CD Baby!

My wife just ordered a CD from CD Baby, and she had a most positive shopping experience.

CD Baby professes to be "a little online record store that sells CDs by independent musicians." And it appears to be just that. It's perfect for the current age where major record labels are easily irrelevant and the CD as a medium for playback (as opposed to long term storage) is quickly joining the ranks of cassette tapes and LPs.

This was not intended to be a review of CD Baby - I have not used their service enough. But I can share my enthusiasm for their invoices. See the comforting message below where a CD was purchased for just $10 with a reasonable $2.25 for shipping and arrived in the mail two days later. Take that Jeff Bezos!

-----Original Message-----
From: orders@cdbaby.com [mailto:orders@cdbaby.com]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 7:30 PM
Subject: Your CD Baby Order! (#XXXXXX)

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized
contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was
in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the
crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched
down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved
'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet
on this day, Monday, January 29th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted
but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little CD store with the best new independent music
phone: 1-800-448-6369 email: cdbaby@cdbaby.com http://cdbaby.com

Home To Roost

As you may have heard elsewhere, we now get daily visits from six chickens and a rooster who live on the farm next door. They have been quite gregarious lately. Appearing in our rear yard, by our gravel driveway, between the house and the road, and in more obvious spots like right below the bird feeder. It's Rocky the Rooster's job to herd them home and keep them safe, but we have been given permission to ignore them or to herd them back home and to keep any eggs we might find. The prospect of mighty fresh eggs is more than intriguing. And to prevent any snide comments: Yes, these are free-range chickens. Lately their eggs could appear virtually anywhere they roam.

Yesterday, Lily's farm buddy was not home, so instead of social time, she managed to scout out two eggs. She took home the brown one, which she immediately put in a dish towel in a small bowl and brought up to her room. "He's special. I'm going to keep him in my room", she said. She didn't want this egg to get turned into waffle batter. We convinced her (wrongly we later found out) that they were not fertile eggs. It was only destined to be food. This morning I realized we had no other eggs in the house, and I didn't have the heart to eat the special one.

Today, Lily and her farm buddy found many undiscovered eggs, so now we have a literal baker's dozen in the fridge just waiting to be consumed.

Check out Sasha's Blog for other farm adventures.

I don't know about you, but I'm quite attached to the Brooklyn Bridge.
 

Q: How do I print what I see on my screen, only my screen ?

A: In Windows hit Alt-PrintScreen or Shift-PrintScreen. They capture a picture for you. Then paste into a new Word document and you will see the image there. Alt-PrintScreen captures just the window of the current program, and Shift-PrintScreen captures the whole screen of your computer.

I was recently asked to validate and review a promising email from a loved one.

As a result, here are Dave's Rules for Spam Chain Emails.
These simple rules apply to silly emails which are only a waste of time and even to very direct fraud originating from Nigeria.

Dave's Rules for Spam Chain Emails:

Rule 1) if it contains text which reads "I never forward these types of emails", then you should not forward.
Rule 2) if it has been forwarded more then twice then you should not forward. Everyone you know on earth probably got it already.
Rule 3) if it is offering something for nothing, remember there is no free lunch.
Rule 4) grab a salient sentence and paste it into a google search
Rule 5) send it to your son-in-law or a respected expert to confirm.
Rule 6) embarrass the person who sent it to you, by sending them my rules as a reply.

Result: it's so false, that if you look in the dictionary for "false email hoaxes" you will find this very example. That's how false it is.

See this link for the email which inspired my rules:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/billgate.asp#micro2

This week was a very busy one for the infamous Brookyn Atlantic Yards project.

Last week, architect Frank Gehry and Ratner unveiled a new plan for the project that is substantially quite un-new.

Brooklyn residents received propaganda in the mail painting the huge pork-barrel project in the rosiest of colors, not unlike that of raw bacon. Here's just one of the lies. And here's the developer's official images of the project. You can't easily tell, but the big building is 60 stories tall and taller than the landmark Williamsburg Savings bank.

I just saw this unpublished story about Forest City Ratner and Brooklyn atlantic yards.
It's worth a look.

Also last week a documentary opened on Mr. Gehry at the Sunshine Theaters. Sketches of Frank Gehry is directed by Sydney Pollack.

Meanwhile

-dave

I was asked by an internet buddy: Is it true that every web site I access leaves a permanent cookie on my hard drive? If so, what can I do to clear all my internet searches and sites examined.

Here's the short answer:

In Internet Explorer, go to tools->internet options->General tab. Select 'delete cookies', hit ok. Then 'delete files', then OK. Then 'clear history'.

In Firefox,go to tools->options->cookies tab. Click 'history' tab, then click 'clear browsing history now'. Click 'download history' tab, then click 'clear download history'. Click 'cache' tab, then click 'clear cache now' button. Click 'view cookies'. (you will be suprised how many you see) Delete any you are suspicious about or all of them. But if you delete all of them, there are some legit sites which will no longer remember you when you visit again. That's what cookies are supposed to be all about.

Don't have a ruler handy? Here's a cheap solution: print out a paper ruler. What could be easier?

Today, I saw Fools In Love with my family. It is a send-up of Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream with a 50's Do-Wop theme. It was the one of the best theatre experiences I've seen in a while.

