Jim Barraud

This past Saturday I had pleasure of attending the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction) show at the PNC Bank Arts Center (Garden State Arts Center to those of use who know better) in Holmdel, NJ. It was a big day for me as I had been looking forward to this day ever since I purchased the tickets a couple of months ago. This tour has also been billed as the final Nine Inch Nails tour.

Some background… Midway through the tour Trent Reznor posted a special VIP opportunity on the NIN website. He began seeking donations for Eric De La Cruz. Someone in desperate need of a heart transplant but stuck in the red tape of the healthcare system. In return for your donation, Trent offered VIP opportunities to his fans. For a $300 donation, you and guest would be able to meet the band, get autographs, pics, handshakes, hugs, etc, and be able to attend the bands soundcheck. For $1000 you and a quest received all of the above, plus backstage access where you could have dinner with the band and even watch the show from the side of the stage. Seeing this as a once in a lifetime opportunity for me (and at the insistence of my wife) I donated $300. I got to try and help someone in dire need and gained an opportunity to meet one of my idols. This on top of the already great seats I purchased for the show via the NIN presale. I was excited that my wife was finally going to be attending a NIN show with me (she’s a Jane’s fan) plus be with me when I got to meet Trent and attend the soundcheck. We joked this would be our official 9th wedding anniversary outing. She was excited. I was excited. Then tragedy struck.

Two days before the concert my wife broke her ankle. Since she had yet to see a specialist (thanks healthcare system!) and was in a lot of pain, she would be unable to attend the show. Which of course made us both upset as we’d been looking forward to this for months. She insisted that I still go, but not wanting the ticket to go to waste, I dialed up my future brother in-law who I knew would enjoy the show and the VIP opportunity. He jumped at the offer and we were off to the show.

I knew it was going to be a long day since we needed to be at the venue by 2:15 for the meet and greet. The outpouring of donations for the VIP opportunity far exceeded the bands expectations, so due to the large volume of donors they blocked out 2 hours of time for the meet and greet to accommodate everyone. There were about 130-150 donors at this show, but others have had between 200-400.

When it came time to meet the band, donors were broken up into groups of 20 and were escorted to the meet and greet area. The band were sat behind a table and you had the opportunity for handshakes, a quick chat and to get one item signed. I brought my copy of The Slip since it was the latest album, limited edition and had most of the band members who were going to be signing it on the disc. I had a handshake and brief chit-chat with each of the band members as they signed my CD, but of course I was the most nervous meeting Trent. I splurged the usual “honor to meet you, been a fan for years” banter, then explained that my wife was supposed to be hear with me but that she had broken her ankle two days previously and was unable to come. I also mentioned that this was something she was extremely upset about. He mentioned it was a pleasure to be doing this and that he appreciated the help with the donation. He also mentioned it was too bad about my wife with a “that really sucks” kind of smirk. It was all very surreal and went very fast, but was at the same time awesome. After everyone had their opportunity with the band, our group gathered around for a group picture with the band.

After the meet and greet it was time for the soundcheck. We were treated to 4 songs the band wouldn’t be playing that night. It was like our own private concert for the donors and I was in the third row. A truly awesome experience. The songs played were Home, I’m Afraid of Americans, Lights in the Sky, and In This Twilight. As Trent said in the soundcheck “We’ll get the quiet pussy shit out of the way now and rock out tonight”. And indeed they did.

The performances started off with Street Sweeper Social Club, Tom Morello’s new band. I had heard a couple tracks before the show and thought they were good, but their performance far exceeded my expectations. Their energy was infectious and performance was top notch. I’ll definitely be picking up their album when it comes out on June 16th and I highly recommend checking it out.

Next up, as the sun was setting, was Nine Inch Nails. I wasn’t sure what to expect as far as setlist goes since the setlists for this tour have been so varied from venue to venue. I had a good idea of what could be played, but I stayed away from checking the setlists of the previous couple shows to keep some sense of surprise. The show kicked off with Pinion, Wish and than Last. From there I knew we were in for something special. I honestly couldn’t have hoped for a better set. Were there other songs I was hoping to hear besides what was played? Sure. But the cohesiveness of the set and unrelenting energy of the band really made this a special night. Highlights for me were Wish, Last, Reptile, Meet Your Master, Non-Entity, Mr. Self Destruct and 1,000,000. Also, thanks to their relaxed camera policy I was able to capture some nice video and photos.

