The more I checkout “Friendster,”:http://www.friendster.com/ the more I realize that I know a hell of a lot of people. Must of them, however, would really fall into the category of acquaintances, so I don’t want to add them as friends. Hell, some of them I don’t want to even know I’m alive.
Maybe they should start an _Acquaintancester._
Does the “Electoral College”:http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecmenu2.htm make any sense to anybody?
I have been using iPhoto on my Mac to organize and store my photographs. It is extremely simple and intuitive as far as interfaces go and allows me to see my photographs by icon to quickly find, modify, and export them.
However, being the digital photographer I am I have amassed a collection of 2,550 photographs and now iPhoto is slow, cumbersome, and takes longer than Photoshop to open. Other people have also reported similar problems regarding iPhoto, siting their XML back end is not efficient enough to organize collections of more than 1,000 images.
Apple have really got to fix this major quirk, especially if they are including it with iLife and charging $50.
UPDATE
It seems that this problem does have a fix. You can find it here “MacDev Center”:http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/06/17/iphoto2.html
Last night at the Bowery Ballroom, I saw an amazing little electronic band from Iceland called Múm, not to be confused with Austrian drum ‘n bass band Mum, which is completely unlike their Icelandic counterparts. They were absolutely mesmerizing. I haven’t ever heard anything like it before.
The best way to try and give you a sense of their music is to say that listening to Múm is to your ears, what watching Amélie is to the eyes. It is haunting without being depressing, grandiose without being inaccessible, gorgeous without being overly beautiful. Closing your eyes you could easily imagine yourself on another planet. Sweeping layers of sound that lie on top of each other, beneath electronic clicks of a synthesizer. It’s like hearing a video game from your youth played by an orchestra.
(Hey that’s a great idea in and of itself!)
From listening to their two albums [Yesterday Was Dramatic — Today Is OK and Finally We Are No One] you might miss the fact that Múm actually play most of their music with conventional very low tech instruments. Until I saw the lead singer pull her accordion on for a song, I hadn’t realized that the sounds I had been hearing on the album were in fact an accordion; it was the same for the viola, xylophone, keyboard, guitar, bass guitar, trumpet, drums, and mouth harp. The only thing I was expecting, and did see, was a Powerbook pleasantly whirring away making the distinctive clicks, tocks, beeps, dots, and other synthetic sounds to accompany the live band.
It was a wonderful show that captured every aspect of the album, except that I found the live show to be even warmer and more human than their album. It was a terrific experience to see the stage come alive with performers who were switching instruments every song to achieve the full effect of each sound.
If you see Múm coming to a venue near you, I urge you to see them. It will definitely be an experience you will remember fondly.
Official Múm Website
Múm Web (has some great audio)
I am busily trying to create a new look for Fun Time Tree House’s second incantation Up The Tree, but time is not on my side at the moment. You might have noticed the new and highly unpolished photo log that has just been added to the right menu. It has been updated to be completely update and searchable in the future.
Other things in the works:
* A full redesign of the photo log section with thumbnail navigation
* A calendar with thumbnails of all photographs for a given month displayed by date.
* An updated right column with a current links section that rotates randomly.
* An all new and improved reading/enjoying section that is up-datable and not a pain in the ass as it currently is.
* “MovableType”:http://www.movabletype.org/ Tutorials on how each new feature was created with step-by-step explanations.
So, please don’t be alarmed when the next time you visit there is a fantastically different beast looking you in the face… it just might take a while is all.