Parity Violation

Maybe it’s the ads, maybe it’s democrats coming home, but Chris Bell is clearly in second place in the new Rasmussen poll out yesterday.

Also, Bill Clinton is doing robo-dial calls and radio ads for the Bell campaign.

All we need is Democrats to come home and vote for Bell and we actually might have a shot at winning this thing.

• Rick Perry (R) 36% (+3 since 10/9)
• Chris Bell (D) 25% (+6)
• Carole Keeton Strayhorn (I) 22% (+1)
• Kinky Friedman (I) 12% (-6)

Consider giving the Bell campaign some money! They sure could use it. (The DCCC too.)

In case you haven’t heard, it’s the iPod’s Fifth Anniversary and everyone is writing about it.

My favorite stories involve initial reaction to the iPod. Check out all these naysayers at the Macintouch web site.

Keep in mind, when the iPod first came out – it only worked with Macs. It only worked with Macs with firewire, in fact. Even when it supported Windows at first Windows didn’t have iTunes; it used Musicmatch Jukebox, and there was a “for Windows” box and a “for Mac” box.

My initial reaction was – cool, but a bit pricey. Once the original 5 gig iPod dropped to $299, I bought one – and I still have it … though I dropped it one too many times and it doesn’t work anymore. I’d probably still use it if that hadn’t happened.

As it is, I now have a 30 gigabyte 5G iPod “with video,” and a 1GB nano for running (and to use with my Nike+iPod).

Now, did the iPod change my life? Nah, not really. It made it easier to listen to music on long car trips, and to some extent on planes. I used at at my birthday party a few years back. The Nano is a sweet running companion. But, I don’t walk around everywhere always plugged in to music.

Still, the idea of carrying around all of one’s music in a tiny little card sized thing – pretty cool. The iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player, but it and iTunes have managed to be the best. It’s nice to see Apple have a great product that actually triumphs.

You can see the very first iPod introduction on YouTube.

How many times have you seen some dumb fan reach for a fair ball down the first base line – turning it into a ground-rule double and perhaps rob his or her own team of a run? I’ve seen it happen, and I almost saw it happen last year at a critical moment for the Astros.

The Cardinals, at least in the playoffs, seem to have bright people down the first base line because in the fourth inning of game 3 of the World Series tonight, two balls were rocketed down the first base line bouncing in to the stands once, and hitting right up against the stands the second time. Both times, the St. Louis fans nearby made a distinct effort to stay away from the bal – raising their hands even to make it clear they weren’t trying to pull anything.

Maybe in any World Series game and in any city, the fans would be paying enough attention to keep away from a fair ball near the stands. Or maybe the fans in St. Louis really are more knowledgeable than in other cities.

Either way, a tip of the cap to the two fans who were sitting down there – I may be setting the bar low, but I was impressed.

I was posited an interesting question today – how do you use purchased iTunes music in a Powerpoint presentation? On Windows, I was asked this. And, frankly, I had never tried such a thing so I wasn’t really sure. I wouldn’t even know how to do it on a Mac.

Eventually (and I was winging it) I just suggested the ol’ burn-it-and-re-import it trick. Reimporting it as gigantic .wav files, even, just to be safe – surely Powerpoint would recognize a .wav file… and it did, so that worked. But, what a kludge – isn’t there an easier way? And what would I do on a Mac?

So, I busted out my iBook and Powerpoint 2004, iTunes 7.01, and Quicktime and tried to get them to play nice together. The thing is that Quicktime can handle iTunes DRMed music and that’s the mechanism to use it in other applications. But, how to make Powerpoint use Quicktime to play the file? I tried renaming the file -.mp4, .mov; pppbt – then Quicktime Player wouldn’t even open it.

The only thing that worked was I used Quicktime Player 6 (which can still see my old Quicktime 6 Pro license and thus has all the Pro features enabled) to open the audio file and “save as…” a movie. Then, I could insert that movie into Powerpoint, and, on my Mac anyway, that worked. But, you have to have the stupid Quicktime Pro to do this – in the Quicktime 7 player even “save as…” is disabled and a Pro feature. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Since the “pro” restrictions really just effect the player and not Quicktime, perhaps someone out there has written Mac and/or PC programs that can embed bought music in a Quicktime movie. That seems the only way to get the song into Powerpoint. Of course I can’t test this on a PC, but it seems like it’d work.

The somewhat ironic part, is, if I was doing what my friend was trying to do – make a picture slide show with background music, I would never use Powerpoint. Well, firstly, if I was on my Mac I’d use Keynote, which can easily insert music from iTunes. It’s nicely integrated. But in any event, in the case of a music slideshow I’d use iPhoto which has all kinds of slide show abilities, and can easily see all the music in one’s iTunes library.

So, maybe the Mac. Vs. PC ads are right and Macs are better at “life stuff” – at least out of the box. Not that making music-background slideshows is something I do every However, the other lesson here is that DRM is lame – and easily circumvented if just a hassle.

