I’ve been busy, as you can probably tell by the dearth of updates this month, but I’ve also been playing more guitar. (Hey, I’m a music major — it’s homework. If only I could justify blogging as “English homework.”) I tabbed out Somebody More Like You by Nickel Creek. Check it out at the tab page.
I was a Sega guy for most of my video game life — I remember tooling around with a Master System when I couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. So once I developed an interest in music, I naturally tried to pick out Sonic the Hedgehog songs. I first learned about harmonic minor while trying to sequence a MIDI for Marble Zone, and discovered my favorite modal interchange chord — iv in a major key — in Star Light Zone.
So those Mario covers are all well and good, but I’m glad to see the little blue guy get some attention too. (via)
Camino, the Mozilla browser made for Mac, just hit version 1.0, so I figured I’d give it a try. Recently Firefox has been freezing, stalling, and generally feeling like the kind of bloated program I wanted to avoid by switching to Apple.
Still, there were features that I was worried I’d miss. Firefox has great integration with Quicksilver. I use the “quick search” all the time, so that I can type “g camino” into the address bar and search for Camino instantly. And there are lots of Firefox plugins for extra goodies.
I made the switch anyway because Camino is so goddamn fast. It opens fast, it renders pages fast, and it runs fast. Then little by little I began to realize that I wasn’t making too many sacrifices. Camino has the exact same QS integration as Firefox — it’s just a different plugin. It also supports address bar quick searches (it’s not a documented feature, and I can’t imagine why not, but it’s there). I do miss the extensibility, but the essential extras like advanced ad blocking are available through the custom preference pane CamiTools.
If you’re not completely satisfied with Firefox or Safari, give Camino a shot. It’s not just about the Aqua look and feel — it’s a great piece of software.
The Hall of Best Knowledge is a weekly comic-cum-typography-experiment. It’s hand-drawn and immaculately detailed. Go look at it; you will be impressed. (via)
Somehow, I got my picture taken with Mayor Bloomberg on New Year’s in Times Square. A mysterious assistant tapped me on the shoulder, pulled Matt, Sherrie, Halley and I into a semicircle around the mayor, and snapped a photo. She left her business card, along with instructions to call her later for a copy of the photo.
Well, here it is.
I particularly enjoy the first comment on this picture’s Flickr page.
Where the hell have I been? I dunno. I’m still kicking, though.
I picked up another webcomic from my girlfriend, Questionable Content. The humor is somewhere between Ryan North and Jerry Holkins, mixed with pop culture references, teenage soap opera melodrama, and blathering about indie or emo or something. It’s oddly transfixing. Even though I don’t get half of the music references.
Also, if you’re interested, I’m ripping Ctrl+Alt+Del off of my daily webcomics list — the only thing I’ve enjoyed about that one recently are the timely updates. VG Cats hasn’t been too good, either. That just leaves Penny Arcade (and arguably PvP) of the gaming-related strips. Viva la diversification!
“I don’t know about you, but I sleep better at night knowing that Bush is in the Oval Office. I mean, do we really want this guy roaming the streets?”