Mundane stuff

Some mundane things to talk about:

I'm really impressed with Sony's engineering on the PlayStation Portable. I went out and bought one a couple of weeks ago, and I understand now why they got out of the PDA business (though I do adore my Clie UX50). This thing can do pretty much anything: video, music, wireless networking, photos, and of course, games (right now, Tiger Woods PGA Tour is kicking my ass). With a PDA, they had to make all their money selling the PDA, since they didn't own the OS and had basically no software to sell. This probably explains why my UX50 was $700 when it came out.

With this thing, they can afford to sell the PSP for $249, and then sell me games for $40 each. I have several already. It's an elegant piece of engineering, and I could see Sony adding things like a web browser and email and maybe a small external keyboard as soon as they've sold enough of these things to get everyone hooked.

My hearing isn't 100% back... I have about half my hearing in the damaged ear, and it's not progressing very fast.

I am considering doing a podcast. Yes, there are thousands of them out there already, but I want to do one that explores less-well-known existing music and the way it ties to other music and other things in the culture of the past. I mean, how many people any more remember the pop music of the 1950s... no, not "Rock Around The Clock," but things like Kay Starr and Louis Prima? How many people understand the rise and fall of Arthur Godfrey? How many people now understand what the pop music business of the early 1960s was like, and the kinds of superstars that got their start in it?

I know a lot of this stuff. And I don't want the music to disappear. Sure, I can write about it here, but I'd rather try to let people explore it and be there to guide them on where to find more of it. I've spent 20 years finding music, might as well pass along what I've learned.

That, and I've been a DJ off and on for more than 20 years and have a pretty good "radio voice" and suitable production and editing facilities.

Oh, and a shitload of music.

I actually experimented with combining a web.journal and music clips a few years ago, but found that the combination of the two didn't work all that well on the web. I think you need to hear things more in real time, and the website I set up, though elegant-looking, didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to.

It's a time for repairing things. I swapped two good front tires onto the Saab last night from my old, dead red Saab. I always figured I'd use those tires, which I bought barely a month before I blew the engine in that car a couple of years ago. At a hundred dollars each, I wasn't about to let the car go to scrap with them still attached. The car was immediately smoother and quieter, and handled less hyperactively than before.

I've also ordered some parts for my iBook. In the last year, I've basically worn out the trackpad, but since it's not sold as a separate part, I had to order the top case (around the keyboard area) which includes the trackpad. I also ordered a retrofit Bluetooth kit for it. BT was available as a factory-built-in option, but since I bought my iBook at CompUSA, it wasn't included and I've spent a year dorking around with plug-in BT modules. Got tired of it. The iBook is still a marvelous thing to have around... smooth, quiet, relatively obedient and fun to work with. Yes, I'd like a bigger hard drive in it and a faster CPU, but it's fine for now, and if I get desperate, I can always swap out the little 40Gb drive it came with and put in a 100Gb drive. Hey, it's off warranty, I can raise hell with it if I want...

My parents are coming down to visit next week. They are the only people in my extended (and somewhat faraway) family who've been to my house. What's surprising about this is that my father had a stroke in 1991, and he's in a wheelchair, but they've been to my house several times. My able-bodied-but-burdered-with-children brother and sister have never been here at all. I guess they figure that since I don't have children, I should be the one doing all the driving. I don't figure it like that.

I figure a lot of things differently.

The selection of lingerie at Hecht's has gone downhill significantly in recent years. It used to be that when one needed a special gift for someone, they had something interesting. All the stuff they have now feels like synthetic (because it is) and comes only in colors that would induce vomiting.