A colleague just brought along the tv-movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, which reminded me of some docu I saw when I was a student, on the rise of Apple and Microsoft and how it all started.

A quick google later and I ran into the entire documentary here, a must-see for all in my opinion. You’ll find out how MS stole Apple’s ideas,… and where Apple got their ideas from…

A Mac is really a PC and a PC can be a Mac but let’s not go there ^^. You’ve probably seen these ads before if you’ve visited the Apple site since last week, but they are really worth a look so, here you are, in case you’ve missed them.

I never understood what all the hype was about. Downloading radio shows and listening whenever you feel like it? Why?

First of all, I never listen to the radio, except during traffic jams. And 99% of the time those radio shows are quite boring. Every day the same music, the same talk, etc etc. So why would I polute my iPod with even more of them?

But a few weeks ago I decided to try some anyway. I googled, asked around and downloaded some podcasts. And what do you now? I’m hooked.

The thing is, where shows on the radio are for a broader audience, talking about more general subjects, podcasts can be just the opposite. They can focus on one or more specific items, singling out a certain audience and thus making for a better experience for the people with the same interests. I could never imagine listening to an all-talk radio show for 1 hour non-stop. With podcasts, 1 hour is sometimes not enough.

I do still only listen during traffic jams though. It takes me an average of 45 minutes to get to work lately, enough time to listen to one long or 2 shorter podcasts and again during the ride home. And time flies by! Plus, with some podcasts being informative, I actually learn something instead of purely wasting my time on the road.

Sure, you can watch a divx at 10km/hour, but I’ve been there and believe me when I say it’s either watch movie or kiss bumpers ;) So yeh, podcasts ftw!

To get you started, here’s a little list of the podcasts I listen to lately:

• Wired Podcast: All Wired related topics, a bit short and sometimes aweful quality but interesting from time to time. Sex Drive’s included, so if you are a bit narrow-minded I’d avoid this one ;)
• Tokyo Calling: Tokyo’s first podcast, nice to hear a Western look on the Eastern living.
• The 1Up Show: A video and audio podcast on games, one for home and one for the road. The video podcast is a joy to watch. It’s a bit more like a reality show, although acted, but the discussions are real. The audio show is just discussions on different gaming topics. One of my favourites.
• Major Nelson: Microsoft’s Major Nelson talks about everything Xbox related. Sometimes he invites quite interesting guests. Worth a listen.
• The Ricky Gervais Show: The most downloaded podcast in the world sadly costs money now. From the makers of The Office, this is one hilareous show!
• The Kojima Productions Report: From the guys behind the Metal Gear games, an interesting podcast, even if like me, you don’t care for the MGS games. A couple of weeks ago they had an interview with the creators of Killer 7!

There are a couple more I’m listening to at the moment and if they are any good I’ll be sure to post them here as well. To download and find podcasts, I advice iTunes, together with an iPod of course ^^. I’m using my iPod shuffle instead of my regular one, because it’s easier to use in the car, but for syncing podcasts it lacks some functionalities.

If you know of any other podcasts, audio or video, please let me know. I got 450 minutes of traffic jams to fill each week ^^.

People borrow stuff. No problem. But when they forget and I forget, stuff ends up getting lost. I also don’t remember what I own sometimes. I go to a shop, see this dvd and start wondering whether I have it or not.

But that’s all solved now. I finally decided to get a copy of Delicious Library, an iTunes/iPhoto-like interface to organise your books, movies, games etc. You can keep track of who is off with what and even sync it with your iPod, meaning next time I’m just a few scrolls away knowing whether to buy or not!

Inputting my entire collection won’t be easy though. The tool does offer the use of a webcam or scanner to scan all barcodes of your products, but the problem is that Belgian releases are not recognised (it gets its data from Amazon) from time to time. So if you have too much free time on your hands, you are all welcome to help ^^

Really. It did. And it’s a good thing too, since I had no idea what to write for our 100th post on the blog!

Most important: Elke got a new job! Finally, after searching for months, wasting precious leave days, she found a new job. She wanted better, she got better! And it’s only an half hour trip instead of an hour! All good things! We’re celebrating tonight! \ ^^ / Champagne!

