Every time Apple announces a new product, I get excited. All of this started when I bought a 40Gb third-gen iPod back in 2004. That thing served me well and I completely wore the crap out of it. In the three or so years I used it before dropping it on the floor and wrecking the hard drive, it was my constant companion. It perfectly suited my lifestyle at that time, and I loved it.

So tonight as I think about camping out to get the new iPhone that comes out tomorrow, I have to keep imagining that device's place in my current lifestyle. And I absolutely cannot.

Most importantly, I don't have any way to carry it. My current phone fits neatly in my pants pocket. The iPhone is designed for women and for guys who carry a murse. I'm not going to carry a murse. Ever. Also I'm not going to walk around with an iPhone in my hand at all times. And I'm not going to start wearing cargo pants either.

Second, I don't spend that much time on the phone, nor do I spend that much time listening to headphones anymore. I used to have a job at a desk where I listened to headphones 8 hours a day, and the 3-G iPod's weak battery couldn't even keep up with me. Now I have a job around huge noisy machines that like to crush little electronic things into sand.

Third, I really don't want to become one of those people who checks their email in the elevator. Not that I ever ride elevators, but you get the idea. Having been internet-obsessed at various points in the past -- and still leaning in that direction in the present -- I've come to the conclusion that I'm much happier and healthier when I experience life in all three dimensions. There's no need to feed bad habits.

So the iPhone is not for me. Pardon me if this post was boring, but I didn't write it for you. I just wanted to make this point to myself.

Four months ago, without notice or ceremony, I disabled the commenting system on this blog. I didn't have a problem with the people who routinely commented on this blog specifically (far from it, actually -- my commenters were consistently intelligent and funny). My problem was, and remains, the idea of commenting at large. Every day, I hate it just a little bit more. And every day, I hate the human race even more than that.

Some posts truly are conversations. And don't get me wrong -- I enjoy spirited debate as much as or possibly more than the next person. Hell, I even run a site that's practically devoted to conversation. But for the most part, comments are just a useless and increasingly annoying part of the web that bloggers, corporations, and site administrators seem to find absolutely necessary in this Web 2.0 era.

I think the type of comments I loathe the most are the ones found on newspaper websites. Overall, they read like a transcript of AM talk radio, only without a host. These people come across -- almost without exception -- boorish, asinine, and flat-out stupid. They make me cringe with shame, and whenever I read them, I become more and more frightened for the world we live in because these people can vote! And if you should ever be wrongfully accused of a crime, these people will make up the jury of your peers! Right this second, most of them are at home passing their values on to their children!

My suspicion is that newspapers allow these comments on their websites because they know that it drives up their hit-count. I know I read them every day, even though I agree with absolutely none of them and they absolutely disgust me. Also, whenever someone cuts me off in traffic, I pull up next to them at the next stoplight so I can get a good look at the asshole. It's a similar behavior, and I admit that I'm part of the problem.

Another loathsome type of commenter is the uninformed helper. Try this: Next time something goes wrong with your computer, or your car, your German shepherd, or your meatloaf, go online and Google the problem. Chances are, you'll find a slew of blogs and message boards where someone has posted about having the exact same problem you're having. They've made the mistake of reaching out to the commenting community on the internet.

Usually, the first commenter will suggest something imbecilic, such as "Are you sure your computer is plugged in?" or "Maybe you put the meatloaf in the fridge instead of the oven. I DID THAT ONCE!" As if that isn't bad enough, the second comment will often post, "I don't know." I. Don't. Know. People actually take the time to read a help request they know nothing about, then log in, and post that they don't know. Well, thanks, kind sir. Because I was indeed talking directly to you.

I'd like to give a special mention to a certain person who, while he isn't by any means the worst commenter who ever could be, sticks in my mind like a gritty, sandy irritant. I think it was about two years ago, when I posted a photo on my Flick account. In between the time it took to put in the title and tags after I uploaded the photo, someone I did not know or have any connection to posted a complete critique of my apartment in the background of the photo. What he liked, what he didn't like, what I should change, etc. Like I said, I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. I just happened to have the most recent photo on Flickr, and he clicked on it. Way to make friends and influence people, buddy.

Lastly, there's lowest common denominator: the scourge of the internet, the "me-too" commenter. While these people have been around since the net began, they've taken on a new level of sophistication since blogs boomed in popularity a few years ago. Now the me-too commenter is a blog whore who skims blog posts for a general idea, which they turn into a bland, inane comment, all so that they can get their own name out there as much as possible. You can frequently spot them, because often it's obvious that they haven't read the post or the other comments very closely if at all. It's just shameful and annoying, and I want it to end. I fear, however, that it's only beginning.

