Norah Jones - What Am I To You?

[Thanks to TC Girl.]

Not normally my type of music, but there are always exceptions.
Hmmm, embedding disabled, so you'll have to go here.

Ministry - N. W. O. (updated)

Ministry - N. W. O. (New World Order, quoting George Bush Sr.) (And in fact this is not an endorsement. Al Jourgenson, the heart of Ministry, made a whole album later just about all the things he hates about Bush, this time Junior.)

Thanks to Jan, here is the orginal video for the studio version, which I think is even better.




... I'm reminded of Scarecrow from the same album (Psalm 69), another old fave. Admittedly it ideally should be played loud on very good speakers, since it's a "wall of sound" song.

Update: Magnetic Mary prefers the one below. And that's great too. (I think it's the closest Ministry has been to a hit, no?)

Getting better

Isn't it funny how you can keep learning, long after you thought you were done?
For example, I did not start using macros and typing-completion software until last year, thirteen years after I started using computer, and using them a lot. And now these things are saving me hours of work every month, I'm sure.

Also, a couple of weeks ago I got a new, faster Mac Pro, and set it up with an extra Cinema display so I now have two side by side, and with the new OS Snow Leopard which is faster and nicer and has some features I really use, like the huge image icons. And all these things, surely along with new levels of ability and willingness on my own side, has made me reach new levels of efficiency and joy in computing and producing. I really feel much more productive, faster, and joyful in my work (and play) than I did just a month or two ago. It's so kewl.

Saving blogs (updated)

Once every couple months I save my blog to my own hard drive, in one-month archives. We've heard of companies who suddenly decide to give up projects, especially unprofitable one as Blogger surely is, and the sad but typically human tendency is to suddenly pull the plug and not save archives, and not give the users any warning so they can save all their work. It's insane, but it has happened so many times.

Firefox is better than Safari for this. Safari saves either as just html without pictures, or a web archive, which only Safari can open. Firefox saves as an html files with graphics in a separate folder, so it can be open from the hard disk by any browser. (It does not save the large versions of images which you could click to get, but I can live with that.)

Update: Chris pointed to this as a better way of saving a blog. I haven't tried it yet.
Update... I have now. When I do it the "export blog" way, I get a 54MB ".xml" file... and my computer doesn't know what to do with that...

Net pics

Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm F2.8

Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm F2.8 macro/portrait lens for M4/3 review.

Fourteen lens elements! In a non-zoom lens! Including an aspheric and an ED element. Holy cow.
This is not a cheap lens for sure, but it's a special one, and I think it's great that they are coming out with really premium lenses for a smallish format such as Micro Four Thirds, this will help the format win favor with serious photographers, which will encourage the producers to make more better products, and so on back and forth.

The female nude in history and society

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Morcheeba - "Enjoy The Ride"

[Thanks to TCGirl and Laurie.]

Here's another Morcheeba song, The Sea, which I've liked for a long time.

Nano video (updated)

When the iPod Nano came out with built-in video recorder, I thought it was a weird idea. Well, I was wrong, it's pretty cool, and the video quality is far better than we had a right to expect from a device so small it can get lost in a bag of candy.

David Pogue said in review that this device will make for a lot of spy-filming. I've no doubt he's right, but it made me think: is that even legal?
In private settings probably not. But in most countries it's legal to photograph anything you can see in a public place, so does that go for filming too?

Vamp

Just watching Grace Jones in Vamp. Like suspected, the film, so far, holds little of interest, but Grace is something else.

Lipfix

I'm just running out of an excellent product, "Tea Tree Lipfix", and unfortunately it has been discontinued. I helped when one's lips got into a worse condition than ordinary chapstick can deal with. Does anybody know a similar product?

Getting misunderstood

I love the English language, for many things, for example its beauty, and its power to reach globally.

But it has its frustrations. My pet hate one is that there is no plural for "you". I can't get over that. So many times does one need to explain whether one means "you" the individual or "you" the company/family/whatever.

Another one is despite the hundreds of thousands of words in English, most of them have several definitions, and often very quite dissimilar. I was reminded of one today: "amateur".

Its two most used definitions of "amateur" are:
"a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons. Compare professional."
And: "a person inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity: Hunting lions is not for amateurs."

Very different definitions!
I know amateur photographers who are more skilled than some professional photographers I know.
And yet, when I say "I'm an amateur", there's no way for the reader/listener to know whether I mean "I do this for love only" or "I'm not really very good" without clumsily going into explaining it. Is there?