nuzzaci - an online journal

About 14 years ago I got a stereo from my uncle in Italy. It was a top-of-the-line stereo, and one, at the time, quite unusual feature it had was a wake up function.

So from then on (for a few years) I always woke up to the the Forrest Gump Suite by Alan Silvestri from the Forrest Gump soundtrack. It’s a very soft and pleasant wake up. Then when I did my military service the song changed, and for an unknown reason, it ended up being Rattlesnake by Live from Secret Samadhi. Rattlesnake is a very bad song to wake up to. So not by any means a recommendation. Just a fact.

After my military service ended, the habit of waking up to music ceased and got replaced by the mobile-phone alarm clock. Very romantic.

It isn’t until earlier this year, when Willow and I bought an alarm clock with an iPod dock, that I again began each day to the sound of music.

Unlike before, this time I have a playlist and not just one song to wake up to. Every morning that “alarm” picks up where the previous morning ended. We didn’t strategically choose what songs to go in the playlist. We just quickly browsed through our iTunes and picked a few that passed our mouse pointer.

So that’s why I’m writing this post, really. I’m so surprised that the playlist we literally just threw together is an extremely good wake up playlist. So good that I like to share it with you.

In alphabetic order (by track name), Volume 1 of the 2007 wake up playlist:

1. Be Good or Be Gone by Fionn Regan, from The End of History
2. Carolina by Ben Gibbard, from Home: Volume V
3. Comfort of Strangers by Beth Orton, from Comfort of Strangers
4. Fly by Nick Drake, from Bryter Layter
5. Half Acre by Hem, from Rabbit Songs
6. Hand in My Pocket by Alanis Morissette, from Jagged Little Pill Acoustic
7. I Was Just Thinking by Teitur, from Poetry & Aeroplanes
8. My Tiger My Heart by The Boy Least Likely To, from The Best Party Ever
9. Naked As We Came by Iron and Wine, from Our Endless Numbered Days
10. Twilight by Elliott Smith, from From A Basement On The Hill
11. You and I Both by Jason Mraz, from an unknown live album

From rob @ podcast 411 podcast on the speculations that Apple was trademarking the generic term podcast.

I wished people out there, when you are writing these blogs, you take some time and do some real journalistic research before you go out and start claiming things that just plain aren’t true.

If you have a bigger audience reading your blog - i agree: you have the same responsibility as any major magazine to make sure what you are claiming is true. The fact that you might manage the art of copy-and-pasting, should never be seen as an advantage - and never to be used as a weapon in a battle of trying to generate content.

The 44 links posted below are not actually all from today. They stretch all the way back to beginning of august.

