Recent sales of the iPod can make it easy to forget that Apple can also produce crap

Last night I was browsing, reading feeds, generally minding my own business when I came across the Roku SoundBridge. I’ve known things like this existed, and for some time considered Apples Airport Express, but nothing really clicked. This clicked. I had an old Onkyo receiver that wasn’t being used, so I dropped that in my bedroom, plugged in the SoundBridge to the analog jacks and fired her up. There was my shared iTunes library via wireless and rendevouz – instantly accessible.

My recent experiment with Getting Things Done has been a huge success. With it, I know that everything that needs doing will get done, and sometimes even on time. I still tend to do the fun stuff first, but at least I know what I’m neglecting, thanks to the ever-present Next Actions list. The concept of “capturing everything in a trusted system” is the key. So, for those of you who might be interested, here’s my Trusted System™…

If someone were to ask me, “What is an artist?” I’d probably just stare blankly and shrug my shoulders. On the other hand, watching Rivers and Tides, a film about Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy made me want to jump up and down screaming “There’s one, right there!” While the movie was beautifully filmed and scored, the best part was being allowed to sit quietly and marvel at Mr. Goldsworthy’s work and his approach to creating each piece.

At lunch a few weeks ago, Matthew mentioned that he was interested in the GIF file format. I had no idea how interested – until now. He’s written an extensive document, What’s in a GIF which will tell you everything you need to know about GIFs – and more. Only thing missing is the final word on how to pronounce “GIF”.

A List Apart publishes a pretty good overview of Use Cases and their, uh, uses.

I was feeling pretty important a few minutes ago. Not so much now

I’m going to put together a small web application using Ruby on Rails. I have no idea why.

I’ve used Firefox daily, since it was an early Phoenix release. On Windows it was pretty much either that or IE, and we all know that’s a no-brainer. Firefox followed me faithfully when I switched to using a Mac and I still think it’s a great browser. But… Since OS X is so impressive and useful, It makes sense to take advantage of what’s available. Things like integrated spellchecking, text services and all of the loveliness that is Cocoa.

Turns out that there are some avid Stanley Kubrick fans at the office. Ryan has seen every movie (but one) that he’s ever directed. Dan hadn’t seen The Shining, and rented it after hearing our reviews during lunch. He’s been raving about it ever since and already knows more about it than most. Due in March, The Stanley Kubrick Archives looks like a great book. At $200, I’m going to taking donations at work in order to buy it.

That is what the Flickr site says when they are having technical issues. Like right now, for example. And the following message on the Flickr weblog is even more fun… “Flickr will be down for a (few) moment(s) We’re doing some database maintenance. It will be back online within 30 minutes. UPDATE1: Unless it takes longer, in which case it won’t be back online within 30 minutes, but rather will be back online after a longer period of time (greater number of minutes).

Curio 2.1 is a product that I truly wish I had a need for. I sometimes teeter on the edge of being creative, and if I were to ever fall, Curio looks like it would come in quite handy.