Yesterday I posted about how Safari was a hog when hitting “Command-R” to reload a page. I seem to have discovered an acceptable workaround that exploits my routine of hitting “Command-L” and then “Return” to reload a page. I had to buy an application called Keyboard Maestro, knowing the history of solid apps that Stairways Software makes, it was a solid purchase. I have made a macro that only in Safari will run “Command-L Return”. What’s rad is it takes over Safari’s “Command-R” just fine. I am happy, yay!

I officially added my first post to Formulate Affinity on 04/02/05. As of 04/19/05 I hit a milestone, with around 800 unique page views (IP addresses) in a twenty-four hour period. To be honest, this is more “readership” than I ever imagined. This was pretty much just an experiment to see if I could get in the habit of writing and actually improve my writing skills. While I can say for certain my writing skills are nothing short of (As “K” says “too ranty”) shoddy, it does give me something to do and a place for me to put some of the stuff that crosses my mind.

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For some reason lately I have been drinking a lot of water. I have no idea what is making me so thirsty, yet without fail, I wake up at 6AM and have to down two full glasses. This of course reeks havoc with that game we all play; trying to sleep when we know we are going to have to get up to take a piss. No matter how hard you try, you are going to end up taking your ass to The John eventually.

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From time to time I have been known to dabble in a little web development. For those of you who do not know how the process works, you basically sit down in a text editor and start writing out code, that code is saved to a server and you load the result in a browser. At that point, Magic Stuff™ happens and your code is translated into html for display in a browser.

This workflow amounts to a lot of reloading pages in your browser. Often is the case where my mind is just not working and I will have reloaded a page hundreds of times after making minor tweaks to the logic in my code. This used to be a pretty painless process, at least up until the latest version of Safari (1.3) surfaced.

The keyboard sequence “Command-R” sends a “Reload Page” command to Safari. This used to happen in milliseconds, it now takes significantly longer. If I watch the “Activity” monitor in Safari, I can see a simple reload is re-requesting all the images that are on the page. Safari has always been a little boogered in regards to caching images, as of late, it seems to simply assume you want all new graphics on a reload command. I am pushing 3 seconds on a dual 2.0Ghz G5 just to reload a page with only three or four images on it. I have however, found a few very strange workarounds.

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The first time I ever understood the meaning of the word “ruse” was while watching Clerks. It was just before Randal Graves gave the annoying video renter the boot. Ever since I have been a fan of anything Kevin Smith and any opportunity to use the word.

I may get a lot of flack for this, but were I a conspiracy theorist, I may just have to call 9/11 a government sanctioned ruse. It was a plot to trick the entire country into thanking the government for taking away every civil liberty we used to hold so dear. Was a few thousand deaths really that large a price to pay for the willing complacency of the entire nation?

CNN is reporting, Airline lighter ban takes effect, which basically means you can no longer travel with a lighter, period. For the past 30 years you have not been able to bring lighters on a place in your checked luggage, which I can understand as it is a safety risk. While I do not fully see the logic in it, I suppose a lighter could explode due to changes in air pressure where the luggage is stored. What I do not understand is how hairspray, which is equally flammable, gets to escape such scrutiny! At any rate, fine, I can keep my lighter in my pocket, no big deal. At least I could, up until a few days ago.

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Album of the Day
This is just freakish, I had no idea this band would be in the iTunes Music Store catalog. Fifteen is a small band that has been together and broken up more times than Microsoft has screwed people. Jeff Ott is the frontman, from what I can dig up on him, he lives in Santa Rosa California. For me, it is pretty odd to like a band that is so openly extreme liberal, but alas, that is the punk rock mantra, just usually not to such “hippy commune” ideals as what Fifteen stands for. I got into them when I was too young to care about what politics were, let alone know that my favorite genre of music stands for almost everything I am against. :-)

I really suggest you take a look at everything they put out, or at least everything they put out on Lookout Records. “Surprise”, which is my AotD is not in iTunes since it was put out on another label, hopefully you can sample some of the songs on Amazon. There is a good deal of overlap on the albums anyway, “Definition” will give you a good idea of what they sound like.

