Archive for 2010

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Rockmelt – A Social Web Browser, Not A Death Ray

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 8, 2010 by admin in Technology

Monday, November 8th, 2010

The new social network-oriented web browser Rockmelt could easily be pitched as a “Flock Killer”. If anybody knew what the heck Flock was.


We would have been SO much more excited
if it were a planet vaporizing death ray.

In August of last year, we pondered whether the mysterious Rockmelt was a new web browser or a planet vaporizing death ray. Well, the answer has been revealed, and frankly, we would have been a little more excited with the death ray option. So why is someone creating yet another browser? Don’t Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, et al give us enough to choose from and argue about? Well, on the “social web”, apparently not. Rockmelt is designed specifically to pull all your social doodads into one place, in a handy tabbed fashion. This is probably why no-one is calling it a “Firefox Killer”; if anything it’s a “Flock Killer”. And that’s not very sexy, ’cause who the heck has heard about Flock, aside from the guys in the IT department and when I mentioned it just now? I for one won’t be rushing to download and install the recently announced beta version of Rockmelt; if they’re trying to build trust and user engagement, they’ve already scored a few negative points with me. I gave them my e-mail over a year ago to stay informed, and heard nothing of them until they popped back into the tech media buzz the other day, asking for you to connect with your Facebook account if you want to try their beta release. No thanks, Rockmelt. They’re obviously on the right track in some ways though; as this Wired piece points out, the web we knew is dead, and apps and social networking define the road ahead. But to define your launch with a Facebook log in seems a little less than forward thinking. Most of the tech savvy and social people I know have been turned off by the MySpace-ization of Facebook, and are using it less, and with less enthusiasm every day. So if you’re an active Twitter/Facebook/FourSquare type, Rockmelt may be just the ticket. Personally, I’m a little connection weary, and LIKE the fact that I have to access different devices, apps, or websites to stay connected. So Rockmelt, drop me a line when you come out with the death ray version. If you can find that e-mail I already gave you. Launch promo video below. Read the rest of this entry »

Joan Wasser’s Band Joan as Police Woman

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 7, 2010 by admin in Music

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

I’m glad talented violinist Joan Wasser took the instrument off her chin to demonstrate what a magically brilliant songwriter and singer she is.

The only thing stranger than the fact that I hadn’t heard of Joan Wasser and her band Joan as Police Woman until the other day is the fact that I feel like I’ve known her and her music for years. Or maybe the latter is not really so strange, considering the fact that after her tune Start of My Heart (video below) literally made me cry the first time I heard it, I immediately bought her 2008 release To Survive, and in the 48 hours since, have listened to it like, four times. And in between listens, have read about her career and listened to or watched anything by her that I can find. But even if I hadn’t so instantly fallen in love with her work, there’s an intimate intensity and emotional depth to most of it that would have eventually had the same effect. One imagines that some of the incredible depth and “realness” of her expression is informed by the loss of her partner Jeff Buckley back in the 90′s, and more recently her mother (the inspiration for the title track of “To Survive”) but her talent as an arranger and songwriter is remarkable in itself. Listening to her work one is slowly struck by its subtly. I say “slowly”, because her impeccable arrangements allow horns, backing vocals and other instrumentation to weave through the tunes so effortlessly that one barely notices their coming and going until repeated listens. It’s almost hard to believe that she is – as she implies at one point in this interview – an “ear musician”, saying that music theory “is just like math to me“. Although Wasser only has a few solo releases as a songwriter and vocalist, her resumé as a violinist extends back to the 1990′s and includes work with the likes of Lou Reed, Sheryl Crow, Sparklehorse, Elton John, David Sylvian, the Scissor Sisters, Antony and the Johnsons, Joseph Arthur, and Rufus Wainwright. I love that ex-Fishbone member Chris Dowd apparently praised her as a “soulful mothafucka” in the liner notes of a Seedy Arkhestra release. It’s that kind of reference that makes me hope Wasser finds the broader recognition that she deserves without a major label deal; I don’t think they’d know what to do with her! While her music has a mature honesty that is easily understood, there’s an intense beauty and strength in her face, her persona, and her work that defies definition, and would almost certainly be diluted and destroyed by the pop music packaging process. In spite of the fact that so far I’ve only picked up her 2008 release, I’m looking forward to her upcoming 2011 release “The Deep Field” (see clip below). Partly because the title references a place where galaxies are born, and partly because at this rate I will have listened to everything she’s done a couple hundred times by then. Read the rest of this entry »

The QE2, The Titanic, And Why I Didn’t Vote Last Week

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 6, 2010 by admin in Politics

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

But I’m glad you were on deck screaming “I don’t think we should sink!” I’m sure it helped. Oh. And all these “bubbles” you keep hearing about? They’re normal when a huge ship is going down.