To close the show was Jane’s Addiction. Fan bias aside, I wasn’t sure how anything could follow the performance NIN just gave. And I think I was right. While I like Jane’s Addiction and thought they put on a great performance I had a hard time getting into it. While both performances were loud volume wise, I felt the NIN sound mix was better as it was easier to make out lyrics and individual instruments while Jane’s was more of a wall of sound that made it hard to make out certain songs. For example I didn’t realize one song was Been Caught Stealing until about a quarter of the way into it. But overall they were entertaining.

It’s four days later and I’m still on a high from the show. From the meet & greet to the soundcheck to the phenomenal performance, it’s a day I will never forget. Thanks Trent and Company.

NIN Setlist

Soundcheck:
Home
I’m Afraid of Americans
Lights in the Sky
In This Twilight

Show:
Pinion
Wish
Last
Discipline
March of the Pigs
Reptile
Meet Your Master
Gave Up
La Mer
Non-Entity
The Way Out Is Through
Mr. Self Destruct
1,000,000
Echoplex
Survivalism
The Good Soldier
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Hurt

Yesterday Apple released the public beta for Safari 4, their latest and greatest web browser. I’ve always been a Safari fan. It’s always seemed faster then the other browsers and has lead the way in implementing new standards and experimental features. And Safari 4 builds on that, while taking a couple missteps. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons.

Pros

• Speed. Safari 4 is significantly faster than any currently shipping browser and it’s very noticeable upon use. I say shipping because the current nightly builds of Firefox appear to be on par in terms of performance.
• Coverflow History. I’ve usually found browser history to pretty much useless unless you know the exact time your were looking at a particular site. Being able to scan through your history as a series screenshots is awesome and makes using the browser history much more usable.
• Topsites. While not particularly ground breaking (this was introduced with Google Chrome, topsites is a nice to have feature that will display your most visited sites as your homepage and notify you if they’ve changed.
• New Web Developer Tools. I haven’t had the time to fully try out the new web developer tools, but from my quick poking around I can tell they’re vastly improved over the previous version. Time will tell if they give Firebug any kind of run for it’s money.
• New Web Technology Support. I’m itching to try out some of the new standards (non-standards) support for upcoming web technologies they’ve added.

Cons

• Tabs at the top. Placing the tabs at the top of the window is an interesting choice, but I feel it’s done purely because google did it with Chrome. I don’t have so much an issue with the tabs at the top as much as I do with how they’re implemented. Now that the tabs are at the top in the window title bar, you can’t just drag anywhere on the tab to move it around. Doing that moves the window. You need to click and drag on the designated area on the far right of the tab to move it. You can also no longer double click anywhere on the tab bar to create a new tab, you need to click the designated button to do so. And visually having the tabs break up the title bar is a little jarring, especially when you have other windows layered on top of them as in the following image.

Overall I’m pretty impressed with the new Safari beta. And it is just that, a beta. I have noticed a couple bugs here and there, but no show stoppers. Like I said, my only real complaint is the new tabs, I’m just not digging them. Luckily there are a couple of hidden Safari preferences, one of which that allows you to revert back to the old tab style.

On twitter (my new favorite gauge of public opinion) I’ve noticed that the general reaction to the tabs has either been met with absolute dislike or the “going to try and get used to it” attitude. Along with a smattering of people who really like it. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds in further betas or in the final product.

Last night the wife and I went to see David Byrne perform at the newly renovated Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ. Mr. Byrne is touring in support of his latest collaboration with Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”.

The tour entitled, “The Songs of Davd Byrne and Brian Eno” is just that. The setlist consisted of an even mix of songs off their latest collaboration as well as earlier Talking Heads songs in which Brian Eno was a producer and collaborator. Songs such as “Once in a Lifetime”, “Houses in Motion”, “Heaven”, and “Life During Wartime”.

The performance consisted of not only David and his band, but also dance numbers during certain songs. The dancers added a visual element to the songs that was welcoming and not overly distracting. If they were present throughout all the songs, it would have probably been too much. But a nice balance was achieved in how the dancers were utilized in select songs and not in others.

