a rothbury observation

The vast majority of people who were at The Dead, and I presume String Cheese Incident (I don't know because I didn't see that show), are not fans of music. Or at the very least, they weren't there for the music. That's not to say that there aren't fans of The Dead (and the like) who are absolutely all about the music, but only that they were very under represented at the show.

Steph and I saw 27 bands at Rothbury this year, and the contrast between most of the shows and the "jam band" shows was stark. It was all in the facing. At most shows, people were actually facing the stage, or in that general direction, obviously focused on the music, usually dancing. There was some dancing at The Dead, but mostly people were walking around talking, smoking weed and yelling "WHERE'S THE PARTY?!"

They were there for the party, not for the music. Maybe like 80% party and 20% music. It reminded me more of a tailgate party than a concert. I'm not sure why this surprised me, but it did. I felt a little sorry for some of the acts there who were performing for much smaller crowds than they probably should have with 40k people in attendance, because everyone wanted to be where the party was. Where everyone else was. Probably better that way, now that I think about it. I'd rather be with a smaller group of enthusiastic music fans than a giant mob of loud, drunk assholes. I hope The Dead come back every year, like a giant annual black hole, sucking all the douchebags away from the better stages.

pissing me off today: harmonix and valve

Harmonix and Valve, without a doubt two of the best video game companies out there today, and certainly personal favorites. I say this to you both with heartfelt sincerity: EAT A DICK. Beatles Rockband and Left 4 Dead 2 are both shameless money grabs that will divide the online user base. You should've made these add-ons for your existing games and you fucking know it. Now I have to pass on content I would otherwise be really excited for and buy without hesitation, or encourage this kind of bullshit. Goddamnit.

confessions of a formerly short-haired man

People are nicer to me now that I have long(er) hair. I'm not joking and this is no exaggeration. Someone literally told me that they used to think I was stuffy and uptight, but that now I seem more laid-back. Granted this person didn't know me very well to begin with, but when I pushed her on the point she admitted that it was probably the hair. Almost unanimously people have told me that The Hippie Hair™ suits me better. More strangers smile at me, which freaks me out a little bit.

It's been an interesting social experiment. I think it's similar to the notion that fat people are jolly; hippies are harmless. I'm going to let them keep thinking that. Grow my hair a bit longer. Wait for them to let their guard down completely, and that's when I'll strike.

the nine

Somehow, despite the fact that I rarely post here anymore, this blog still manages to pull in an average of about nine unique visitors per day. Who are you people and what do you want?!

sick pleasure

I don't know if it's coincidence, but it seems like it's the republicans I know who have been hurt the most by the current economic downturn. I wonder if it was worth it for them. Were eight years of Bush worth the beating they're taking right now?

osx is shit

A few weeks ago I bought one of the newish aluminum uni-body 13" Macbooks. Partly because I had a few iPhone app ideas I wanted to work on, and partly to feed my addiction to shiny electronic gadgets. Well after a few weeks of near constant use, I can confidently say that OSX is the biggest piece of shit of an operating system on the market today.

- The idea that Macs are expensive because you're getting a lot of value in bundled software is a myth. OSX comes with less software than Windows, and way, *way* less than Linux. What little software Apple has included is of little practical use, unless (to paraphrase The Onion) you're just dicking around in Garage Band. Where's the fucking office software? Where are the codecs so I can play something other than goddamned Quicktime files? And let me just say that it takes some engineering genius to design a text editor that's worse than Notepad.

- "It just works" as long as what you want to do is extremely limited. Try to configure anything and you'll find that the options just aren't there. You'll probably need to buy some very expensive software to replace the basic crap they threw in for free, because no one develops free software for Macs. And actually, a lot of it doesn't "just work", which brings me to my next point...

- Reboot. Reboot. Reboot again. I'm not the kind of guy who typically minds rebooting. I'm used to working with multiple-boot drives (rather than virtual environments), so rebooting is kind of in my nature. But geezus fucking kriest I'm sick of rebooting every time some random process or service decides to take a shit on me. I'm a software developer, and I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around some of these bugs. Like how the fuck can all my Firefox plug-ins lose connection to the internet but I'm still able to surf the web? Of course killing Firefox does nothing. Only a full-on reboot seems to fix most issues.

After reading this you might think I'm regretting my purchase. I'm not. The hardware is AMAZING. I was using a fairly new Sony Viao prior to this, and as nice as that was it's still clunky jumbled mess when compared to the Macbook. After weeks of use, I'm still in awe at how thin and sleek it is. It's just a shame the software sucks. Come April I'll be putting the latest version of Ubuntu on it for when I'm doing anything other than writing iPhone code.

re: using twitter to mock democrats

Via Think Progress: Gingrich’s Bold New Idea: Using Twitter To Mock Democrats

Conservatives love Twitter. Many have embraced it as the future of the Republican party’s outreach to young people. Prolific Tweeter Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) has said that such technology is “the next revolution that’s going to take back the Congress.

Reminds me of a conversation Clive Thompson and I had in comments on his blog about how throughout history Republicans have helped pioneer new mediums (AM Radio) because they claim the old ones are biased (The Liberal Print Media!). They just never fucking learn, and they're going to keep running forever. How long until we hear the words "Mainstream Liberal Twitter"?