Feaverish

Well I’ve officially died and gone to nerd heaven. I found this (via Engadget via Hack-a-Day) today and tried it out, and it’s awesome. As I understand things, it installs Linux as a separate bootable partition on your 1st, 2nd or 3rd Generation iPod. “Why would I want to do such a thing,” you ask? I’ve got three words for you question-man: games, recording, and (wait for it) calculator.

What’s cool is you don’t lose any of the Apple-y goodness of your iPod. In fact, you’ll never even know the Linux is there unless you hold the “Rewind” button after resetting. If you do, it boots up into Linux (complete with iPod-using penguin) and gives you a bunch of options that aren’t available from Apple, for example:

Games: Asteroids, Tetris (yes! Tetris!), Pong (not Breakout), and (ooh baby) Minesweeper. That is not a typo. I said Minesweeper. As in one of the greatest games of all time Minesweeper.

Recording: Why drop $35 on a voice recorder that only records at 8khz (if khz is what I mean) when you can record at high-quality 96khz for free? And you can record using an external mic, the line-in, or even your headphones!

Calculator: uh, this one is pretty self-explanatory. Still, I was able to leave an exactly 9.5% tip for lunch today, which I never would have been able to figure out on my own, so that’s something.

Also, I had some initial problems getting the installer to work right, but Jeffrey Nelson, one of (the?) the developers answered my email in like 30 seconds and got me all straightened out. Capital. Simply capital.

If you’re in the mood for a laugh, head on over to Mister Pants, who’s having his year-end link clearance. Today it’s all hilarious Christian propaganda. The Cross in Space alone is worth the price of admission.

Breaking News: Adfreak has a link to DIY Team Zissou Adidas Shoes. My weekend just got exponentially more exciting.

I know I already wrote about Blueberry Boat a few days ago in my “Best Of” list, but Fluxblog today linked to a site with comprehensive reviews of each of the songs, as well as a chronological re-ordering of the tracklist. Clap Clap Blog has taken the time to rearrange the album’s songs according to the era of their narratives, starting in the 16th Century and moving to the present day. And you can download all the songs right from the site.

There’s also a great review and analysis of each of the songs — most recently Mason City, which I used to think was completely indecipherable. For all you ignorant bitches haters out there who think the lyrics are gibberish and the music uninspired and simple, read the musical analysis at Clap Clap before you tell me again how great the new U2 album is.

And speaking of trite, hackneyed entertainment, pop-culture gossip site Defamer has a couple of links to hilariously scathing movie reviews, past and present. Anthony Lane reviews the new Phantom of the Opera in the latest New Yorker, and the NY Press eviscerates that poor movie Sphere.

And now in unrelated news… Watching TV the other day, L and I landed on this infomercial for the Little Giant Ladder System. It was one of those typical infomercials where an overly excited inventor has to work really hard to get the product to do what it’s supposed to do, and it’s super-obvious that any non-inventor would never be able to get the product to work and it would spend the rest of its days in the garage next to the Chia Pets and self-cleaning golf clubs. Anyway, my exciting point is that this little maintenance van pulled up outside my window at work just now and what should it have strapped to its roof but a Little Giant Ladder System ladder? Nothing. Nothing but a Little Giant Ladder System ladder. And another ladder of indeterminate make and model. And also a big PVC pipe with, like, duct tape on the ends.

Man, I said this was exciting.

L and I saw Wes Anderson’s new film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou yesterday, and it was great. After reading a few lukewarm reviews I was ready to be disappointed, but L and I both thought the movie was funny and touching.

As in The Royal Tenenbaums, there are some directorial choices made in Life Aquatic that would be considered bad moviemaking in any other film, but in a Wes Anderson film they just have to be accepted as the realities of his universe. All the usual Anderson themes are there: the sympathetic dreamer, the fucked–up father figure, two men fighting over one woman, etc. (L pointed these out to my ignorant ass, by the way).

In case you’ve been living in the Batcave for the last year (and I want to know about it if you have), Anderson co–wrote the movie with Noah Baumbach. Noah wrote and directed one of my favorite movies ever, Kicking and Screaming, as well as my favorite Shouts & Murmurs, The Zagat History of My Last Relationship.