ITunes Samples | Buy At Amazon

It is a well known fact that Apple’s iTunes is of great success, at the same time it is equally well known that Apple is not making much money off of the music store, but rather profiting on the sale of iPod’s.

Steve Jobs said this to The Register:

“Most of the money goes to the music companies,” admitted Jobs.

“We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it’s not a money maker,” he said, candidly.

I have a proposal that could change the tides of this for Apple, or alternately, could put Amazon in a position to stomp right over Apple.

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It is perhaps arguable that email is the core foundation of the internet, well before the web was in common use, there was email. In 1971 Ray Tomlinson created the first application used to send a message from one local user to another. It was by no means the “application” most people think of with fancy buttons, pretty images, file attachments, and links to websites. It was however, a start, and with that, the “@” symbol was born and computer to computer messages were well on their way to becoming the most widely used form of communication since letter writing.

The first emails ever sent were a distant relative to the inbred bastard son we know and refer to today as email. Imagine messages where plain text was your only option, there was no bold, no italics, no inline images, just your trusty fixed width terminal with orange on black type. I was just barely born in those days, but what I would not give for everyone to take a step back and adopt some of the earlier conventions practiced in those very first emails that were sent across small local networks.

Today we live in a world of rich media, where most are not interested in an email unless it pukes bright red on you. Email is being reduced to a form of slower instant messaging. Haste is the norm, ignoring emails for weeks on end, or even indefinitely, is considered acceptable practice. If all that was not maddening enough, most emails look as though they were composed by children who have not yet learned the subtleties of spelling and grammar. Not a day goes by that I do not get a email from someone I once considered intelligent and thorough, to only have to form a new opinion of them based on their email etiquette. Perhaps I live in a bubble and I am being far to critical of people about this, perhaps I am not seeing the difference between email and letter writing, perhaps people will read this and get a clue!

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I found this site a while ago, accidentally stumbled upon it again, its just too funny. I genuinely feel for him, school sucks, I just hope he does not off himself before I get a chance to read everything.

After way too long between visits to the dentist, I finally got around to getting a checkup and general cleaning. I really don’t mind the dentist all that much, but this guy is a full on nut case. I am pretty sure he is primarily a children’s dentist, the way he explains things, you walk away feeling like you are six all over again. After the usual lecture on how smoking is bad for the teeth and gums, he recommended I get some mouthwash and use it regularly. This surprised me, I figured that stuff was just marketing fluff in regards to it’s ability to prevent plaque and gingivitis, apparently, it really does work. After damn near a grand in work I figured a $6.00 bottle of green minty stuff was money well spent if it was able to prevent getting gouged by the dentist.

Back at home, it’s time to test this stuff out and see how it tastes. When did all this child proofing happen? It took me evading no less than three child safety counter measures and applying one hack to get my mouthwash container to resemble something I would consider convenient. First, there was the plastic seal around the screw top, seriously, what are they making this stuff out of, I damn near had a suicide on my hands trying to slice the plastic seal off. Second, you have to squeeze the top just right in order to align these two little tabs, then the lid is off, yay! Not done yet, don’t forget to remove the safety seal that is super-glued to the top of the bottle.

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Album of the Day
Nina Gordon used to be one of the singers in Veruca Salt, you may remember her from their hit song “Seether“. For some reason she is not in the iTunes Catalog, try the Amazon link below or just go to her site and listen to the multitude of samples she has put up. I would say, somewhere in-between Aimee Mann and Juliana Hatfield, but with a much more sultry twist to it. There are a few tracks that others have mistaken for Madonna, whom I am not a fan of, but it just goes to show how great her voice is on this album. Oh, and if you still think Skid Row is a damn fine rock band, like I do, this cover of 18 and life Nina Gordon does should spark some interest.

Buy At Amazon

When I started this blog I spent a good deal of time trying to come up with a domain name for it. With so little out there that is not being squatted on these days, you get to a point where you want to just move on and be done with it. As I mentioned in “Blog Explained“, Little Trouble Girl comes from a Sonic Youth song title. I was pretty pleased with the name, but the more I thought about it the more I was getting hung up on the gender fuck that was happening with the name. In case you haven’t guessed, I am not a girl, I may be a little troubled, but I do pee while vertical. While it was not my intention, I started to feel the site was misleading to some, and could possibly attract readers under false pretense. As of now, the domain name is FormulateAffinity.com, which comes from a Nirvana song that I am quite fond of.

