Just a quickie for the holiday. I’d also parked Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake on the DVR and just got around to watching the flick. Another well done British crime thriller from the same producer (not director) of Snatch, although not nearly as frenetic or comedic.

Layer Cake makes up for it though by being slightly more probing of British class dynamics and having a few more surprises up its sleeve. Also, the Sienna Miller/Daniel Craig relationship has some real sparks. Very judiciously applied, I’m torn as to whether a little more of those two together would have made for a better film.

There’s something about the modern Brit gangster flick that’s definitely missing in today’s American cinema. It’s almost as if Goodfellas pretty much closed the book on stylish gangster tales for this side of the pond. In light of my string of recent discoveries, I’m wondering if there isn’t a whole lot more where Snatch, RocknRolla, and Layer Cake came from.

Update. Somewhat formulaic, but an interesting backgrounder on Layer Cake from celebritywonder.com.

I completed Fritz Leiber’s Swords Against Death, the second collection of his short stories chronicling the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The most intriguing thing about this set of tales is the varied publishing years. The earliest, and first ever Fafhrd and Mouser piece, The Jewels in the Forest appeared in 1939. The Price of Pain-Ease and The Circle Curse were released in 1970.

This disparity in ages leads to some distinctly different storytelling and writing styles. As always, Leiber brings a quite pleasurable sophistication to basic heroic swords and sorcery. Of the bunch, The Howling Tower, Thieves House, Claws from the Night, and The Price of Pain-Ease are my favorites. The Howling Tower is quite dark and disturbing, tending towards horror. The Price of Pain-Ease humorously solidifies the bonds between Fafhard and the Mouser with Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.

Swords Against Death isn’t fabulous, but it is a notch above Elric of Melnibone and a refreshing tonic relative to Conan the Barbarian.

7th book of the year down.

Over there to the left is my ancient “smartphone”, the Nokia 6620. The thing is so old it has a Cingular logo for a background.

Today, using the little joystick at the center of the phone, I was scrolling through my contacts looking for a phone number. When the one I was searching for finally came up, I started tapping its row with my thumb. Tap, tap, tap. Why isn’t this thing working?

Oh yeah, it’s not an iPod Touch.

Keep in mind I’ve only had a Touch for a month and I don’t make any calls with it. Yet somehow I have “muscle memory” for Apple’s user interface, on any handheld screen device. Granted, I had just been using my Touch to do some feed reading, but I was still surprised by my own behavior.

Maybe it’s a sign to get cracking and get a new smartphone.

William Deresiewicz’s essay entitled Solitude and Leadership, hosted on theamericanscholar.org, may have been the best piece I’ve read in quite a while. Well worth the time to make a focused, concentrated reading. Don’t scan the essay (not skim) even though the temptation is there since it’s on the Web.

I don’t claim to know squat about leadership, but I resonate with the need for concentrated reflection. Not just for leaders, but for all folks who want to be substantive achievers. At some point you really have to grapple with what you believe in preparation for defending your position.

How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude? I started by noting that solitude and leadership would seem to be contradictory things. But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.

I disagree with him, mainly on degree, in regards to electronic media. Carefully exposing yourself to the more emotional and fleeting aspects of the modern world can provide mental calisthenics. Yeah, the constant cell phone checking looking for new texts, or Tweets, or check-ins, or wall posts strikes me as pathetic. Reading with a critical eye the flotsam and jetsam of the Web can help sharpen your bullshit detectors though. Then again I earn my living by being steeped in the stuff.

…was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

According to MetaFilter, today is Neuromancer‘s birthday. Still love this book and think it holds up well after 26 years.

I’m tempted to get a new MetaFilter account just to smack the MeFites who are calling Neuromancer irrelevant and overtaken by the passage of time. If you move past the computing tropes that Gibson created (jacking in, cyberspace, hacking runs) and focus on the hyper-globalization (instantaneous travel anywhere on the globe and even off of it, swirling merge of ethnicities and cultures), the personification of massive wealth (corporate and family), and media hacking as a weapon (remember that “terrorist” attack on SenseNet?) it’s still pretty damn relevant.

Frankly, Gibson got a lot more of the shape of our current world right than wrong.

But here, I am definitely a fanboy.

It’s been a little over a month since I got my iPod Touch. Here are a couple of observations to supplement my ranting about the quality of the music player.