Musically David and the band were top notch. I’ve seen him perform solo twice previously and this was the best I’ve seen him. He appeared to be having a great time and the crowd was giving off an overwhelming positive energy. The first standing ovation came after the fifth song, “Houses in Motion”, and were frequent after that.

Last night I experienced my first Nine Inch Nails concert and what an experience it was. This is a band I’ve wanted to see perform live since high school, but just never did. Well last night more than made up for lost time.

Mr. Sykes and I traveled up to the IZOD Center (or the Brendan Byrne Arena as we old school Jersey folk remember it) in East Rutherford, NJ for the show. But to call it a “show” would be an understatement. It was more of an audio/visual juggernaut sending your auditory and visual senses into overload. There were signs posted around the arena warning that “Strobe lights are in use” when they should have said “your mind may explode”.

Being a long-time fan and this being my first time seeing NIN live, I was extremely happy with the setlist. Sure, they played the big standards “Closer”, “Head Like a Hole” and “Hurt” which are to be expected (and rocked). But they also played some great non-standard tracks off past albums. “The Big Comedown” off The Fragile was one of the best performances of the night. But the best? “Reptile”. Fucking Reptile. I can’t tell you how excited I was to see them perform this, and we were only 8 songs into the performance.

The first third of the show consisted mostly of a wall of synchronized lights and strobe lights for the visual effects, which in itself was amazing. Then three screens were lowered to stage level and basically encased the band. The front two being essentially a mesh LCD screen (not sure of the exact technology) allowing you to see the band behind them. These screens created the illusion of the band playing in the desert, a swamp, the rain and even a wall of static that gave the appearance of being controlled by Trent. Amazing stuff.

The musical performance was top notch. The band really seemed energized and hammered through each song flawlessly. Midway through the show they performed three tracks off the recently released instrumental album “Ghosts I-IV” with an electronic/acoustic twist involving an upright bass and Trent playing a xylophone. The songs were more down tempo then the rest of the set which provided a nice change of pace. But were back to rocking in overdrive with “Wish” in no time.

Overall I would have to say this is one of, if not the best show I have ever seen. It’s possible they’ll be playing in a city near you. So if you have the opportunity, go check them out. Even if your not a fan, it could turn you into one.

Unfortunately my little point and shoot was having a hard time capturing any of it so I didn’t really get any quality photos or videos. But I’m finding plenty of other people did, so I’ve included flickr slideshow below of shots others have gotten. You can also find plenty video goodness from the show on YouTube

I’m always excited when I find a solution to a problem that works within my existing workflow. For example, I’ll be attending the Nine Inch Nails show at the IZOD center tomorrow night and I need to remember to bring the tickets. Because for one I’ll be leaving from work so I need to grab them first thing in the morning and two, my memory is crap. I’ve tried various reminder services in the past, but since they don’t fit into my existing workflow I always forget to use them. Ironic, I know.

Since I’m an avid Twitter user and Twitter is a notifcation/messaging service, I thought it would be great if I could tell Twitter to send me a reminder at a particular time to remember the tickets. A quick Google search later and I discover timer. A Twitter bot that serves this exact purpose. Add timer to your following list and send it a direct message with the minute count of when you’d like to be notified and the message you’d like to receive in the following format “d timer 30 Remind me about that thing”. You’ll then be reminded of that thing in 30 minutes via a direct message.

This really shines if you setup Twitter to notify of direct messages via SMS. This allows you to both set and receive reminders from anywhere via your cell.

One downside is you need to set your reminder time via minutes. So if you want to be reminded the next day at a particular time you need to figure out how many minutes that is. It would be great if you could set the units of time. For example, if you wanted to be reminded in two days of an event it would be cool if you could format it as “d timer 2d Do that thing you need to do”.

Other downsides revolve around the fact that this is done through Twitter (which as I’ve said is also the advantage). And Twitter is known for having it’s share of outages. So if Twitter is down, so are your reminders. There’s also no way to edit existing reminders or view the reminders you’ve set. But for me those are minor gripes.