In concept, comments would be a good idea if they actually did promote community and debate. And that's possible. They can, in some rare cases. But for the most part, they're a tool to drive up hits. Their relative anonymity and lack of responsibility tend to bring out the worst in people.

Not everything needs to be a conversation.

My awesome laptop is now a craptop.

For quite some time, the battery has been completely drained. It would hold maybe 15-20 minutes of charge, then would rapidly fade and shut off -- almost without warning. I put off getting a new battery and just kept it plugged in most of the time. Usually, there was an outlet within reach so I didn't mind so much.

The barrel on the power adapter was a little bent. Sometimes, I'd have to play with it a little to get it to connect. But it always did so that was no big deal either.

Then suddenly, the adapter stopped working. No adapter plus no battery equals no power. No laptop. No music. No Photoshop. No fun.

So, I bit the bullet and ordered a new battery and a new adapter. I did this at the end of last week, so I had to sweat out the weekend without a laptop. Last night I came home to find that my new goodies had arrived. I plugged it in.

Nothing. Cold. Dead.

I popped in the battery and found that it had about 30 minutes of charge. Which would be no big deal if the adapter worked -- then I could charge it up. No such luck. The little charging icon never appeared.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd try the old adapter once more. I plugged one end into the wall socket, and was bringing the other end toward the computer, when a spark jumped out of it.

Apparently, this thing's been sparking up the inside of my laptop. The computer runs fine when it can get power (like, from the battery). But it seems that either the DC board or the Logic board is shot. A new DC board costs about $100, but a new Logic board will run something like $500-800, making it a pointless purchase. Then there's the labor charges. Normally, I like to try to fix things like this myself, but after perusing the instructions online, I won't be attempting this kind of a fix myself. Nearly every component inside the laptop needs to be carefully removed before the fix can happen.

I'm completely miffed, as you might guess. If it's the DC board, and the labor charges aren't too high, well, I guess I'll have to pony up for that. But if it gets much higher than that, I feel like I should just look into a new laptop. And I simply can't afford the shiny MacBook Pro that I truly want, so I'll have to settle for something less. Something plastic and pedestrian.

At least I know what I'll be spending that "economic stimulus" check on.

Nice try, birthday girl.

I'm currently in the process of upgrading to Movable Type 4, so if anything wiggy happens, it should be a temporary bug.

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I really meant to go back and get this toolbox's name, but that didn't happen. So for the purpose of this post, let's just agree to call him "Chad."

Christa needed a new laptop. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the old one sounded a lot like a weed wacker. Whenever she started it up, I was always surprised that it didn't require a pull-cord. That, plus the inability to download or upload anything, ever. It was time for an upgrade.

We headed to Best Buy, because that is pretty much the only place that sells laptops in this neck of the woods. And that is where the hilarity began.

"When you go on the internet, which is the World Wide Web, and you are not protected, you can get viruses," one of the Best Buy friendly team members warned a couple. We walked away a couple of steps to make our laughter less obvious. "Just like a virus in your body, like when you get sick, your computer can get sick. Just like when your body doesn't work right, your computer doesn't work right. You have to protect against that."

Christ. We were in for some bullshit. That was certain.

We snagged a friendly team member to call our own and started a dialog about a laptop in the proper price range. Enter Chad.

"I have to ask, what do you want to use this computer for?"

"Writing. Photos. Music. Internet."

"OK. Just to let you know, this computer isn't powerful enough to run Windows Vista," said Chad, a smarmy, virginal little fucker with black hair and glasses.

"What?" we said.

"Yeah. When you turn it on, it'll power up, but that's about it."

"Ooooookaaaaay. So can you sell it to us with Windows XP?"

"No."

"Well, maybe we can install Windows XP when we get it home."

"Yeaaahh. Uhhhhh. That's probably not going to work."

"OK," I said. "So you sell RAM sticks right? We could just upgrade the RAM."

"Well, you could. But even then, it's going to be slow at multitasking. If you want to do a lot of multitasking, it won't work."

"What's 'a lot' of multitasking?"

"I'd say, running three to ten programs at once."

"Three to ten?" Here is where we begin openly laughing. "So, what you really mean is three. What you're saying is that if you're writing something online, uploading pictures, and listening to music, it's gonna crash."

"No! Not crash! Windows Vista is the most stable operating system ever made! It just won't work, because it'll be too slow."

"Okaaaay," I say, thinking about a stable operating system called Linux. "Still. Three programs is too much? That's unacceptable. What do you suggest, then?"

"Well, we have these other laptops over here ... a little more pricey, but ..."

Oh. OK, "Chad." Whatever you say. "Uh. Yeah. We're gonna need to think about this."

I utterly loathe the sales mentality. I'm sorry if that's how you make you're living, but I don't see how anyone could ever sell anything for a living and not feel like a glorified telemarketing shitface. I especially hate it when I totally know what more about the product than the friendly team member.