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I stumbled on Mark Cuban’s weblog, blog gmaverick in which he has an article entitled “The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin“. This was my first read at his blog, judging by his archives and the number of comments per post I saw, his blog is hugely more popular than mine. :-) I don’t aim to piss on anyone’s toes here, but the basis of his article is just not agreeing with me, not one bit. (Note to Mark: if you are reading this, which I doubt, this is in no away a personal attack on you, I just don’t think your idea jives with the general consuming market.)

I am going to do some massive paraphrasing here, if you want the exact scoop, click on over and read it for yourself. Mark’s idea is that the CD as we know it is going to soon go away, we will all be trading in our CD’s for rapid download kiosks in mini-malls and retail outlets. He brings up some good points in favor of the CD, such as the current instability of file formats, pointing out that the traditional audio CD is still the one medium in which us, the end user, have full control over what we do with it. We can copy it, loan it, covert it, mix it, or otherwise shift it around into any of hundreds of different environments and mediums. The same can not be said of digital files.

Mark sums up parts of it here:

To buy music these days, I have to make all kinds of choices. If I want to buy downloads from the net, it’s like trying to figure out which mortgage to take out on a house. Now because of the cost, but because of all the rules and regulations. Do I want to limit myself to 5 computers. Do I want to always keep my subscription live. Do I want to store the music in a proprietary format that only a couple devices can use. Those are all tough decisions to make when the only thing I know with certainty is that the device I’m using as an MP3 player today, is NOT going to be the device I’m going to be using 18 months from now. There will be players that have more features, or I will consolidate multiple products into a single device. I may be using my phone, my PSP or PDA or something other device for my music.

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Album of the Day
I think it was Supernova (Sorry, this is an acoustic live thing, iTunes does not have WhipSmart in the catalog) that first got me into Liz Phair, right about the time 120 minutes was on MTV and it was actually a good place to discover new bands like Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumkins, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr. and any number of other bands that by now most of you have heard of. Miss Phair is a tough one, her songs tend to be rather graphic and leaning on the side of something a guy certainly should not listen to. Her self titled release has a track aptly named H.W.C. which is an acronym for “Hot White Cum”! I don’t know about you, but female or male, I just have a hard time digesting that title. :-) What’s worse is it is probably one of the stronger tracks on the album, finding yourself singing along and realizing exactly what it is you are groovin’ to can be a little disconcerting! She’s definitely unique, her album is polished and well done, not to mention, she is pretty damn hot, is into the PlayStation, is good friends with John Cusac, and you have an all around nice little package. If you can get over the “girly” party of it, I suggest you pick it up or give it a listen.

iTunes Samples | Buy At Amazon

For some reason I decided to look at the iTunes Music Store today, i usually don’t, I am glad I did. My second AotD was Lost in Space, by Aimee Mann, so it is odd that iTunes has released a special “Originals” with her as the feature. I guess I am just *that* on top of my shit. I do not really get the listing in the iTunes store, there seems to be 23 tracks, some you can do à la carte
and others you have to get the entire album. I am guessing the whole album download is the “Originals” thing, which is an interview, the rest of the tracks must be the new stuff. What has me really pumped is the acoustic remake of Voices Cary, just freakin rad!

Why can’t I copy and paste from the iTunes Music Store? …Yes, I had to retype that, ugh, analog! From the iTunes Music Store page…

Aimee Mann made it big as a lead singer of the ’80s pop sensation ‘Til Tuesday, with tightly-written songs like “Voices Carry.” Since breaking out on her own, she’s reinvented herself as a high-caliber independent artist. During this edition of iTunes Originals, she discusses having a huge hit on her debut album and then thriving in cult-dom thereafter. We get her thoughts on going solo, earning and Oscar nomination for the Magnolia Soundtrack, and making The Forgotten Arm, her latest album.

