Jason Griffey

I think I have mentioned this, but I don’t believe that I have fully discussed my adoration for this little application. How do i love thee, iTunes? Let me count the ways…

1. I love you for your Smart Playlists. iTunes allows you to use, basically, boolean logic when designing playlists for your music. Want all the songs in your collection with the words “rock” and “child” in them, but don’t want anything by Guns ‘n Roses? Smart playlist, to the rescue!

2. I love you for your “Top 25 Most Played” playlist. iTunes automagically keeps track of the songs you play the most, and arranges them in a playlist for you. So, at your disposal, you can immediately have those songs you just KEEP PLAYING. Conversly, you can tell it to only play songs you’ve NEVER played before. So good, soooooo gooooooooood…..

3. Most of all…I love you for your “shared music” capability. You can choose to share the music you have, and anyone on the same network can stream it from your machine…and of course, you can stream from theirs. Right now, I’m on the library’s network, and iTunes sees 5 other users, any of which I can stream music from. So useful…I can listen to a TON of music that I otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and sample bands that I would like to hear.

All this, and not even any mention of the iTunes Music Store, the only way to legal puchase music that isn’t completely moronic and full of DRM goodness (yes, I know that the files you get with iTunes have DRM attached…but you can immediately burn to CD, and poooof! No more DRM). All I can say is, after trying iTunes, Napster 2.0 can suck it.

The end result is that I want both and iPod and a 12 inch Powerbook. Neither of which I can actually get, but the longing is there. I’ll go out on a limb and say that thanks to iTunes the iPod will be the most popular christmas techie gift this year, hands down. Apple is gonna sell a ton of them.

Hmmm…problems with the forwarding. Since Ibib is virutally hosting my domain (www.jasongriffey.net) the forwarding is a little odd. I'll put in a word with ibib help to see what's going on and how to handle this, but in the meantime….those of you linking to this, please update your links to: http://www.ibiblio.org/griffey/wp as that is the blog I'll be updating most frequently.

Hopefully, I can figure the forwarding thing out, or maybe just set up a subdomain or something (like blog.jasongriffey.net or something).

Highlights from Halloween 2003, Chapel Hill, Franklin Street

Most popular costume: Spongebob Squarepants
Sluttiest costume: a group of girls, dressed as Fire Fighters, with signs that said “Hoses Needed”
Best Costume: Roy, complete with blood and a stuffed white tiger clawing at his throat

See the pics of the insanity!

Check this out! OCLC opening some of its records to Google!

OCLC has announced to its library members that it will begin testing the opening of WorldCat records to Google access. The project will extract a 2 million record subset from the more than 53 million records in the WorldCat database. The subset will target the most popular and widely available books by only selecting records with a minimum of 100 libraries holding each item. Searches on Google will retrieve the records and link through OCLC to library holdings. The move expands the scope of the Open WorldCat yearlong pilot project to make library resources available from non-library Web sites and will “test the effectiveness of Web search engines in guiding users to library-owned materials.”

Why haven’t I heard about this yet? Libraries should be shouting this from the rooftops.

…let’s break a few copyright laws, shall we? From one of the best Tim Burton films….everyone sing along!
************************************************
Boys and girls of every age, Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see, This, our town of Halloween
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Pumpkins scream in the dead of night
This is Halloween, everybody make a scene
Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright
It’s our town, everybody scream
In this town of Halloween
I am the one hiding under your bed, Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red
I am the one hiding under yours stairs, Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!
In this town we call home
Everyone hail to the pumpkin song!

As some of you may have noticed, I'm slowly transitioning off of this blog, and onto a new, cleaner, WordPress styled blog. I'll be updating my .htaccess to forward (which should keep everything happy, without anyone needing to change bookmarks). So stay tuned.

Everyone seems to be feeling the crunch on the Halloween costume front. Here’s a rule that may help out:

Every costume is better with an adjective, don’t settle for a noun.

Example: why be a nurse, when you could be a ZOMBIE nurse? Why be a doctor if you could be a Hillbilly doctor? Some examples of appropriate words:

zombie
vampire
undead
hillbilly
insane
killer

Further examples?

Just wanted to say “Thanks!” to everyone who was nice enough to leave comments/tell me in person that they liked the new look. I’m still working on getting the CSS for the homepage exactly right….a matter of playing with the different options for the bottom border. But I do appreciate all the feedback guys…my job search will benefit from it!

Ok gang…it's group review time.

I overhauled my homepage for the upcoming job search. What do the masses think?

(as well, the more observant among you may notice that my blog link goes to a slightly different address than the old http://www.jasongriffey.net/blog/ That is because I'm slowly weaning myself off of Radio Userland, and starting to use WordPress. Please feel free to update links accordingly.)