Douchebags. Douchebags one and all.

Chad, may you never make love to a non-virtual woman as long as you live, you weaselly little fuck.

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So, completely on a whim, I decided to redesign that other website I fool around with from time to time: Perfect Duluth Day. A few nights ago, I was looking at the old design, which had a lot of black in it, and also pun-a-riffic little icons of neanderthal skulls, stonehenge, and such, and I started thinking about what the site must look like for a new visitor. Maybe it looked fine to the 300+ members who've been using the site since 2003, but suddenly it didn't look fine to me.

I get on kicks, like a lot of people do, and right now I'm on a big redesign kick. (You may have noticed.) The problem with redesigning, intense writing, video editing, photoshopping, and the like is that whenever I do these things, I go right out to lunch. I tweak and tweak. Hours pass. I refresh. Stare. Change some tiny aspect that no one will ever notice anyway. Stare. Suddenly it's 5am. I lose a lot of time this way.

But now, speaking of going right out to lunch, I need a sandwich.

Enjoy the new PDD, if that's your thing.

Even though I could be a lot thinner, I consider myself to be in fairly good condition. The life I lead is far from sedentary. My job is very physical, and in my free time I do a lot of hiking. Lately, I've been walking everywhere -- to the movie theater, to the beach, to bars and restaurants downtown. Some stretches of the Superior Hiking Trail wear me out, but generally, I can keep up pretty well and not feel so horrible the next day.

Today, however, I woke up with every muscle in my body screaming bloody murder. I was stiff all over. It hurt to move. My hair was sore. I could barely get out of bed.

You see, it all started on Thursday afternoon at Target. Christa and I were there buying mundane things. I needed light bulbs. She needed a toothbrush. As we were walking past the electronics, something caught my eye: the little white box we'd both been lusting after for weeks but had been unable to locate anywhere.

It was a Nintendo Wii.

"They have a Wii," I said, whispering reverently. Christa's pupils visibly dialated. "Should we buy --"

"YES."

An hour later we were jumping around the living room, hurling imaginary baseballs and swinging virtual tennis rackets. We took turns beating the shit of out various cartoon characters in the boxing ring, all the time screaming, "GET YOUR GLOVES UP! GET YOUR GLOVES UP!"

It was fucking awesome.

After about two hours, we needed food and a break. We went out to dinner in Wisconsin and decided to check in on the Head of the Lakes Fair. We ate ice cream cones. But the whole time we were both silently thinking about how every moment we spent in the world was a moment we were spending away from the Wii.

We got back home at about 9:30, went immediately to the Wii, and then proceeded to play practically nonstop for the next eight hours. Birds were chirping. The sun was rising. I was mastering my hook in bowling and Christa returned my tennis serves viciously.

At one point, I think it was around 3:30am, we were out on the deck catching our breath, when I said, "Do you want to quit and go to bed? Or do you want to play a game of baseball?"

Christa looked at me like I was insane, and had just asked the stupidest question in the universe. "Oh ... we're playing baseball. Don't worry about that."

Today, I feel like shit. But still, the Wii calls ...

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So I'm waiting at the ATM behind this woman who is older, but not that old. Maybe she's in her late 50s/early 60s. But still, this is obviously the first time she has ever used an ATM. She inserts her card, reads the screen that tells her to quickly insert and remove the card, then slowly pulls the card out. It doesn't work. She inserts the card again, reads the same screen again, with her finger slowly tracing each line, and again it doesn't work. She sighs. Tries again, this time gets the hang of it, and suddenly she's boldly using 1980s technology.

At each screen, she does the same thing, slowly reading each line with her finger moving across the screen. She sighs two or three more times, somewhat baffled. Eventually she gets her money, which is something like $140. I hope she actually wanted that much.

One thing that scares me about aging is the idea of being left behind by technology. The idea of standing confused and helpless at a device that most people could use with their eyes closed. I try to stay current. But today, the trend is that most developing technology is social technology. And if your peer groups don't stay current, you might not be able to either.

I don't know any 50-year-olds who use text messaging. They don't get it, nor do they understand the use for it. Not every piece of information requires a conversation. Sometimes, most times, "I'll be there at 10," is all you need to say. While leisurely conversations are nice, I don't need to take the afternoon off and arrange a coffee date to tell someone that I'm standing behind an albino at Walgreens. All you need to know is that I saw an albino and I thought of you. Texting is like a greeting card for absolutely every occasion. It's fun and kind, and it lets you stay in contact with people you like when you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Still, there seems to be an age-cap on its use.

Back when I was a kid, we actually rented our phone from the phone company. It was a big, black thing that was attached to the wall with screws and directly wired into the phone line. It had a dial, not buttons (touch-tone service actually required an additional monthly charge in those days). One day as I was running around like a maniac, I blindly ran into the three-foot cord as my mom was talking. The receiver flew out of her hand as the cord wrapped around my neck and slammed me into the wall. The cord tore out of the phone, and I got a scrape on my neck.

