So, Apple announced a music service. I'm impressed. I think they balanced the rights of the consumers quite well with the desires the record companies. The iTunes interface is simple, easy and all around cool. I can't wait to try this out, except there is one problem - the iTunes Music Store is only available in the U.S. I was very excited about this whole thing until I read that. I have read other articles however, that say that Apple is working on bringing it to international users and it is simply a matter of legal issues, rather than them simply not caring. I can't wait. Apple's hit something here.

I'm excited about the new iTunes (even without the Music Store) and iPods. Library sharing in iTunes 4 is a very very cool feature and it is so beautifully seamless. I've noticed that some songs sound much better in this version of iTunes. In iTunes 3 it seemed that on some tracks the vocals were very quiet, despite relentless adjustment of the equalizer.

I think I'm going to buy an iPod. The new ones look really sexy and I kind of like the new button layout. I was originally thinking about getting the 10GB 'pod, but when I priced it on the Apple store with the case, iPod dock and remote it ended up being more expensive than the 15GB model with all those things bundled.

Well, thats all for me for now. It's time to do more homework.

This is a poem I wrote for English class. I think it's good enough to share. It is called Away On The Lake.

Sitting in the busy city lights alone,
When life is dragging and limping along,
I hear nothing but melancholy chords.
I dream about the last time and I think,
If only I could simply get away,
Away into the vastness of the wild,
the air, the space, the water open now.
I dearly wish I could do that today,
Today I would get up and fly away,
But wishing cannot take me from this life.
You get enveloped in the busy life,
Too much happens to get away from it.
Often I think of letting go today,
Step, jump away to save my sanity.
Luckily, there are times to get away.
The serene pristine scene of nature calms
the body and the soul. Paddling on the
Water gives you control over your life,
And leads you through peaceful passes unknown.
The smooth surface of the mirror-lake breaks,
As you glide on with ease, like a cloud blown
Ever so softly on the chill night breeze.
To paddle on a lake at sunset is
Like traveling to meet a place of peace
So deep. A sleep of beauty is unleashed
To set upon your mind like a mist of
Heaven on earth. It helps you escape from
Life, promises, and work. After a day's
Paddle you rest by the fireside at camp.
Sparks twist and turn with great fury in the air,
dancing and painting in the dark night sky.
The art of nature is now close at hand.
The waves lap the shore and the fire crackles.
This is the time for thought and peace. Yet not
Forever will I stay, paddling the day
And thinking away. Since Forever is
Quite a long time for nothing, yet something.
In time, I return to life, often too
soon, or too late for my contrary taste.
Escape is beautiful, calm and new, but
One needs something to escape from, or to.

Today, Six Apart, the creators of Movable Type announced a hosting service named TypePad. It will use MT as it's weblogging software. This really sounds great. Blogger was essentially the only choice for those without a server who wanted to set up a weblog up until this point. Now Blogger has competition from Movable Type, which is, in my opinion, a much more advanced piece of software. Then again, Blogger now has google's finances behind it and as Brent warns, hosting can be difficult and can cause problems for a company.

Despite that, I'm very interested in TypePad and optimistic for its future development.

Siliconvalley.com has a nice article about OS X's NeXT roots.

"Stone sees the modern Mac architecture and programming toolkits enabling a "samurai" model of software development. That is, the tools and platform make it possible for a significant number of individual programmers or small teams, not just corporate behemoths, to create seriously innovative applications."

Recently Dave Winer has been made some comments about CSS and his apparent dislike for it. He claims that it is broken and he has to support IE. Last time I checked, CSS works quite well in IE and it doesn't take that much work to figure it out. He's started complaining that designers are trying to get him to make a political statement by using CSS. Personally, I think he's already making a statement for Microsoft. He claims to be a XML guru, but he doesn't even understand the concept of seperating style from content. He's taken some heat from people around the web about these comments. some are more heated than others.

Mark Pilgrim brings up some good points in the form of a satire of Dave's original post. If someone said that RSS validation is a stupid idea and we should use any XML we wantk, Dave would likely disagree.

Slava from Unsanity comments on Apple's iApps and their lack of speed and functionality. He makes a very good point about how we are paying for these things in the cost of the OS. Although even if the iApps weren't included with OS upgrades, I don't think Apple would lessen the price.

It is understandable that carrying an advanced featureset and lots of media manipulations can't be all that speedy, but we're talking about the interface responsiveness here. I am, trying to assemble my first home-made movie in iMovie, using a semi-modern Mac (dual-Ghz), don't like clicking into a movie fragment and waiting for half a second for the system to understand I clicked in and update the UI. I don't like browsing through the iPhoto library with an ocassional coffee breaks every time i click on an up arrow because my library contains about 600 photos.

