This last weekend saw the final cut made to the first of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy movies and it was promptly shipped over to the US for final prep and distribution. The unvieling to the world is December 19th and I'm trying hard not to get too hyped up about the flick, but I can't wait to see it.

Apparently the arena of online music broadcasters has taken a drastic downturn in recent weeks. As reported by news.com, most of the existing services (including long-time local player NetRadio) have already shutdown or are leaning that direction. Ouch. Is there still room for small indie netcasters?

Apparently the Dakotas are under a huge snow storm (over 10" and winds) and it is starting to hit us now. It is blowing like crazy but is going to get worse and the snow is falling and starting to accumulate. I think the ground is too warm for it to stay around (I hope) but dang, it sucks already.

Apple's "breakthrough digital device" (their words, not mine) was revealed today and at least one of the rumor sites got it mostly right -- a mini digital portable audio player. And more.
The great features of this device are many: the size of a pack of cards, generous backlit LCD display, super-easy controls, 10-hour battery, 1-hour recharge, firewire port (for transfer and power), instant and automatic sync to your iTunes library and playlists, 5 gigs of storage (that's 1000 songs at 160k mp3 rate), functions as a firewire drive as well, upgradable firmware, comes with new iTunes 2.0, ... and probably a few others.
The drawbacks to this new device are: the price ($399 is too steep), only for Macs right now (they say they want all to use it), the price, no line-in or mic, the price and finally the price. Did I mention the price?! Knock the price point down to $299 and they'd sell like crazy (I really want one, but not at $399).

A friend of a friend (yeah, you know how these things go but the source is reliable) recently discovered that IKEA has been scouting property in the metro area for a new store. Duh. You think a Scandinavian-based retail store would do good here in mini-Scandinavia? Barring that connection, would a retail store with inexpensive, high-quality products do well here? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now when does it open?

Before select film screening at Landmark Theaters, you can check out Bjork's Pagan Poetry, the US debut of the uncensored video. Oooh... uncensored. Wonder what that means? All of her other videos have been unique, enjoyable and technologically advanced. Cool!

We (my co-desk-occupant) finally convinced our boss to purchase a new computer for our use and testing (testing is always a good excuse for new hardware) and it came in last night -- a brand shiny new 867 Mhz G4 tower with the 22" wide-screen Cinema Display attached to it. Sweet! A gig-and-a-half of RAM, a 60-gig internal hard drive, a 20-gig firewire drive and, wait for it... wait for it... ok, the SuperDrive!! It burns CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RW and DVD-R. Awesome. This is one slick machine. Fast, fast and fast. The display is gorgeous and sharp and yet easy on the eyes (no flicker like with a regular monitor). I'll have to find some time to try at least one DVD burn and examine how it works. How cool is that?! Not to mention that we should have better stability and power in Photoshop now... much needed. Thanks, boss!

My big birch tree in front of my house has turned all golden yellow and when the sun beams through the leaves (as it has been doing these past few days) it floods the house with warm cozy light. It is beautiful.

I had very high expectations for the newest Star Wars movie (who didn't?!) and I came away from that 7:00am screening (the morning after the release) somewhat disappointed. Sure, it was fun to take part in the hype of the movie and go early in the morning and see the "first" part of the story take shape, but it seemed so kid-oriented.
Anyway, I rushed out last night before the stores closed and tried to buy the DVD of Phantom Menace. Target was selling it for $17.99 but were completely sold out at my local store. I went over to Border's Books and they seemed to have plenty of copies at their higher price of $22. Go figure. I bought it anyway.
This DVD set (it's two discs with an extra six hours of content) looks amazing. Very well done. So much content... no, so much interesting content... that I watched over three hours of it last night and feel that I barely dented it! I even found a few of the easter eggs (hidden features) by scanning the web and those were cool, too. Wow.
You probably need to add this movie to your collection. It redeems itself with the DVD release.

I off-handedly mentioned to somebody that I could eat a whole bag of fortune cookies and a few days later I was given a bag of a dozen! Wow. These little treats are just so tasty! So I dutifully devoured the dozen (not all in one sitting!) and have here compiled my fortunes:

• Your worries will vanish if you face them bravely.
  
