Awesome Website of the Week: Last.fm

Posted on March 31, 2007

I love music. Let it be known. My iTunes library is several dozen gigabytes. My CD collection numbers a few hundred. And on top of that I have a couple of boxes of vinyl albums. That’s why I really like Last.fm. This is a website that has one basic idea, sharing music (but not in the Kazaa Gnutella kind of way), but it really does so much.

The first thing it does is track your music. Pretty much every audio player under the sun is supported (I use iTunes), and a little background app quietly submits that information to Last.fm. Last.fm then takes that information and parses it into charts tracking top artists, songs, albums, everything else. It can then recommend to you stuff that you might like. There are songs for free download, with no DRM. There’s a radio app that lets you listen to just about every artist available. There’s a wiki-type system for each artist, for bios, pictures, tagging, etc.

There’s the social aspect too. You can befriend people, recommend music too them, discuss on forums, track other people, all sorts of stuff. Last.fm shows you your “musical neighbourhood”, people who, based on their listening habits, have the same tastes as you. There’s a quilt thingie, similar to the flash-based Flickr badge but with album covers. And there’s the chart publishing tool, like what’s in the sidebar there.

There’s a lot to explore and find on Last.fm, and it’s a cool way to find music, negating the argument that mp3 players are killing people’s ability to discover new music. It might not change your life, but it’s a fun site to use. And if you do sign up, be sure to add me.

Single of the Week: Space

Posted on March 30, 2007

Our single of this week is from British band Space, probably their most well known song, “Female of the Species“. There sound is an eclectic mix of ’60s caberet, rock, and electronic. This is a big sounding song about how women will eat you alive. The band broke up in 2005, which is sad, but be sure to check out the rest of this album.

Hottie of the Week: Joanna Rutkowska

Posted on March 28, 2007

I was reading eWeek, as I’m often wont to do when I came across something very interesting. Being a Mac user, I’m interested in rootkits and the like so I can keep up on the latest ways to be smug to PC users, so it caught my eye when I read about something revealed at the Black Hat Conference by a Polish security specialist. It was malicious code that could run from a system’s firmware. This is a bad thing. Wiping and reimaging a drive won’t get rid of the code like normal bad shit, letting it get back into the system. Also, the only way to track the bad shit down is to explore the contents of memory, but to keep the code from doing it’s mojo you have to restart, clearing the contents of memory. So basically, this malicious code can bone you. That’s impressive and all, but what impressed me more was the fact that this wasn’t some pallid, deathly thin nerd in a black Invader Zim t-shirt, but in actuality a very attractive woman. Wha wha?

Joanna Rutkowska is a security specialist for COSEINC, a Singapore-based IT company. She has long been interested in the inner workings of operating systems, and has been involved in Linux kernel programming. She now works on dectecting and developing stealth exploits that can attack XP and Vista via rootkits, network backdoors and covert channels. You can check out Rutkowska’s work at Invisible Things.

(Photo courtesy of Hackinthebox.org)

Hay Guyz I Gots a Zoon!!!1!

Posted on March 27, 2007

Nah, as tempting as the Zune was, I got an 80 Gb iPod instead. In black, because the black looks better since they removed the bevel from the face of the iPod. It’s syncing right now (shoveling 45 gigabytes of data over USB takes a long time; what I would give to bring back Firewire support). I considered a Nano for jogging and such, but I really like having all of my music travel with me. I may get a Shuffle down the road for those purposes, ‘cuz c’mon, the orange in anodized aluminium looks so hawt. I’ll have to scrounge to get by for the next few weeks, but it’s totally worth it to watch reruns of The Office while I’m driving to work.

Movie Review: Shower

Posted on March 26, 2007

I watched a pretty good movie last night, so here ’tis, a review for the 1999 Chinese movie, “Shower”. From IMDB summarizer jhailey:

Shenzhen businessman, Da Ming, goes home to Beijing when he thinks his father has died. He finds his father hard at work at the family’s bathhouse (the false message was a ruse of Da’s mentally-handicapped, exuberant brother, Er Ming, to get Da home). Da stays a couple days, observing his father being social director, marriage counselor, and dispute mediator for his customers and a boon companion to Er. Da is caught between worlds: the decaying district of his childhood and the booming south where he now lives with a wife who’s not met his family. When Da realizes his father’s health is failing and the district is slated for razing, he must take stock of family and future.