Album of the Day
This is pretty old, circa 1990 or so. You may remember the song "Sweet Jane" from Natural Born Killers: A Soundtrack For An Oliver Stone Film. I bought the original album, and since then they have released The Trinity Sessions which seems to have a whole lot more songs in the same spirit as "Sweet Jane", which is the only reason I ever got into this band. I never really liked any of the other albums, but this one, is just really good. Almost all the songs have that Mazzy Star "feel" to them, which is why it is such a nice easy album to listen to. If you liked "Sweet Jane", you are pretty sure to like the rest of the songs on this album, if anything get it just for "Sweet Jane" which is a remarkable peiece.

iTunes Samples | Buy At Amazon

There are probably a lot of people out there who are not familiar with what RSS (RDF Site Summary) is. I see it everywhere, just about every website I go to has a little orange RSS/XML icon on it, and as nice as that is, I have this feeling that the RSS thang just has not hit the mainstream yet. There is a awesome "roundtable" with some of the key RSS aggregator makers out there over at DrunkenBlog which should help to give you a little background on exactly what this RSS stuff is all about.

For those of you who want to download and test out a a few of the top RSS readers, here is my list:

• NetNewsWire
• NewsFire
• NewsMac
• PulpFiction

For those of you who do not know, RSS is just another way of getting information. As it is now, most of you probably rely on bookmarks in your browser to get your daily dose of updates. The more advanced of you may even have gone as far as to set up boomark groups in your browser so you can fire up your favorite twenty links all at once. RSS sort of sidesteps the browser. Instead of opening up your internet browser to load up your favorite websites, you open up a small desktop application that looks a whole lot like an email client. New articles that you have not read show up in this RSS reader. You get the title, and sometimes the entire article, more often, you get a summary of the entire artilcle, and if it strikes your fancy, a click here or there, and you are off reading the real website in your default browser.

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Album of the Day
For those of you who do not know, Ben Weasel is the front man for a punk band called Screeching Weasel. Don’t bother with the main bands website, it has not been updated in ages. Either way, Screeching Weasel to many is considered to be in the same league as the Ramones. Personally, I like them a little better, but they certainly have a spot in punk rock history. I could never even begin to get across how important and influential they are to music in general. Most of you I am sure have never even heard of them, other than perhaps one stint where they put out a release on a semi-large label. If you at all care to understand just how important these guys are, take a read over at “Screeching Weasel is Dead” and see what I mean. This album, however, is not a Screeching Weasel release, but a solo album, and in my opinion, one of Ben’s better works.

Buy At Amazon

Album of the Day
I know, it is starting to seem like I am a total wimp for anything female when it comes to must, and for the most part, you are sort of right :-) My real roots in music come from punk rock, I like to consider myself the Matt Pinfield of punk rock, only I don’t actually know anything at all. I did just drop way too much money on a “system” in my car, and have just been into more well recorded stuff. Tigerlilly happens to be one of the better recorded albums out there. Some of her older stuff, some of the stuff she did in 10,000 Maniacs, while not bad, is just not *this* good. I am not saying one of my AotD’s won’t be a 10,000 Maniacs album, but when there are songs like Carnival with it’s rock solid kick drum that just hits you physically, I can not pass this up as anohter one of my favorites.

iTunes Samples | Buy At Amazon

Slashdot reported Sony to Make an “iTunes for Movies” You can read the entire original article at the BBC News site.

“We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple chief Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry,” Mr Arrieta told Cnet news.

These kind of announcements seem to strike a chord with me, partly because I am an Apple fan, but mostly because others are just so misinformed in their illogical thinking. It is almost as if some are just waiting for anyone to blow Apple off the map for some reason. Just the other day I was over and my SO’s house talking with the dad, who was pretty sure the PSP was gonna kill the iPod since it could play mp3 files. Then again, he was also certain my recommendation to dump 100K out of mutual funds into Apple when they were at 40 per share was a bad idea. Seems that near 100 they hit was just not worth the 3 weeks it took to happen. There is so much going on here in comparing the PSP to an iPod or calling it an iPod killer that I just don’t know where to begin.

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