It's been a long time, long time...

I apologize for the lack of ambition that has led to no blog updates in a few weeks. I have plenty to say, I just haven't been using the old 'puter much at home lately.

In today's lesson, we learn how new media (aka the Internet) has changed how I want products delivered. In some cases, things have become so easy to obtain that we have become relatively spoiled, expecting that it should always be that easy. In this case, being spoiled is a good thing though.

Commerce should not be difficult. Although the last thing that most Americans need is a way to quickly indulge in something they desire, for those with a bit of self-control this is exactly how it should work.

Now, to get from the theoretical to the point. I think it might have been Ryan who said this first, "If it isn't on iTunes, it doesn't exist" (man, I bet Jobs would love to hear that). Much of my music purchases follow this belief. When I want a new song now, I either buy the CD somewhere like Best Buy, or I go purchase the individual song from iTunes. If neither of those work, I'm very likely to just decide it is too much work and look no further. Simplicity in shopping is good in my mind.

Very recently, I had to break this rule. First, we recently re-watched "The Big Bounce" after purchasing it. Fantastic movie, and it starts out with a great rendition of The Steve Miller Band classic "Rock n' Me". At first I thought it was by Sheryl Crow, but a quick google search proved that it was by an artist named Shayne Blue. I thought, "Great, I'll just search for her on iTunes and buy it." No dice. Shayne had made one CD with a group known as Theodore. They were not to be found either. I ended up purchasing her CD from CD Baby though, which was my first purchase through that fantastic site. If you haven't heard of them before, they are a great site, especially because they provide a way for smaller artists to make a fair share of CD sales. The CD turned out to be very good as well.

Next, I went in search of a song named "Unleashed" by a relatively unknown artist named Chris Classic. Again, no luck on iTunes. I found out about this after hearing it featured in a commercial for the incredibly sweet new Dodge Charger. The song was a mashup between "Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth, and a cool rap tune. A quick search of Google with nothing more than "charger commercial hair dog remake" gave me the artist and a history of the song. It is a mashup of an unreleased tune by Chris named "Live and Loose", with a remake of Nazareth of their own song, "Hair of the Dog." Unfortunately, although some press releases indicated the song was available on iTunes, it is not (as far as I can find). It is only available on Yahoo, which thanks to the taint that is WMA I refuse to touch. Thus, I am forced to wait, because it's not on iTunes, so it must not exist...


Finally, if you haven't seen the movie Crash yet, go watch it. Soon. It is one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time.


Updated Oct 23: The info I had was a bit wrong. It is by Chris Cook, not Chris Classic. The song is now on iTunes. Rock.

It's the end of the world as we know it

Not really. It is however the end of the road for my college days, as those of you who read the blog and watched the grad school hell counter countdown and then disappear probably noticed. Disregarding the 3 year break I took after graduating from Iowa, I have been in school constantly since 1984. Ugh.

That is all finished now. My MBA is now complete (pending 2 final grades) as of last night. I have absolutely no intention of ever getting another undergrad/masters/doctorate degree of any sort. I just don't enjoy school at all anymore. I find it all rather fake and stifling -- I would much rather be in the workplace working on real issues that are defined and have a purpose (most of the time).

So, it is time to party. There will be some form of BBQ shindig at our house in the very near future, invitations are being prepared tonight. I also plan to enjoy watching the Iowa Hawkeyes start off their next fantastic football season this Saturday. I will do all of this with no thoughts of what homework I have due that night, or how tired I am from staying up writing papers the night before. Sweet!

Update: Only pending 1 grade now...
Update #2: WooHoooo, all grades are in now. The 4.0 has been successfully maintained.

ICE

Generally this blog doesn't function as a community service (although I hope I am providing semi-stimulating information for others to read). However, I found this information to be very worthwhile.

For those of you who have a cellphone (everybody except me I think), this is something that could help save your life in case of an accident. It involves creating a addressbook/phonebook entry in your phone named ICE (In Case of Emergency). This is someone that should be contacted in an accident situation, and emergency personnel are being trained to look for the presence of this on your phone.