The movie opens up with an impressive sequence displaying a sort of showering autowash, quite similar to what you might drive your car through for four bucks with gas. “The future of bath houses”. It’s unusual to me, an American with American sensibilities, that these places still operate. They are few and far between here in the states, and generally are used for less honorable purposes. But it’s this sense of “otherness” that gives the movie a part of its charm. I’m just astounded by the fact that there are people that can use chopsticks properly and efficiently. But enough of that, on to the movie.

The focus of the movie is Da’s strained relationship with his father and his brother. Er Ming had sent a crayon drawing of him standing next to his sleeping father, making Da believe that his father was dead. His father quickly figures out that this is the reason for his visit. Da feels ashamed of his father’s occupation, thinking it to be a relic of the past, and of his brother. He later admits to not telling his wife that he has a brother. However, he comes around to his family, realizing that the bathhouse is a center for the community, and that his father is really important to those around him. His father mediates differences between two friends who compete in regular cricket fights (just what it sounds like), helps a young man who owes money to a loan shark (another difference between the movie and what I’m used to, when the tough guys threaten harm upon the debtor, the father stands in their way and tells them to get out. I have a hard time imagining the elderly being that respected here), and helps a man who’s marriage is falling apart.

There are lots of humorous moments in the movie, the aforementioned cricket fights, a chubby fellow who always sings “O Sole Mio” at the top of his lungs during his shower, and Er Ming’s childlike fascination and enthusiasm lend to some great scenes. Overall, the movie comes across as very touching, without being schmaltzy, which often happens with movies of these types. The only thing I can really ding this movie on is the subtitles. Occasionally the translation seems a little rusty or stilted, as if perhaps the meaning was conveyed, but not as well as it could have been done. This is a problem that can be troublesome for a lot of foreign films, unfortunately. However, it doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyability of Shower, so I would recommend renting it.

Goodbye, Old Chum

Posted on March 25, 2007

Alas, my poor iPod, Fermium*, has died. After a few good years of service, having previously died twice only to come back to life, the hard drive on it is officially a goner. It clicks and whirrs and fails to be seen by any computer when it’s connected. If I start it up, the dead hard drive screen shows, that is unless the screen just goes all black. I’ll just have to save up for a new iPod, and until that time, have to kick it old school, listening to CDs in the car. Dang.

The iPod is survived by an iBook, and iMac, and two inkjet printers. A long lost brother, an iPod Shuffle residing somewhere in southern California, could not be reached for comment. In lieu of flowers, the bereaved request that a charitable donation of $15 be paypal’d directly to me.

*All of my disks are named after elements. The iMac has Iridium as its main volume, and Molybdenum and Argon are my external drives. My iBook’s main volume is Vanadium.

Single of the Week: The Dandelions

Posted on March 24, 2007

A single of the week for you, this week it’s The Dandelions’ “On the 54“. The Dandelions are an indie band from Stockholm, a kind of thrashy group that draws inspiration from The Stooges. It’s straight ahead fast rock comprised of guitar, drums, bass and catchy vocals. It’s good stuff.

Awesome Website of the Week: Beerorkid.com

Posted on March 23, 2007

Awesome! Another Awesome Website of the Week! And it’s BeerorKid.com. BoK, or Steve Ramos as he is known in the Journal Star editorial pages and presumably that’s what his wife calls him too, is a fellow Lincolnite, an avid cyclist, a networking guy at the state capitol, and an amateur beermaker. Over at his site, he pledges a pic in every post, and at least 5 posts a day (cept weekends), chuck full o’ random crap. Therein is a collection of youtube videos, funny pictures, assorted hotties, and great links, as well as tidbits of news, Linux stuff, recipes, and just about every goddamn thing else.

