*WEDDING.BLOG.LINK*

Hopefully I can go see these guys when I'm in Montreal at the end of next month.

I've been busy and lazy, so you haven't heard much from me.

Here's some great iTunes info to check out though.

iTunes 4.9 was just released and has PODCAST SUPPORT!!!
I think it's fantastic. I haven't listened to any yet, but I just subscribed to the CBC Radio 3 Independent Music one and I'm really excited about it.

Also, Nardwar has recently been honoured with his own celebrity playlist on the iTMS. Go check that out sometime - it looks really good, including some artists I love such as Ween, Mudhoney, and Warrant.

And don't forget that Canada Day is coming up this Friday (Yes! 3-day weekend!) because iTMS certainly hasn't. They have four different 'shuffle' lists just for the holiday, grouped by genre. There's an alternative shuffle, a pop spotlight, a rock shuffle, a roots spotlight, an easy listening spotlight, and an urban spotlight. There's about 6 hours of great Canadian music on each of the alternative and rock shuffle lists, and there's 50-some tracks on the pop spotlight, 27 on the roots spotlight, 28 on the easy listening spotlight, and 32 on the urban spotlight. The price is about what you would pay if you bought each track individually, but it's good to see all this music together, and it's good to see the iTMS embracing Canadian music. This would be a great way to buy some tunes for this weekend's celebration. If I had $300+ to blow on music that is.

Speaking of great Canadian music, it looks like my boys, 54-40 have a new record out too, that I can't wait to get ahold of - And DFA 1979 has a 4-song iTMS exlusive EP up as well. (I love getting EPs through the iTMS). The Tea Party are raising money for cancer research. And Thornley has an exlusive iTMS track up as well.

In case anyone's looking for some sweet-ass personal+intimate/romantic music to completely rock every part of your being (who isn't!?) check out this 2003 release from the Cardigans. Forget you ever heard Lovefool. (though, I still love that song too!)

I just watched one of the most interesting videos I've ever seen.

It's an interview the great Barbara Frum did with Trudeau in 1987 on the Meech Lake issue.

Even if you don't give a shit about Meech Lake or politics in general or even if you are a monocellular ball of slob you owe it to yourself to watch this video.

It very properly displays the profoundness of one of the country's greatest leaders, and allows him to discuss, philosophically, the nature of Canada. It's great.

Of special interest to me where:

1. about 15 minutes into the interview, Frum proposes a hypothetical federal child care program, and asks a question something like "Wouldn't every province agree to a proposal like that?" and Trudeau responds with something like "Sure they would accept it, but they would want the money to spend however they want, and Meech lake would give them the power to do that. They could build roads with it or whatever else they think might win them votes in their province - and that's not good for the country, it's only good for that premier."
   
   What's interesting about this part is that THE VERY SAME THING is happening right now almost 20 years later! A national child care program is being shopped around the provinces by Ken Dryden, and some of the provinces are refusing to sign on because they want to spend the money HOW THEY WANT instead of following the Federal Government's guidelines. Luckily, Meech Lake wasn't passed and ol' Kenny has the ability to keep them out of the program if they don't agree to the terms.
   
   
2. A few moments later on a similar issue he brings up "the poor provinces" - this is a great section.
   
   
3. I love his ideas about Quebec getting 'special' powers out of this accord. He says that Quebec is distinct. VERY distinct. But no MORE distinct than other places in Canada. The west, The maritimes, the prairies, NF.... you could even go more granular than that if you want. I've felt this issue should be pressed more often. This issue is especially apparent around 28 minutes into the interview.
   
   
4. The whole bit about where he goes over what's bad about the accord for the judicial system and the senate.
   

This is a great piece of Canadian history and I'm a better person for seeing this today.
Dan-0 will especially love this.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) - Mac x86 BIOS?

If this report is true, I am officially PISSED. Losing the PowerPC is one thing, but losing Open Firmware is quite another.

It seems that among the people that I've had contact with in since the big Apple+Intel announcement there is confusion about what it is I'm really upset about.

And, truth be told, I'm not really upset - I think Apple will be fine, the machines will be fine, PowerPC will be supported for years and years thanks to Rosetta and to Universal Binaries... I probably won't even notice a difference.

Nonetheless there is still that air of disappointment in the air around me, even now at two days later

The great John Siracusa from Ars Technica put together a great article yesterday going over what this all means to the Macintosh community. Here's an excerpt from that article that, I think, accurately describes what everyone who has been with the Mac for any amount of time really feels about this:

A broken heart

Despite all the interesting possibilities for the future (which I'll get to in a bit), I'm saddened by this turn of events. Everything that was captivating and exotic about Apple's CPUs added up to little more than a few brief moments of glory in the market and a handful of trips to the top of the performance heap. But to silicon-loving geeks, it really meant something.

Many a "PC weenie" has been won over to the Mac side by the allure of strange, new hardware. For CPU geeks, its the same. Look no further than our own Hannibal whose slow ascent to PowerBook glory was guided by a fascination with AltiVec, plentiful registers, and an orthogonal ISA. Sure, x86 has the market-share and usually the speed, but is it elegant? Does it turn the CPU geek knobs all the way to 11? Is it sexy? No, not really. In fact, it's pretty darned ugly.

Yes, this all sounds silly, but it's a real phenomenon. Right or wrong, sensible or not, this is how a lot of people feel about PowerPC vs. x86 (or 68K vs. x86, for that matter). I'm one of the biggest x86 haters. I've often argued that the collective human effort spent making fast implementations of the bass-ackwards x86 ISA would be much better spent elsewhere. Oh, I fully realize the market realities that conspire to make all of this x86 effort worthwhile, but this is about emotion, not reason. And if I didn't give significant weight to my feelings when it comes to my platform choice, would I really have been a Mac user for the past 21 years?

