Month: April 2007

albums? who needs ’em?

Two guys who opened a record store in 1993 (closed in 2005) offer these comments on the RIAA cartel:

DESPITE the major record labels’ best efforts to
kill it, the single, according to recent reports, is back. Sort of.
You’ll still have a hard time finding vinyl 45s or their
modern counterpart, CD singles, in record stores. For that matter,
you’ll have a tough time finding record stores.
Today’s single is an individual track downloaded online from
legal sites like iTunes or eMusic, or the multiple illegal sites
that cater to less scrupulous music lovers. The album, or
collection of songs — the de facto way to buy pop music for
the last 40 years — is suddenly looking old-fashioned. And
the record store itself is going the way of the
shoehorn.

The money quote:

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead
they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster.
Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just
record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now
belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite
figured out how to make it pay.

And where do you buy singles (if you buy them at all)? iTunes,
eMusic, etc. I leave you with these words from Dick Dale:

why are manufacturers so cheap?

Turns out I need to fix up a home-made Garmin eTrex data cable since the Garmin eTrex that arrived today as an early birthday present doesn’t come with any way to connect it to a computer.

Having only a GPS receiver makes not much sense. One should be able to prepare waypoints and routes at one’s own computer to transfer those to the Garmin eTrex. For this you need a data cable which costs up to 50$. That’s quite much for a simple serial cable without any electronics. Due to that I made my own cable.

And make it, he does, as do some other brave souls. I kid: it’s three wires, but still some folks are going to be bilked out of some change for this.

I have had the little device on today while out and about and it’s quite interesting and informative. Turns out I live 238 feet above sea level, or thereabouts. Once I get this cable made, I plan to log a week or so of driving and errand-running to look for optimizations and savings. US$40+ fillups are getting old.

anyone tried this?

Maps Help:

What is the click to call feature on Google Maps?

We’re testing a new feature, click to call, on Google Maps. Click to call gives you a fast and easy way to speak directly with businesses found on our maps.

I noticed this tonight when I was setting up an appointment on my Google Calendar (I feel like a wholly-owned subsidiary of GOOG some days). Apparently, you can “click to call” and Google will take your phone number and initiate a call from the number you want to be connected to.

Do we even need phone numbers anymore? Is computational power and networking so cheap we need remember nothing?

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.”

Could Dr Johnson have anticipated the internets and search engines?

You’d think the rebs would want to forget April

I never learned about when the South turned its guns on women trying to feed their children:



Racist yokels across the state of Georgia are observing “Confederate Heritage Month.” It also happens to be Emotional Overeating Awareness Month and Fresh Florida Tomato Month, but I digress.

In recognition of this asinine occasion, we’ll be cooperating with the chaps at Alterdestiny throughout the month to remind everyone of what “confederate heritage” actually entails.

Two years to the day after turning the state’s guns against his own citizens, Jefferson Davis fled the city of Richmond on a late-night train as the Civil War neared its conclusion.

The war started and ended in that month, after all. I expect I’ll learn a lot I never learned in the Florida school system.