This past Friday (August 8th) I had the pleasure of attending the first day of the All Points Festival at Liberty State Park, NJ with the wife and Mr. Jon Sykes. I haven’t been to a festival (much less a concert for adults) in quite some time, so I was pretty excited to go. Of course that excitement level was cranked up a few notches since both Underworld and Radiohead were playing, back to back no less.

APW was being promoted as a sort of “green” festival. Attendees were encouraged to use mass transit and if you wanted to drive you had to obtain a special carpool permit. We had opted for the ferry route. But since we were coming for southern Jersey, our trip consisted of 1 hour car ride, 40 minute ferry ride and yet another 15 minute ferry ride. From what I’ve read by other attendees, the ferry was the way to go.

Aside from a couple 5 - 10 minute rain showers, the weather was perfect. The view great as well with both the Manhattan skyline and Lady Liberty in the background. Since it was a “Music and Arts” festival, there were various art installations and performances scattered around the grounds.

The festival itself was well organized, but there was one aspect that felt a bit too restrictive. In order to purchase alcohol you needed to get your special “over the age of 21” wristband. Your wristband had 5 tabs on it and that was your drink limit. Each time you purchased a drink a tab was removed. I actually thought that was a good idea and it seemed to work because I didn’t see anyone acting out of line all day. The downside was you weren’t allowed out of the designated drinking areas. Which I can sort of understand since they were probably trying to prevent you from passing out drinks to your underage friends. But the issue was the drinking areas were fenced in and the view of the view of the entire festival and performances were blocked by the fences. You started feeling like a second class citizen for drinking a beer.

We had opted for the more expensive VIP tickets which included access to air conditioned lounge, more beverage choices and special VIP viewing platform in front of the main stage. But apparently the VIP viewing platform access didn’t include Radiohead since everyone with the special VIP bracelets got kicked off after Underworld for the “real” VIPs with orange bracelets. While the walled off beer area irritated me, this angered me. What’s the point of buying “VIP” tickets if you get access to the VIP area for only select times?

Because of our (early) access to the VIP viewing platform, we stuck mostly to the main stage performances. The Go Team!, who I’ve never head of, were pretty awful. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by Michael Franti and Spearhead. They had a great sound and energy. Next was the New Pornographers. I had just gotten acquainted with their music before the festival, but their live performance blew away anything I had listened to previously.

I’ve never seen Underworld live but I’ve been a fan for quite some time. While I was super excited to see them, I was a little disappointed to find out their set would be during the daylight because of everything I’ve heard and seen about their light show. But guess what, it didn’t matter. Their sound was tremendous live and their visuals carried through despite the daylight.

Then there was Radiohead. As great as all the other performances were throughout the day, they all seemed like opening acts compared to Radiohead. Both their visuals and musical performance were spectacular. The setlist was comprised mostly of their In Rainbows material with interjections from their back catalog, which was perfect. The only downside was that I had to leave before the encore in order to make my second ferry home.

Overall I felt the festival was great (even if I only went the first day). It was well planned, not over crowded and the bands had decent set lengths. I’m hoping it does really become an annual event and based on the other reviews I’ve read, they should have no problem making that happen.

I’ve put together a flickr set of the photos and videos I took throughout the day. I didn’t get any of the Radiohead set because I was too enthralled with the performance to take out my camera. But my cohort Mr. Sykes got some great photos and videos of the performance.

I’m a big flickr fan. It’s a great service for sharing and discovering interesting photos. But I’ve always felt browsing around flickr to discover new photos could get a little tiring. You have your standard single page with a photo, previous & next buttons, or a page of paginated photos. Presented in a very basic way that’s similar to the majority of photo-sharing services out there. I usually prefer to view photos in flickr’s slideshow mode because of it’s darker background and larger photos, but this isn’t a great method for discovering new photos or browsing around.

I’ve just stumbled upon a nifty little app called DestroyFlickr (via). DestroyFlickr provides alternative methods to viewing, downloading and uploading photos on flickr. Photos are presented on a dark gray background in a casual format. The app divides itself into several workspaces. You can load various content into each workspace and easily switch between them. For example, you could have you’re photos displayed in one workspace and various contacts photos in the others. The app is built with on the Adobe Air platform, so it will run on either windows or mac provided you have Adobe Air installed.

