I never knew

When I was in France a couple of weeks ago I’d watch bits of BBC World News to keep somewhat connected to current events and one of the big things was George Galloway’s testimony in front of the US Congress. He ripped them a new one and their were a number of choice bits:

I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice

The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and maps – the better to target those guns. I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war.

I’m under the impression that it didn’t get much coverage in North America, especially in the US. What’s your impression? Did you even hear of it?

I was supposed to think about it and write something about what I thought. Didn’t. Still, I remember talking about that Mac mini PVR stuff with a couple of people so here’s the 3 links I was starting with.

• The New Mac Mini is All About Movies, Robert X. Cringely

































































• Is Apple secretly working on a DVR / Video Download Service? at Mac HTPC

• HOW-TO: Turn your Mac mini into a media center, at EnGadget

Niftyest trick in a while on Lost a minute ago. Jack worthy. Dumbass Charlie gets a rock on the head, deep cut. Saheed opens a bullet, puts the powder in the cut, lights it. Instant cautherization. Nuts. Possible? Excellent trick! Jack worthy I tell ya.

(No spoilers) I know loads of people watch 24 but I also know very few of them watch it live or even PVRed soon after. A lot of you wait for the DVDs so I don’t know who’ll be able to answer but…

There’s been a change in gizmos used on the show, I believe it happened between hour 22 and 23 (might have been before but I doubt it). I hate that they made that change because since the show is in “real time” there’s now way it wouldn’t have happened in real life. And it was obviously a new product placement deal. What is it?

Can’t remember where I found this, might be from someone around here and everyone who reads me already knows about it but here goes anyway.

In previous versions of Safari when you right clicked on a link or image to download the associated file or the image itself you could select the destination on your hard drive. Not so in the latest (1.3 and 2.0 depending on your version of OSX), now you simply get “Download Linked File” and it sends it to your standard download directory. Which bugs me. Here’s the tip: if you hit the “Option” key while the little menu is down, the prompt changes to “Download Linked File As…” and it then works as it used to.

Also, I use tabs a lot and I’m used to switching from one too the next with “Shift+Apple+Right/Left Arrow”. Apple added some more functionality when entering text in a text area, such as “Apple+Z” for undo and “Shift+Apple+Left/Right Arrow” to select a line within the text. Problem, that interfers with the same keys used to navigate tab to tab. Which bugged the hell out of me when posting in Textpattern because I’d be writing the post, hit the keys to go back to the tab I was posting about and it didn’t work. In that situation, you can use “Shift+Apple+{ or }” to switch tabs. Sweet. Except of course if you’re using the french canadian keyboard at the time. Doh!… then you can always use “Option+Apple+Space” to swap keyboards ;).

A new term has been coined, Alterpreneur, and it fits pretty well with my thinking.

Alterpreneurs are small business owner managers who went into business for lifestyle reasons, and as an alternative to the nine-to-five of a traditional job and the one size fits all lifestyle that goes with it. They are not motivated primarily by money or career. Instead, they see running a business as an opportunity to have greater control over their lives and be ‘happier’.

Some very nice, very small places with innovative solutions and great design choices. My favorites are this one and this one.

Ok, a bit late but I’ve finally added archives to Yulzine, I’m pretty happy with the result, took quite a bit of tweaking to merge the entries in the Textpattern install I’m using. I’ll probably reuse some of what I found to enhance some other parts of the site.

(Untested in IE so far)

Boris posted an innocent (to me anyway) screen grab of software downloading a copy of Revenge of The Sith which got AJ thinking about the whole pirating issue, some interesting stuff in the comments, I’m copying my answer to have “in my stuff”:

I’ve never downloaded a pirated movie and only a few tv shows. Not for some higher moral stance either way, I just don’t take the time to do it. Just mentioning that before going further.

The reason loads of actors work for crappy salaries isn’t pirated movies it’s the 20 millions “stars” are payed or rather, it factors in more heavily than pirated movies. George Lucas is a billionnaire or close to it based on a few good ideas, some imagination, luck and a good sense of the biz. But it’s also based on all the “little people” ’s work. I’m much more disapointed in the millions upon millions he’s making based on merchandising designs that little people created, for which they get nothing, than by the few hundreds of thousands who might download instead of going to the theater.

I sense a great imbalance in the Force AJ and it’s not caused by downloads it’s caused by money grabs from those controlling the business. Musicians are starving but 50cent is having 30 000$ parties, who breaks the system more, people creating “stars” out of not much to make barrel loads of money or those who realize the system is currupt and decide they just don’t give a damn about the whole structure?

Granted, simply grabbing what you can without paying (I’m always hesitant to call an immaterial copy that didn’t cost anything “stealing”) might not be the best way to go about protesting but it’s a twisted act in a infinitely more twisted industry. All the energy anyone spends on battling downloading would be much better placed in battling Disney getting copyright extended to 75 years (who does that help but mega entertainment corporations?) or the inequalities of… pretty much every field than asking people not to grab what advantage they can from a corrupt system.

“The Man” isn’t a nice guy and copying isn’t all that good either but who’s hurting the industry more?

(Comments are closed, add your thoughts to AJ’s post if you want to chime in.)

I’ve gone through all 1800 and some items in my feedreader and encountered the Music Baton Meme something like 25-30 times but surprisingly, only once in Montréal with Boris pleading the 5th on it so even though I’m not a big music guy I’ll push it locally, just ‘cause I’m always good for a meme.

Total volume of music files on my computer:

4.59Gb, 977 songs

The last CD I bought was:

Haven’t bought a CD in a loooong while but the last album I bought on iTunes was Kasabian by Kasabian.

Song playing right now:

There was none playing right now but if I push play on iTunes (which is on shuffle), Habitacion De Alicia by Alberto Iglesias from the Hable Con Ella soundtrack comes up.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that means a lot to me:

Three that I play a lot.

1. Club Foot, Kasabian

































































2. Bows + Arrows, The Walkmen

1. This Is The Last Time, Keane

   Two that mean a lot (or some)

2. Rooftop, Stereophonics. One of my favorite bands and reminds me of my trip to australia, heard them there first, on the deck of a sailboat.

1. Save Me, The Tea Party. Good period, I listened to that album all the time.

   Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

   mc (Je doit dire que je suis assez “astonishé” qu’elle ne l’ai pas déjà fait)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Alex
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Nika
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   AJ
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   ‘toine