September 2005

Yes, Breezy CDs are now available to pre-ship. I ordered a 10-pack today. I will begin salivating immediately.

Ars Technica has a great article from a Finnish newspaper today, where a representative from a Finnish recording group (think RIAA, but proto-Uralic) said that playing back a CD on a computer was a priviledge, not a right. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this since Ars does a great job of it, but here’s one quote that stuck out to me:

“If you are a Linux or Mac user, you should consider purchasing a regular CD player.”

Holy crap.

I hope this guy is mauled in the street by a group of rabid Lapplanders, at least one of whom is a were-reindeer or something. Seriously, these big media conglomerates need to realize that they’re going to hamstring themselves, particularly by targeting subgroups of users who have a historical tendency to be both rabidly committed and savvy.

I’m as jazzed as anyone with the upcoming release of Breezy Badger, the 5.10 release of Ubuntu. I keep hearing good things about the new Nautilus, as well as some nice changes with some of the included applications. I’m looking forward to working with Banshee, since I’m mainly working with Beep Media Player at this point — I’m in a mode where I like click on a button, pick a playlist file, and go. Easy, simple, and it doesn’t hog the screen real estate that Muine or (shudder) Rhythmbox do.

Other minor things that I’m hoping will be fixed in the new release:

• Sound: Hoary and Warty both would give sound preference to my TV tuner card, making it somewhat hellish to get the right sound setup working, and it’s still flaky - opening and closing tvtime will mute my input on my soundcard for no apparent reason.
• X.Org: I’m hoping for improved composite support. It was pretty reasonable previously, but I always had some residual visual weirdness, like a text window near the bottom of the screen would lose the last few lines somehow, or have them come up scrambled.
• XFS: Is it safe to come back yet? Seriously? Without risking my beloved collection of FLACs?

We’ll find out in a couple of weeks.

I’ve gotten myself a wordpress.com account, and my new personal blog will be at Divisive Nature, and this will become more tech-oriented. You bastards on planet.arslinux had better appreciate that. Fuckers.

So my brother-in-law took me to my first Yankee game tonight. Fantastic game, as the stadium had something like 51,000 on hand to watch the Bombers take on the Orioles. Chien-Ming Wang pitched brilliantly after having a bit of a shaky start, and the experience of going to a game at Yankee Stadium is so much different than watching it. Highly recommended.

I did learn a few things, though…

• You actually can charge someone $8.50 for a domestic beer and not die from shame.
• Being a cop means the NYPD lets you park in the special area about a half-block from the Stadium.
• Being a cop also means that they don’t even blink when you tell them you’re carrying a gun.
• After you tell them you have a gun, the Stadium security will say “Well, do you have a cellphone?” They will then check that the cellphone is actually a cellphone and then let you pass without even bothering to ask about the gun or see any police ID.
• The amount of noise when someone gets a good hit is just amazing.
• The Major Deegan truly, truly sucks.

I give all the credit in the world to SanDisk. I’ve learned this weekend that their Cruzer Micro and Cruzer Mini products will not only survive a heavy wash cycle on a Maytag washer, but will not lose any of my data despite looking like it lost a fight with a weedwhacker.

Outstanding.