On the one hand, I own enough already to keep me busy for the rest of my life.
On the other hand, I still want everything on my Amazon wishlist.
Archive for December, 2008
Needs versus wants
Posted in Life on December 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Favorite songs of 2007, #1-25
Posted in Music on December 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
To continue listing my favorite songs added to my iTunes in 2007…
25. “Kick Out the Jams” by The MC5
24. “Time and Tide” by Basia
23. “Green Tambourine” by The Lemon Pipers
22. “Draggin’ the Line” by Tommy James
21. “East Bound and Down” by Jerry Reed
20. “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe
19. “1st Things 1st” by Phantom Planet
18. “Condoleezza, Check [...]
Favorite songs of 2007, #26-50
Posted in Music on December 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Because I was on a blogging hiatus a year ago, I never posted my year-end favorite songs from 2007 (these are songs that I added to iTunes in 2007, most of which were not actually released that year). Here are #50 through #26:
50. “The Vex” by Black Tie Dynasty
49. “Forecast Fascist Future” by Of Montreal
48. [...]
Favorite songs of 2008
Posted in Music on December 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
These are my 25 favorite songs that I added to my iTunes collection in 2008 (almost all of the songs were released before 2008), limited to one song per artist:
25. “Angela” by Bob James
24. “Gold Dust” by The Hochimen
23. “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” by Sarah Vaughan
22. “Ace in the Hole” by [...]
Changing the world
Posted in Books on December 14, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Some book and media titles from the Multnomah County Library:
50 Aircraft That Changed the World
50 Battles That Changed the World
50 Companies That Changed the World
80 Days That Changed the World
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
Bridges That Changed the World
Five Equations That Changed the World
Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World
The Gun [...]
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Posted in Humor, Music on December 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Cute.
And funny.
Sherlock Holmes
Posted in Books on December 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
When I was a child, I got The Complete Sherlock Holmes Treasury as a Christmas present (probably from Aunt Judy). Of course I read it right away—what nine-year-old can resist Sherlock Holmes?—and would re-read it every two or three years as I forgot how the cases ended (though I could never forget “The Red-Headed League”).
I [...]
The Barber of Seville
Posted in Music on December 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
My knowledge of classical music is slight, but I will still venture the opinion that whatever you would call the effect Rossini creates at the end of the overture of The Barber of Seville, no one could surpass his version of that effect. It is at the same time both worthy of awe and a [...]
Comcast >>> AT&T
Posted in Commerce on December 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Having given one side, I’ll now give the other.
Comcast has made a strong effort to fix the connectivity problems we have been having, and we are hoping at this point that they have been resolved. We also signed up for cable television service again, which I dropped a year ago (immediately after the Ohio State [...]
Commitments
Posted in Life on December 11, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I’ve come to think of commitments as the structure of life.
Make the right commitments, and I have a platform to stand on.
Make the wrong commitments, and I have a prison to live in.
Upgrades
Posted in Apple, Blogging on December 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
During the four weeks that I was just away from this blog, wordpress.com updated the editing interface. I like every change they made, especially the one that makes categories easier to select while writing a post.
Also, I upgraded my iPhone 3G system software to version 2.2, which, as advertised, has stabilized the Safari web browser [...]
Ray Taliaferro
Posted in California, Media on December 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
When I was in junior high school in the early ’80s, I had terrible insomnia. I used to lay awake at night and listen to the Giants game on KNBR, then listen to the Giants post-game show and the news. If I was still awake (it would be midnight by this point), I would turn [...]
Shazam!
Posted in Apple, Music on December 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »
An iPhone ad touts an app called “Shazam” that allows the iPhone to identify a song that is playing loud enough for the iPhone to detect.
Does it work?
Yes it does, and I now have a copy of “Silly Boy” by The Blue Van.
How libraries reinvented knowledge
Posted in Academic, History, LIS, Quotation on December 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Ian F. McNeely and Lisa Wolverton note how the development by the Greeks of libraries, as storehouses of the written word, changed the possibilities of knowledge from what they had been in a purely oral society:
Every library comfortably contains writings and juxtaposes ideas that, if they were represented by their proponents in the flesh, might [...]
My new favorite Christmas carol
Posted in Music on December 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A Christmas carol from Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello that sounds…exactly the way you would expect a Christmas carol from Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello to sound.