• The DarkHat: Britney Spears Is Scary
  It is not that scary… just makes you wonder when she will start making the same kind of toasts as Elvis and ultimatly reach the same end screen.
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple admits excessive iPod hours
  “Apple Computer has said a report of labour conditions at its iPod plant in China found workers did more than 60 hours a week a third of the time.”
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection - UT Library Online
  If you ever need a map, these guys have got just about everything.
• My Project Puppet.com Chewbacca!
  He looks a bit weird. But if your planing to make a softtoy Chubacca…
• The Art of Adam Betts
  The guy who designed the Adium icon.
• Apple - Trailers - Borat - Trailer G
  This movie is going to be so great. Not many trailers gets me to laugh out loud.
• Getting Back To The Business Brickyard. . . Bookshelf // Dig Tank
  “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” about marketing and it’s books.
• Internet Soul Portraits
  Screenshots of large site with there text tripped off.
• Marian Bantjes
  Very nice typography skills going on here!
• Starts to play on radio right now
  A very nice interactive piece that show’s you what starts to play on radio right now (in america).
• Jason Kottke, August, 2006 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging
  An interview with Jason Kottke - a full time blogger. I don’t read his blog, but I find the whole “famous blog symptom” interesting. And the choice of accepting ad’s…
• TIME.com: 50 Coolest Websites
  Please define ‘Cool’.
• Not strictly commercial - Los Angeles Times
  “I had a guy come up to me, in my face, saying, ‘You think you’re so cool? You’re not cool’ and I’m saying to him, ‘Dude, it’s a commercial.’ ” Interview with the Apple commercial dude (also know from the TV series Ed).
• Creating graphs, Part 2 | Bartelme Design
  Illustrator tips and tricks.
• RSS Reading Preferences, Part 2 | Bartelme Design
  Feeds and behavior… now that’s the kind of blog post I’d like to see! Someone who spends some time to create content. Not just echoing the internet.
• China bans foreign cartoons from prime-time TV - Yahoo! News
  “Beginning Sept. 1, regulators have barred foreign cartoons from TV from 5 to 8 p.m. in an effort to protect China’s struggling animation studios”
• Is it friday?
  on of those really useful websites.
• Today’s Blog Music / The Hype Machine - discover, listen and buy music discussed on the best mp3 blogs
  An aggregator who search blogs for mp3’s.
• Fernando Leal {Illustration+Animation}
  Some really nice stuff going on here.
• Call Me Fishmeal.: Memes that need to die.
  “WWDC is a developer conference. Aimed at developers. Who develop software. Those of us who are developers are freaking amazed at all the great stuff that’s in Leopard.”
• 37signals: An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design
  “… there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.”
• Balancing Point In Reverse - BREAK.com
  This a pretty awesome movie made entirely in reverse. This must have taken forever to make but I think it turned out really well. It reminds me of that scene in the classic Val Kilmer movie Top Secret.
• Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas, original design by Stamen, press any key to s
  Draw. Click to change color. Very nice. A good way to make art ;) (I really like it and it reminds me of my friend Vinh Kha).
• LiveSurface Layered Image Library
  Introducing the Shift LiveSurface Layered Image Library: high-resolution Photoshop image templates with pre-masked surfaces.
• Quick change
  Honestly, even though the Hoff is in the judging panel - this is good!
• A war on terror simulation.
  “This is not a game. You can’t win and you can’t lose. This is a simulation. It has no edning. It has already begun. The rules are deadly simple. You can shot. Or not. This is a simple model you can use to explore some aspects of the war on terror.”
• Weighing a Switch to a Mac - New York Times
  “Ten years ago, if you were a Windows user, the idea of switching to a Macintosh might not have seemed enticing. An abundance of new Windows software was arriving on store shelves, while the selection available to Mac users seemed to be falling behind…”
• How About an E-mail On That? - Yahoo! News
  “Cell phone users spend lots of time talking into their devices, but they generally communicate with very few people. Just how few? Would you believe four?”
• LOVELINES : From Love to Hate, in Words and Pictures
  Basiclly the same as wefeelfine.org, but this time it’s about love (and done in flash instead of java). I prefer wefeelfine.org,
• Newsvine - Exposing Sony’s Corporate Shills
  This bookmark is saved for later use.
• Blogging the conflict in Lebanon
  The music industry got slapped in the face my Mr Mp3. Will journalism and magazines be slapped in the face by Mr Blogg?
• YMCK Official Web Site
  This made me think about Magnus Lowing. A 8bit NES sound keyboard.
• Interview with Jakob Nielsen [Usability and Information Architecture]
• The GoogleMaps flight sim
  Really nice.
• Macworld UK - Google nabs MySpace search deal
  To be honest I wouldn’t be to worried if I was Yahoo.
• Helvetica
  A movie about a famous typeface.
• Urbancounterfeiters
  Urban Outfitters plagarism, copying, and otherwise ripping-off. found on http://k10k.net/newspost.aspx?id=13898
• Daring Fireball: Highly Selective
  About anchored and unanchored lists in Apple OS X UI. I have no opinion on this one.
• CNN.com - Eskimo village destroyed by fire - Aug 5, 2006
  …. but but but but… were are the igloos?
• YouTube - OK Go - Here It Goes Again
  Since I bookmarked this one, and today (16 days), this video has done a lot of internet travel. The simple explanation for that is - it’s fucking great. (good song too).
• BBC NEWS | Technology | How the web went world wide
  One key date is 6 August 1991
• – madeyouthink –
• The World’s Most Photorealistic Vector Art
• What Web 2.0 means to 500 random Basecamp customers - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

And so again it’s friday

This morning wasn’t a normal morning. This morning i woke up early(er) and went out for a run.

In my pre-london day’s this wasn’t such a big deal, but since this is the first time I did it in london (and add the fact that I have been living here 3 years) - it is kind of a big deal.

What actually got me going is the fact that I sit by a computer all day, and that has given my back and shoulders a higher voice of complaint.

So three days ago I bought the NikePlus kit - the shoes, the iPod, the accessories - all of it. I like statistics - so if I can get it - why not!

So how was it?
The NikePlus/iPod experience was fine. I’m actually a bit impressed how well they have put it all together - the shoes, the iPod, the website.