• Feel free to ask for assistance, friends are willing to help.
  
• A great truth will soon be revealed to you.
  
• Knowledge is the past. Wisdom is the future.
  
• A confidential tip clues you in to a great financial deal.
  
• Your long forgotten kindness will bring a substantial reward.
  
• Your plans will be rewarding.
  
• Success is preparation meeting opportunity.
  
• You are courteous, diplomatic and affable and may find happiness in politics and public service.
  
• Your sparkle never fades, the party begins when you arrive.
  
• Your destiny is to be famous.
  
• You and your mate will be happy in your life together.
  

I drove down to Mom and Dad's place today to visit and play with Bella and have some great smoked chicken for dinner. Yum! Mark and Jen and Hank were also present and even though it was cool and sometimes rainy, it was a nice relaxing afternoon. We even took Bella over to the park and fooled around after dinner as she was hyper from eating all the whipped cream and chocolate cake.

I decided I'd better go see "Ghost World" before it left theaters... this was about a month ago. Tonight I finally got my gumption up and went over to The Lagoon and checked it out. I was not disappointed and people who told me it was "good" and that it "was my kind of movie" were very accurate. I enjoyed this movie quite a lot and it certainly isn't the sort of block-buster movie to appear in the 'burbs or the sort that screams out "this flick will win awards" -- yeah, my kind of movie. I loved the characters and really identified with them on various levels. I'd say I identified with all three main characters, even. This quirky, funny, subconsciously sad movie is very much worth seeing and it appears that word-of-mouth is driving this movie's long run at the local theater. So, I say: go check it out and have fun.
Oh, and make sure you sit all the way through the credits for a little surprise.

from this posting at Salon.com Politics | Nader attacks U.S. bombing campaign

"When are we going to learn from history?" he asked. "When are we going to learn that we can't bomb our way to justice?"
Instead of increasing U.S. security, said Nader, bombing Afghanistan would just give the Muslim world another reason to hate America. U.S. policies in the Middle East -- such as our.support for Saudi Arabia's repressive regime and our sanctions on Iraq, which have created misery for its civilian population -- have already alienated much of the Arab world, he noted. Bombing Afghanistan will only hurt the country's weakest people, "thus giving terrorists the images they need to recruit more killers."

Just for sake of interest of somebody out there, here's my set list (in time, title, artist format -- although times may not be accurate) from the Friday night Grand Opening party of Renaissance Box during the Art Crawl in St. Paul:

19:01:02 Intro/Amar
19:04:02 Arion/Blue States
19:08:26 One More Try/A New Funcy Generation
19:12:37 Sexelevatormuzik/Avatars Of Dub
19:17:32 Swollen/Bent
19:24:20 Breather 2000 (Arithunda Mix)/Afterlife
19:29:33 Mumbai Theme/A.R. Rahman
19:34:46 Beautiful My Child/Euphoria
19:38:14 Anamaria/Montefiori Cocktail
19:44:56 95C/Valerie Lemercier
19:48:08 Waltz (Le Serpent Rouge)/United Future Organization (UFO)
19:52:11 Je T'Adore/Montefiori Cocktail
19:57:11 Spy's Spice (Mon Espionne)/United Future Organization (UFO)
20:01:31 Tres Tres Chic/Mocean Worker
20:04:47 Low Tide Of The Night/Everything But The Girl
20:09:01 Believe/Franka Potente (Run Lola Run)
20:13:29 If Everybody Looked The Same/Groove Armada
20:16:38 Strobe's Nanafushi (Satori)/Kodo
20:22:07 Hey Baby/Mocean Worker
20:25:35 Super Sound/Pepe Deluxe
20:29:03 Jump N' Shout/Basement Jaxx
20:33:27 B-Line/Lamb
20:35:56 Ooh La La/The Wiseguys
20:41:32 The Inner Thumb/Citroens 'N' Sitars
20:45:44 Crazy Beat/Montefiori Cocktail
20:51:51 Streets/Nitin Sawhney
20:55:23 Boba Fett/Mocean Worker
21:01:28 Woman In Blue/Pepe Deluxe
21:06:44 Out Of Control/The Chemical Brothers
22:10:52 Sexyboy/Air
22:11:45 Lebanese Blonde/Thievery Corporation
23:53:32 Savoir Faire/Ursula 1000
23:58:58 M6/Market

