"Mission Accomplished"

I read about this earlier but now it seems it's been confirmed. John McCain truly is a maverick if he can win a debate he wasn't planning on attending before it even occurs. Brilliant.

World, Stop for a Moment

Even Huckabee's calling McCain out on this bullshit political maneuver:

You can't just say, 'World, stop for a moment. I'm going to cancel everything,'

- Mike Huckabee on John McCains attempt to postpone the debate

The Way Out Is Through

There is no more MTV, radio has lost it's reach and the major record labels are losing their relevance. Still, I never thought I would be getting direct marketing emails from Trent Reznor.

Message from Trent:

Hello everyone.

I'd like to thank everyone for a very successful year so far in the world of Nine Inch Nails. I'm enjoying my couple of weeks off between legs of our Lights In The Sky tour and got to thinking... "wouldn't it be fun to send out a survey to everyone that's shown interest in NIN?" Well, that's not exactly how it went, but regardless - here it is. As we've moved from the familiar world of record labels and BS into the unknown world of doing everything yourself, we've realized it would benefit us and our ability to interact with you if we knew more about what you want, what you like, what you look like naked, etc. I know it's a pain in the ass but we'd truly appreciate it if you'd take a minute and help us out. As an incentive, everyone who completes the survey will be able to download a video of live performance from this most recent tour (and I know what's going through your little minds right now: "I'll just grab this off a torrent site and not have to fill out the survey!!!" and guess what? You will be able to do just that and BEAT THE SYSTEM!!!! NIN=pwn3d!!!)
BUT
What if we were to select some of those that DO complete the survey and provide them with something really cool? I'm not saying we'll ever get around to it, but if we did maybe something like signed stuff, flying someone to a show somewhere in the world, a magic amulet that makes you invisible, a date with Jeordie White (condoms supplied of course), you know - something cool. See, you'd miss that opportunity AND be a cheater. Do the right thing - help us out. You'll feel better.

Thank you and I've had too much caffeine this morning,
Trent

I can't imagine I'm the only one waiting to see what he does next.

Update: I took the survey and I am now eagerly awaiting my date with Jeordie White.

Nanorganization

I currently sync two playlists to my iPod. A "smart" playlist and a manual playlist named iPod Smart and iPod Manual respectively. The "smart" playlist is configured to select 115 songs ordered by date from my library where a: the rating is greater than two and b: the play count is less than two. The other serves as a way sync up a few current favorites or even a pod cast.

As the idea of an iPod large enough to hold your entire library goes the way of the virtually ignored "classic", I think apple would do well to make some improvements in the tools it provides for managing and syncing it's iPod devices. What are your tricks?

Update: as I was syncing my iPod this morning I realized you could limit a "smart" playlist by total bytes (in GB and MB). This is a far more reliable method for someone like me trying to use every bit on a small drive. I'm not sure if this is a new feature in iTunes 8 or if I just never noticed before.

Bandcamp

Great ideas are often based not on doing something new, but doing something the way most people didn't even realize it should be done. Bandcamp, the newly launched digital music publishing platform, looks like it may just fall into this category. As a musician, as well as a developer, I'm terribly excited about it's possibilities.

If you're at all interested in independent music or web application development, do yourself a favor and read the interview with Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond at Waxy.org.

Chrome Notes

Vassup!

• Install and import process is painless and idiot proof
• When you open a link in a new tab it opens next to the parent tab not at the end of the list
• Built in site specific browser (SSB) functionality
• Incremental but significant improvements to existing ideas such as the "omnibar" and the new tab page
• WebKit
• Minimal interface
• History and bookmarks, all searchable and seamlessly integrated
• It's really, really fast

Ich Don't Think So!

• No Mac/Linux version, yet
• The window "chrome" is very, very blue

Google Chrome