momusradar

From the AP article covering the newly built USS New York now underway and heading to New York City:

Brian Corcoran, a mechanical contractor, brought his four children, who range in age from 12 to 5. He figured they might be a bit late for school but was OK with that, given the importance of the occasion.

“Hopefully, it’s going overseas to do damage to them like it did to us,” he said.

Brian is a belligerent idiot.

Giles Turnbull pokes holes in the genius of iTunes Genius:

Using “Fingertips” as my source results in a mix full of more They Might Be Giants songs. Some R.E.M. Some B-52s. Pixies. Devo. They Might Be Giants. Jonathan Coulton. Elvis Costello. So dull.

I am triumphant, because my point is proven. Genius isn’t a genius at all, merely a regurgitator of other people’s opinions. And too many people who listen to They Might Be Giants also listen to that other lot.

That’s no mix. A mix considers the songs themselves, not just the genre. It listens to the possible combinations, it has moments of drama and moments of peace, and it has two very precise end points. The end of side one, and the end of side two. iTunes Genius provides none of these.

Spot on.

As reported by the N.Y. Times:

In a mainly party line vote of 240 to 179, the House held that by shouting “You lie” during the president’s speech Mr. Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, committed a “breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House.”

Yet they can’t get their shit together to hammer out proper healthcare reform.

Apple Inc.’s latest iPod nano has the capability to record H.264 VGA video, which is ideal for the YouTube & video on Flickr crowds. Cisco Systems, your Flip is on notice.

It appears the recent rumors proceeding today’s Rock & Roll event didn’t see this coming. Such speculation reminds me of the only time I entertained the idea of making an Apple event prediction. In February of 2006, I wrote:

But if it does turns out to be a revamped iPod then I can only hope that it’s a real Photo iPod. Think of it: iPod with a built in iSight. They’ve already made the iSight ridiculously small, the iPod can already display images, and the scroll wheel has been dying to be used for something other than simply sifting through menus. By adding iSight to the iPod you can not only carry a ton of pictures with it, you would be able to take them too. It’s a feature that most users would actually use, definitely more useful than watching a movie on a two inch screen.

At the time YouTube was only a year old & video sharing was something with which I was not interested. In hindsight, it was not such a bad forecast.

A row of such little consequence, it gets covered at Time:

They went cheap, in other words,” counters Bucharest designer Iancu Barbarasa, who blogged about the font change on his website. If he sounds somewhat bitter, there’s a reason. With its attention to the curve of even a $9 lampshade, Ikea has become renowned for its understanding of good design. “Designers have always thought of Ikea as one of their own,” Barbarasa notes. “So now, in a way, the design community feels betrayed.”

I never thought of Ikea as some sort of bastion of high design. Rather, much like Verdana, Ikea and its offerings are safe and chintzy.

Destino is a short animated film released by Disney Studios in 2003 that started out as a collaboration between Walt Disney & Salvador Dali in 1946.

John Canemaker notes, in his article titled When Dali Met Disney, that Dali worked at the animation studio for a few months in 1946 before the project was shelved. By that time only a brief animation test of two tortoise shells draped in cloth depicting facial apparitions was made.

When Roy E. Disney (Walt’s nephew) sought to use the test in the feature film, Fantasia 2000, the Disney Legal Department pointed out:

Dali’s contract stipulated that his original artwork for Destino would not become Disney property until after the movie was made.

This revelation was key to resuming production & ultimately the reconstruction of Destino was completed.

The original animation test (starting at the 5:20 mark of the linked video) is the most impressive part—at least to me that is. There is a clear difference with it as compared to the rest of the short which lacks its vibrant feel & appearance.

Notwithstanding, it is an interesting piece of work from Disney Studios.

More perplexing than the theory behind the knife are the slew of comments about said knife. Such as:

Tell me, please… what will you do when a criminal breaks into your house and points an illegal gun at your child’s head?—Carrie, Virginia, USA

Really? Are there hordes of armed criminals entering homes in Virginia & taking children hostage of which I am unaware? Assuming she has planned for such an event, what exactly would Carrie do in that situation?

The real problem is the cost of living is so high that people have to work so much they don’t have time to raise their children, who grow up without values and commit crimes.
Fix the real problem not the symptoms.—Mahhn, Nonevyourbiznes, usa

One could write a sociology thesis based on this comment.

The new Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 7970 gear-shifter sounds great for real racing cyclists. I can’t help but be concerned, though, that it will be the new rage with the roadie posers that litter the roads here in Northern New Jersey.

The first being, Jerry Seinfeld is not funny. Now that I think about it, he was never funny.

The second is that Microsoft has nothing to sell. Literally. It’s a commercial about nothing. Oh, how original.

Having been able to sleep on it—the idea, not the actual device—I realized that the MacBook Air is the antithesis of Apple Inc’s three big products: iMac, iPhone & iPod touch. And that’s what makes it a fine product.

Where the aim of the “i” products is to have all the desired features wrapped tightly into a small convenient package, the MacBook Air does the exact opposite by shedding nearly everything and persuading you to access whatever features you need wirelessly. It seems users have been keen on sharing just about everything else, now it’s time for them to share hardware.

There are two things that I don’t care about with the MacBook Air. The first is its price; compared to the base-model MacBook, you’ll pay more to get less on many levels. Second, and perhaps most important, there is the problem with it not having a user replaceable battery. Like it did with its original iPod, it appears Apple would prefer that you trash the Air when the battery dies and simply buy another. While it makes financial sense for them, it makes very little sense for the consumer. Especially at that price point.

addendum May 1, 2009

I no longer have an issue with the batteries in any of Apple’s products, let alone the MB Air. They can be replaced by the user if they are so inclined to do so & they have the option to pay Apple to change it for them as well. There are really no reasons for the devices to be discarded at all.