App Store Surprisingly, I’m not finding a whole of useful stuff in the App Store. I’m really not much into gaming which seems to be a category that dominates the ratings. Right now the only app type that I’m thinking of picking up is some kind of task or productivity manager. I grabbed Evernote and Instapaper, yet still haven’t put them to any use.

e-books The one sample chapter of Neuromancer that I read using iBooks was actually quite pleasant. Amazon’s Kindle app for the iPhone is up next. I’m going to use it to read Charles Stross’ free novellette Overtime. I could get to like this e-book thing. Hopefully publishers will get the pricing straightened out. I can’t remember the title, but they were asking $11.99 for an e-book edition when I could have bought the paperback for $9.99.

Social Media I enjoy social media browsing and light feed reading much more on the touch. Browsing Twitter and Facebook one handed, leaning back, with my feet up, just feels more natural and appropriate. Flicking through some low intensity feeds with NetNewsWire is a breeze. In general, the Touch is really good at filling interstitial spaces.

Podcasting Video podcasts? Other than The Economist video segments (quite nicely done despite the loud Lotus intros), I’ve been pretty disappointed. Might as well be extended radio segments. This Week in Google is surprisingly weak given the pedigree. It’s an hour of unorganized chit-chat which tends to be pretty close to content free. They really need a good radio producer to give the show some structure and focus.

The new iPhone 4 induced a little bit of feature envy, but I’m still pretty happy with the Touch. Not having readily available 3G definitely does have an impact though. The device feels totally different when it has no connectivity.

Since I’ve slimmed down my media criticism diet, I may have missed it, but ESPN deserves some credit for its World Cup 2010 coverage, especially on TV. Even though we haven’t hit the finals, I have a whole bunch of positive elements:

• First and foremost, all games are being broadcast live. Not all the pool games were on TV, but at least you could stream them from the net. Insert withering sideways glance at NBC here.

• Many exciting or crucial games were also televised on tape delay, mostly whole, on the same day.

• The United States was highly and properly promoted, without studio hosts falling into jingoism. This particularly applies to Alexi Lalas who, while sympathetic to the US side for obvious reasons, still provided great level-headed analysis.

• The selection of European play-by-play and color broadcasters was perfectly appropriate. Typical dumbass US sportscasting policy would have called for a three man booth, featuring a network golden boy and two long forgotten NASL players.

• Judicious use of technology to highlight important football elements, e.g. offsides, but no gimmicks.

• The I Scored A Goal series was a nice promotional run up. And they actually promoted the World Cup coverage well before it started. I knew exactly where to go when play started.

• They brought out the big guns, Bob Ley, Chris Fowler, Reese Davis, etc. as studio hosts on site. Considering ESPN is also covering Wimbledon, and just came off of the US Open and the NBA Finals, this was a pretty impressive investment. Plus, no Chris “Boomer” Berman in sight.

All in all, ESPN basically took The World Cup 2010 as a serious, international, big-time event. Which of course it is but since the US traditionally hasn’t been a top level side, there’s a temptation to tart up the proceedings. ESPN didn’t half-ass it, or treat it like a novelty. The National Hockey League wishes it could get coverage this good.

My only minor complaint, and it’s exceedingly minor, is that a little bit of local color and backstory would have been nice. I don’t need a ton of soft pre-canned goop like NBC does for the Olympics , but a few more player, team, and/or historical tournament profiles would have been the cherry on top. Also, just a little more on the impact of the tournament on the streets of South Africa would have been great. Then again, maybe they’re just squashing bad news. At least they didn’t dwell on the vuvuzelas.

But again Bravo ESPN!! from this very casual follower of The Beautiful Game.

Interesting. Virgin Mobile is about to sell a 3G MiFi Hotspot. Big deal you say? Just like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, whoopedo! First up, no long term contract after you buy the device for $150. Second, it looks like you’ll be able to purchase megabytes using pre-paid cards.

I’ve been thinking that one of the major hang-ups I have with the HTC Evo is the extra $30 a month for WiFi hotspotting. But really, how badly do I need that feature? The Virgin Mobile offering is a reasonable compromise for someone like me where usage is probably mostly bursty, especially relative to the Clear 4G+, which carries a $40 per month post-paid fee.

After thoroughly enjoying Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, I parked his RocknRolla on the DVR. Took me a while to get around to watching the movie, which was definitely a mistake. RocknRolla is a pretty damn good flick.