L and I saw Rushmore on what amounted to our first date. When I asked her out I wasn’t even thinking about the whole older–woman / younger–man theme, but there must have been some serious subliminal action going on. Also, like Olivia Williams, L is smokin’–hot. And like Jason Schwartzman, I am not. But Jason and I do both have bad hair.

Anyway, there’s a pretty good interview with Noah Baumbach at Filter’s website (via Kottke). (A lot of my links are “via Kottke,” by the way. And pretty much all my links are via someone besides me. I assume everybody’s links are from someone else, right? I mean, it’s not like there’s some eight–armed Ganesha–Hipster out there discovering all this stuff, right? [And before you give me any crap about Ganesha only having four or six arms, the Agamic scriptures recognize 32 forms of Lord Ganesha, and some of them have eight arms.(via The Hindu Encyclopedia)])

And about this website, I’ve started ironing out the bugs. The “book” image should stretch now if the post is really long, and the words shouldn’t go off the left side of the screen anymore. That “should” in the above sentence assumes you’re not using Internet Explorer. Seriously, folks, it’s time to switch to something a little less craptacular. If you’re not switching because you don’t want to lose all your precious My Little Pony bookmarks or whatever, don’t worry about it. You can import bookmarks from IE if you need to. Or you can switch to an online bookmark manager like del.icio.us.

Obviously I have a long way to go—I can’t stand that crappy default sidebar on the right, plus the links don’t look good, plus, like, there’s no margins—but I’m making progress.

Well everybody, it’s that time of year again. Time to reflect on all the happenings, good and bad, that…uh…happened over the course of god this is boring. Okay, here goes:

Aught four began much as aught three ended. That is to say, uneventfully. I was unemployed, and spent my days watching foreign movies borrowed from the library. L was teaching, S was studying. We were poor, but happy.

With Spring came change. I got a job. Suddenly, we weren’t so poor—or so happy. My new job fit me like a sock. It was the kind of place where my blistring bilstering much intelligence and can-do attitude were nurtured and appreciated. Also, it was near a park. And everyone used Macs. These are now must-haves for me as far as employment goes.

Summer brought locusts. S went to CA to be with BD. L found us a house—in which to live. It was hot. Thanks to limited foresight, we were again poor. But happy. But mostly poor. And also sweaty. We rediscovered the joy of tending a garden. Of burying naked hands in the peaty, fecund earth. Of washing unspeakably filthy hands and calling a gardener.

Then, without warning, Summer was over. Or technically, Summer was ongoing but school was starting anyway—ask a fucking meteorologist!—it’s not right! It’s just like how fucking 12 AM comes right after 11 PM —who the fuck figured that out? “Let’s start counting at 12, then go back to 1 and work our way up to 11!” Arggghhhh.

Where was I oh yeah school. School started and the two academics in the family left their boorish lover/father figure for the world of books and hazing paddles. That was Fall I guess. Or “Autumn.” I don’t really know. It all went by kinda fast.

And now here we are, about to lower the curtain on another year. Oh crap! I forgot to talk about the election. Yeah, the election sucked. Yeah, despite my best efforts I totally got myself convinced the Democrats would win. Yeah, Wonkette totally suckered me on election night. But it’s over, and our little family is still together.

Oh, and we went to Lake Michigan for a week in the summer for L’s sister’s wedding, which was oodles of noodles of fun. And we went to Seattle to see L’s brother & co. and also some van Goghs. And L’s sister & new husband came out to see us for Thanksgiving, and it was literally the first time in years we’d had houseguests but it was really fun and we all stayed up really late playing Spades, at which I suck. I started a website, this one, and got my first pro bono web design job. And if you knew my friend P you’d realize that “pro bono” is really a pun, or play on words.

All in all it was a pretty good year. Merry Insert Holiday Here Everybody!

Everyone seems to be doing it, so I figured I’d throw my hat into the cool kids’ ring and present my top albums of 2004. Maybe I’ll follow up with a movies “best of” later, but for now you’ll just have to wallow in a state of anticipatory delight.