A few days later, the phone company came out and replaced our rented 1960s phone with a somewhat modern phone. It still had a dial, but it was made of light plastic and it was yellow. Also, you could detach it from the wall if you wanted to. They replaced the upstairs phone with a similar model, albeit in the classic black. My parents bought those phones outright and never rented a phone again.

The thing is, to this day you still hear about old people renting phones. If you don't call the phone company specifically and tell them you want to spend $8.99 on a new phone at Kmart, they won't suggest it. One elderly woman in the news recently was reported to have paid something like $14,000 on phone rental throughout her lifetime.

When her children found out, they discontinued the rental and bought her a new phone. And you just know that she hated that new phone. It probably had screen for caller ID and tiny little buttons. It was probably cordless. I'm sure that she misplaces it all the time and every time she uses it she feels a little bit terrified.

The above link states that AT&T still rents phones to about 750,000 people nationwide. The idea seems beyond absurd.

At what point does this happen to you? When does the world shift exponentially beyond your grasp?

Please let it not happen to me.

I wrote a long blog post last night, making the mistake of writing it on a PC, and lost the whole thing when the browser crashed.

Then I backed everything up on an external drive in preparation of relegating to effing thing to completely unimportant tasks, like streaming the Current.

No more Windows.

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For the past several months, I've been living in a cocoon. Almost every night, I've been spending time with my girlfriend, in a girlfriendly world of girlfriendliness. It's been wonderful and fun, like effing Disneyland to tell you the truth, all TiVo and Scrabble and dualing laptops, with the occasional night of pizza-binging and/or beer-swilling and/or karaoke singing to round things out, and all of this taking place during my prime hours of 12-5am. Things have been ideal, is what I'm saying.

And yet, I'll have to admit that when said girlfriend announced that she was leaving for a short business trip, and that said business trip would correspond with my rare consecutive two days off, I kinda got excited.

It's not that I don't love my girlfriend. Jeezus, do I ever love my girlfriend. Have you seen her? Have you spoken with her? She's ... never mind, you don't want to hear all that. But it's been a long time since I've done the kind of things that I do when she's not in the neighborhood.

So after dropping her off to catch her plane this morning around the time of day we parted ways on our first date, I started thinking of all the vile things I was going to do as soon as she left Minnesota soil.

I'm totally gonna read some more of that book I just got ... then, I'm gonna make those subtle tweaks to my website I've been thinking about for awhile ... ultimately, I'd like to upgrade some of the software on that old G4 Powermac ... really trick it out ... look into a new wireless card maybe, but not necessarily ... I'll probably not get one but I'll look into them ...

And while I was sad to see my lover go away, internally, I was warmed by all of my grand plans. Not only did I accomplish all of them, but I also took a walk and photographed Lake Superior. Hello, my name is Barrett and I'm a geekoholic.

I have no idea how I acquired this many computers. Sure, I have the laptop, which is my main machine. But I also have two crappy desktops. One is a Powermac that I want to use except that it isn't (wasn't) quite good enough, and the other is a PC that I use all the time while cursing vehemently.

Back in the day, I always swore that I'd never be a Mac person. They just seemed so smarmy. And even today, those Mac ads with the jackass in the hoodie? God, I hate those ads. Still, Macs are so much better than PCs. It's like driving a really nice car when you're used to driving a shitheap. You sit behind the wheel and sure, it takes some getting used to, but suddenly you realize that driving is really, really fun. Because everything is absolutely smooth and easy, and nothing is going wrong. Even an old Mac is better than a PC.

The G4 is pretty old and crappy. I bought it secondhand simply because it was cheap. The hard drive is small, and the fan is really loud. But I think I'm ready to retire the PC and all its crappy, garbagey ways.

And then I'll officially be a Mac person. There's no going back. My girlfriend always calls me a hippy, which I have to say is so, so wrong. She looks at the soy milk in my fridge, along with the cage-free eggs and the organic spinach, and she giggles. I deny it and she points to the Amy's products. The soy yogurt. This whole Mac conversion doesn't help my case.

I prefer the term, "internet bohemian."

My PC has been on the fritz for quite awhile now. I've been ignoring it, because generally I just use the Mac for most things. But still, the PC has almost all of my music on it, and sometimes I like the feel of a desktop. It's a familiar friend, and I like using it quite a bit.

The problem is that I can't open the Start menu. When I try, it just blinks open and closes. Then the Start button blinks rapidly. Extremely rapidly. This is similar to a devastating virus I had a couple of years ago, so immediately I assumed I was screwed.