DestroyFlickr succeeds in making it seem as though browsing flickr is like browsing photos on your own hard-drive. A desktop native feel is given to content that exists entirely online. At times it feels as though I’m using a kind of “Lightroom Light” app for browsing photos on my computer. It’s the first Air based app that I’ve used that doesn’t feel much like an Air app (and that’s a good thing).

DestroyFlickr is still in the beta stage of development and the developer has stated that there are plenty of other features he wants to add, but currently can’t until June 30th because of its submission to the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. It’ll be interesting to watch this app as it develops because there’s a tremendous amount of potential here.

Location based social networking isn’t exactly a new thing. One of the earliest and more popular services in this area was Dodgeball. Dodgeball was eventually bought by Google, but nothing has been done with the service since it’s purchase in 2005. But location based services seem to be on the rise again and Brightkite is one of the newer players on the location based social networking scene.

I was blessed with a Brightkite invite by Mr. Jon Sykes. While Jon has been singing it’s praises, I’ve been more on the fence. Being a big fan of Twitter, I wasn’t sure I needed another Twitter-like service to keep tabs on and update. Plus there’s the selling point of the service, it’s all bout location, location, location. Whenever you’re at a new location, you can check-in via your phone, computer or other mobile device. With your location set, you can then post notes and photos about that location. Notes and photos are essentially twitter-like messages with the ability to post photos. While I can see the value in this for those who work/live in large cities or those who are big into the social scene, it was hard to see the value for someone who’s location may not change that often or who doesn’t have the flexibility to spontaneously meet-up with friends.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve used the service on and off. And honestly, it’s been fun seeing what friends are up to and the photos they’re posting. The challenge for me has been finding where Brightkite fits in my “digital lifestyle”. I already use Twitter for posting short messages and Flickr for posting photos. But lately I’ve been more selective about the photos I post on Flickr and the messages I post on Twitter. I’m not posting as many “going to the store” type of posts to Twitter and I’ve refrained from posting lower quality photos (such as cameraphone) to flickr. But now I’m finding this is the space where Brightkite fits in nicely.

With Brightkite you have various privacy settings available to you. At the high level, it’s public or private. Public is no holds barred. All info about your checkin location will be posted. Private on the other hand has a subset of privacy settings for how to handle your photos, notes and location while you’re in private mode. You could choose to display your exact location to only your friends while the non-friends will only see the city from which you posted. These settings are applied on a per-post basis. So while you’re home you can set your privacy level to private and all posts while in private mode will be marked as such. Then while your out and about getting lunch, set your privacy level to public while you’re at that location. All posts marked private previously will remain private. My only pet-peeve with this is that if you mistakenly post a photo or note as public, you can’t change it to private. You’ll need to delete that post if you’re concerned about the info being public. What I would like to see when it comes to the privacy settings is the ability to set privacy by location. For example, being able say “When I checkin at home, automatically set my privacy level to private”.

I’m now using Brightkite to post the short location based posts I would normally restrain myself from posting on Twitter. Because that post is now within the context of the location it was posted from. And I can set the privacy of that post so only my trusted friends will be able to see it, making Brightkite more personal than something like Twitter. While you can make your Twitter stream private, it’s an all or nothing option, you don’t get the level of privacy controls you get with Brightkite. I’m also using it to post location based photos that I normally wouldn’t be posting on Flickr. In addition to the personal aspects I’m using it for, I can see it being a great tool while traveling or attending conferences.

While I gave Brightkite a hard time at first, I’m beginning to see where it could fit in the current social networking ecosystem. Will I stick with it? Who knows. Ask anyone I know, I’m the most fickle person when it comes to… well, anything. Currently Brightkite is in private beta and is invitation only. I currently have 5 invitations left, so if you’re interested in checking out Brightkite and you want an invite, drop a comment on this post.

I’ve been working with Apple’s new operating system for a couple weeks now and figured I’d post up some of my observations.