The Register has posted a strange but funny story about how CNN accidently posted obituaries on it's website of world leaders and figures who are not yet dead including Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, The Pope, Nelson Mandela, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

Daring Fireball has a great article on competition in the browser market and how it is getting much better. This is especially true on the Mac platform where Camino, Safari and Mozilla are all very competent browsers. He mentions that the OmniGroup is going to base Omniweb 4.5 off Webcore (the Safari rendering engine).

Well, I haven't posted in quite some time, so I figured that I'd post the stereotypical "I'm busy" post. And yes indeed, I am busy. Last week I was out almost every night doing something and this past weekend I was busy each day as well. Now I'm heading into a lighter patch of life and Easter long weekend is coming up.

On another note, it was/is beautiful out today. Highs of about 27C which is insanely high for this time of year. Just last week we had snow on the ground! It's suppose to cool down later on this week, but having this glimpse of summer sure was refreshing.

Supposedly I'm the number one source for leaked safari. I would think that a mac rumor site or another apple site might get the number one spot in Google, but for some reason, google likes me.

Another interesting one is Saddam body double pictures.

And my favorite referal of the day is names of arrogant people. Well I might have had some names throughout my posts, but I can't say I have the master list of arrogant people in the world. I'm sure I could think of a lot though :).

Builds of Minotaur, the new Mozilla mail client, have been released for OS X and Linux. I downloaded the windows build a few days ago. It seems pretty nice, but the OS X build is a little rough around the edges.

Tonight I present to you a rambling political parody that isn't really any good - George Bush and the Search for the Holy Sand! This is a parody of the Knights of Ni in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you don't know this movie and read this you'll think I'm crazy.

* * *

Heard in the background - Terrorism! Terror! Terrorist!

Saddam: Who are you?

Bush: We are the Americans who say..... Terrorist!

Background Americans: Terrorist!

Saddam: No! Not the Americans who say Terrorist!

Bush: The same.....!

Saddam's body double: Who are they?

Bush: We are the keepers of the secret words - Terrorist, Misunderestimate and "make no mistake".

Saddam: Those who hear them seldom live to tell the tale!

Bush: The Americans who say Terrorist! demand..... a sacrifice!

Saddam: Americans of Terrorism, we are but simple Iraqis who seek the oil beneath this sand.

Bush and his cohorts: Terrorist, Terrorist!

Iraqi Regime: Ow! Ow! Ow!

Bush: We will say Terrorist to you again.... if you do not appease us!

Saddam: Well, what is it that you want?

Bush: We want!..................... your weapons of mass destruction!!!!

TENSE MUSIC!

Saddam: Our wot?

Bush and Blair: Terrorist! Terrorist!

Saddam: Please, please, no more. We will destroy our weapons of mass destruction!

Bush: No! You must return here with your mass destructors, or you will never pass into hiding with Osama...... ALLLLLIIIIIIIVE!

Saddam: Oh Americans of Terrorism! You are just and fair and we will return with our weapons.

Bush: Some that look nice.

Saddam: Of course.

Bush: And not too expensive!

Saddam: Yes, we bought them from you!

Bush: NOOOOOOOOWWWWWW GO!

* * *

Saddam talks with the Iraqi with big glasses and decides to slowly destory the weapons, just to make the Americans mad.

* * *

Saddam: Oh Americans of Terrorism, we have brought you some weapons! May we go now?

Bush: They are good weapons, I like the Anthrax particularily. But make no mistake, there is one small problem.

Saddam: What is that?

Bush: We are no-longer..... the Americans who say Terorism! (Terror! Shhh). We are now the Americans who say screw-you-france-and-the-UN-we-will-bomb-iraq-to-hell-anyway

Protesting Americans: Terrorism! No War! Osama!

Bush: Therefore we must misunderestimate you and give you a test!

Saddam: What is this test oh Americans who... till recently said Terrorism?

Bush: Firstly, you must find...... more weapons!!!!!

TENSE MUSIC

Saddam: Not more weapons!!

Bush: Then, when you have found the weapons, you must place them here beside these weapons only a little more dangerous so our people understand why were here (why are we here? why are we here?). Then when you have found the weapons we must cut down your regime, have a regime change, and make..... aaaaa.... DEMOCRACY!!!!

I love reading my referal logs to see what kind of weird search queries are directing people to my site. The most recent strange one is the pictures freezing monkeys in the snow"

That's my specialty, of course.

jeff.hume.ca - your one-stop source for frozen monkeys.

Today, Mozilla.org announced a new roadmap. It is a big change for the direction of the Mozilla project. They are promising to split up the current Mozilla Application Suite into various applications. They will use what is now Phoenix as their default Browser along with Minotaur as their mail client. This is great for Mozilla. It will give them apps with nice easy interfaces that are smaller and leaner.

They also mention that this means Phoenix will now be built daily for OS X! Another OS X browser! Note that Camino will continue to be developed as well.