Life is a State of Mind : ideas, thoughts, rants

What will Apple’s next desktop computer be like?

There is a very interesting (to Apple desktop computer users and geeks) article on Ars Technica with some pretty educated conjecture about what Apple’s next desktop computer(s) may look like. The article is by Eric Bangeman, and I find myself mostly in agreement with his conjecture, albeit reluctantly.

While I think his prediction is spot on, it is bad for me personally. I’d very much like to see a split in the lines between the high-end video production market and the professional office automaton and sys-admin market. I know the big profits and market will be the huge video editing machines, but I need a machine I can upgrade and do maintenance on easily with reasonable performance. The Mac Mini and iMac lines are nice, but they don’t upgrade or handle maintenance easily (need more drive bays and easier access to the drives).

I want a mini-tower with 2 hard drive bays and 2 optical bays. I doubt Apple will make one, because they know we’d milk up to 10 years of life out of those machines, which impacts their long term sales of new computers. I love my low power, low noise, low heat Cube; but the lack of a second drive bay in that puppy is a pain, especially since the firewire ports are fried. How about a 2 drive bay low power Mac?

2006 07 31 snolan Computers Comments (0) Permalink

A little harmless Friday vandalism

Buddha sighting church sign

Couldn’t resist… the devil (prehensile-wit) made me do it…

You can misbehave yourself by visiting churchsigngenerator. We all “aim to misbehave” don’t we?

Ian Anderson at Wolf Trap

Last night Erci took me to the Ian Anderson concert at Wolf Trap. It was amazing. Ian featured Lucia Micarelli on violin, and she got her own standing ovation with her energetic version of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” (Ian and the band and the orchestra played backup).

Thick as a Brick album cover from wikipedia

She played along with Ian through several re-arranged classical and contemporary pieces, and every Jethro Tull favorite except “Aqualung” (she took a break then). Ian’s flute playing was amazing and as animated as ever; though he overdid his signature clown act a bit much for my taste (though the crowd loved it). “Bouree” and “Thick As A Brick” keep getting better and better every time I hear them. The Orchestral Jethro Tull concert added a Sibelius arrangement and a re-timed Mozart tune, I liked both.

Lucia and the Jethro Tull members each have their own blogs, though the Tull members’ blogs are pretty corporate sanitized. It was hot and sticky, and no one seemed to mind. We briefly ran into Jason in the crowd, but could not find him again later. There was a lot of history in the T-Shirts worn by fans.

2006 07 27 snolan Fun
Music
Personal Comments (0) Permalink

230 years of Tax Dodging is the American Way

Mike Leavitt is just the latest miserable example of a tradition that dates all the way back to the American Revolution in the late 18th century and perhaps even longer. Wealthy and powerful Americans are experts at dodging their taxes, and once again the rich get richer while the rest be damned.

I want to rant about this more later, but now is not the time.

I am just pissed this is not getting more attention in the main stream media, clearly they are more interested in Lebanon (understandable), a Medieval book of psalms (personally fascinating, but newsworthy?), sex offenders, gay marriage, teen violence, and the weather! Sorry, MSM, but Leavitt needs a little more scrutiny.

2006 07 26 snolan News
Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Noche Flamenca at Wolf Trap

Last night Erci and I went to see Noche Flamenca at Wolf Trap after a quiet sushi dinner at Hama Sushi (which has become our favorite regular sushi restaurant). The saki and sushi were terrific, and helped Erci calm down from a particularly harrowing day at work (her team is immersed in a sense of impending doom lately).

Soledad Barrio, Alejandro Granados, and Juan Ogalla were each stunning as dancers, both together and as soloists. It was a sticky, humid night, but the dancers did not hesitate to give stunning performances even though they were obviously quite hot. Juan was visibly soaked by the middle of his solo dance routine, and he kept turning up the intensity anyway.

Juan Ogalla photo courtesy of nocheflamenca.com

Wolf Trap’s Filene Center has interesting acoustics, and sometimes I have not been fond of them, but for classical guitar that is lightly amplified the stadium really shines. The guitar players played fantastic and rich music and the sound came through to us in the seats perfectly. It was like being right next to the guitar while these amazing players made their instruments sing.

Interesting anecdote: it was vastly easier getting out of the parking lot after this show than it was getting out after Gypsy Kings and Chicago recently; the crowd was far more polite and turn taking was reasonable and pleasant.

Tonight I look forward to the Ian Anderson concert, also at Wolf Trap. What a season!

2006 07 26 snolan Dance
Fun
Music
Personal Comments (0) Permalink

Added Gravatar plugin

The php was a smidge tricky in my comments.php file, but I finally got gravatars working in my WordPress blog. Woo hoo! So comment already so I can see your gravatars!