The running experience was awful.
I have never really been a fan of running to start with. I’m a team player. There is just not enough excitement in running. It’s just you. No-one to adjust your “play” to. Just you. Before I ran so I would be capable of doing something else better… this time I guess that thing is my ability to sit in front of a computer - living the life I live without turning into a public health risk.

And so again it’s friday.

This weekend it will be a very very interesting Hungarian GP. Really hope Schumacher will put Alonso were he belong - back with the other young promising drivers. I’m even looking forward to hear him complain about the tiers again. If I could decide - Button win, then double Ferrari and Alonso breaks down.

And so again it’s friday.

This weekend Willow and I are going up to Newcastle to visit her parents. More on this next week.

And so again it’s friday and I have shit loads to do and I better get started.

Friday.

About a week a ago (or so) this email:

I’ve got 2 x 4th generation ipods at home, both with knackered hard drives. My inner environmentalist says that I can’t throw them away. But getting them fixed will cost £150 quid each. Which just isn’t worth it considering they’re old and scratched up. Is there anything you can do with them? Or like mobile phones is there a charity that can do something with them?

turned a mailing list into a temporarily war zone about capitalism, corporal responsibilities, old mechanics vs new. A lot of good thinks got said;

…in a way it’s our own fault for supporting it and propagating the apple-is-best mythology simply because ipods are so much nicer-looking, more nicely designed and more ergonomic than e.g. creative or any of the other dog-ugly pc-like clones. i guess we’re victims of our own taste, or something? personally i don’t think it’s too much to ask that we should have nicely-designed and ergonomic technology that doesn’t cost the earth and lasts longer than a mayfly, but it seems the man doesn’t agree with me, because that would interfere with unfettered economic growth.

i’ll get my coat.

good point were made:

so that they can make more money from extended guarantees, a relatively recent bit of sharp practice. from what I understand of older times, this was not previously the case.

and a lot of good links got send around:

• Slavoj Zizek: Nobody has to be vile
  An article including both good and bad things. So maybe not all good - but definitely an interesting read.
• Apple battery replacement
  Apple’s batteries scheme, that was, according to some sources, set up as a response to all the complains coming in.
• Apple and the environment
  “Apple has long been an advocate of product stewardship, and we believe that this concept extends to the proper disposal of electronic equipment at the end of its life.”

So all that (and a lot more) came out of a email about two knackered iPods in combination with some brilliant people and their thoughts (and will to share them). I actually didn’t contribute to the discussion at all, I just agreed towards the end. So well done everyone and thanks for once again proving that TV is a bad choice of entertainment (and that the world is fucked up and we all gonna die and burn in Hell).

So thanks Iain Tait for fucking up two iPods. Thank you Andrew Knott for winding up Igor Clark to produce some absolute top quality rants.

• McDs launches next strike in breakfast war in Wrigleyville | Crain’s Chicago Business
  really nice… and smart. Probably not the ultimate weapon in the war on breakfast, but a very good weapon on advertising.
• Let Go. Free Your Soul
  iPod in the belt… sounds stupid, and probably is stupid… (still i post it…)
• A CSS Solution to Image Blocking | Articles/Tips
  a good article on image replacement. I do know that this is not the best way (for instead you need to us the ‘em’ tag and not the ’span’ etc and so on). but it do tell the method in a good way, and the article also links to a article by Dave Shea, which is The Image Replacement Article. So read them both… and I would never suggest anyone to use CSS when doing an HTML email.

• Apple - Trailers - Who Killed The Electric Car? - Trailer
  business business business. it’s mad; how money have become something so bad for the society and world. power, money, greed… that’s what will bring everything down.
• Codewave Software - myTunesRSS
  This little application seems very interesting. Haven’t tried it… but hope it delivers what it says on the tin.
• Nike and Apple find common trought iPod and iTunes
  This most be one of the things that have been past around today. also on the apple website.
• YouTube - SmackBook
  I think, and believe, this is just a hint of whats coming.

• this is something i’m gonna try to set up
  so that in the future this kind of post will happen automatically from my del.icio.us page.
• Skilled guitar player
  this is the kind of thing that can and will send guitar players back to school/practice.
• YamiPod
  seems like a wicked application/software.
• The Microsoft malaise — Eight signs that the software giant is dead in the water
  nothing surprisingly new but still interesting (and I love the inline stock updates).
• shaveeverything
  found this very funny and in many ways brilliant.