Not sure how I feel about the Flickr purchase by Yahoo yet, but Caterina makes a good case

I like pens more than I should, given the amount of actual writing I do. With my recent “Moleskine” acquisitions, this has changed somewhat. Anyway, when I do write it’s with one of three or four different pens. Pilot G-2 for everyday notes and whatnot. They cost a buck or so, but write really, really well. Montblanc Meisterstuck Rollerball. Overpriced (a gift), beautiful and feels fantastic. Trouble is the ink sometimes chops up on me.

Yes, I would happily purchase the new Fiona Apple disc, Extraordinary Machine, in a heartbeat. No Sony will not be releasing it. So I stole it from the net instead. See what happens?

I must confess to a recent infatuation with the idea of “Audiophile-grade” gear. I don’t necessarily want to own the stuff (that would be just crazy, right?) but I would like to understand the unbelievable lengths people will go (and money they’ll spend) on listening to music. And now, From PsiberAudio, tube amps for your iPod. With features like “Massive 1.2 Farads of reservoir capacitance in the power supply,” how can I not want one?

Most sane people hate DRM right along with the products that implement it. I tend to grant a little leeway for those companies who at least seem to be trying to strike a fair balance. Apple and the iTunes Music Store are (or were) a good example of this. You see, the problem with Digital Rights Management is that the “Rights” part can be terribly mis-“Managed”. The latest iTunes update, for example, (once again) reduces the rights I have to share and stream the music I paid for.

According to this press release TiVo might just be able to stick around a bit longer. I hope so, but I much preferred the Apple buyout rumors.

Seems that the new AOL Terms Of Service has introduced a trivial modification that essentially gives AOL the rights to do anything it likes with your instant message conversations over AIM. (I have not read the new TOS in detail so if this turns out to be nothing but alarmist nonsense, I apologize) See this post for more details. Wouldn’t it be nice if this finally brought the capable, extensible and open source Jabber into widespread use?

Turning the table Whoa. I found my old turntable buried under a bunch of crap in the basement. What the hell, let’s hook it up and dust off some old records. First up. Rush – All the World’s a Stage. Oh baby, here comes 1976 all rushing back at me. All I can do is dig Neal Peart and remember sprawling out on the floor with some big-ass headphones.

I love databases. Mostly this love is poured into MySQL these days. Used to be that everything I did was in SQLServer but thankfully those days are nearly gone. Yesterday I was lamenting the fact that I don’t know PostgreSQL well enough. I hear great things and if you’re looking for an “academically correct” implementation without the (mostly theoretical) shortcomings of MySQL, Postgres is the way to go. Well Jeremy overheard this and today brought me a big fat PostgreSQL book.

What I’m not doing right now is learning to develop with Ruby and Rails using as many of the (stupidly-named) Ajax techniques as possible. This is a mistake. One I intend to rectify as soon as possible.

If you didn’t know better you’d think I was on some sort of anti-email crusade. Not true, just food for thought “…But my incoming e-mail is important,” you cry. Don’t fool yourself. Time how long you spend at your inbox. Multiply by your per-minute wage to find out just how much money you spend on e-mail. If you can justify that expense, far out–you’re one of the lucky ones.”

I’ve been secretly in love with Tori Amos for more than 10 years. It started the first time I heard “China” (Little Earthquakes, 1991). She pauses—… breath…—then resumes with a whisper-like, soft and altogether unique voice that still gives me chills. It continued through the harsher Boys for Pele with “In the Springtime of his Voodoo” and then with “She’s your Cocaine” on From the Choirgirl Hotel. This is when our relationship started to get wierd.