It really is a great site, with a good group of players. Anyone can sign up and begin posting there, as I do occasionally, and so do many others. The comments are a great place to hang out, you can tell when I have a particularly slow day at work because I’ll be checking out BoK’s site all day long, and I’ll put in at least five or six comments a day. And that’s about the highest recommendation I can give. It’s a fun lot for sure.

There’s so much stuff there that you can always just click around and find something new. Lincoln stuff, girlie galleries, Ubuntu depositories, christ knows what else is there. It’s definitely a place worth checking out, posting comments to, and signing up to write for. Go to it now

Best IT/Samuel L. Jackson Crossover Ever

Posted on March 21, 2007

I usually read the print version of eWeek while I’m on the can (free subscriptions to trade magazines are awesome for that purpose), when I saw this little story that I think is great. A software company, ITA Software, has been contracted to write an airline reservation system for Air Canada. Okay so far. But they’re writing the language in Python. Do you realize what this means? It’s Python in an air transit system. It’s snakes on a plane (ticket reservation system)! Awesome!

Read the story at eWeek.

Movie Review: Dead Silence

Posted on March 19, 2007

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. This is going to be a shorter review, I should think, because I saw Dead Silence in an actual theatre, so I didn’t have my notebook. It was Sarah’s birthday, and this is what she wanted to see. Nothing good on IMDB, so I’ll do the basic plot summary myself. Jamie Ashen finds a mysterious package on his doorstep, an antique ventriloquist’s dummy. He runs out for takeout and his wife decides to set the doll up and freak out Ashen. Upon his return, he finds his wife dead, her face disfigured. A homocide detective (played by Donny Wahlberg, the only name on the cast list that I’ve ever heard of) let’s it be known that he suspects Jamie, whilst Jamie returns to his hometown, where local legend, in the form of a childhood rhyme, tells of a woman who had dolls instead of children and if you screamed when she saw you, you would die. There he meets his estranged father, a cagey undertaker, the undertaker’s crazy wife, and finds that the detective has followed him there. Then a bunch of stuff happens involving ventriloquist dummies, local legend, and a pisspoor attempt at suspense.

I find dolls and ventriloquist dummies quite frightening, and the one in this movie was crafted to be quite so. My great grandmother in Butte has a room full of them that I had to sleep in on many occasions; these nights of terror remain burned into my memory forever. Aside from the creepy factor of the dummy, the standard cliches of trendy horror are there. The soundtrack is tense throughout, whenever the dummy attacks all sound fades out to silence except the breathing of the victim. Then there’s a simultaneous loud noise, orchestra hit, and something scary pops up on screen. Everyone screams and blah. The gore is kept to a relative minimum, which really surprises me, being as this movie was produced by the same group that puts out the Saw series, some of the goriest movies of recent times. The suspense is often drawn out far too long; scenes become more tedious than they are tensive. Really tedious. And than there is my least favorite trendy horror cliche of all. The blue color filter. All of these bad horror movies use a blue color filter during filming, that casts a sense of darkness over the print and removes the vividness of light and color. And it’s always done so heavy-handedly that it’s boring. As one IMDB reviewer so aptly described it, it’s “cinematic wallpaper”. I can generally tell I absolutely won’t like a movie just by watching the trailer to see if it’s entirely done with the blue filter. Get a new technique, bargain basement cinematographers.

The writing is drab, the twists are not very surprising, or interesting. I was often checking my watch to see if the movie was done yet. It’s a bland way to spend 90 minutes. The characters are boring and hard to care about. The acting is unspectacular. Ryan Kwanten as Ashen is a generic good looking guy that are flooding Hollywood movies without being good enough to be considered leading men. And his accent kept switching from standard New England small town to New York City, which was confusing. Donny Wahlberg as the detective was just trying to hard. And for some reason the character is shaving. Always with the electric razor. That’s not a good character quirk, that’s just retarded and weird.

The high school crowd will eat this up like they do every other trite, poorly-produced horror film that comes out, but for lovers of the genre this movie will blow. For people that like movies, it will blow. For people that haven’t suffered serious head trauma, it will blow. Good day.

View the trailer.

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