Context here if you don’t get this joke

Yesterday a friend asked me if I voted last week. I calmly said “nope”, to find myself on the receiving end of a laser-like liberal glare that screamed “how could you abandon us at this crucial juncture in history?“, but then out loud they said “Why the f— NOT? Are you RETARDED or something???” I then reminded my liberal friend that it’s not nice to say “retarded”, and went on to explain that my decision not to vote was part of my plan to accelerate my collapsitarian vision for a shiny new apocalypse. You see, what liberal, conservative, and especially that other bunch of voters seemed not to notice last week was the fact that Ben Bernanke had instructed Washington to print a bunch of money in a quantitative easing effort. For those of you not familiar with sophisticated economic terminology, 1 bunch=$600,000,000, and according to many, quantitative easing = bank bailout. To me the best part of this all is that since everyone’s calling it “QE2″, we no longer have to resort to that hackneyed “polishing the brass on the Titanic” line. The QE2, as you may recall, was the last of the great steam-powered luxury liners, whose only satisfied customers were probably the British soldiers that she ferried to the Falkland War. The debate will rage about this economic strategy until the results manifest themselves, but for one of the more balanced views of what’s going on (even if you do think he’s full of shibboleth) Paul Krugman sums things up here. And there’s one likely side effect of this cash injection that I find hilarious: in spite of the fact that if teabaggers had any idea what’s going on in the real world, they would be in a psychotic rage about the government printing a bunch of money at a time like this. But in their inexplicable ignorance, they’ll support it with every bone in their little heads, because clearly, if the rest of the world thinks an idea is stupid, it must be the patriotic thing to do. By the way, if you want to print your own money at will just like Ben, HowStuffWorks has excellent step-by-step instructions. Read the rest of this entry »

Daylight Slaving Time

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 5, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Daylight savings time is clearly a tool of those in power to keep the working man enslaved. And even if it isn’t, it’s freakin’ annoying.

I’ve always been a little disappointed by the fact that with all the breakthroughs in quantum physics of the last century, the closest we’ve gotten to exploring time travel remains Daylight Savings Time. To me, the government-mandated arbitrary tinkering with my clocks is nothing more than a petty annoyance; in most cases it just means that all the meetings next week that don’t happen at their scheduled time will just not happen at a different time they weren’t scheduled at. Or that on Monday some really ballsy numb-nut will say the reason they were late was that they managed to make it all the way through Sunday without knowing what time everyone else thought it was. Although there’s a liberal conspiracy theory that the latest change in DST dates was engineered by Texan politicians to give big oil billions in tax breaks, we all know that it was in fact Dick Cheney showing off his god-like authority by bending time itself to his desires. And if you dig deeply enough into the history of Daylight Saving Time, you quickly learn that it was mostly engineered to enslave the working man while giving the wealthy more leisure time. This is especially evident in the fact that TV ratings drop 16% the Monday after the time change (presumably because the working stiffs are too tired and disoriented to know when their shows are on), and that according to the book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, the National Golf Foundation estimates an extra month of Daylight Savings Time increases golf industry revenues by $100 million. It should also be suspicious that the Germans were the first to implement it in WWI. My biggest concern is that with the US government extending it a month every ten or twenty years, by 2090 we will be completely out of standard time! On the bright side, at that point I won’t have to rely on this stupid Microsoft page to know what time it is when I’m sitting at the computer,

4 Quick Tips To Help Solve Your Procrastination Problems

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 4, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

If you’re doing things to stop procrastinating, aren’t you really just putting off procrastination itself?

It seems like people are always talking about being more productive, and how they have to stop procrastinating. When did we all turn into little mini-corporations with deadlines and productivity quotas? Personally, I think the whole thing is part of a vast conspiracy to keep us on edge. And shopping. One built in problem with this whole procrastination vs productivity issue is the assumption that the things you think you should be doing actually matter. I mean, maybe it’s okay if you never launch that quarterly newsletter devoted to the latest developments in competitive duck herding, and maybe you don’t need to finally start blogging. At least 144 million other people seem to have that covered for you. But so far we’re just looking at this on a personal level. On a societal level, I would comfortably argue that the fact that we live in the most productive period in history has been relatively unproductive. First of all, as we recently pointed out, it just makes us run out of everything. But more significantly, in spite of our ever-expanding knowledge, technological developments, and ability to produce, people still kill each other with the same regularity, starve every day, and are depressed and sick enough to keep a $643 billion pharmaceutical industry in business. So relax. Stop beating yourself up. If you only do one thing today, make sure it’s nothing. Below are some tips. Feel free to share any of your own. When you get around to it. Read the rest of this entry »

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