I am starting a running count of how many iPods I see everyday on the way to work. My commute is from Montrose (Blue Line) to Chicago (Blue Line), and on the Chicago Ave. bus (#66) from Milwaukee to Orleans. I am basing my tabulation on sighting the conspicuous white earbuds, or the iPod itself. Today’s tally: 10.
At age 91, ex-FBI chief Mark Felt has told Vanity Fair, “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.”
The Salvation Army closed its Strawberry Field home and childcare provision on Beaconsfield Road in Liverpool today. The center was, of course, immortalized by The Beatles in 1967 and closes “after 69 years of looking after Liverpool’s disadvantaged youngsters”. In 1997, after a semester in Sevilla, Spain, I made a pilgrimage to the famous red, front gate and every other Station of The Beatles’ Cross (Penny Lane, Paul’s childhood home, etc.) via the Magical Mystery Tour Bus, which I highly recommend.
You know who you are! (Damn, what’s wrong with me?)
Any good sci-fi is really about the present, albeit clad in silver spacesuits or dragon-proof chainmail. A story about a galactic empire’s tightening vise grip on a peacefully democratic republic of planets is bound to have parallels in history, recent and ancient alike. But it just so happens that our very own moment in history (in the minds of many) passes the acid-test as one in which an empire threatens to choke the sovereignty of people unequiped to oppose its might. Is it ironic or tragic that America throws its weight around in the name of spreading democracy?
Just watched the trailer for Bomb the System, a new graffiti-themed independent movie. My hopes of it being “Wild Style” for the New Schoolers were instantly dashed. Why? A) The star is white. B) The graff looked terrible. C) There are guns in it. D) The white guy’s VO says, “We just wanted to make art. To be left alone.” E) The white guy and his black buddy go to “war” with “the system” by “tagging” or “bombing” everything government related. F) A “loose cannon” cop takes it personally and gets violent…’Nuff said.
Last night Sony unveiled their next generation console, the PS3. Macworld tells us that the PS3 has “35 times the performance of the processor inside the current PlayStation 2″. Its main processor — the Cell chip (jointly created by Sony, Toshiba and IBM) — “is based on IBM’s PowerPC architecture and will have seven cores, each running at 3.2GHz, to give the chip a total performance of 218GFlops”. The Nvidia graphics processor is said to performan at 1.8TFlops. “Together, the two chips will give the PlayStation 3 a total system performance of 2TFlops, or about double that claimed by Microsoft for the Xbox 360.” So, though the new XBOX will be out in time for the next X-mas buy-a-thon, the PS3 will be breathing down its neck like the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. PS3 will also have an insane array of connectivity and storage options (USB 2.0, 3 Ethernet ports, 802.11b/g wireless LAN, Bluetooth, Blu-ray Disc, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, Compact Flash, removable 2.5-inch hard-disk drive), and the clincher: it IS backwards compatible!!!!!! I guess I am breaking my “root for the underdog” rule, but the fact that I hate Microsoft and that it is such a pathetic underdog more than makes up for it. Should Apple now find a way to partner with Sony and create the ultimate Windows killer?
More info:
Joystiq
The Unofficial Playstation 3 Weblog
PS3 Portal
My site suffered the equivalent of a heart attack and many files were zeroed (reduced to 0KB). Now that I’ve finally had a chance to reinstall MovableType, I see that the damage wasn’t as extensive as feared. After missing a payment (I’m poor), my hosting company (OLM, good people) denied me access to my site, preventing me from flushing out the spam email with regular downloads. The pile up of spam was like plaque in an artery, preventing the good data (my blog) from getting out to the internet. I feared that among the zeroed files were the bulk of my blog entries so I put off thinking about what to do with Dragonize because I couldn’t deal with the idea of having lost my precious pearls of wisdom. “But Jeff,” you say, “what about your backup files? Surely you make regular backups!” Nope. Live and learn. Lucky for humanity my worst fear never materialized. Enjoy!
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