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Updated: 7/7/02; 11:26:12 PM. |
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Updated: 7/7/02; 11:26:12 PM. |
| Radio Bump Reply Hazy, try again.  Monday, March 4, 2002Looking Grim at the Grammys "The generally dismal quality of America's mass-marketed pop music is an esthetic national emergency." This person is looking in the wrong place. There's plenty of great music coming out, but it's not from a boy band or a teenage diva. Mass-marketed pop music has been bad for decades, maybe even forever. I'm finding solace primarily in the Turntablism movement and the Electronic music community currently. Bands like Gorrilaz are products of these movements without actually being a part of them. I'd trade fifty Britney's for Dan the Automator any day. Some of the other music that has meant a lot to me are artists that have left or been forced out of major label America, like Aimee Mann. The bottom line is that music is art, it's self expression, not just another product, not just another dishwashing liquid or pair of khakis. Without that self expression being genuine, there's no emotion. Whether that emotion is torment or bliss, it's the experience of it, and the story that it tells through words and emotions that make it so important to me. Most of the time when the majors luck into an artist like this, it's because they threw a whole truckload of shit, and, while most of it sucked, one or two artists shone through. For every Jeff Buckley or Radiohead, there are a few hundred artists that were either mediocre or just plain sucked. Perhaps I am being an optimist, but that's how things look from where I stand, and no amount of file swapping is going to change it. 11:46:52 PM
 discuss [] Jason's post today about the picture from SXSW two years ago really hits home over here. I don't even know who that guy with the dorky expression on his face is. So young, so naive, so....FAT. 11:28:36 PM
discuss [] It's funny how much a difference a couple of months can make. I have used the Mac OS in some form or another since 1987. I was there for the transition to color monitors, the addition of the CD-ROM drive, eWorld, the transition to PowerPC (painful at times, remember 7.5.2?), the clones, their death and so on. As I've noted here before, when 10.1 and Microsoft Office V.X were released this fall, I went to Mac OS X full time. I rarely boot the Classic environment, only when I need Photoshop and Fireworks, and aside from that, never. I've had to eat some nails along the way, but I've adapted and embraced Mac OS X. It's not perfect, but I do like it. There are things there that I've wanted for a long time, like a command line interface(can you believe that I was missing DOS when I wasn't on a Windows machine?), and it just doesn't crash. Others have had different experiences there, but for me it's been rock solid as both a desktop and server OS so far.(I have just jinxed myself.)
Today, I went over a friends house to configure her brand new iMac. Not the cool new Luxor iMac, but one of the older Snow ones. She needs to use Quark and a couple of other apps that aren't available for Mac OS X yet, so she'll be running Mac OS 9 for the time being. I booted the machine, and began installing updates. All I could think of the entire time was how old fashioned the operating system seemed to me now. I've learned how to use Mac OS X, and the operating system that was like an old friend a couple of months ago now seems like a distant relative I only see once a year. It was almost shocking. I still know how to do everything, but it all seemed foreign. It's for this reason that I know that Apple is on the right road with their operating system. Oh, there's resistance from some people, but people are always scared of change. We're quite close to having Flash and Photoshop over here, and that's the tipping point. Unaddressed issues with things like fonts will get dealt with then, of that I'm quite certain. So goodbye old friend, we had a great fourteen years together. 11:10:24 PM OsOpinion: Macromedia Unveils Flash MX, Backs Mac "Enhanced platform support in Flash MX goes beyond the desktop, with a new version of ColdFusion MX that can be used in conjunction with Microsoft .NET, Java application servers and Web services." 10:41:18 PM
discuss [] iTunes and Home Theater (via Mac Net Journal) This is really just one way to go. I'm using my Airport network to do a similar thing, but it requires a second computer, which I happened to have lying around anyway. Makes it easier to have all of my MP3's on a machine I can get to over the Internet and have a second computer, in the same room as the home entertainment system, that I can control without leaving the room. I went the extra step of adding a wireless keyboard, so at least I don't have to get up. 10:16:18 PM
discuss [] Macromedia finally annouced Flash MX. What is up with all these software companies switching over to letters for software versions? Confusing, if you ask me. One thing that the site doesn't tell you, but should be public knowledge, is that the new version of Cold Fusion that will come on the heels of this version of Flash will have an entire API that is dedicated to Flash integration. You will be able to use Cold Fusion as your application logic and to manage state, and use Flash as your UI layer. This should be scary stuff for the providers of other Web Application servers because it's also written in Java. 10:58:42 AM
discuss [] The new DanSays is up. I'm interested to hear about his development experience with .NET. 10:35:56 AM
discuss []
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