I present to you the Very Very Best Albums of 2004

1) Blueberry Boat — The Fiery Furnaces

An easy number one. I’ve liked the Furnaces since their first album, Gallowsbird’s Bark, but Blueberry Boat “blue” me away oh ho ha. If you read Pitchfork, you probably already know about the 10–minute epics and songs–within–songs, but this album is much more than a novelty.

It takes a minute for you to catch on to exactly what’s happening in each song, and just when you finally wrap your head around a beat or melody or theme they start over from scratch with an entirely new beat/melody/theme. About halfway through the album, though, you start to hear snippets of earlier riffs or maybe an earlier melody played backwards or something, and you realize you’re listening to something that’s complex and deliberate and most of all something that works. And by the end your brain is all melted and it sploshes when you shake your head “no” as in “no please don’t stop a rockin’.”

The Rest

2) SMiLE — Brian Wilson
3) Oh Honey, We’re Ridiculous — Pas/Cal
4) Bows + Arrows — The Walkmen
5) Franz Ferdinand — Franz Ferdinand
6) Antics — Interpol
7) Satanic Panic in the Attic — Of Montreal
8) The Futureheads — The Futureheads
9) Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes — TV on the Radio
10) The Trial of the Century — The French Kicks

Honorable Mention: Funeral — The Arcade Fire, A Ghost is Born — Wilco, Two Way Monologue — Sondre Lerche, Every Night — Saturday Looks Good To Me, Out of the Shadow — Rogue Wave, I — The Magnetic Fields, The Power Out — Electrelane, Underachievers Please Try Harder — Camera Obscura, Free the Bees — The Bees, Our Endless Numbered Days — Iron & Wine, Seven Swans — Sufjan Stevens

And those don’t include bands I started listening to this year, even though their albums came out earlier. Like the Shins, Beulah, the Fruit Bats, the Long Winters, and dozens of others I’d now put among my favorite bands.

Oh, and a note about the site. Comments are off, but my email address is in the sidebar over there on the right. Feel free to “drop me a line,” as they say. If it’s interesting or thoughtful, I might include it in a post. Also, yes, the site still isn’t flexible. If the words go off the left of your screen, by all means please make your browser window bigger. If something looks screwed up, it’s probably 70% my fault and 30% your browser’s. I’m working on changes, but in the meantime get a better browser.

L and I decided to do Christmas a little…how you say…differently this year. For starters, we’ll be buying gifts for ourselves, not for each other. Also, we’ll be walking around backwards for the entire day.

We realized over a martini luncheon the other day that, if left to tradition, we’d just spend a ton of money on stuff neither of us really wanted, or stuff that was the wrong size, or the wrong color, or the wrong breed, etc. Plus we’d have to act all grateful about it. Add to that the guilt of having to act grateful for something you’re not grateful for and you’ve got a pretty dirty diaper.

I’m gonna get myself a new bike. My current bike is old. Really old. Penny–farthing old. It’s also way too small for my Herculean Homer–Simpson physique, as I found out when I tried the following test I found on one of the internets:

When you straddle your bike, your genitals may rest on the top tube, but your pubic bone will easily clear it—as you’ll notice if you grab a handful of genitals and pull up.

My new bike will be a shiny, sleek — let’s just say seal–like — marvel of modern–yet–at–the–same–time–centuries–old engineering. Furthermore, it will have only one speed. You heard me right. One.

I’ve been reading about single–speed road bikes, and it seems to be the right choice for a daily commuter (that’s me) who doesn’t have too many steep hills (uh, that’s only sort of me) and who doesn’t want to worry about maintenance (that’s definitely me). What really pushed me over the single–speed cliff, though, was a compulsive desire to understand this:

Single speed cyclecross is a beautiful thing, as very little can go wrong. A good chainline makes chainsuck irrelevant and you never never ever stack because you missed a shift going into a barrier and forgot to get off your bike. With a 135 spaced rear hub built without dish, the probability of tacoing your wheel is extremely low.

I’ve pretty much worn out all the slang I know, and it sounds like I’ll get a whole new vocabulary with my new single–speed. Anyway, here’s what I’m going for, roughly. If you see a bike like this for sale and/or not locked up, let me know.