Recent articles in rants (page 3 of 4)

1. Jul 12, 2006 Getting All Barenaked

   I'm a big fan of Barenaked Ladies. Not only do they make music I dig, but they've got an enlightened approach to user rights, and there is a geeky vein through all of the work they do (I refer you to their blog and podcast). But with the pending release of their new album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, they have slipped up a little. It seems they have produced so much new music for this album, that they are going to make different subsets available through different methods of distribution. From the announcement email:

   Order before Aug 22nd and receive as a bonus the "BNL: All New Revue (Live from the Glenn Gould Theatre)" disc FREE, which is a live acoustic version of the new album. [The album's 13 tracks] will also be available digitally with a bonus of two tracks for purchase of the entire album. In addition, a 25 song package called Barenaked Ladies Are Me: Deluxe Edition, will be available digitally (album only). With the purchase of the Deluxe Edition, fans will be have the opportunity to obtain either two bonus tracks OR four bonus tracks for pre-ordering. Details on the digital pre-order to follow. In addtion, a USB stick featuring 29 songs plus other special content will be released Sept 12.

   Confused yet? This is more complicated than picking an edition of Windows Vista! As a loyal fan, I want to know one thing: how do I get all the Barenaked goodness that I can without paying for most of it twice (or three times!)?

2. May 28, 2006 Boo Hoyts, Yay Hoyts!

   Jess and I went to see Mission: Impossible III a couple of weeks ago. (Some spoilers indicated below.) To beat the crowds, we picked a Monday evening and avoided the city centre theatres, heading out to the Hoyts cinemas at nearby Victoria Gardens. Not only did we beat the crowds, but when we arrived the place felt abandoned. Not exactly paying attention, I absently zig-zagged through the empty cordoned queue area while Jessica watched ruefully, shaking her head, and joined me at the ticket counter. There we met with a young woman holding a walkie-talkie, who looked very unsure of herself as she sold us our tickets, then radioed ahead to ask a member of staff to go man the ticket taker's position for a few minutes as we made our way there. Sure enough, he appeared just as we got to the little podium, where he ripped our tickets and directed us to the third door on the left. As we entered the cinema, we were surprised to find the lights were down and there was already something playing on the screen. It was 8:40pm and the movie wasn't scheduled to start until 8:45pm, so I figured the projectionist must have decided nobody was showing up for that session and started the pre-show advertisement reel ahead of schedule, hoping to make an early night of it. As we made our way to our seats, however, I couldn't help but notice Tom Cruise's unmistakable grin on the screen---the film was already in progress!

3. Mar 19, 2006 Flickr is starting to suck

   I'll admit I haven't jumped whole hog into the whole Flickr thing. I do have a Pro account, and yet most of my photos are still in my private gallery. One of the main reasons, I think, is that, while I enjoy the whole idea of Flickr---a world of photographs naturally organized by keywords and shared (or not) between communities of like-minded people---a lot of the actual implementation kinda sucks. Oh sure, I was dazzled along with the rest when their AJAX-powered interface first came on the scene, with slick edit-in-place functionality and plenty of taggy goodness to explore. But whenever I actually want to do something with Flickr, the site quickly begins to get in my way.

4. Mar 6, 2006 Installing IIS after Service Pack 2

   I'm preparing to record one in a series of video tutorials for SitePoint, for which I'll need a copy of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), the web server that comes with Windows XP Professional, installed on my home computer for the first time since I installed Windows. The usual way to do this is to launch Add or Remove Programs from the Control Panel, click Add/Remove Windows Components, pick IIS from the list and then go from there. But if, like me, you're working with a copy of Windows that has been updated to Service Pack 2, you'll just get this error: Microsoft helpfully offers a solution to this in its online knowledge base. Problem is, the solution (which will most often require "Method 2" in that article) requires you to have a Service Pack 2 CD on hand, and Microsoft's web site does everything it can to talk you out of getting a copy of that CD.

5. Jan 11, 2006 I Want To Love It But I Think I Hate It

   Billy West's upcoming movie Billy Bastard has a trailer as well as a blog, which falls apart in Firefox.