Ok, I just found two little nuggets of useful information if you ever need to rent a Mac system in the Twin Cites. FirstTech does not do rentals, but they graciously pointed me to the following two places:
ASAP Computer Rental
952-882-9962
First Choice Computer Rental
952-975-9926
ASAP appears to be a bit cheaper ($95 for a weekend laptop rental -vs- $150) if you go and pick up the machine directly. Actually, for $150 they both deliver.

Jedi Knights show up as a religion in the UK census for 2001. There was a worldwide push to get it recognized as such in the last year and it looks like it is starting to show up. Ha. I love it. I guess it is particularly popular down in New Zealand... although I wonder if after the movies come out if some sort of Hobbit thing might suddenly be all the rage.

MovableType (the program that runs this weblog) was publicly released today and the 1.0 version is remarkably amazing. The features for future versions will make it even more so with such things as XML-RPC (I can't wait for this). The suggested support donation is $20.00 (a very fair price) and the upper level donation is $45+ which gets you free tech support and other goodies. Well worth that price, IMHO. I think I'll be sending in the funds quite soon. If you want to get your own install of MovableType, head on over to http://www.movabletype.org/ and grab it. You'll need a *nix box with Perl installed and know how to use FTP. Make sure you actually read all the instructions (they're easy). Enjoy!

I've got a little DJ gig on Friday night and it is making me a bit nervous. There really isn't anything too pressured about this gig (a grand opening of a friend's warehouse downtown) and I'm sorta just there for background music, but I want it to go well and for people to have fun and maybe even come up and say, "Hey, what was that cool song?!" Even if only one person did this, it'd make my night. So I guess I better keep skimming through my music collection...

We went hiking in the Shawangunk Mountains (the 'Gunks) today as it was mostly sunny, cool and breezy -- and we had nothing better to do. Wow. What a great hike it was, too, although my legs and feet are very very tired at the moment (guess I didn't need to go running this morning). We loaded up our packs with cameras, fruits, veggies, water and some delicious deli sandwiches from this little joint down the road (cheap and yummy stuff).
Mohonk Mountain is just on the west side of New Paltz and when we got to the main entrance, it was blocked and closed as they only allow a certain number of people each day. Bummer. Lena and tried to go see the Mountain House last fall and were soundly rejected then, too. But I had done a little research and knew there was another parking lot about a mile down the road on the north side so we went to check it out...

Success. The attendant at the lot didn't have any day passes on him so he said to just go on into the park and get a pass from any park ranger we come across (guess what? we avoided them all day! whoo-hoo!).
The trails up to the Mountain House are long and sometimes steep and sometimes unbelievable. I happened to see this crevice through a gigantic pile of granite (or some other big rock) that was big enough for a person to squeeze through -- I had to check it out! Sure enough, there were little markers showing a path through the towering 30-foot high rocks. It was like entering the Valley of Kings of something out of Indiana Jones. Some places you had to really stretch, some you had to duck and squeeze, some you had to shimmy sideways to get past. It was super amazing awesome cool!! A huge natural rock maze of cracks, tunnels, and chutes.
Anyway, it tooks us forever (like over 3 hours) to get up to the Mountain House -- it was worth it. That place is jaw-dropping huge and crazy and old and ... well, wow. I guess I can see why it cost $400-500/night! The place overlooks Mohonk Lake, a natural lake at the top of the mountain surrounded by high rock cliffs and with a blue-green color to the water. Vistas of the rest of the 'Gunks to the north, the Hudson river valley to the east and trees covering every visible inch of land. Again, it was awesome.
We hiked all the way to the summit where there is a large tower (built in 1921) and it was so crazy windy when we got up there it felt like it could blow you right over the valley. But what a view!!
Since it was getting late we then scammed a ride down to the main gate from the shuttle bus guy which cut about 2.5 miles off our hike back to the car. We still had to walk from the main gate down to our parking area which was another mile or so and it seemed like a pretty long mile by that time. Whew.
We stopped to eat some Mexican food in New Paltz (nothing special) and I was feeling so tired that I couldn't even finish my chicken-bean-rice burrito. ate hers all up.
Now she's baking me a fresh blueberry pie (my birthday 'cake') and we can barely stay awake... but we're trying.