2006 07 19 snolan Blogging
Fun Comments (3) Permalink

Power of Nightmares

A few days ago I posted a message about “The Power of Nightmares” documentary, and friends on Daily Kos have pointed out a better source for the video if you want to try burning your own DVD of it or just watch the mpeg files rather than the stream off google video.

The files and DVD ISO image are online at http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares and Daily Kos member “monkey knife fight” has posted essentially the same information in his diary way back on June 10th, and I missed it then.

2006 07 19 snolan Foreign Policy
Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Steam Punk and Pirates, Yar!

Yesterday Erci accompanied me over to Atelier de la Charrette to help Bob and Peter, Winterbadger, and Bryan test a game of “VSF: Actions at Parroom Station” before Bob goes to Historicon to expose more steam punk fans and miniatures gamers to the allure of the Martian landscape. We arrived a little bit late and had to run Japanese and Prussian units along with Bryan’s Americans against a rebellion in Parroom Station itself, where Peter and Winterbadger were running insurgent royals and the rebel mob of Martian city dwellers.

Losses were atrocious, but the Imperial Earthmen barely managed to regain control of the city. An early indicator of how rough the action would be was Winterbadger’s brilliantly concealed gun taking out my entire unit of Japanese regulars with a single shot in the first turn of the game!

Note to self, charging into insurgent cities in flying column formation is perhaps a little impetuous and rash… It was a lot of fun.

We learned to make a few tweaks to the game scenario I think, and it was a pretty game. We took lots of pictures so Bob could post them online at Parroom Station when he gets time.

If you like gaming with miniatures and steam punk, or just want to see more Parroom Station, try catching Bob at Historicon next weekend in Lancaster, PA, where an example game will be run. If you can’t make it to the convention, check out Parroom Station online.

All the Victorian SciFi action left us tired and hungry so we headed over to Herndon’s Worldgate for Charlie Chang’s yummy buffet & BBQ, then caught “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with B&L. It was not as good as the first movie, but still lots of fun and a nice action-packed yarn. Stay through the closing credits if you go to see it, there is a silly surprise at the end.

2006 07 17 snolan Fun
Gaming
Miniatures
Movies
Personal
Science Fiction Comments (1) Permalink

Delirium, a Cirque du Soleil live music concert

Last night sutragirl and I went up to Baltimore with Becca and Khoa to have dinner and see the Cirque du Soleil live music concert called Delirium. Traffic was bad on I-95 because of an accident at MD-198, so we diverted to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which was very busy and moving slowly. We ended up grabbing a quick bite at an Afghan Kabob place on the corner of Charles & Lombard Streets. Man it was hot and humid outside.

Baltimore Arena is now called 1st Mariner Arena (sigh), and I suspect it is normally a basketball and ice hockey arena. Not really set up for concert, but Cirque applied their usual amazing engineering team and came up with a very wide (as you face it) stage that had no depth (only about 18′ from front to back) because they had audience on both sides. All the numbers were set up to show well from both sides and they did amazing holographic tricks with thin curtains and projected images.

A singer called Nitza opened for Delirium, and performed with them later in the show. Her music and her band are stunning, especially a bouzouki player. I was not stunned by her voice, but the music is awesome. We can’t wait for her first CD.

The show was music concert with a light sampling of Cirque signature acts throughout. Particularly impressive were the strongman/acrobats (team of four), the hoola-hoop juggling act with at least 7 hoops, and at least one fantastic popper (dancer). Some of the music was familiar from other Cirque shows, other pieces seemed new to me. The thin veils of curtains were used with video projectors to create a holographic dream-like of multiple layers. Really amazing show, do see it in your town if it comes near.

capture from cirque du soleil.com

2006 07 16 snolan Fun
Music
Personal Comments (0) Permalink

The Power of Nightmares

Thanks goes to Alice Marshall for pointing out that Adam Curtis‘s fascinating BBC documentary “The Power of Nightmares” is now available on google video.

This documentary was first broadcast on BBC Two in the Fall of 2004. Later, it was adapted to a single 2.5 hour film for the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Now anyone can watch it on google video, and it is very much worth the effort.

This documentary will challenge you to think carefully about the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the parallel rise to power of the neo-conservatives in America. It brings to light the infiltration of the traditional Republican party by the neo-conservatives and their overthrow of Kissinger and other pragmatists like him.

It is three sessions at an hour each, so it takes a while to download. I opened the links in different windows, and let them download overnight and watched later.

I recommend watching with a notepad handy, this will really make you think and want to do more research for yourself.

Three one hour episodes are available:
Part 1 – Baby It’s Cold Outside
Part 2 – The Phantom Victory
Part 3 – The Shadows in the Cave

2006 07 16 snolan Foreign Policy
Movies
Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Life is a State of Mind