I restarted the computer in Safe Mode, which works out fairly well. Then I ran spybot and adaware and scanned for viruses and did some other things. No dice.

Then yesterday I happened to be in the room, not really thinking about the computer when I looked down and noticed something strange.

The space bar is stuck down.

DUH.

This is being unable to start your car and then realizing that it's in gear.

On the other hand, it is a relief.

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On my recent tour of the old Carnegie library, the tour ended with a movie, filmed in 1971, of a typical day at the Duluth Public Library. Here we saw people going through their ordinary day: checking books in and out, cataloging new books, fixing old books, and doing the general tasks involved in running a library.

It was amazing. (I mean, it was amazing even in addition to all the hot library ladies -- and there were many.) Here are all these people doing what they do every day, and it is unfathomably different from anything anyone does today. Punch cards, mimeographs, archaic filing systems, teletype ... it's weird to imagine what life was like before there was 200 microprocessors in every home.

But I do vividly remember life before the Web. It kind of sucked. Still, the things we used in our daily lives back then were facsinating and pretty. Not nearly as fascinating and pretty as a Powerbook, but damn fine nonetheless. Plus, their scarcity these days boosts their aesthetic value.

Anyway, I have this idea to start making mundane movies about mundane things. And while they wouldn't be very interesting at all now, they might be interesting in the future. I remember getting my first library card. It was white, with my name typed on a sticker on the front of it with a typewriter. My card number was raised in the plastic, like on a credit card. When I checked out books, the library tech would place it in a machine just like the old credit-card machines (ker-chunk) that made a copy of the number by pressing the raised numbers against carbon paper. But when the lady behind the counter gave me the card, she also placed a barcode sticker on the back, explaining that soon the library would be switching to a system that used "zebra stripes."

I had that library card until I was about 20, when they took it away from me and made me get a newfangled one.

I need to make movies.

Any leads?

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After great deliberation, I decided to go with a Lumix camera as recommended by St. Vincent. It's tiny and beautiful -- about the size of my palm. It has a huge LCD display that covers almost the entire back of the camera. And, it has a great anti-shake function.

If it's nice outside tomorrow, I'll probably go out and take some pics. Thanks everyone for your advice, especially you, St. Vincent. Hopefully, this will mean many more pictures on this site. I'm sure it will.

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On his fantastic blog Blurbomat, Jon Armstrong coincidentally posted about killing comment spam with Movable Type the same day that I did. I would love to use TypeKey, as he suggests, but frankly, putting another hurdle in front of commenters and making them register to comment just isn't good for me. I already am freaked out by the volume of people who read this site and never let me know about it. To have even fewer comments would just make me wig out.

For some, comments are an ego thing. For me, they let me know who it is I'm talking to.

Jon makes another case for registration as well. Registration and accountability slow a person down, making them think before commenting. Over on Perfect Duluth Day, we've added just a thin sheet of accountability to the comments, and it's improved the blog tremendously.

Still.

The vast, vast majority of people who read PDD never leave a comment. The vast, vast majority of members -- people who've taken the time to register with a username and password and all that -- have never made a single post.

And whenever I receive complaints, it's that there isn't enough variety, that more bloggers would make a better blog. I wholeheartedly agree.

"Wading through thousands of junk comments stops me from spending time writing, taking pictures or learning new tricks," Jon writes. You don't know how true this is. I want to make PDD a better blog, but I spend so much time approving new members, adding new banner photos (which I've been neglecting) and doing other forms of routing maintenence that I haven't been able to work on new, innovative stuff. As a result, everything falls behind and no progress is made.

A lot of the time, I think this way about Duluth as a whole. There are very few dedicated participants in anything. Everyone wants to be a member. Everyone wants to feel the enthusiasm. Everyone wants it all to be great. But the whole process is made up of baby steps; it's an incremental process. If we held a barn-raising, tons of people would show. But nobody wants to do the dishes.

I've only participated a tiny bit, but I think this year's Homegrown Music Festival is being handled pretty nicely. I have no idea what the organization looks like as a whole, but there seems to be delegation of authority as well as some leadership happening. Of course, I could be completely wrong, as I haven't been that involved. Still, it seems a whole lot better than in the old days when one guy did everything.

I have no idea what this post is supposed to be about. But oh well. That happens sometimes.

On a trial basis, I'm going to moderately moderate your comments to this site. It's not you, it's all the fricken spam I've been getting. No matter how high I crank up my spam filter, my comments still get clogged up with links for payday loans, free viagra and foolproof investment strategies.

So, let's see how this works out. It might be annoying in and of itself, in which case, we'll go back to the old-fashioned free-for-all.

* UDPDATE *

OK, here's how it works: I will review comments posted by new commenters before allowing them. Regular commenters will be automatically approved. Many of you are already "whitelisted," but if you regularly comment on this site and get the hold screen, don't worry, I'll whitelist you. This is mainly a way to cut down on spam.

