option I just don’t use (nor do I pin the Dock to either side) - floating weirdly above the Dock it is. I’m still playing with it, so the jury is still out on this thing…

WinSwitch - Not terribly crazy about your user name hanging out in the Menubar when you have Fast User Switching (FUS) enabled? What? You don’t have FUS enabled? OK, I’m the only one who uses my Powerbook, but I’ve got FUS enabled since it gives you an easy way to secure your computer if you want to head to the bathroom or go for a munchie break. So, back to the topic at hand, WinSwitch allows you to configure how the FUS Menu item appears - change it to your account picture and save yourself some Menubar space so you cram more Menu items in!

MenuMeters - Also something I’ve been playing around with for a while. Surprisingly configurable, it can show you at a glance your CPU, memory, disk & network performance. I only got it for CPU & network (CPU, because, well, it’s good to be able to easily take a gander at that sort of thing; network because with my spotty ethernet performance due to some overly-tightened hinges, I can see if it’s flaked out with a quick glance). I just found out from a friend that it will also show you how much you’re paging out to VM swap files - a nice indicator as to whether, yes Virginia, it might be time to throw some more RAM in.

Well, that’s five recommedations (well, four recommendations and a “sorta-recommendation”). Hope they’re of interest to ya - lemme know, as I’m sure I’ve got other crap on here that might pique your interest.

« OK, I’m done

There’s more? »

Anyhoo, as I’ve been playing around with Backpack (well, trying to get my mind around it and jimmy it into working for me), I’ve also been getting reacquainted with Quicksilver, an absolutely amazing time-saving OS X utility. Moreover, there’s some pretty cool Backpack-specific tweaks you can use & abuse to your heart’s content.

Speaking of Quicksilver, here’s a little tid-bit you might not know about: you can auto-hide the handy-dandy shelf.

« OK, I’m done

There’s more? »

Hold on there camper. It’s obviously not what your thinking. A cool little program from the guys who brought you QuicKeys (Startly Technologies, née CE Software), Trans Lucy allows you to watch a DVD (or VIDEO_TS folder on your HDD, if you prefer) on a full-screen layer over everything else on your screen. “So?”, you might be asking… Well, smart-ass, you can change the translucency of that layer. Which means you can work on something through the movie layer you’re watching. For instance, I’m watching The Italian Job while typing this very post.

While I certainly don’t recommend doing this while at work and I don’t know if you like to watch TV while toiling away at the computer, it’s certainly a handy little utility to do whatever you’d like to do at home while watching a little movie at the same time.

Try it out - the trial gives you 20 minutes at a time to make up your mind, otherwise it’s $15. Oh, and speaking of recommendations, try the 2004 Wolf Blass Yellow Label Chardonnay - it’s given me a nice buzz to work off of.

« OK, I’m done

There’s more? »

Now you’re prepared for Morford’s article from today, “Scariest Music Video… Ever”. Keep in mind that the video he’s critiquing is stupefyingly laugh-out-loud funny in its cheesiness (I originally found out about it from Tom Tomorrow) and you should certainly be prepared now for Morford’s wit in his column, but do NOT miss his captions for the four screen-captures he has accompanying the article. I was actually crying, I was laughing so hard.

Update: I never noticed this, but apparently the folks responsible for the original video are concerned about spoofs:

America We Stand As One and Dennis Madalone did not authorize or assist in the production, creation, or concept behind alternative “spoof” videos of America We Stand As One.

DO NOT BE FOOLED BY IMITATIONS!

SPOOFS?!? A little googling came up with this.

« OK, I’m done