How to add NYC Parking Holidays to MS Outlook

2006 is right around the corner and it's time to update your calendar.
If you like me own a car in New York City and are a slave to alternate side parking, then you want a tip on those great days when it is officially suspended. Meanwhile I often use Microsoft Outlook's calendar feature to remind myself of many events.

So here, I present the ingredients you need to simply add the official 2006 NYC alternate parking calendar to MS Outlook.

In windows, open Notepad.

Then open this directory from Notepad:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\1033

Edit this file
outlook.hol

Append this blob of text and save it (don't worry about blank lines):

[NYC Parking] 45
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/01
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/02
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/10
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/11
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/12
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/16
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/01/29
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/02/12
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/02/13
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/02/20
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/03/01
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/03/14
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/04/13
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/04/14
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/04/19
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/04/20
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/04/21
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/05/25
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/05/29
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/06/02
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/06/03
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/07/04
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/08/15
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/09/04
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/09/23
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/09/24
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/02
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/07
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/08
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/09
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/14
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/15
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/22
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/23
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/10/24
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/11/01
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/11/07
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/11/10
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/11/11
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/11/23
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/12/08
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/12/25
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/12/30
NYC Parking Holiday, 2006/12/31
NYC Parking Holiday, 2007/01/01

Now go to this URL and follow the instructions on how to use Outlook's feature to add new holidays to your calendar. Follow the step in the instructions called "Add the new dates to the calendar." You will see that you have a new holiday called "NY Parking".

This link gives better directions on editing your custom Outlook holidays.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010864971033.aspx

And there you have it.

Important: Check the official NYC site for more info on Alternate Side Parking, because it sometimes other days for weather and other reasons.

Notes: This definitely works for me in Outlook 2003, but you may have different results in other versions of Outlook. I checked my conversion of the calendar to the Outlook format, but if I did make an error, please do not forward me any parking tickets. There is enough information on the official NYC parking site for you to verify my work yourself. This information does not help you if you do not have a car, and if you do have one, it does not help you if you never park it in New York City.

Just an update: my wife has started a theater company called Katharis. I recently helped her deploy their new website.

OK, here's a Thanksgiving puzzle. What's wrong with this picture? And, No, I did not use Photoshop.

If you figure it out, post a comment. If you think it is way cool, email my blog link to every human being you know.


 

This photo was taken during Thanksgiving. The camera's flash made this common object quite compelling. What is it?
 

Some poor soul deposited a bit more than their correspondance in this SOHO mailbox. 

David,

I know you were wondering about that previous post.
Actually, I left the last sentence in for the cryptic self-referential effect.

(OK, that's not the same kind of self-reference I used in the other post. In that post I used something more like these very sentences.)

-dave

David,

Ah, I didn’t know you liked the show Everwood.
We have tossed some advanced videos here at work.

We watched "Million $ Baby" last night.
It absolutely sucked.
I called it "Rockette".
I kept a tally of clichés observed during the movie.
Just made tally marks, no recorded details.
Got up to 22.
Kept me busy.

Morgan Freeman's narration put me in such a haze where I wondered if Tom Hanks or perhaps a penguin would appear any second.

Speaking of his Penguin movie, you'd find this interesting. It seems it wasn't translated from the French.
http://www.kottke.org/05/08/march-penguins-remake
I also heard that Morgan has no personal interest in the creatures.

Speaking of clichés, here's a search engine for them.
http://www.westegg.com/cliche/

Guess I shoulda put all this on my blog.

-dave

Here's a Bookmarklet which will move you from an IMDB movie description page to a search for the same in the New York Public Library. It's also an experiment for me to put something useful here on this blog. It works in recent versions of Firefox and IE.

Just drag the link below to your bookmark or link toolbar of your web browser and click on it when you are at IMDB viewing a movie. Try it out and send me results - if you know how to find me.

IMDB to NYPL

Ok, here's another one. Catgut? It's that string stuff that we had in tennis rackets which we often found in the back of the gargage. It was on old guitars. But is it made of CAT? YUCK!

The answer is no. If you believe this source.

Catgut or Gut, cord made from the intestines of various animals (especially sheep and horses, but not cats). The membrane is chemically treated, and slender strands are woven together into cords of great strength, which are used for stringing musical instruments such as the violin and the harp.

"Hail the size of grapefruit".

Today a co-worker reminded me of this phrase which I had heard on the radio just this week.

It is such a cliche, but is it true?

Well, a simple web search found this information about hail the size of grapefruit.

This quote explains all:

Smaller hail tends to fall in large batches near the heart of a storm. Larger stones, which are fewer in number, typically get centrifuged toward the edge of a storm. The biggest hailstones are aggregates of smaller stones, which gives them a spiky, irregular shape.

They do exist. You can see these photos.

Google Desktop Search

I installed this new tool which is free and from the people at Google.
http://desktop.google.com/
It seems well behaved, but I do have some comments about it.

It is certainly cheaper than the stuff from X1.
http://www.x1.com/
That product, which does most of the same thing, is aimed at the business user. Or the user who doesn't mind putting things on their credit card.
It's $75. It has excellent preview and other features. But it did seem to bog down my machine to an absolutel crawl.

All this is similar to the promise from Bill gates to include google-like desktop search in the next version of windows, currently called 'Longhorn'. Microsoft has removed features from Longhorn most particularly WinFS in order to move up its release date.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35006-2004Oct15.html

Hopefully, right here, I can tell you what is right and wrong with Google Desktop Search. We'll see.