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Diablo is miffed that she isn't a Blogebrity, and I agree, she should be. This is the first I've ever heard of Blogebrity, and I can't say I agree with all of their opinions, although I am glad to see Rex on the A-list. That guy is phenomenal.

One thing I agree with adamantly, however, is that BLOGS POSTS ARE NOT BLOGS, PEOPLE. God, I hate that. Hate it hate it hate it. Hate. HATE.

"I made a blog about Anna Nicole Smith today."
"Really?! You must be obsessed!"
"No. It only took me ten minutes. It's not like I'm going to make a blog about her every day."
"Oh. Post. You made a post. OK, leave."

And you know what? It's always the most out-of-touch sites that say that: "Recent Blogs." It's always corporate sites that don't really need or make great use of their blog, but someone read some article about how "blogs are hot" so now the company has a blog.

Which is why it really angers me that Myspace uses that definition. WE ARE TEACHING THE YOUNG TO TALK SHITSPEAK. We're engraining bullshit lexicon into the vocabulary of the next generation.

Somebody slap me.

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First off, I'll begin by saying that this is the gayest photo of me ever taken. It's even gayer when you realize that I took it myself. And even worse is that I used a bunch of Photoshop techniques to achieve the near-impossible: making myself even prettier than I actually am.

I've been thinking a lot about photography lately; namely digital photography, and how it has changed the way we capture memories. A commonly made point about digital photography is that we so rarely have any bad photos anymore. We see our photos immediately after they are taken. We delete the bad ones and keep reshooting until we get it right, even if we have to take 500 pictures to do it.

I recently helped a friend with her Myspace pictures, and took what I thought was just a few shots. When I started transferring them into my laptop, it informed me that I was loading 63 pictures.

In the old days, you'd take 24 pictures on a roll of expensive film. Then, you'd take it to Walgreens or whatever, lay down even more money, and you'd get back 19 bad pictures and maybe five good ones. But you wouldn't throw the bad ones out, because you paid so much money for them and it's insulting and awful to see pictures of your loved ones in the garbage with the coffee grounds and moldy leftovers. So you hung onto them.

What these bad photos did, however, was hold your memories. Recently, I was looking at some old digital photos of mine that I loaded onto my hard drive and forgot about. I probably have even stricter standards than most, because when I take pictures, they don't just have to be good, they have to be blogworthy, in other words, pertinent to something I want to write about.

Anyway, I was looking at these photos, none of which were either blogworthy or good, and it was incredible. I remembered all of these things I'd forgotten. Days that were really fun, even though nothing noteworthy happened. It was the day you wore that one shirt. Or the time we ate at Sammy's Pizza. Or the night we drank that fantastic rum that we can't remember the name of.

Which brings me to my point. Are we purposely skewing our memories to be even more untrue than they would otherwise be? Are we rewriting our stories as we go along? Because really, while I do want to remember the night when Bone Appetit played in the Keep Aways' basement, I don't really need any help with that. I do, however, need help remembering the night we made nachos and watched King of the Hill, because that is the stuff that life is made of.

Only when I remember it, I am glowing and poreless. And, apparently, metrosexual.

UPDATE: I was on the phone with a friend of mine when I posted this. I told her that I just posted, then there was a pause, and then a shriek of horror. So yes, I know how bad it is. Never say I don't sacrifice myself for art.

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After months and months, I finally gave in and got myself a Myspace account, just like all the rest of the kids. You can befriend me at http://www.myspace.com/ograte.

If you can even log in to their slow server, that is.

Ever since I first found out about Myspace, I've tried occasionally to see what all the fuss is about. But every time I went to a Myspace page, I was so assaulted by animated GIFs, embedded music and/or embedded video, that I ran away howling with my eyes clenched and my hands over my ears. But recently, I found some pages that were actually tasteful and nice to look at. So I explored and then I joined.

Anyway, I spent all day yesterday just browsing through all the people, finding a lot of familiar faces, and reading bios. It's a vortex, to be sure.

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Like most people my age, my introduction to computing occurred back in elementary school, and involved the Apple ][e. There was probably only one of them in the whole school, and the big reward for being good was being allowed to play Oregon Trail.

In junior high, we had an actual computer lab with an Apple ][e for everyone in the class. I had two classes in the computer lab -- keyboarding, in which we just typed, and computer programming, in which we actually learned BASIC. By this time I had also inherited a Commodore VIC-20 so I was using BASIC at home, too.

My point is, aside from about three months when I had to use a Mac for word processing in college, 8th grade was the last time I regularly used an Apple computer. And that was the ][e, before the invention of the Mac, which is an entirely differnt animal anyhow. I think I'm pretty proficient when it comes to computers. I'm no genius and no expert, but I hold my own. Now, however, with a Mac in front of me, I feel like a complete idiot.

