magnetonic

I've had the winter blues for quite a while now. As you know, Christmas wasn't very Christmas-y, New Year's wasn't festive either. My birthday's coming up, but I'm not all that excited about it.

But today as I was about to leave work, someone said, "It's snowing!" I looked out the window and sure enough, it was snowing.

As I was walking down the stairs, I saw some students going up, semi-covered in powdery chunks of snow. I got a little more excited.

Then I got outside and saw the snow coming down in big flakes, nice and slow. A huge uncontrollable smile took over my face. It's the first proper snow this season here.

I know, though, that this feeling's gonna get ruined. The snow will clog the streets since they don't hardly take care of the streets here and most drivers I've seen don't know how to drive in snowy weather (i.e. no lights and they drive way to slow). It'll also melt a little and mix with the crap on the streets to make a brown slush that'll get all over my shoes.

But for now, I'm happy.

Posted by f r e d at 5:43 PM in ruminations | Permalink | Comments (1)

Again.

Posted by f r e d at 10:19 AM in grind | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, I did something I never thought I'd do.

I bought music online.

Hey, I love buying music. If there was more than just Korean music or top 40 sludge here, then I'd definitely be buying more. Also, import CDs tend to be quite expensive here. Korean CDs are quite cheap, usually no more than CA$12-15.

Without admitting to anything, I've had my share of addictions to Napster, Audiogalaxy, Kazaa, Poisoned, and BitTorrent. But honestly, I see now why buying music rather than scrounging for it is becoming so popular.

Jackie needed some classical tracks for a school activity. I opened up Poisoned and found not much and what I did find didn't download immediately or at all or began at 0.1 KB/s. This I find annoying.

So luckily, there's this thing called the iTunes Music Store, which until recently, was only available in the US and Europe and perhaps Japan. It's now avaliable in Canada. Of course, I'm not in Canada, but my credit card billing address is.

We searched the store and were treated to fairly good selection of high quality, 30-second preview clips. Mind you, this was in the classical section, looking for pretty popular pieces. We picked 7 tracks and at $0.99 each, it totalled to $6.93. Since my info was already saved in my account, a simple click of a button (and a password and comfirmation) began the downloading of the songs to my computer. It took about two minutes to get 7 tracks of about 40 minutes at 128 kbps AAC. A not-so-quick calculation makes that about 36 MB.

I immediately burned that to a CD and it that was the end of that.

Since I have an iPod, I can listen to these songs outside of my computer. But there is Digital Rights Management (DRM) on these songs. You have to "authorise" a computer to be allowed to listen to the songs. You can authorise up to five computers. I have two computers. So this is ok. You can also burn the music any number of times. Thus, I could rip the music off the CD again into any digital audio format I please, thus "removing" the protection at the cost of quality.

All in all the DRM doesn't bother me too much. The only thing I'm afraid of is rampant, unchecked purchasing of music with a strange one-button mouse from the comfort of my own home. I simply cannot afford it. Luckily (?), the Canada iTMS is not yet fully stocked with music that I would buy.

In other news, if you were ever in the mood to try out a Mac, now is the time. They've just announced a tiny Mac aimed mainly at PC users fed up with Windows security, such as viruses and spyware, and at the living room. As your resident Mac geek friend, I am here to tell you about the Mac mini. Rather, provide you with an easy-to-follow "link" to another "page" on the "World Wide Web", which is part of the "Internet".

In a few words, it's a tiny box 6.5"x6.5"x2" with everything inside of it. No keyboard, no mouse, no monitor. Remove ugly beige PC. Place tiny aluminum box on desk. Plug-in. Go.

Oh, and it's way under $1000.

Posted by f r e d at 12:59 PM in technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my computer shows up today with no warning.

Monday morning, a tech called me and asked what the problem with my computer was. I told him. He said Ok, we'll call you later.

Five days later the iMac is here. Everything looks fine. No parts are hanging out or anything. There's a scratch that may not have been there before. It's been less than an hour though, so testing is not over.

But I did discover one thing. I've got free Bluetooth. I hadn't ordered it, because it seem like an unnecessary perk to have a wireless keyboard and mouse for nearly $150 more. And I don't own anything currently that is Bluetooth capable.

Since the computer was serviced, and the problem I was having seemed to be a hardware problem, I assume they replaced the logic board. And since I've now got a little Bluetooth icon up by the clock, I also assume they must have replaced the logic board with on which had Bluetooth built-in.

The Bluetooth by itself is about CA$65, and adding a keyboard and mouse was CA$129 on the Canadian Apple site. But now I've got myself a wired keyboard and mouse. So is it now worth it to go and buy the wireless ones? What will I do with my wired ones?

I think I'd rather go WiFi before I get a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a happy new year.

I've got to get my brakes checked out on my car.

And buy some DVD-Rs.

Posted by f r e d at 11:22 AM in technology | Permalink | Comments (0)