Here is the original post where I saw this.

Lick It Up (MP3 1)

Okay, time for another late night post. I've been writing a huge research paper off and on all day today, and I just can't write anymore. Time for something more fun.

I've had a sweet little companion keeping me awake while writing this paper tonight. My ultra cool wife got me a new electronic toy as a combination birthday/almost done with horribly annoying school present. She had considered getting me an iPod last year for Christmas, and I mentioned this year that it would be a good combination present, especially since they have free engraving right now.

I was fine with either a mini or the standard model. However, we decided that we really should get one of the color models. Now that the 30 GB photo model has been phased out, that left either the 20 or 60 GB color models. I decided that the $100 premium for the 60 GB just wasn't worth it. If it isn't already, my collection will no doubt expand past 60 GB. If I can't keep the entire thing on there, I doubt that I really need more than 20 GB, so that's what she got.

Here are some pictures. You can see the very cool engraving she added to the back:

So, of course I wasn't satisfied to stop there. I needed to keep it with me at all times, it was just too darn convenient. I don't have XM in the car, so this was a great alternative to crap radio or carting CD's around. Thus, I purchased an iTrip FM modulator. Fantastic design, and works very well. I also disliked how many scratches I was accumulating rather quickly. To stop this from happening, and to spice things up a bit I picked up an iSkin. Here are some photos with the iSkin:

I think it turned out pretty sweet and incredibly useful. Now, I'm working on getting my iTunes library all sorted out. Lots of playing with ID3 tags, some musicbrainz work, and some fun with the iTunes art importer. It's just too cool when all of the song data is right, and I can look at the album art in color on the iPod.

Lastly, if you were wondering why the (MP3 1) was in the title, this is the first of two posts I'm going to do about MP3 devices. I plan to post a review of the VR3, my previous MP3 toy, shortly.

There was a white haired man in Panera...

Okay, you're fried from working on a research paper all day, it's midnight, and you need to go to sleep because you're getting up at 6 AM. What should you do? Well, if you're insane like me, you write your first Firefox MyCroft search plugin.

That is the cool little search box that is installed by default with Firefox (which uses Apple's Sherlock technology spec BTW). In case you didn't realize, you can add a plethora (somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500) of different search engines to that box. I have always found it very useful and well done. Like other open source projects, I always want to write my own piece of the pie too.

So, I was searching for a country artist biography tonight, and ended up at CMT.com using their search form. I thought, "why don't I have this on my search bar?" After finding that there was no available plugin for that site, I felt it was time to make my own.

Here is a link to the plugin I created. Most of you will have no use for it. Some will be able to suggest how I could code it better. Either is fine by me.

Reality TV

So, I saw an example of a disturbing trend today. First, I occasionally complete online surveys because they sometimes pay me cash which is cool. Second, I don't like reality television in general. Not so much because of the genre itself, but because I find most of the shows lame. Finally, although I don't really have time to play video games anymore anyway, if I did I would be very disappointed with the gameplay of many games coming out lately.

Having said all that, here is my trend. I see video games starting to become essentially interactive reality tv. Here is a sample question from a survey I took today:

We want to know about your interest in features for future football video games. These future football games might include sports simulation or life simulation games, role-playing games, arcade games, or other types of games. How appealing would each of the following features be in future NFL football video games?

	1 Not at all appealing	2	3	4	5 Very appealing
Design players' homes
Choreograph cheerleaders
Add female players
Be involved in the lives of players' wives
Design players' fitness programs
Get involved in the players' personal lives
Choose players' cars
Design players' uniforms
Control players' romantic interests
Control players' nightlife

Okay, that is truly scary. None of that crap appeals to me. If I want to play a football game, I want the damn game to start and get to cracking skulls and throwing passes. I don't want to take the quarterback's mistress and her younger sister out for a ménage à trois.

Lame. Give me Super Mario 3 anyday.

That's right, I'm Brody. What's it to ya?

Mostly I just needed a spot to store this picture, but I figured he deserved a post either way.