I’m sure Microsoft could write Office in such a way that it uses Quicktime to play back the .m4p, much like Apple’s programs do, but I doubt they have any interest in integrating with iTunes.

Here’s a question though – can you use the various WMP-protected songs in Powerpoint? How about the upcoming Zune marketplace songs? Someone, let me know.

I spent way too much time on this post. Check out screen caps below of how easy using purchased music is on a Mac…

I’m preemptively blogging about digital watches that beep on the hour. Because, without fail if it’s quiet at a symphony concert and it gets close to 8 or 9 or 10 it’s bound to happen, a flutter of beep beep – beep beep. The hour chime on someone’s digital watch.

Hey people – it’s not 1986. Time to ditch the digital watch. Yes they’re fine for running or other scenarios where you need 1/100th of a second accuracy, but otherwise – they are not exactly a fashion statement. (Well, it is a statement, but not a good one.)

If you really love your digital watch and don’t want to part with it and are offended I even said such a thing then please figure out how to turn off the hourly chime. It’s not that hard. It can be done. Don’t know how? Find someone who does. I assure you, you have at least one watch-savvy friend.

In fact, if you know me then I personally will figure out how to turn off your hourly chime – free of charge. Anything to lower the number of beep beeps I’ll hear in my life.

The latest Scorsese movie was pretty entertaining, if very bloody and full of tons of cursing. My favorite moment of the movie was when Alec Baldwin’s character was positively giddy about the Patriot Act, which amused me greatly because we all know that particular Baldwin to be extremely liberal and very much a democrat and I’m sure he despises the Patriot Act. Thus, it was funny. :)

Well, they say it’s not a question of if but when – and the hard drive on my iBook G4 began to whir and die yesterday. Fortunately, it died slowly enough I was able to get all my pertinent data off (my last partial backup was 4 days ago, and the last full one like 10 days.)

I didn’t lose any data, and after acquiring my firewire drive backup of my home directory, I was able to jerry-rig a nice setup on my aging G4/400. For a six year old computer, it really is quite usable. Though the action on the keyboard kind of sucks. Anyway, I created a new account and then edited Netinfo to use my backup homedir on the firewire drive as my home directory. Which, I just realized is probably going to create a myriad of permission issues when I migrate back but I’ll deal with that later.

I also just realized that backing up my home directory but not, say, fink or idl or any other software I use regularly is pretty stupid. I’m going to have to re-evaluate my backup system, because re-installing key software – while possible – is certainly going to take a while.

Oh well, at least it’s under (the extended) warranty and I didn’t lose anything important. And I have a backup of what maters.

This article at Salon about the curious feelings parents feel(you’ll have to watch a Day Pass advertisement) has proven popular with my parents. If you are a parent, well read and see – and otherwise, send it along to your own.

I find the Safari “Mail Contents of this Page” feature (in the File menu) very useful for sending articles like this, incidentally. I usually just click on the “printable” link first, though.

Well, here’s the AP story out of New Hampshire about the 2008 White House race. There’s a new poll out, and some familiar names are on the list. You’ve probably heard of all the names on the list, for both parties. McCain, Giuliani, Romney, Rice and Clinton, Gore, Edwards, Kerry.

That’d be because, and repeat after me Polls this far out are about name recognition only. I believe at this time in 2002 the leader in polls for the Democrats was Joe-mentum himself, Joe Lieberman. I assure you Bill Clinton was nowhere to be found on a N.H. poll in 1990.

So, just ignore these polls. They mean nothing. And I guarantee the 2008 race won’t be McCain vs. Clinton. The conservative base of the GOP doesn’t trust McCain – this is why they chose the inexperienced and unqualified George W. Bush over him in 2000. Clinton faces numerous problems – the left feels she has been too moderate and accommodating and the center thinks she’s unelectable. I’m still not sure she’d even run, and if she did, we’d see she’s not that great a candidate.

I was surprised Mark Warner bowed out yesterday. I can’t figure that one out. Frankly, the “spend more time with my family” excuse isn’t really believable. Maybe he wants to run for the Senate. Time will tell.

A study says that 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war. In fact, that number may be high. It may be like 50,000.

Would that many Iraqis be dead and our troops stuck in that quagmire if Al Gore had not been denied in 2000? I think not. It matters who actually wins elections. Remember that next time some one tells you that the Democratic party is just as bad as the GOP. I’m thinking Nader voters in 2000, specifically is Florida. Not that it’s their fault persay – Bush has been worse than anyone could have imagined. But, elections have consequences.

My only consolation is that after arguably the worst president ever – James Buchanan – we elected the best president ever – Abraham Lincoln. So, perhaps things have to get awful before people wise up and things get better.

Didn’t Churchill say something like the Americans always make the right decision, after exhausting every other possibility?