• The overall level of visual polish is higher then any previous OSX release. The entire system feels more cohesive.
• The new dock is an atrocity. But I rock mine on the left of the screen so I get the much more pleasing alternate dock.
• I thought the new transparent menu bar would bug me, but so far it hasn’t.
• Spotlight is actually usable. Fast enough to make a great app launcher and search results appear faster and seem more relevant.
• The new ToDo’s and notes features in Mail are a great addition and I can see myself using them regularly. But currently they’re almost unusable if your making ToDo’s within Notes. There seems to be a bug that decides to randomly make items you’ve designated as ToDo’s in your notes… to not be ToDo’s but just sentences of text.
• It’s nice having a system wide ToDo’s system. But it would be helpful if they were color coded in mail in accordance to the color of the calendar they’re associated with.
• The new Mail.app is much improved in terms of performance and features. But also suffers from a bug that randomly decides to not show your message in the bottom preview pane unless you select it twice.
• I’m finding Spaces to be super handy. Other’s are finding issues with how it’s been implemented. I understand the issues being argued, but my personal workflow hasn’t really hit it (yet).
• You can now double click an image embedded in an iChat window and it’ll open in preview. This was previously only doable if you’ve installed the Chax plugin.
• iCal is much better at handling Exchange based calendar invites (and changes). Not perfect mind you, but much improved. They also seem to have done away with the asinine requirement of having your email being defined in the invite in order for you to accept it. Which was a tremendous pain in the ass for invites sent to mailing list groups.
• As great as the iCal improvements are, it seems riddled with as many bugs as Mail. My alerts no longer work, which is torture for someone who relies on them. And there are times where it will not allow me to pick the calendar I would like a meeting invite to be placed in.
• When you take a selective screenshot, you now get X&Y coordinates next to your cursor. And when you start creating your screenshot selecting, it displays the height and width of your selection. This is super cool. (And it’s small touches like this throughout the OS that make it awesome.)

There are many other cool new features and a few more minor annoyances, but these are the items I come across and affect me on a day-to-day level.

One of my main sources of sanity when dealing with the daily grind is music. Music at home, in the car, and at work. Music listening at work (or while working at home) is usually performed through headphones. My headphones for the past couple years have been a moderate sounding pair of Sony earbuds. While sufficient, they always seemed rather lacking in terms of musical quality. And in a desire to regain some of my audiophile hay-day (pre bills & children), the search was on for a decent pair of headphones.

My search came down to two contenders. The Sennheiser HD280 Pro and the Sony MDR-V6. After reading endless online reviews of both headphones, I was able to aggregate the following Pros and Cons of each.

The Sennheiser HD280 Pros are said to have excellent and accurate sound quality. They excel at blocking outside sound without using noise canceling technology. I found three common complaints about the HD280 Pros. The first was that to achieve the excellent outside sound reduction, the headphones tend to press against your head tightly. Because of this, some people would report getting a headache after wearing them for an extended period of time. The second complaint was that they’re rather large. While this to completely subjective (some people love big bulky headphones) it was mostly expressed as a negative. The third was that the headphones need adequate power to perform properly. Portable devices such as mini-disc players (they still make these?) and iPods tend to be a bit underpowered for these headphones.

The Sony MDR-V6 benefits from being a tried and true studio headphone for the past 15 years or so. They have excellent sound reproduction and people say they tend to be a bit more bass heavy then the Sennheiser HD280 Pros. Which I prefer. They also have lower power requirements and work great with iPods. They’re also smaller and more portable. The only complaints I was able to find was that some people report of their ears getting too warm due to the ear pads. And that the ear pads seem to start falling apart after 7 or 8 years. Both complaints seem to be easily resolvable with these Beyerdynamic velour replacements.

It should be noted that while both had their common complaints, the amount of complaints of both of these were minimal. And the vast majority of reviewers praised their choice headphones. Although the Sony MDR-V6 seemed to get a bit more in the way of praise.

So I went with the Sony MDR-V6. For the added bass response people noted and the smaller form factor since I’ll be toting these to and from work. The main factor that turned me away from the HD280 Pros was the perception that they were a tight fit and the complaints of headaches from several reviewers. Being someone who is prone to headaches, this was something I wanted to avoid.

So far I’ve been extremely pleased with my purchase. The headphones sound crisp and clear and bring out a level of detail I haven’t heard in my music in quite some time. I find them very comfortable and haven’t experienced the “hot ears” that some people complain about. I’ve also read reports that they sound even better once they “burn in”, but I’m not sure if I buy into the whole “burn in” theory. Time will tell on that front.