RocknRolla follows the Ritchie standard playbook incorporating multiple threads of somewhat bumbling London gangsters to both comic and action packed effect. The trigger point is a mega-stadium being built by a Russian billionaire, Uri Omovich. Omovich needs certain construction permits “taken care of quickly” and turns to long-standing English crime kingpin Lenny Cole to make it happen. Uri also lends Cole his lucky painting, which immediately gets nicked.

Of course mayhem and hilarity promptly ensue. I shouldn’t oversell Lenny and Uri as the movie really revolves around One Two, Mumbles, and Handsome Rob, key members of The Wild Bunch crew. RocknRolla is a little less frenetic and kinetic than Snatch, but it still moves. Plus it’s damn funny. RocknRolla is really a comedy caper at heart, with a nice dose of action.

Herewith some highlights:

• A great cast including: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Idris Elba, Jeremy Piven, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Karel Roden, and Toby Kebbell as Johnny Quid

• Great hood names such as, One Two (Butler), Mumbles (Elba), and Handsome Rob

• Some great teasin’ and chappin’ amongst The Wild Bunch

• Archy’s manner which is , well…, rather arch in an exceedingly dry style

• Thandie Newton, as Stella, and Gemma Arterton, as June, are easy on the eyes

• A hilarious dance sequence between Stella and One Two

• The junky philosophical stylings of Johnny Quid and his sidekick, Pedro

• And a great MacGuffin

The tail end of the movie teased a sequel called “The Real RocknRolla”. Looking forward to it.

Knocked off Michael Moorcok’s Elric of Melnibone this week. An old, dusty box at my mother’s house held the entire seven DAW editions of Moorcock’s albino anti-hero, Elric. Elric is right up there with Conan as an iconic swords and sorcery character. I remember that as a teen, Elric’s tales felt somewhat more sophisticated for fantasy, probably due to a darker themes and a British author.

Elric of Melnibone is mostly about introducing characters and setting the stage. Elric is a quite discomfited emperor, showing empathetic capacity not in line with his cruel forbears. There’s a lot of probing of his and his cohort’s internal feelings about each and other and the world. Elric could easily be read as a metaphorical tale of a fading empire’s struggles.

While the characters are rich and distinctive, the actual plot and writing are nondescript. The book comes in at a thin 160 pages, and even at that I felt like it dragged in a few places. A lot of the base constructs (moody anti-hero, dark and treacherous gods, fading exotic empire) are well crafted, but the actual action is mundane. Eventually we’re reduced to a less than thrilling chase involving Elric trying to reach the evil black sword Stormbringer before his rivalrous cousin Yyrkoon. At the denouement, nothing is resolved and Elric sets out on a ridiculously foolish journey.

Still Elric of Melnibone is worth reading as a darker counterpoint to stuff like The Lord of the Rings. And if you’re even a middling fan of fantasy, you need to know what all the fuss is about.

I have to say though, the DAW cover just does not fit the character. Elric and bulging muscles are not synonymous in my mind.

Your right to comment ends at my front door.

I was never wavering on my aversion to comments on this site. Just in case though, it’s good to know that Derek Powazek and John Gruber are of a similar mind to me when it comes to not employing them.

As a card carrying member of late 80’s, early 90’s hip-hop fandom, I’m sort of torn by Kia’s latest hamster commercial. On the one hand, it’s a pretty well done homage to Black Sheep’s The Choice is Yours.

On the other hand, it’s freekin’ hamsters.

And of course the original video is still a classic. I’m surprised Kia didn’t make more of a connection, especially with Dres and Mr. Lawnge reaching into and crumpling up the screen.

In a previous life, I was early on the bandwagon of prefuse, an innovative information visualization toolkit implemented in Java. A key element was the programming model that systematically organized the transformation of data into graphical elements. Subsequent work identified and extracted information visualization design patterns, including the usage of structured tables and SQL-like query facilities.

While it would be hard to top the quality of prefuse as a Java toolkit, I’ve always wondered what a Python adaptation would look like. The graphic primitives aren’t that big a deal, and Python is rich enough to easily emulate any of prefuse’s control flow mechanisms. The structured tables and SQL facilities always bugged me though, because it seemed to me that you could easily use an embedded relational engine, like SQLite, to support those capabilities. The embedded DB could provide a richer query language than prefuse’s, higher performance querying, and persistent storage allowing you to work with bigger datasets.

I’ve been mentally kicking this issue around and digging into the prefuse source code to see what exactly was implemented. I think I’ve got a relatively straightforward way to emulate prefuse’s table facilities in a stock Python install. This is starting to feel like a worthy side project.

