June 2003

This month’s issue of PC Magazine has a review of the top of the line Falcon Northwest Mach V, which sports an AMD Athlon XP 3200+. Its front side bus runs at 400MHz and it comes complete with DVD burning, DVD-ROM, and CD-RW. That’s right, the tower has three CD drive bays. The PC Mag tested machine has two 36GB 10,000 RPM hard drives and one 250GB 7,400 RPM hard drive. For video, it comes with the ATI Radeon 9800, 128MB of beauty. That comp is a monster.

The only problem is that it costs $3,595 direct. Ouch. Maybe I’ll build my own instead.

I’ve always like Falcon Northwest although their systems are expensive and now Dell’s tech support is so bad in my opinion that Falcon Northwest might be worth the price. Gateway’s tech support is equally poor compared to Dell and Apple just doesn’t have enough software options to suit my needs. Alienware is another good alternative to Falcon Northwest but their machines are being sold at Best Buy, which means that inevitably, Alienware’s quality will start to decline just like the trend with Dell.

It’s been confirmed that Radiohead will be touring Los Angeles and San Francisco this September. I went to their last tour, which took place in 2001 at Shoreline in Mountain View and it was an amazing show. This year will be no different. Here are the dates that I might attend:

• 23rd September 2003 Shoreline Ampitheatre Mountain View, CA
• 25th September 2003 Hollywood Bowl Los Angeles, CA
• 28th September 2003 Coors Ampitheatre Chula Vista, CA (San Diego)

If you like Radiohead and want tickets for the Hollywood Bowl date, please send me an e-mail. I can also be reached via AIM at “Webspiffy.”

Information on Ticketmaster on sale dates is now available thanks to w.a.s.t.e.

• 23rd September 2003 Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mtn View Ticket On-Sale date – 20th July 2003 Ticket Info: All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com, charge by phone # 415/421-8947, or Shoreline Ampitheatre BO
• 25th and 26th September 2003 Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Ticket On-Sale date – 19th July 2003 Ticket Info: All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com, charge by phone #s 213/480-3232, 213/365-6300, 714/740-2000, 714/703-2525, 805/583-9700, 619/220-TIXS; or Wherehouse Music, Robinsons May, Tower Records, TU Musica, Ritmo Latino, & Hollywood Bowl Box Office. For Parking Information call 323/850-2000
• 28th September 2003 Coors Ampitheatre, San Diego Ticket On-Sale date – 19th July 2003 Ticket Info: All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com, charge by phone # 619/220-8497

A lot of MT users are angry that <$MTCommentAuthorLink$> breaks XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 validation. This has been pointed out by a number of people but I think Jay Allen was the first to publicly post about it. I’ve been using a different tag for quite some time that validates and hides people’s e-mail addresses. This is a good thing because leaving your visitors e-mail addresses in the comments section makes it easy for bots to harvest the addresses.

This fix only applies to users using static comments that are displayed on the individual archive page.

Replace <$MTCommentAuthorLink$> with <$MTCommentAuthorLink show_email="0"$> and that should validate. While you’re at it, install MTSimpleComments, written by Adam Kalsey, which integrates comments and trackbacks into the same section.

For those of you that want to show e-mail addresses, you’ll have to do hacking. In your Movable Type directory, browse to /lib/MT/Template and open up Context.pm. Do a search and replace for target="_blank". There should be three instances that you need to remove.

The essential MP3 renaming tool, MP3 Releaser, has been updated to support ID3v2. It now supports multi-CD renaming up to 99 CDs as well as ID3v1.1 track numbering. I’ve been waiting for that addition for a while and he’s finally added it.

Download it today, make yourself a custom NFO template and you’re ready to go. I’ve been using MP3 Releaser for over a year and it is just perfect. My whole collection is tagged with it. MP3 Releaser is the best program out there, and I definitely recommend it over the competitor, CD Tag.

I’ve been using Trillian for over six months but I’ve switched back to AOL Instant Messenger thanks to James Dennis, the author of DeadAIM. DeadAIM gets rid of the ads, allows you to set up tabbed windows much like Mozilla, log messages, even use transparency. The new version of DeadAIM gets rid of audio ads and has support for multiple screen names.

Simply, DeadAIM has everything you need to convert AIM into a decent messenger.

If you are going to install the free version of DeadAIM, you have to use AIM 4.8.2790 instead of the current AIM release.

I highly recommend it and I’m now using it full time. The tabbed windows feature is essential and isn’t even found in Trillian. That’s why I made the switch. I previously wrote a review of AIM+ but I assure you, DeadAIM is superior to AIM+ or myAIM. I tried using AIMutation but it sucks compared to DeadAIM.