We went over to New Paltz yesterday to just bum around (well, we hit a few antique shops first) and check out the scene. New Paltz is a very old town, one of the oldest around (the year 16xx something) and even contains original (yes, original) Hugenot stone houses and they are still in use. Cool. Apparently the reason New Paltz is so liberal and hippy-ish is that, according to local wisdom, people on the way to Woodstock got to New Paltz and just stayed... for the rest of their lives. Could be. It's a nice place located at the base of the 'Gunks (Shawangunk Mountains).
Anyway, we had a nice chat with "Frank" at the local coffee shop and then ate some decent food over at the Mainstreet Bistro. The waitress had big colorful tatoos on each of her forearms -- of table lamps. Lamp shade, cord, etc. Being curious I asked what the significance of the lamps was and she simply replied "I like lamps." Now that is a commitment to a niche most people might not ascribe to -- liking lamps so much that you etch them into the skin of your arms. Gotta give her credit for her passion, though. Whoa.

Another day, another version of MovableType... well, they did miss a day without a release, but that can be overlooked. I swear Ben and Mena have not been sleeping, just coding and drinking caffienated beverages. whoa. Still, they are very responsive to bug reports and modification suggestions. This program just gets better and better!

One thing I've noticed, however, is that upgrading a batch of CGI scripts via dialup from across the country is for some reason much slower than from directly connected to my server and with DSL... go figure. ha. I'm kidding. It is tolerable. I'm just spoiled and used to my DSL.

Long lines at the security checks at the airport today but it really is no big deal, so you have to get there a bit earlier and wait around but I guess if it makes things safer then it is worth it.
My connecting flight actually was on time but then we sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes. We finally took off when we should have already been landing at our destination.

This guy at Web Entourage: Mac OS Scripting Solutions has come up with an applescript (only for Mac OS X) that allows you to copy any content and then with one-click post it to your Blogger account. Cool.

Ask me if I can believe it... Go on, ask. Nope, I can't. A bunch of bug fixes, a bunch of new features, all in the space of 24 hours. Wowzer. Unreal. Now I'm up past my bedtime and I really should be sleeping. But I've gotta test it before bed so I know what's going on... I can't help it.

Whew... I worked an extra half-shift for the past two days at work on this very detailed project and it's been kinda frustrating but good as well. I could use the extra money on the paycheck, so I'm not complaining, but man, that is an awful lot of sitting in front of the computer... and I do that at home on a fairly regular basis as well. For example, in testing this web publishing system. The team behind it is producing daily updates to the code, which is very impressive. wow. They rock.

I went out for a run last night around 11:00pm and it was so absolutely perfect outside! The moon was full and very bright, casting light shadows around the neighborhood, and has been so impressive these past few evenings. I ran about 1.5 miles 'cuz I thought too much would just get me all wound up before bedtime. Sure enough, I had some delays in getting to sleep. But it sure felt good.

Did you ever see the episode of the Simpsons were Homer gets The Who to come play in Springfield? Cool.

what I'm doing, just checking out the functionality of the system -- making fake users, clicking on everything, typing a bunch of crap that means absolutely nothing... all in the name of "science" I suppose.

yup, that's what I'm doing, just checking out the functionality of the system -- making fake users, clicking on everything, typing a bunch of crap that means absolutely nothing... all in the name of "science" I suppose.

I live in the kingdom of squirrels under the watertower forest.

This is the maiden voyage of my installation of MovableType, a new personal web publishing system (in Perl) that has some super cool features and a great (ie: well-designed) interface. I am hoping that this new program takes place of the other systems I've been using such as GrayMatter and NewsPro. Those are both excellent programs for what they do, but I kinda want a blend of them with some other features added in as well --- in short, I think I want THIS program. We'll see how it goes after testing it (I'm a beta-tester).