The result wouldn’t be completely superfluous as I think there are some unexplored issues in terms of the prefuse model and interaction. Also, the combo with Python might lead to some increased flexibility due to the language change, and a higher level of accessibility due to an interactive command loop and Python’s batteries included. Of course you’d lose the ability to generate applets, but frankly that’s probably a small loss.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Ars Technica’s review of iOS4. There’s deep into the features and then there’s an ArsTechnica obsessive compulsive disorder level of inspection. They even dig out the dirty little warts of all these new features.

P.S. They also confirm that the iPod music app, it can’t even be graced with the iTunes name, is standing still:

Within the iPod app itself, barely anything has changed except for the ability to create and edit playlists. In fact, even this isn’t very new: Apple has basically revamped what was previously known as “on-the-go playlists,” which was an old concept anyway that was carried over from the days when iPods didn’t have touchscreens. Now, under the (mostly just renamed) system, there’s a menu item to “Add Playlist” toward the top of your playlist list:

C’mon Apple. This is beneath your standards.

Since I have an iPod Touch of recent vintage, I’m privy to the latest and greatest iPhone operating system, iOS 4. I joined the rush and updated my iPod today. Gizmodo (yeah I know, they’re probably on the wrong side of that “lost” iPod issue) seems to have a pretty good breakdown of the new features, going deep into the main feature list, and then even deeper into some “hidden” features. Many of the new features are obviously iPhone 4 related, but there are a couple that are of interest to me.

The biggest one is iBooks. I doubt that I’ll be reading a ton of books on the iPod but I’m going to give it a test drive. There seems to be a fair amount of free material and each book seems to have a sample. I’ve already grabbed Charles Stross’ Overtime, a Laundry short story, as a freebie, and a sample chapter from William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

I have to admit, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” looks pretty good, even on such a tiny screen.

Meanwhile, looks like iTunes is still teh suck. Oh, now you can edit playlists on the Touch, even if you can’t read the long titles. Sigh!

Took the day off. Put the feet up, watched some football, some golf, and then had a nice dinner out with the wife and my little guy (3+ years old). Hope every other guy doing their best to provide proper guidance for youth had as good a day. Cheers!!

Just finished Charles Stross’ Iron Sunrise this past week. I had made a good start, got sidetracked, then jumped back in thanks to a long plane trip. Like many of Stross’ works I got a little lost in the baroque ornamentation of singularity science. But I still enjoyed this story, quite like I did the first in this series Singularity Sky.

While the protagonist of Singularity Sky, Rachel Mansour, has a significant role in this tale of interplanetary intrigue, she by no means hogs the spotlight. Instead, Wednesday Strowger, a teenager on the lam after her home planet has been wiped out, twice, is arguably the heroine. Both of them are trying to defeat a dark, planet destroying plot, although it’s not until the latter third of the book that they connect.

Iron Sunrise is more overtly political than Singularity Sky, while the later is a bit more humorous: “Will you entertain us?”. The ReMastered, the bad guys of the novel, are bit of a Nazi pastiche and laid on a little thick, but still quite ominous. Stross pulls a nice ethical twist with them at the climax of the novel. There’s also a host of other interesting characters fleshed out to varying levels of detail.

I’m not going to claim Iron Sunrise blew me away, but it was a solid sci-fi read, and a little more accessible than the typical Stross singularity mindfuck. Worth springing for the paperback edition.

Whenever you hold the device in a landscape position, you get CoverFlow. There’s no setting to disable this.

You can’t start a playlist by double tapping on the playlist name.

Guess what, you can’t shuffle by album, which you can do on an iPod Nano.

Still extremely chapped about not scrolling long titles.

And I hate apps that pop out to Safari to display a URL. Problem is you can’t easily pop back into the original app. Just embed WebKit, like NetNewsWire does.

This is mostly about the poor interface in iTunes music playback. I’ve noticed that you really don’t have a cursor which may be part of the problem. The scrolling is BS though. ESPN has a horizontal crawl in its apps. Why can’t Apple get this one little detail correct.

Also, you’ve got this big display area and metadata on each track, but all those beautiful pixels aren’t being put to any use.

The upcoming NBA Finals is intriguing though, with a Celtics-Laker rematch of the 2008 Finals. Despite having home-court advantage and Kobe Bryant, it’s unclear who is the favorite in this series. While seemingly challenged in the Western Conference, the Lakers haven’t gone more than 6 games this year. It also feels like they have a bit more talent than the Celtics. Meanwhile, the Celtics have been on a roll and their defense has rounded back into 2008 form.

