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All news stories were taken from this morning’s BBC News RSS feed.

Apple continues to boggle my mind.

• iWork ‘05 - The second rendition of Keynote, plus a stylish new word processor called Pages. Only Apple could make the thought of typing documents enticing.

• iLife ‘05 - All new updates to the iLife suite. The calendar display in iPhoto and the new Garageband look especially amazing.

• iPod Shuffle - Apple wants us to rock out blindly and in no particular order, but at that price, I don’t really care if they want us to march off of a cliff.

• Mac Mini - Six and a half inches square, two inches high, and a million gajillion tons of awesomeness. Wow.

I guess you could say that this year’s Macworld was fairly successful. Steve Jobs might have crashed his demo of Spotlight, but 2005 is definitely the year of the Apple.

This comment was written in response to a misinformed linguistic Nazi troll on a recent Slashdot story.

Not quite ingenious but certainly not ironic.

I’m getting so amazingly tired of Alanis Haters Anonymous getting on everyone’s case for not understanding the word “irony,” when in fact, ironically, they themselves do not understand it.

Irony [reference.com] is an “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.” When companies use anti-piracy “features” to install Spyware, it’s ironic, because no one expects that DRM will be used to install Spyware.

And, while we’re at it, it’s unexpected (and thus ironic) when you find a black fly in your chardonnay. It’s unexpected (and thus ironic) when it rains on your wedding day. Yes, there are some lines in “Ironic” that aren’t themselves ironic, but that fact itself makes the song ironic! So members of AHA are screwed both ways: if they complain that the lyrics do not describe irony, they show by their very complaints that the song itself is ironic.

Take that.

Jeremy

The story about WMP DRM and how it is being used to install spyware on unsuspecting users’ machines can be found here.

Instant messaging is officially the best way to learn to type. Of course, having a beautiful girl with whom you can instant message helps. You don’t want to miss anything just because you are a big nerd.

By the way, I use iChat AV. For all of you deprived souls still using Windows, at least do your machine the courtesy of running GAIM, or even Trillian. Anything else could be adware.

Holy canoodles, how is this for weird?

Monophasic sleep, which is how most people sleep, is divided into five stages. Polyphasic sleep causes the brain to bypass the first 4 - 4 1/2 stages and instead slip almost immediately into a short stage of NREM, followed by a lengthened stage of REM.

The thing is, one only sleeps about two to three hours every 24 hours (six 20 - 30 minute naps a day, which is a nap every four hours.) Even with this reduced total amount of sleep, total REM increases.

Read the Wikipedia entry for more information and this Everything2 article for a few firsthand accounts from people who have converted. This blog is solely dedicated to polyphasic sleep.

I think I like sleeping too much to try it, but it is definitely intriguing.

Tonight will be the one week milestone in my quest to learn the Dvorak keyboard layout. I am slowly but steadily becoming more comfortable, and therefore faster, with it, but I still have yet to even come close to rivalling my Qwerty typing speeds. Like I said before, it takes two weeks to learn. I start school next week, so it is naturally my goal to be proficient by then.

Here are some things that I noticed:

• I can type “that” really quickly.

• “N” and “T” seem to switch places on a regular basis.

• I always forget where the “R” is.

• For the longest time, I was not able to reach the “I” comfortably.

I never learned to touch-type, which is both a good and a bad thing. Good in that I don’t have the Qwerty touch method so ingrained in my mind; bad in that I didn’t really know where to start placing my fingers at first. However, the hand placement has started to become second nature, obviously a good sign that I am on the right track.

I’ll update the Dvorak progress in another few days. It isn’t exactly heartstopping news, and I can assure everyone that my life is a little more exciting than the fact that my comma key is now where the “W” was. And vice versa. I bet you didn’t notice that, did you? I’d bet even more that I know how much you care.

In light of my previous post, you can find an HTML version of my iTunes Library (created with iTunes XHTML Playlist) on my band’s website. We haven’t played since July 2004, but I am ever hopeful that we can still play music together.

UPDATE: The domain is no longer active. Plus, maintaining a 7000+ song library of music in an HTML page was not fun.

Straight from Facebook.

Darkest Hour, The Mars Volta, Mos Def, Dillinger Escape Plan, Lamb of God, All That Remains, As I Lay Dying, On Broken Wings, Prayer For Cleansing, Ed Gein, Poison The Well, Ion Dissonance, Converge, The Killing Tree, Manu Chao, Mano Negra, John Williams, James Newton Howard, A Perfect Circle, Tan Dun, Thievery Corporation, Saint Germaine, Minor Threat, Black Flag, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Pennywise, Social Distortion, NOFX, Rancid, Thrice, Fugazi, Hot Water Music, Bleeding Through, Death By Stereo, Strike Anywhere, The Cure, The Faint, From Autumn To Ashes, Millencolin, Propagandhi, Anti-Flag, Authority Zero, Less Than Jake, Bouncing Souls, Dropkick Murphys, Riot Act, Drawn A Blank, Flogging Molly, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, MxPx, No Use For A Name, Rocket From The Crypt, Suicide Machines, Lagwagon, Suicidal Tendencies, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tenacious D, Chemical Brothers, The Offspring, My So-Called Band, Propellerheads, Bail Out, Goldfinger, Green Day, Senses Fail, Operation Ivy, Strung Out, Sick of It All, John Coltrane, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Tiger Army, US Bombs, F-Minus, One Man Army, Rise Against, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Queen, Louis Armstrong, Frank (yes, Sinatra), RX Bandits, Fatboy Slim, The Vines, The Hives, 88 Fingers Louie, Alkaline Trio, Home Grown, Led Zeppelin, Swingin’ Utters, Paint it Black, Good Riddance, Against Me!, Avail, Bracket, Frenzal Rhomb, Consumed, Wizo, Thursday, Mozart, The Vandals, Dead Kennedys, Nirvana, Rufio, Dickies, The Distillers, Tilt, Bad Religion, Living End, Hi-Standard, Bigwig, Ataris, Killswitch Engage, Evergreen Terrace, The Descendents, Circle Jerks, The Damned, Pulley, Guttermouth, Bela Fleck, The Refused

If you know much about me, you know that I am big supporter of OSS and the people who develop it. Firefox is a prime example of a community that has built around the common goal of creating a great product for the good of the public. In this case, the amazing browser built by the fine folks at Mozilla has taken the simple idea of browsing the web and (re)turned it into an easy, user-friendly experience, making us reminisce about times when “spyware” was not yet a household word. The community that has built as a result of Mozilla’s choice software offerings is simply astounding. Just one look at Planet Mozilla’s blog amalgamation RSS feed unveils a team of hardworking men and women who volunteer their time and effort in order to make the internet a little bit more forgiving.

Why can’t more companies be like that?

If you’re still using IE, do yourself a favor. Get Firefox.

What? A new keyboard layout? You heard me.

Apparently, it helps reduce the risk of repetitive stress injuries, increases the typing speed, and acts as an amazing security measure against snooping friends. It is also one of the most annoying things to relearn something that has been second nature for over ten years. The consensus is that it takes two weeks to learn.

I have been using it since Monday, January 3, 2005.

Of course, updates on my progress will be posted here.