Kicking the ITunes habit

After an awesome, awesome Essex Green (even better than I hoped, and when I bought a shirt, the band itself was manning the merch table) / Camera Obscura (surprisingly good) concert at the Warsaw (high-school-gym-ish, a little out of the way) last night, I was compelled to buy another EG album, and the "Underachievers Please Try Harder" album from Camera Obscura, which has the haunting track "Books Written For Girls" (well, it was haunting in concert, less hot on the album). As I was about to spend $20 at Itunes for DRM-ed music, I remembered Akshay's insistence that almost everything anyone could want was available on Emusic, so I investigated. Stupidly, Emusic.com shoves you into signing up without seeing what tracks are available, but some Googling helped verify that the CDs I wanted were available. So, I'm now paying less money for music that (gasp) can be copied and shared. I feel liberated. So take that, iTunes. I wonder if Apple will ever be less compulsive about restricting my rights? Maybe they'll be forced to legally? Certainly locking down the iPhone is a step in the wrong direction.

Tasty tapas

Dinner tonight at Boqueria was a reminder of how bad I am at predicting what will be best from a menu. The thing I expected to be deliciousest (because, in Spain, it was) - Pa Amb Tomaquet - was the most bland. And the most boring sounding - Patatas Bravas and Pimientos de Padron - were really tasty. Yay tapas, for letting me try lots of stuff. The desserts were uniformly awesome, and we had a good Priorat wine. For a tapas place in New York, it was reasonably priced and the wait wasn't bad.

Added to the good restaurant notebook.

Poll: What's your most-listened song in iTunes?

In honor of international iPhone day, what song has the highest play count in your iTunes? Mine is Don't Know Why by Essex Green with 116. This is surprisingly low given how much I play single songs on loop. Anyway, not coincidentally, I have an extra ticket to an Essex Green/Camera Obscura concert this month, but nobody wants to go. :-(

Problems. Solutions.

- When I got my hot new HK receiver and JBL speakers, I was all excited to play music off my laptop. But there was this annoying electric hum. Then, last night, it occurred to me that I could use the attenuator I got to use my Shure headphones on airplanes. Voila! Now I'm listening to all the new music I downloaded for running (Fergalicious, Love Generation, SexyBack, Right Here Right Now) with pounding bass and annoying my neighbors! I think I also need to work on lowering the input level at the receiver itself, but that involves more menu navigation than I have the energy for.

- On Friday, I went to Rosa Mexicano. They don't list anything vegetarian on the menu, and I was worried. But as soon as I said I was vegetarian, the waitress said they could make a vegetable enchilada. This was exactly what I wanted, but WHY DON'T THEY JUST LIST THIS ON THEIR MENU? This always happens with French restaurants. I don't get it. In any case, the atmosphere was awesome, but if I'm going to pay obscene amounts of money for enchiladas, I prefer Dos Caminos.

- Last weekend, I did two 6 mile runs in a row, and what felt like my shoes digging into my foot turned into incredible pain. I broke down and went to a podiatrist, who said it was just inflammation (I guess fractures cause the foot to swell up?). Anyway, some Aleve and ice made it go away, although to keep it away, he's suggesting I get ridiculously-expensive custom orthotics. I guess I'll just break down and do it.

- As long-time readers of this blog will know, I'm on an unending and unpleasant quest to find shirts and jackets that fit me. For some reason, small implies wide (and often also tall). I guess that's what happens when you compress two dimensions into one, and why our beloved capitalist system has failed to move beyond this is totally mystifying. Anyway, Catherine spotted XS sweaters at jcrew.com (not available in stores). Very exciting. They also have XS shirts. Akshay & co recently procured a XS fleece from Uniqlo for me (thanks!). And I was able to find a nearly-fitting sportcoat at Zara. Yay.

- Problem: I was almost done with Guitar Hero. Solution: Richard got me Guitar Hero 2 for Christmas! Problem: I keep playing Guitar Hero instead of going to bed. Solution: Caffeine.

- I couldn't go much longer without mentioning that Catherine and I broke up last month after 3 mostly-awesome years. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I broke up with her. I'm pretty sure that makes me an asshole, and possibly stupid. Haven't found a solution to this one yet.

(On a lighter note, Happy Birthday Brian!)

I'm in the Times Fashion section!

Well, not exactly, but this is as close as I'll get, I'm sure. There's an article about our office, and in the last picture, there's some loser wearing a red shirt over (Seth Cohen/Craig-at-work -ishly) a long-sleeve green shirt hanging out with all the hip UI designers. Well, that loser is me! (And Chaz, that shirt is the one you made!)

Less frivolous updates soon. Still undoing jetlag.

My other Google baby

After a very long time, my other project finally has something out the door. To see it, try searches for a restaurant or bar or whatnot that has a homepage. e.g. babbo, and look at the little plusbox under the first result.

(Also, while I'm discussing work, I'm excited that Mondrian is public. It's just one of the snazzy new tools at work that make me wonder how people get anything done anywhere else.)

Bugs fixed in partychat

We have this chat room tool Akshay wrote that just shows up as a buddy in Google Talk called Partychat. But it's had some bugs for a while. In a fit of boredom Sunday, I fixed them. It was kind of fun to work on an open source project again, even if it was a little-used one powered by Googlers. The hardest part turned out to be getting the Sourceforge CVS to cooperate with Eclipse. For some reason, the initial checkin mapped src/ to C:\users\... and weirdness ensued from there. By deleting the src symlink, creating an actual src directory, and then running a CVS update, I made the weirdness go away, but boy was that obscure. I also had to manually download the library files. For some reason the CVS ones showed up as empty inside of Eclipse. If anyone has seen this before and knows why, we're all ears.