I’ll take the Lakers winning it in a close game 7, although I’m a little nervous going against Tim Legler, who has the Celtics in 6. He’s been on target with his predictions much of the postseason.

The Lakers are the 2009-10 NBA Champions. Game 7 was a grinder affair, but pretty tense. Still doesn’t make up for the tepidness of the rest of the playoffs. Heck, I didn’t even find any of The Finals games particularly dramatic. Contrast with Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

ABC/ESPN what’s up with having Magic in the booth, then going all Laker fanboy on the podium? Un-pro-fessional. Hey LA, I don’t care who you’re a fan of, you don’t boo Bill Russell. ABC had to lay on the 7 second delay tonight didn’t they?

And Ron Ron Artest has a ring. Long way from the Malice in the Palace. He still crazy though.

For a moment, David Pogue’s review of the HTC Evo had put the dagger in my choice of the new 4G phone, battery life being the culprit again. Here’s the money quote:

The good news is that most of the disappointing, flaky and mediocre aspects of the Evo all pertain to its cutting-edge features. Thousands of people don’t actually care about 4G or hot spots or video calling. They take pleasure in the Evo’s less exotic features: sizzling speed, smooth software, ingenious layout of the five home screens, and even the little kickstand that props the thing up when you’re watching a video.

Beyond that, the Evo is basically a technology demo. It’s a glimpse at the high-speed, smooth-video future of this country’s cell systems, at least for people who live in those 32 lucky hamlets.

Some of the Evo fans descended on the comments with contradicting experiences. Apparently if you work a little you can easily decrease the power consumption.

The real killer may be the monthly charges that accrue if you want the Evo with all the bells and whistles. You’re looking at $70 for the plan Sprint forces on you, plus $10 for the privilege of 4G (even if you’re not covered), plus $30 for WiFi hotspotting. That’s $110 a month total.

But here’s a combination of an iPhone 4 and a modem from Clearwire:

• $40 AT&T Nation 450 (voice)

• $5 AT&T Messaging 200 (text)

• $25 AT&T DataPro plan (data)

• $40 4G/3G unlimited Clear data plan

So for the same $110 bucks, I get the identical coverage on my laptop, which I can use as a WiFi hotspot through MacOS X Internet sharing, and an arguably better phone. Or at least one with less hassle. And I could ease into this plan, test driving the iPhone 4 with tethering before committing to Clear.

Now that’s not a complete apples to apples comparison, since the data plan for the phone is unlimited, text and bytes, with Sprint, while with AT&T I’m capped at 200 texts and 2GB of data. There’s also the $115 for the Clear modem and the inconvenience of another device. Alternatively, I could forgo the Clear 4G plan, add tethering to the AT&T plan and get a monthly hit of $90.

I still haven’t run into a review that flat out says “the Evo is great” with no qualms. Maybe I should trawl the Android fan sites to get another perspective.

It’s about two weeks since I discovered SportsGrid, but I’m really enjoying their reportage. I especially liked their NCAA football coverage while the Big 12 was melting dow … errr … reconfiguring. Again, I have to point out SportsGrid, while having a slightly irreverent tone, is simply not as juvenile as DeadSpin. The only irritant is their usage of “WATCH” in every post that features a video embed.

Highly recommended.

Matt Neuburg knows a bit about Apple in general and Macintosh technology in particular. He’s a Witch fan, so I’m in good company. If you’re a Macintosh user, you should buy a copy right this minute ;-) I’ve even put my own money where my mouth is and paid for a license.

At TidBITS, Neuburg outlines why he loves the window switching application. The new release improves performance and works better with Spaces. I even learned quite a bit about some advanced Witch features.

Just doin’ my bit to promote the independent developer economy.

Update: Corrected egregious typo of Neuburg

In the spirit of Jeff Atwood’s Meta is Murder, I’ve generally been avoiding meta-blogging here. Not that I’m generating a stream of the most deepest, insightful posts, but hey it’s my site.

However, allow an indulgence.

Recently I hit a couple of century marks in my posting. First, in March, April, and May of 2010, I posted a total of 100 times. That beats my previous best three month total of 96 from September, August, and July of 2009.

