My introduction to Jorge Miguel was low key. I was in my office, trying to figure out a particular bug that I was
experiencing, and a friend dropped by, slightly breathless, and said, "Come with me right now!" I hopped up and went
with him, with no explanation, and had a problem keeping up. He exited the building and walked into the building right
across from it. In the foyer, there was Jorge Miguel with a dancer to accompany him, playing an acoustic flamenco guitar
to a group of about 30 staff and students.
Wow.
First off, a general disclaimer and a brief history: of the three OSes I use on a regular basis (Windows, Linux and Mac OS), I started with Windows. Specifically, I started on an IBM Aptiva with Windows 95 (which still runs very well and has never, ever needed to be reinstalled), moved on to a Toshiba Tecra laptop with Windows 98 (which still runs, albeit poorly, after one reinstall), skipped over Windows 2000 (being mostly interested in spend…
I guess I could also have labelled this as "10 Things I Hate About You" or "Why MySpace is Rotten."
Obviously my point of view is clear at the outset - MySpace is bad. As a disclaimer, I'm not averse to new things - in fact, one might say that I'm addicted to new things - and I do not automatically dislike things that are popular. I apprehensively love Google, for instance, and I am currently a Facebooker (though Fac…
Of note - I just upgraded from Wordpress 2.0.something to 2.1, so there may be some interesting changes to the blog. I have not yet noticed any problems, but I'll report on them here.
One of my favourite blogs to read is Tim Bray's Ongoing - and this is a funny lead in
to my first music post, because Tim is very much a technophile (for instance, he was recently featured on the cover of
Linux Journal, and on the inside too!). One of my favourite recurring themes is
his "5✭♫" posts, in which he expounds on various musics that he listens to.
If the title looks broken, you should Get Firefox. It's the simplest
way to fix it.
Sourceforge is an invaluable tool for developers that don't have a budget for proprietary software. You can find a lot of useful bits and pieces there, not to mention wholes and entires, that are incredibly useful for whatever your software needs are. As a staunch supporter of OSS, I'd say I was a fan.
Well, until today. Today we find the wrench in the works.
I was interested in the softwa…
As you may or may not have noticed, I've overhauled aphoenix.ca. This used to be a fairly static website with a few extra odds and ends (like the photoblog) available to peruse. The plan is as follows:
Monday is "Left Brain" day and you'll probably have something fairly technical to see here. Friday is "Right Brain" day and you'll find a post that is fairly music oriented. Wednesday and Weekend days are photoblog day…
One thing that interests me among the techgnoscenti is who installs which Firefox extension and why they do so. Firefox is a great browser out of the box, but once you start adding on your extensions, it really becomes all about you. If you think it's beyond you to install an extension, let me tell you - you're absolutely wrong. If you can get here to this site, you can certainly customize your firefox. Just mozy on over to
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The topic of brain lateralization has already been discussed in some detail, but the previous article left out the Left Brain. Let's just pretend this article had all the same verve and panache of the previous article, but ended with a bit about Left Brain functions, specifically about Techgnostics (knowledge of technology) and The Proof (wherein I give highly spurious "proofs" by …
Music is my raison d'être. Here's a bit of my musical background:
- I play piano and have since I was 8. I'm pretty good, but I'm no concert pianist.
- I've played guitar and bass guitar since about 14. I'm a middling to good guitar player, but I play lead bass in a rock band. I've been told on more than one occasion that I sound like a mixture of Les Claypool,