So yeah, I'm sad that the PowerPC is be leaving the Mac platform—even more so because of the really interesting things going on with that ISA in the upcoming crop of game console CPUs. It will pain me to know the contortions that instructions are going through in an x86 CPU inside a Mac. I will miss the idea of AltiVec, and the promise of powerful new CPUs arriving "out of nowhere" to power new Macs, a la the G5. I'll miss the interesting things that "only Macs can do" thanks to clever CPU features like AltiVec, or even just a particularly fast barrel shifter. I'll miss the dream, even if it was always destined to be just that.

so it looks like I accidentally invited everyone in my Yahoo! contacts list to Hi5 this morning.
Sorry to anyone who recieved it that didn't want it. I'm not given to spamming my friends!

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

I called it dead wrong this time.

Numbness, here I come....

Guys Tees - gameskins.com

I've been told I ruin the gift giving experience for people trying to buy for me. In case anyone ever needs inspiration these tees from Gameskins.com are right up my alley right now.

I esp love:

• WASD tee
• RPG Tee
• Play Old Games Tee

(I think Morgan will really like this one too)

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com

There are some heavy heavy rumors out there about this right now.

Lots of other people are out there writing about the reasons why this would or wouldn't be good for Apple, IBM, Intel, Motorola, us, and on and on. I don't really want to add to it.

I do however want to be on record, before the keynote this afternoon, stating that I don't think this will happen the way it's being reported - ie: a fullscale switch to using Intel CPUs exclusively come next year.

Anything's possible, but I personally don't think it will happen.

I suppose, to cover my butt a little bit, I should say that a single machine entry, using an Intel CPU might have some strange justification that only barely eludes me. But as far as offering only Intel based machines in the next year? I think that's totally ridiculous.

On the off chance this Apple-Intel interweb clairvoyance does indeed come to fruition, prepare for me to be slightly downtrodden (melancholy even) for the next few weeks.

And on the off chance I do end up in a numb stupor by the end of the day, the lure to pull me back from the dark side will be the revelation that what I really love about Apple is not their CPUs, though I do think they're great. They will still make their own hardware, I'm sure - and I'm sure they would be the only machines able to run Mac OS X, and the iLife stuff, and thus deliver the experience of Apple, which is really what I love anyway.

As long as an Intel announcement didn't mean every dickhead with a PII could download a stolen copy of Mac OS X, gum the install up, run it on his shit-ass 6 year old machine and then write a review on his blog about how terrible Apple computer is, I will be able to lull myself back into the real world. Eventually.

I'm suprised Bob Cringley didn't write about this. He didn't do a column last week.... Maybe Jobs asked him not to so that he wouldn't quash the rumors before they could generate some press around the keynote today?

It's useless to talk about all this anyway, because it's not going to happen. Is Apple talking with Intel about something. Probably. Are they interested in keeping their options open and perhaps looking at using Intel sometime in the future in a controlled, regulated-by-Apple kind of way? Probably. Are they going to announce an all out partnership like everyone's talking about today? Here's one voice in the blogosphere who doesn't think so.

One thing to think about is Intel's RISC plans. They've been trying to find someone to buy their newly developed chips for some time now - the Wintel world doesn't want them because they don't run Windows as fast and they're more expensive. (Shortsighted much?) But it would not surprise me entirely if Intel is making a NEW chip for Apple - possibly Power compatible; possibly they're actually going to fabricate IBM's PowerPC970s for Apple - just selling off some of their fab facilities' time. When I talked about my "No Intel" predictions above I was talking about x86 Intel.

We'll know for sure before I go home from work today. Stay tuned.

Microsoft Longhorn in 2006? Well, maybe

Apple will be shipping Lion (or whatever else it will be called) by then and probably be working on Sabre-Tooth (or whatever THAT will be called)

Not that I really think Microsoft NEEDS to release a new OS - what they have is fine; I won't be upgrading my Mac OS for quite a while either, I don't imagine... I'm really happy with Panther - but to promise a new OS in 2004 and have it ship in 2007? (I know, I know, it is possibly an unsubstantiated report but still)

Rightfully, I/we expect more from the world's largest maker of software.

UPDATE:
Apple has announced that their new OS will be released late 2006, and will be called Leopard, not Lion as I had speculated. Maybe they don't feel their first Intel+PowerPC OS will really be deserving of the "King Of The Jungle" stigma. There has been speculation that the following OS will be called "Ocelot"

Tactiva — Introduction to the TactaPad

This thing is amazing. I was less than thrilled when I first saw it, but after seeing the demo I'm sold. I want one. I'm thinking about how great it would be to manipulate code with this thing!

The movie is big but you won't want to miss it, so be patient and check out the whole thing - some of the best stuff is at the end.

I got myself a Yahoo!360 invitation - so now I can invite others.

If you, like me, have been evaluating 'social networking' software like this, you may want to check this out. I used to think that you HAD to have an existing account with Yahoo! in order to use this 360 thing, but it doesn't seem like it now. Let me know if you want to try it out and I'll send you an invite.

I've also been (fairly passively) using Friendster lately as well - Linz hooked me up. It seems really good too.

I'd really like to know which one everyone prefers. When I make a decision I'm going to start inviting everyone I know!!!! Aaahahahahahaaaaaaaa....