Second, I’m currently on a streak of 107 straight days of posting. I hit 100 straight on June 6th and have been trucking along ever since. There have been a couple of close calls and challenges, mostly related to long days at work, late night post-work social functions, and long distance work related travel. Did I thoroughly blame work? Posting desperation only really crept in one time, but I beat midnight with five minutes or so to spare. And only one post felt like it was mailed in. Otherwise, I’ve felt like I’ve made a good honest effort to provide some value or entertainment with a basis in the myriad of things that I’m working on or interest me on a daily basis. I’ll probably take a break soon though.

One thing the streak has done is bring some clarity to this blog’s themes. Clearly, I’m not close to what I long ago wrote in the About page. The #1 topic has to be a trailing edge geek’s quest for a new smartphone. Then it’s equal parts, post-disco dance/electronic music, Apple nuggets, sports observations, and a skoosh of science fiction. Mmmmm, fantasy football’s only 3 months away!

Some stuff I need to get back to? Working on a sideline programming project. Reading more books. And expanding my library of DnB mixes.

No plans to do comments, as I still can’t stand them. But Annals of the Disco Diaspora might get some more play. I’m having fun digging into my mental history of 80’s and 90’s dance music.

To infinity and beyond!

I’ve been a long time ssh user, but not with much sophistication. Caught a nice little tip on Lifehacker about setting up per host ssh config files. The key thing for me was being able to customize each configuration, give it a name, and have ssh tab complete named configurations. I’ll have to give this a try toot de suite.

io9.com captured a recent press release naming Vincenzo Natali as the director of an upcoming production of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. I’m not one to say a book is unfilmable, but as a big fan of the seminal classic, good luck to Natali. He’s gonna need it. Sci-fi adaptations have a poor track record, c.f. Dune and Watchmen. Not to mention the results from adapting Gibson’s own Johnny Mnemonic and New Rose Hotel.

On the plus side, Natali seems to have a distinctive style and vision, having directed Cube and the recent Splice. Natali also did the story boards for Johnny Mnemonic, so presumably he’s familiar with Gibson’s work and well aware of what went wrong with that film.

Now that parts of the cyberpunk ethic have permeated popular culture, and we have other technology aesthetics emerging from the Web, gaming, and mobile telephony, the time might be ripe for a great Neuromancer film.

P. S. A better place to begin a a movie based on Gibson’s work might be the short story Burning Chrome. There’s enough story and style to form the core of a screenplay, but also a lot left unsaid and unexplored, leaving a director with plenty of room to work.

Stashing Rudix for future consideration:

Rudix is a package-based, user-friendly way to extend the Unix portion of Mac OS X with additional network utilities, computer languages, development libraries, text tools and everything else you missed from command line.

Plus Rudix is aimed to be Python friendly.

T. J. Luoma of The Unofficial Apple Weblog provides a little more depth on the utility of Rudix.

“I’m sure there a lot of Chicagoans expecting the big time collapse, but I’m not seeing it. The Blackhawks ain’t the Cubs.”

“Most people realize the Hawks are the better team, but Philly is showing a lot of grit. At the end of the day, their goaltending might finally bite them in the ass.”

Congratulations to the Chicago Blackhawks, the 2010 Stanley Cup Champions. This means in the past 25 years the city of Chicago has held the Lombardi Trophy (once), the Stanley Cup (once), the O’Brien Trophy (six times) and the Commissioner’s Trophy (once). Take that New York (Knicks waiting since ‘72) and LA (Los Angeles Kings working on their first cup), not to mention Philly (Eagles have yet to win a Super Bowl).

“If the Lakers can make a couple of adjustments to slow Allen down, without giving up a lot to Paul Pierce and/or Rando, they can get one or two in Boston.”

Still sticking with Lakers in 7.

In my quest to propagate Google Reader key bindings to all my feed readers, I discovered that you can rebind the keys for menu items in MacOS X. Caius Theory had the initial tip off when I was looking to get NetNewsWire to emulate Google Reader. Don’t quite know if NetNewsWire has the menu functions that can actually make this happen, but the capability is a neat little feature of MacOS.

Speaking of old House classics, digging around on the Amazon MP3 store, I was surprised to unearth Master C and J’s In The City. I thought I already had it in my digital library, maybe on some Trax Record compilation, but it was missing in action.

These guys were one, maybe two, hit wonders. We’ll give them credit for Liz Torres’ Can’t Get Enough as well, which is also available as an MP3. Both of these cuts wound up on a surprising number of compilations though.