It's not so much like reading Greek, it's more like writing with my left hand or driving in England. I know how to do it, on a primary level, but I keep thinking, "Well, where's the ---?!" and "Why the hell is the ---- ?!" and "OK, that thing that normally does blah blah blah? What might that be called in this strange land?"

Another thing is, I think that I will never belong to the Cult of Apple. Apple people, who have grown up on these fancy expensive machines and have learned to hate the opposition, never say anything bad about their computers. Recently, I was looking up laptops in Consumer Reports for a friend of mine, and the article had users' ratings. Apple was the only one where users rated everything as excellent. That is bullshit.

This computer I am using has a glitch -- the USB ports do not work if the computer has been put to sleep. If you reboot, they work -- until you close the lid or otherwise put the computer to sleep. After that, you will have to reboot if you want to use a USB device. According to my research, this is a very common issue, but Apple will not acknowledge it or create a patch to fix it. Well, that sounds less than excellent to me.

Anyhow, I'm a quick study, and, no offense, but the Mac is built for chimps to operate, which is why people like them in the first place. So I'll get used to in very soon. Until then, I'm dumber than a chimp. I'm sub-chimp. I'm a flippin' gibbon.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go into the bathroom and attack my own reflection in the mirror.

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Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I have gone over to the other side. Or at least I'm now working from both sides. I'm the proud owner of a new 15" Apple Powerbook G4, which has solely transformed me from a semi-wealthy individual to a poor indebted sucker just like you. Ho-hum: this is my Christmas present to myself.

I feel like such an idiot with this thing. I don't know how to work it, I don't know the subtle intricacies, but at the same time it does really minor things that make me drool. It shows my Netflix Queue right on my desktop! It shows the moon phases! It lets me play my new favorite game, Sudoko!

More than that, it lets me use Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and Illustrator, which is the main reason why I bought it. While I've wanted a laptop for quite awhile, I realized that I wanted a Mac so that I wasn't just buying the same computer I already had, only mobile. I wanted a whole other computer that could do altogether different things. And I wanted to get a Mac before they started installing the Intel chips, because while I do love/lust the Pentiums, I don't want to buy a first generation of anything. When you buy the latest and greatest, you are essentially a beta tester. It's much better to buy the tried and true.

So anyway, if I wasn't a geek before, I certainly am now. Cheers.

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Ok, check out the photos above. You will notice that the screen is completely black and that it reads "Lens Cap" even though there is no lens cap on. What the hell is it with me and cameras?

So, I dug out the box that the camcorder came in, and inside is a warranty card. A Canadian warranty card. It seems that I have a Canadian video camera, technically. This concerns me, because usually when you have to pay to get a camera fixed, it costs more than the camera is even worth.

I called the company I bought it from, and they were pretty surprised about the whole Canadian thing. I told them I'd lost the receipt, so they're sending me another one, so that I can go to a dealer and get this fixed. They insist that I should have no problems, and that if I do I should call them back.

Well, this had better work, because I've got a bajillion ideas for movies. Plus, I just bought this damn thing, and it weren't cheap lemme tell ya.

Nonetheless, I sense a ripoff, and I'm prepared to get totally "red ice" about it.

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Please be patient as I continue to tweek the design. I'm getting closer to what I really want.

Thanks.

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Hey there, home fry. As you can see from the look of things around here, I have finally made the transition from clunky old Blogger to sleek Movable Type. I don't have all the bells and whistles tweeked yet, but they're on their way.

Probably the most important changes for you are the new commenting system and the categories feature. You won't find a whole lot of change in the comments, except that anonymous commenting is not allowed. (This was never much of a problem on this site, though, as 99% of the time only known friends and internet comrades comment anyway.) But, I think the categories feature will be useful. Check it all out and let me know what you think.

Also, from now on I'll be hosting my own videos, so that I am not affected by the Perfect Duluth Day server, and it is not affected by me. (My old videos are still on there, however, so you'll probably have trouble with them until either the PDD problems clear up or I get off my lazy ass and move them over.)

Anyhow, enjoy the fresh new blog smell, and I'll throw some video in your face soon.

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If you don't know what I'm talking about

See, there's this other blog called Perfect Duluth Day (which I won't link to because there's no point) with 150 members and it was just fine until recently.

What happened

Well, it all comes back to this video of a kid dancing on stage to "I Love Rock and Roll." People on PDD liked it, and were a lot nicer about it than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise.

Then it got leaked out to some nasty sites. You know what I'm talking about. Sites made by and for people who enjoy misery. There are a lot of people on these sites; it's surprising how many Beavises and Buttheads there are on the Internet. Anyway, long story short, our server got slammed.

