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Came out to Long Island on Wednesday. This is our yearly house sitting "working" vacation. MB brought her new firewire hard drive and has been using the flat panel iMac that lives here. I brought my crt iMac, which is pretty easy to do if you are in a car. But it seemed like a joke at first, as I couldn't really do any work on Thursday. But it sure is nice to live in a house with a big kitchen and deck and garden and pool...

But then yesterday, which started out slow, ended up being a really productive day. Maybe the first one since I've been back from Montana. Sure, I've done lots of stuff since then, but I hadn't really gotten in deep with anything. Yesterday I wrote the entire foundation for a new site I'm building (well, rebuilding.) I noticed that when I'm really cruising on a project I like to hear the same music over and over again. Yesterday it was six Lucinda Williams tracks off the MP3 player. Over and over again. I think I do this so I don't have to listen too hard. I can just work, and the repetition somehow marks the time. It gives my brain something to hold onto. Otherwise time can really slip away when you're staring at the screen.

Woke up this morning and I'm anxious to get right back to work. That's how I know it's going well.

This evening we'll take a ferry out to Fire Island to celebrate Stephen's birthday. Home to NYC tomorrow. Feeling very good.
- jim 7-20-2002 3:54 pm [link] [add a comment]

Wow. My friend Dave posted some amazing pictures from his new temporary home in New Zealand.
- jim 7-19-2002 7:58 pm [link] [add a comment]

Check out this switch ad Apple has pulled off the air. Apparently she seems too "stoned". I don't know about that, but it's the best Mac ad I've ever seen. (Quicktime 5 required)
- jim 7-18-2002 7:19 pm [link] [1 comment]

Steve Job's keynote just finished (MacWorld New York.) New 17 inch flat panel iMac (1440x900). 256 megs ram, 80 gig hard drive, Superdrive (DVD player/burner; CD player/burner), Gforce 4 mx graphics.

$1999.

Clearly the most powerful consumer machine in the $2000 range. Only an incremental improvement, but it's very impressive nonetheless. As a first computer there isn't a better choice.

Also, the 5 gig iPod drops to $299, the 10 gig to $399, and a new 20 gig (!) is $499. Oh, and they work with Windows now. Still can't make playlists on the fly though. :(

Lots of Jaguar (OS X 10.2) previews. Out August 24th. $129. Looks great.

iTunes 3 is out, with only minor revisions. But my most wanted feature was added, so I'm very happy. iTunes will now automatically normalize the sound levels of all songs across your collection. This was a nightmare problem for me making playlists for the restaurants. I had to go in by hand and tweak the levels on all the songs because some CDs are so much louder than others. But no more. Nice.

iCal is the new (free download of course) calendar app. Looks very slick. I'll be quite interested to see how open the data format is.

More to come on iSync and Rendezvous. Certainly Palm and bluetooth phone owners will be happy with the much improved integration. Looks like I might have to get the Sony/Ericsson T68i.

- jim 7-17-2002 7:09 pm [link] [5 comments]

For my next trick I will try to download and install the new Quicktime 6 just released by Apple. If it doesn't completely fubar my system I will report back.
- jim 7-16-2002 7:03 pm [link] [add a comment]

I think it's great that NYC PBS has been showing episodes of The Prisoner Sunday night at midnight. Still, I failed again last night to make it through to the end. The plots are interesting (and the location is amazing) but there is something very methodical about it. Almost hypnotic. Does anything every happen? I'm usually asleep by 12:20.
- jim 7-15-2002 10:58 pm [link] [6 comments]

Looks like Salon is the soon to be named mystery partner about to bring "thousands of blogs" (first item) online through a partnership with Userland.
- jim 7-15-2002 10:11 pm [link] [add a comment]

From Dave Farber's Interesting People list:

On 7/14/02 6:04 AM, "vint cerf" wrote:

even if WorldCom enters chapter 11, I am confident that UUNET and the MAE Systems will continue to operate normally.

vint

Just in case you were worried.

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone"

--Bjarne Stronstrup (originator of C++ programming language)

We went to see De la guarda last night. This is an Argentinian show put on in a beautiful old bank building right off Union Square. To start, everyone is herded into a dark room. A low fabric ceiling hangs above. The walls are dark fabric. The crowd is just standing around in the low light, not quite sure what is going to happen. It's not clear if there is a stage, or a direction to face, or an optimal place to stand in the shoulder to shoulder crowd.

And then you notice some rising ambient music. Like sounds of the jungle. And then you notice lights flickering up above the fabric of the ceiling. And other strange sounds. Is that water falling on the other side of the ceiling?

And then more lights flickering above. And then the shadows of people. Swooping. Flying up above your head, their shadows racing across the fabric roof above you. The music gets louder. The flying becomes more frantic. And then eventually the people above start to tear through the fabric of the ceiling. The music explodes. People are yelling. The whole ceiling comes down and the night of acrobatic bungie jumping Argentinian dancers running and flying and looping and spinning overhead begins. They literally dance up and around the walls. They pick a few people up from the crowd and swoop around with them overhead. Neat.

Lots of drumming. Lots of water (you get a little wet.) Lots of crowd participation. Pretty cool gimmick.
- jim 7-15-2002 6:03 pm [link] [add a comment]

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