The surprising thing about both In The City and Can’t Get Enough is how “murky” they were. Before the Acid outbreak, most House was fairly positive, well nigh spiritual. In the City has the standard House elements, especially the head cutting hi-hat, but the lyrics and mood are really dark. The song is reminiscent of a trip into the urban jungle gone wrong. Can’t Get Enough has a similar flavor, and is about a woman who tries to leave a man but come’s back to him, not quite crawling.

Definitely musts for the House aficionado.

When the Chicago Blackhawks jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals, I thought they were going to cruise to the championship. Got to give the Flyers credit for fighting back to tie the series. Most people realize the Hawks are the better team, but Philly is showing a lot of grit. At the end of the day, their goaltending might finally bite them in the ass.

Great moves by Joel Quenneville, breaking up the first line and sparking the O. I flipped away to watch some of the Lakers-Celtics, flipped back and the Hawks were up 3-0 in Game 5.

I’m sure there a lot of Chicagoans expecting the big time collapse, but I’m not seeing it. The Blackhawks ain’t the Cubs. The Bulls got over the hump. The White Sox got over the hump. The Bears made it to the Super Bowl with a mediocre (at best) QB, almost managed to beat one of the greatest QB’s of our generation, and frankly were not the better team.

What’s better than playoff time in Chicago? Championship time in the summer baby!

P. S. Speaking of the Lakers, they’re in a bit of trouble, but keep in mind Ray Allen had to have a historic game to keep the Celtics in Game 2. Then the Lakers just fell apart for no apparent reason. If the Lakers can make a couple of adjustments to slow Allen down, without giving up a lot to Paul Pierce and/or Rando, they can get one or two in Boston. I’m sorry, KG can’t go for 40 any more and Perkins isn’t even looking for his shot. So I’d help off of the big guys and take my chances.

I can’t claim to have been there at the dawn of House music, being nowhere near Chicago or New York at the time. But four years of college in Boston, starting in 1985, gave me a front row seat for the genre’s breakout into the underground. The transmission vector was a cohort of New York students, a few of whom had pretentions to deejaying. They obviously brought a lot of fresh Hip-Hop back to campus, but they also mixed in this new higher tempo stuff from Chicago.

Thinking back to those days, and my own delusions of spinning records, I remembered a handful of tracks that were often played at campus events or late night on the college radio mix shows. I eventually got all of these records on vinyl, but by chance looked to see if there were MP3 versions for sale. I wasn’t holding out much hope, but was pleasantly surprised to find the following:

• Serious Intention, You Don’t Know, Easy Street Records 1984. A little slower than the typical House track, but the synth lines are to die for. The swirling breakdown is legendary.

• Cultural Vibe, Ma Foom Bey, Easy Street Records 1986. Similar to You Don’t Know, Ma Foom Bey has great synth lines. The chunky organ sound is the hallmark of this track. Also, probably one of the earliest tracks to incorporate African chanting.

• Nitro Deluxe, Let’s Get Brutal, Cutting Records 1986. If Phuture’s Acid Tracks is the first Acid House record, then 1986’s Let’s Get Brutal is definitely a precursor. The ultra-minimalist 14 minute version, The Brutal House, is sans Roland TB-303 tweakiness, but definitely comes from the same spare, trancy mentality.

• Strafe, Set It Off, Jus Born Records 1984. This is a little more up tempo and arguably more Electro than House. But I note it here for the emphasized head-cutting hi-hat. Hey, if Walter Gibbons mixed it and Larry Levan threw it down on the decks, that’s close enough for me.

I found the first three on the Amazon MP3 music store. Apparently, a lot of the Easy Street Records catalog recently came available. Set It Off I found on the iTunes Music Store.

Best of all, these four tracks date pretty well. I think House DJ of today worth their salt wouldn’t be embarrassed to throw any of these tracks into the mix right now. Might even be a badge of honor.

Okay, I have to admit that the Wi-Fi syncing in 1Password for the iPod touch is pretty sweet. It’s exactly what I was looking for when I bought the application.

Still haven’t had a chance to try out the password filling features on the iPod Touch though.

“Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

John Wooden’s career wound down a little ahead of when I got into following sports. But the echoes of The Wizard of Westwood’s achievements propagated well past the end of his tenure as UCLA basketball coach. If you tracked college basketball at all over the past 30 years you got at least one annual John Wooden appearance.

Not to mention the overly loquacious Bill Walton all over the place, who’d give you five run-on minutes on Coach Wooden whenever he got the chance.