"Unmetered" bandwidth does not equal "unlimited" bandwidth. I'm not sure how it works, but for whatever reason, even though the video has been removed from the server, very few people can get through to PDD. Perhaps they have turned off the tap, so to speak.

What we can do

First of all, I'd like to hear from anyone who has any ideas about what exactly is going on and how this type of thing works. Our host, Doteasy, has been great up until now. Replies to Starfire's emails have come back vague, and all of them suggest we get a dedicated server for $100/month. This is not an option.

Right now, we're in sort of a holding pattern. This doesn't just affect the PDD community, it keeps me from vlogging, since that was where my video files actually reside. It also keeps Starfire from doing anything on Le Garage, since that site is a PDD subdomain.

Anyhow, it is a good time to regroup and rethink the whole Perfect Duluth Day thing. Perhaps we need to revamp the site. I've dreamed of changing the whole thing over to something other than Blogger -- perhaps Movable Type or Word Press.

It's getting toward the end of the month, and while I hope things will change after the first, I'm not betting on it. I'm looking into other hosting options for this site so that I can once again post videos, but the thought of overage fees concerns me.

Once again, I'd appreciate any insight that anyone might be able to offer. Leave a comment or e-mail bchase@gmail.com.

Thanks.
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A-list videoblog Rocketboom interviewed field correspondent Chuck Olsen yesterday about Minnesota Stories, and showed Starfire's "Hungry Cyclist" video.

Whew. That's a mouthful.

Watch the Rocketboom segment here.

(NOTE: I had some trouble with the default download, which I think is BitTorrent. It kept crashing my browser. So you may want to choose the Quicktime or WMV version. Rocketboom is savvy enough to provide all that crap.)
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A map of area vloggers provided by Vlogmap.org.

(Duluth and Chicago are the only cities here with overlap.)
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is seeking to license music videos for sale in the iTunes Music Store, and perhaps plans to release a video iPod in September.

Once again, the big guys are opening a door for us to walk through.
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While I really dislike using the new iTunes 4.9 to subscribe to podcasts (I still prefer iPodder -- ironically it seems to work a lot better with the iPod), it's great for videoblogs. When you sit down to watch, all the movies are pre-downloaded, so there's no waiting or buffering. Everything's orderly, and there are links to previous movies in case you've missed some.

Check it out for yourself. Subscribe to The Product using iTunes:

(You will first need to download iTunes 4.9 if you don't have it. It's free.)
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I am currently very excited, because at last, FireANT, the world's first video aggregator, is available for PCs.

What is a video aggregator you may ask? Well, let's say you have this favorite videoblog called The Product. One minor problem with videoblogs is that you have to visit the site every day to see if there is a new video, and then wait while it downloads before you can watch it. A video aggregator simplifies this process. It knows when The Product has been updated, and will download my videos to your computer as they become available. It can do this while you are sleeping or otherwise away from the computer. All you have to do is fire up FireANT and use it to watch my movies, as easily as turning on your TV. There are already scores of aggregators for blogs and podcasts, but this is the only one for vlogs, and until now it was only available for Macs.

So you need to download FireANT, and load in The Product. All the really cool videoblogs are already in the FireANT directory, so subscribing to my feed is easy. Did I mention that all of this is free?

That said, the PC beta version of FireANT is still pretty (ahem) buggy. The worst part is that the aspect ratio gets all screwy for Quicktime movies, which is a little bit nasty, since most vloggers are Macheads who post exclusively in Quicktime format.

As a PC-using vlogger, I've been concerned about this Mac-heavy imbalance in the vlogging community lately. I wonder, when my videos start up on the clunky Windows Media interface, do you Mackies wince a little bit?

I suspect that on a subconcious level, some feel that posting in WMV is akin to wearing an ugly shirt or having slight BO. Sure, it doesn't mean I'm a bad person (or that it's a bad movie), but ... well ... y'know.

Conversely, Quicktime is the power tie at the business meeting. It makes the statement, "Look. I'm in your club. I'm one of you."

These are my concerns. I just want to make fun movies. But metaphorically speaking, they're my children, and when they go to school I want them to be popular.
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So, I had a little poll over there on the sidebar for a week to see how you folks feel about downloading video. Here are the results.

81.82% said they watch the videos. This is good.
No one said they don't watch the videos due to a dial-up connection.
9.09% said they don't watch the videos because they view the site at work or on a public computer.
4.55% said they don't watch the videos because they don't know how.
4.55% said they don't watch the videos because they're not interested.

This is good news. My apologies to the people who can't watch the videos at work, etc. And if clicking on the pic or link doesn't bring the video up for you, I don't know how to instruct you further. Find a geek and ask him/her about it.

Thanks for the input. I'm always trying to make this site better.
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