DeadAIM 4 has been released. Download it for $5 from JDennis.net (PayPal donation required). Also, in case you’re wondering, no, I won’t send you the new installer or a serial. Any requests for bootlegging DeadAIM 4 will be reported to JDennis.net, so don’t e-mail me about it.

Looking for the DeadAIM 3.2.1 installer? I’m not mirroring it here due to bandwidth limitations, but oldversion.com has an archive of DeadAIM installers available for free download. If you don’t want to pay the $5, go there and download the file. Just remember, it only works with AIM 4.8!

Andy Baio of Waxy.org reported on May 29 that “Ghyslain, aka the ‘Star Wars Kid,’ and his family may be pursuing legal action against the individual(s) who originally posted his video on the Internet. Andy started an iPod fundraiser for Ghyslain on his weblog, asking for donations to ease the embarassment. At the time of this post, Andy has raised $3,254.09 for Ghyslain. The money was given to his lawyer at the end of May.

There has been no news since the May 29 post about whether or not the lawsuit has stalled. I think three thousand dollars covers the embarassment without a doubt. Drop the suit and move on. Next time, watch where you leave tapes of yourself.

Microsoft announced this week that IE5 for Mac will be the last release of Internet Explorer for the Apple platform. This is a smart move by Microsoft since Safari is gaining in usage as well as Camino (Chimera), developed by Mozilla. Microsoft is at the opposite end of the browser war on the Mac. Safari now comes preloaded with OSX much like Internet Explorer on Windows XP. Safari is built by Apple and it integrates into the system like Internet Explorer for XP but not to the same degree.

Mac aficionados in general don’t like Microsoft, so when they have the option of using an Apple product such as Safari, they will choose it over the Microsoft alternative, Internet Explorer. Microsoft knows this and is ending Internet Explorer development early before it invests manpower in a wasted cause.

Office is the one Microsoft product that will always be in demand by Mac users since it is the business standard. AppleWorks will never outshine Word because it is the 800 pound gorilla of word processing. However, Keynote is shaping up to be a viable PowerPoint killer.

I finished my finals on Thursday and returned home to Mill Valley today. I’m now a junior and I feel old. Two years of UCLA have flown by and they have been great, but surprisingly short. I already have my apartment for the next year and my stuff is moved in but not set up. There isn’t a bed or a desk yet but that’s easy to fix. The official move in date is August 1st, since summer school session C starts up August 4th.

I’m taking Life Science 3 over session C, which lasts six weeks. I’ve heard that summer courses are a lot easier over the summer since they are so quick so I’ll try to take advantage of that and get an A in LS3.

The phone isn’t set up yet in the apartment and I have to call Verizon tomorrow to prove that I’m actually Mike Steinbaugh. They won’t activate the account until I show them my driver’s license or something of the sort. Those bastards gave me the run around last week telling me that I had to go to a Verizon Phone Center to get the account activtated and they gave me the address of a store in Santa Monica Mall on 3rd street. The only problem is that no such phone center exists in the mall. Apparently it’s somewhere else in Santa Monica.

For the time being, I’m going to relax and read a few books. I still haven’t conquered The Return of the King and my mom let me borrow Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which is supposed to be a well-written book. Some of the critics called it self-indulgent but I’ll be the judge of that.

Also, on a totally unrelated side note, Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard this past week and is returning to Hollywood. Here’s hoping that Westwood is one of her hang-out spots…

I was listening to recording of Jack Johnson at the El Rey Theater and I remembered that “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” was a Bob Dylan poem. He performed the poem live but never made a song out of it. Jack “covered” the poem by putting it to music and switching up the lyrics a little bit. It’s an awesome song and I hope he releases his version on CD one day.

Without further adue, I give you…

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin’ behind an’ losin’ yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life’s busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin’ up
If the wine don’t come to the top of yer cup
If the wind’s got you sideways with with one hand holdin’ on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood’s easy findin’ but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin’ and the street gets too long
And you start walkin’ backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow’s mornin’ seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin’
And yer rope is a-slidin’ ’cause yer hands are a-drippin’
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe’s a-pourin’
And the lightnin’s a-flashing and the thunder’s a-crashin’
And the windows are rattlin’ and breakin’ and the roof tops a-shakin’
And yer whole world’s a-slammin’ and bangin’

Bob Dylan

Mmm…what a fitting song for finals week. Well, back to studying.

Hostway is now offering domain name set up for $6.95 a year. Wow, I’m definitely going to sign up some extra domain names at that price. I recommend you do the same as well.

This may be a limited time offer so act fast.