There will be plenty of highly eloquent Wooden tributes. I won’t be able to make much of an addition. But for all the simple, folksy, life lessons he dispensed, I’m sure there was a ton of hard work behind the winning results. Don’t be deceived by the seemingly effortless achievements.

And “Be quick, but don’t hurry,” is a pretty damn good line.

Godspeed kind sir.

I’ve long known I share my birthday with John Wayne. Can’t say I’m particularly a fan of his movies or some of his politics. I don’t think I’ve watched a single Wayne film.

Via the Flickr blog, I learned that Dorothea Lange was also born on May 26th. Now there’s someone I’m happy to share birthdays with, especially since some of her best work is preserved at Cal Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. I did my graduate work at Cal, and while not a raving Old Blue, I’m quite proud of my alma mater.

And it turns out that a number of Lange’s photos are out of copyright, so some digital versions are freely available from Flickr, including the unretouched original “Migrant Mother” shot to your left.

SportsGrid looks like a conveniently timed sports feed replacement since I deadpooled DeadSpin.

Via Michael Sippey, who called SportsGrid: “ESPN meets The Awl.”

Our goal is a simple one: to cover the culture of sports and entertainment, as well as the media personalities who talk and write about it, in a fun, compelling and easy to consume way. Perhaps more importantly, we also aim to objectively rank the legions of participants of our favorite pastimes by tracking who is – at any given moment – receiving the most “buzz” from his or her actions on and off the field.

From what I’ve read so far, I like the coverage. The stories are actually intellignet reporting and opinion, without being more of the sports same old, same old. Or dry statistical overanalysis. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The “buzz” and ranking stuff is a gimmick. Seriously, who needs a hype index for NFL coaches? But it’s probably paying the bills.

I could care less about those steroids you took allegedly. I’m over 30, have been on the Internet before you even knew what an emoticon was, and will use one if I damn well please ;-)

Ha, ha. Only serious. Hugs if you flashed Vincent Vega

AT&T’s failure to provide tethering was my biggest hurdle to buying an iPhone. Today’s announcements by the company, revising its data plans and providing tethering, are now a big spanner in my smartphone works.

ArsTechnica has the best overview of the plans and the implications. If you believe AT&T, a lot of their smartphone customers who only use under 200 MB are gonna save money with a new $15 DataPlus package. Their “prosumer” DataPro version only provides 2GB of data but at $25 is a little cheaper than other providers 5GB plans. Tethering is an extra $20, only available if you get the DataPro plan, and doesn’t provide any extra bandwidth. Your laptop usage and smartphone usage have to fit within 2GB or you pay overages.

I’ve argued before that 5GB caps are pretty reasonable. 2GB seems a little snug, especially if you stream any audio or video. Plus it’s actually $5 more than what you’d pay monthly to be on Sprint’s 3G/4G network, with tethering. Then again, AT&T, unlike Sprint, seems to be trying to avoid unleashing those types of applications on its network. Also, the basic plan that Sprint forces you into, at $70 may wash that $5 difference out.

I do agree though, that AT&T has screwed Apple and iPad users.

The other complication is that there is mounting evidence that the HTC Evo may have serious battery life issues. 4G may be bleeding edge and all that, but there’s no point if you have to constantly be recharging the phone.

So for once I actually will be waiting with some anticipation to see what Steve Jobs announces in the near future. I’ll be a fanboy yet.

Washington Business Journal is reporting that Clearwire has unleashed WiMax coverage in the Washington DC area. That’s the service behind Sprint’s, and the HTC Evo’s, 4G capabilities. Makes that smartphone even more tempting.

The odd thing is that the coverage map doesn’t hit my home, but seems to cover a lot of other places around the metroplex where I spend a lot of time. Actually, it’s not odd considering how far west I live.

Via DCist

Of course it’s most appropriate that the first App Store app I buy for my new iPod Touch is Agile Web Solutions’ 1Password. This week Agile is running a promotion on Daring Fireball. Half price ($6.99) for the Pro version. I can live with that for a good password manager. We’ll see how well it works in practice.

Just went and pulled the trigger yesterday. On my Macbook, I flipped my default web browser to Google’s Chrome.

I had been using Apple’s Safari. The main reason that Safari won out over Firefox at the time was that Safari actually supports Apple scripting (of course). I don’t really take advantage of that any more though.

Even with Flash turned on, Chrome just feels faster and cleaner. Nothing real definitive or quantitative that I can point to though. Basically a pure gut feeling. Your Mileage May Vary.