When I was little back to school was an awesome time of the year for one reason and one reason alone; new school supplies. I was (and partially still am) a stationery geek. I would page through my father’s office supply catalog making lists of the items I wanted. The fact that you could get an entire case of your favorite type of pen, pencil, eraser, or whatever boggled my mind. I never ended up with cases of my favorite stationary items, but I did end up with and extensive collection of Garfield branded post-it notes, but that’s another story.

I’m not the stationery geek I once was, but I still appreciate a fine pad or pen. Which is why I was intrigued with the new Field Notes Brand notebooks put out by Coudal Partners and Draplin Design. The notebooks consist of a durable cover and 48 pages of graph paper, which in and of itself isn’t that special. What’s special is the personality these little notebooks carry. The inside covers of the notebooks are filled with gems such as Practical Application suggestions consisting of Grocery Lists, Shoddy Sketches, Half-Ass Calculations, Gambling Debts & Tall Orders. Also listed is the specifications of the notebook. For example, did you know the corners are precisely rounded to 1/4” (6.4mm) by a CRC round corner machine? Or that the innards where printed on a Heidelberg 36” 5-Color printing press? Well now you do.

My shipment also came with a Coudal Partners logo decal and Field Notes branded pen and pencil. Even the pencil holds the same charm as the notebooks with it’s specifications printed on the side. So much charm that I can’t bring myself to sharpen it.

So while yes, it is just a notebook. It’s a little notebook with a lot of charm.

I’ve been listening to this incessantly since it was first available as a full album stream on yearzero.nin.com. Quiet simply, awesome. It harkens back to earlier Nine Inch Nails albums with a return to a more industrial sound. It’s also refreshing change in that it’s not another “woe is me” melodrama. But a concept album about an apocalyptic future as a result of an oppressive government. And now that I’ve purchased it through iTunes’ craptastic pre-order mechanism (I’ll cover that later), my morning commutes are full of Year Zero goodness.

There’s a new kid on the block in the social networking space. It goes by the name of Virb. Granted, a new social networking site is released every 8.2 minutes these days. But Virb is a little different. It has the potential to not suck.

Now, I’m not a MySpace fan. But the kids these days seem to like it. I’ve always seen it as the modern day version of Geocities. Back in the day, Geocities (pre Yahoo! buyout) was the place where anyone could stake their own little piece of the web. Ripe with marquee banners and tiled pictures of the Hoff. 99.9% of sites on Geocities were the internet equivalent of a bowel movement… and still are. MySpace is Geocities with the ability to link up with “Friends”. So you still have the ability to create your digital shrine to the Hoff, but now your friends can share in the love.

Virb matches MySpace pretty much feature for feature. But does so in a very elegant and logical way. It’s also very pretty. But the real magic in Virb to me is the customization aspect. There are different levels of customizations. Basic and Advanced. Basic allows you to change colors, move around the sections of content, upload some pictures, etc. But as long as you remain in Basic mode, which I imagine most people would, it’s very hard to make your site look… um… “unpleasant”. You then have an “Advanced” way to customize your page. This allows you to dig right into the CSS and go hog wild. It also allows you to dig into some more advanced functions of the modules and add in some of your own markup.

Like MySpace, Virb is heavy into the music aspect. Allowing you to place your own music player on your page and it features artist centric profile pages. But Virb kicks it up a notch with Virbtunes. A plugin for iTunes that automatically uploads the songs you play in iTunes. This then provides stats on the most recent songs played, most popular artists, etc. The idea is in the future, Virb will be able to provide you recommendations for new music based on the music you’re listening to. But for right now, you can advertise your recent Freebird obsession.

Virb still has a ways to go though. It needs to flesh out the Fashion, Photography, Design, Comedy, Art and Sports aspects it’s advertising that Virb “Is”. It also needs to expand a bit on the social and community aspects. As of right now, the main form of community is linking up with “Friends” and leaving them “Comments”. Sound familiar? There are “Groups” in Virb, but this also relies heavily on comments. But based on their “New Features” section, this may soon be changing.

You can check out my Virb page to get an idea of what it’s all about.

