Starting to ramp up for licensing photocore and I decided it was time for (another) company to handle all that business stuff. And thus critical axiom was born… And yes, my primary reason for saying something here is to get some links going on to get the site indexed :-)
Feb
5
2007
Logitech Revolution-ary
The Logitech Revolution MX mouse is worth every single one of the rather large number of pennies it costs. I’ve had it for a week now and I liked it initally, but today I upgraded to SetPoint 3.3 (the config software) and now i’m totally hooked. The mouse has two scroll wheels and three buttons. The normal scroll wheel up top scrolls vertically, leans left and right and clicks. Then it has a thumb wheel that scrolls horizontally and clicks. It also has the usual Forward-Backward browser buttons.
The way I set it up, the top wheel scrolls documents like any normal mouse and the left-right clicks are set to do Prev-Next in my iTunes playlist. The thumb wheel is set to do volume up-down and click to mute. Then it still has the browser back button, a middle click for tabbed browsing and an interesting Search button where you can highlight text and press it, then it opens a google search on that phrase. Cool. Very cool.
Jan
31
2007
Smooooke. (not now Larry)
I’ve seen some cool smoke and fire photography before, but these really are impressive even knowing the color is all photoshop. Unlike some, I don’t take issue with people using photoshop for artsy purposes as long as they’re not deceptive about it. In related photos: Ariel also has done some cool stuff with matches in the past.
Jan
31
2007
Build your own modded System.Web.Extensions.dll
Earlier today Microsoft released the source code to the AJAX 1.0 release System.Web.Extensions library. I was in the apparently unique position of needing to modify parts of the code for a special case application, so I downloaded the source right away ready to modify, compile and deploy.
I guess I was pretty naive to think that it would be that easy. The distribution doesn’t include some pretty important parts. A .csproj file for one. The entire Resources class for another.
So I had to work my way through the process of getting a compile-able version of the library ready to replace the official System.Web.Extensions binary in my project. The server code Reference License prevents me from simply providing the project to you, but here are the high points if you need to do the same.
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Dec
28
2006
Awesome First Lines
I was sitting here working, listening to 3 Inches of Blood and decided to start this list of some of the coolest first lines/phrases in music. I wish there was a better way to present these but I don’t think there is. They’re in no particular order, but tend to be loosely grouped by artist.
Bolded lines are the ones where I _really_ like the song itself or the line.
How many do you know? Did I miss any wicked awesome songs?
In the year four thousand fifty five, Wykydtron came to life
Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world, She took the midnight train goin anywhere
Mama take this badge from me, I can’t use it anymore
Here in your bedroom, I can turn my head off
Im broke but Im happy, Im poor but Im kind
I want you to know that Im happy for you, I wish nothing but the best for you both
On the floor of Tokyo, Or down in London town to go, go
Hey little sister what have you done, Hey little sister who’s the only one
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Dec
26
2006
Sirens Sister
Listen
I’m a big Vendetta Red fan and was bummed that they broke up right after releasing the amazing Sisters of the Red Death album. Well, the good news is that some of them got back together as Sirens Sister and now they have their first album out called Echos from the Ocean Floor. Buy it now.
Dec
26
2006
Top 5 Covers
The art of covering a song is complex. Just singing the same song is boring, you have to make it yours. Here are some of my favorite covers, (parentheticals show the original artist).
These five covers I like better than the version from the original artist.
Cake – I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor)
The original version of this song is just so… boring. Cake’s rendition is catchy, and though it is pretty much word-for-word the same, changing one little word in there totally gives this cover so much more emotion than Gloria Gaynor did. If I’m in this situation, I’m not gonna change the “stupid lock”, I’m gonna change the “Fucking lock” (with a capital F).
Marilyn Manson – Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
When I first heard this cover, coupled with the music video, I was totally sold on it. I’m not a huge Marilyn Manson fan – I like Sweet Dreams, The Beautiful People, and Disposable Teens – but this cover really makes the song so much more _real_. In the same way that Cake sells I Will Survive, I really believe that Marilyn Manson knows all about Tainted Love.
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Dec
26
2006
Why I Buy Music – Part One
Sometime in 2003 I changed. Previously I was just like all of my Georgia Tech classmates and I would use a variety of post-Napster software tools to procure any music that I wanted (and plenty that I didn’t really want, but it was free, so why not download it??). At that time, how many gigs of music you had was really more important than how many songs and it was definitely more important than whether the music was any good or not.
Sure, I owned some actual CDs but those were from my pre-Internet2-connection days at Tech. Looking back, I didn’t think anybody saw downloading music as “illegal”. The excuses for downloading music instead of buying it – “I don’t want all the whole album, just one track”, “$16 CDs are way overpriced and I’m not going to pay that much” – were more like explanations since there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Certainly it wasn’t like pirating software – that was bad and even though everyone did it, pirating a $600 copy of Photoshop just felt different than downloading a song.
So what changed? I discovered the value of Intellectual Property and I realized why copyright law was kind of a big deal… thanks to photography.
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Dec
26
2006
Smells like Ukulele Spirit
I’ve heard a bunch of covers in my time, some of which were really good (Gary Jules’ cover of Mad World by Tears for Fears comes to mind). This cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit sort of defies classification… but I liked it. If only for the ridiculousness of the whole thing.