The latest phenomenon scorching across the net is a little service called Twitter. Even though twitter recently turned a year old, it’s been the past few months that the service has begun to grow beyond the typical first adopter crowd. Everyone from the Dark Lord to presidential candidates can be found on the service. But what exactly is Twitter?

It’s a question not easily answered. It’s been described as a mini blog and an IM status on steroids. It’s accessible from the web, via IM, through SMS on your cellphone or a plethora of other mini applications and plug-ins. It’s a question the folks at twitter choose to answer with a question. What are you doing?

That’s the question you’re presented with. Some choose to take it literally (my current twitter status is “writing about twitter”). Some use it as a sort-of stream of consciousness tool. Others use it a communication device. However you choose to use it, your limited by 140 characters. While this limit is to account for SMS compatibility, I believe it’s part of what gives the service it’s identity. Anything more, it’s just another blog. Anything less, it’s a standard IM status message.

The first question most people new to the service ask is “Why do I want to do this?”. I asked myself the same question. It’s not until you start using it that you kind of get it. For one, it’s fun coming up with something to write within the character restrictions. But the more fascinating aspect for me is looking at your twitter stream. You get a mini history of what was apparently important enough for you to twitter about, but not necessarily important enough to blog about. A kind of “lifestream”. Even more fascinating is watching your friends streams or even the public timeline. At times you can get a “collective” feel to what’s going on in the world.

Now thanks to it’s open API, it’s begun to be utilized in other ways. Twittermap combines Google maps and Twitter allowing to you to see who’s twittering from where. And Twittervision takes that to the next level by updating in realtime.

Overall this is a service that is still trying to define itself. But in the end it will be the Twitter API and how the users choose to utilize it that shape it’s direction. However it evolves, it’s developers know they have something special. Twitter’s parent company Obvious is selling off it’s other service Odeo, a podcasting service, to concentrate on Twitter. They probably don’t have much to worry about though. After all, they do have the Dark Lord on their side.

It’s been about a week, and I’ve been surfing along nicely on my new Airport Extreme(n). There are some significant improvements when compared to my original Airport Extreme.

The most notable new feature for me is the ability share USB Hard drives. Before the new Airport arrived, I purchased a two new usb Hard Drive enclosures for some drives I had lying around and a 7 port USB hub specifically for the new router. With the hub I’m able to plug in multiple drives as well as my printer and have them all accessible wirelessly. This has allowed me to move my entire iTunes music library off my MacBook Pro and onto the external Hard Drive that is shared wirelessly. And with the 802.11n speeds, music & videos stream beautifully (as I had hoped).

But I may have set hopes too high. I also attempted place my entire iPhoto library on the shared drive, and while it technically worked, it was far too slow to be usable. Just scrolling through the library would introduce the never ending beachball. I’m hoping that Apple plans to leverage this new wireless sharing ability with iLife 07. You can now share from computer to computer with the iLife 06 apps, but it would be nice if they were built to recognize a centrally shared library and had the smarts to handle multiple users using the same library.

A future benefit of the shared drives will be once Leopard comes out. With it’s time machine backup feature, you should be able to have your computer automatically backed up without the need to physically plug-in an external drive.

I should also mention that it seems to share any type of storage media that will plug into the USB port, such as the little USB keys that are all the rage. It even seems to mount media cards that are plugged into an external media card reader. My printer that is shared has a built in media card reader and any media cards that are plugged into it also mount, which was a nice surprise

Some other things I like:

• Increased range. (I now get full signal bars anywhere in my house)
• More reliable printer sharing. (The previous Airport was always a bit flaky for me)
• Nicer Admin Utility.
• Shared drives automatically mount when your on the network.
• 3 Ethernet ports. (as opposed to 1 on the previous airport)

So far the only real issue I’ve come across is getting my Nintendo DS lite to connect to the network. It seems to be because of the Airport’s new “Transitional Security” that combines WEP and WAP. Even though I enter the WEP key, the DS still won’t connect. This seems to be a common issue with gaming consoles in general. And since I’m in no way turning off wireless security, my solution has been to plug in my old Airport Extreme into the new one and create a separate network which the DS can connect. I’m hoping that a firmware update will resolve this issue.