Less important, but reason enough for hell to really have frozen over: today I read you can connect an Xbox 360 to Apple’s iLife, which means you don’t need the crappy Windows Media Center to get your pictures and music on your big screen. This and the fact that Elke bought me Dead or Alive 4 for Xbox 360… well, I guess you see where this goes.

There’s still a lack of Xbox 360s, so I didn’t find any in the stores and had to order one. So it’s on its way. Yes, I’m not proud, but something has to feed hi-def to our telly no?

I might get an Intel computer again in the near future. Once my iMac has died of age anyway. To convince you as well, you might want to check out this very nice commercial ^^.

My precious iBook is back! And wireless :D The local Apple retailer IT Pro did a good and quick job. I feel happy! :D

Anyway, I was planning on seeing House of the Flying Daggers, but it was sold out. I hope they’ll still play it somewhere after today, but I doubt it since it’s at the theatres for a while now. :(

Speaking of movies, have I seen some these past weeks. It all started with Ichi the Killer, quite good movie, some gore (well lots but it’s not that bad). Funny in other words. And at last I’ve seen the Ring, Japanese version. Now there’s a movie where really nothing happens. Still, you don’t leave your seat and the tension remains till the credits run.

Some more gore in Audition, which was kind of boring and not scary at all (although it was 5am and I was really tired/drunk), but the girl was so cute! :D Sick, psycho but cute and funny :D I’m not gonna try to spoil it for you.

Ah yes, the Grudge… no not with Buffy, but Ju-On The Grudge 2. Now there’s a scary movie. I’ll be checking the first one out as well, but I think I’ll go for the Japanese version.

Last and certainly least, The Isle, some weird Korean movie which bored me so much I couldn’t bare to watch it completely. Unless you have lots of patience and too much time, don’t see this one.

So I’ve seen my share of movies, and there’s more to come. My Amazon order just arrived, containing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for only 60 euros (extended versions, 12 dvds). Also, Donnie Darko the Director’s Cut (loved that movie, still see bunny appearing in the dark ;)) and 1984, which I saw at school once. Remembered I loved it and it finally arrived on dvd! (it’s mono! Ha! Who needs an expensive surround system ;))

Now to get my lazy ass away from the laptop and in front of the tv…

Damn it. There’s no better way to express myself than by cursing I guess. But my iBook is at the store so that makes me sad and angry. Sad because I miss it, angry because this means I have to use my crappy Dell laptop from work to write this post. Yes yes, it’s supposed to be a very nice laptop (Dell Latitude D800) but it is and remains a Dell with Windows on it.

Anyway, yesterday I finally decided, after almost a year of doubting, to get wireless. I bought an Airport Express base station (yes those things are actually base stations, not just extremely cool “music over WiFi from iTunes to hifi” gadgets) and got an Airport Extreme card for my iBook. All went well except I made the same stupid mistake as I did 12 years ago when I installed my first modem, I didn’t push the crap in hard enough. It’s supposed to be very easy to install, but you just don’t have to be kind to it… you got to show it hell.

So I finally install it the way I should, and I see that the signal I’m receiving is terribly bad. I have to go sit on my Airport Express to get a perfect signal and going further than 3 meters kills the connection. After hours of googling, I figured it had to be the internal antenna that’s broken. So today I headed over to the local Apple retailer to take a look at it.

This is the first time in my life I take a computer to a shop. Really. I’ve been messing up and fixing pcs since I was 14 or something and every pc i owned after my first (oh my god what a piece of expensive junk) Compaq, was home built. When there’s something wrong with that, you take the piece to the shop, not the entire pc.

It’s scary though, giving your precious iBook to someone else. It feels like lending your appartment to a stranger or something, it just doesn’t feel right. That thing is personal, it’s yours,… I even have a hard time just letting someone alone with it. I didn’t know I felt that way about this kind of stuff until today. Damn. :D

But it is true that the thing is filled with your personal belongings and if you use it every single non-working hour of the day, well, it becomes part of you I guess. Anyway, it should be in good hands, seeing as a friend of kurisu works at that store, so I’m not worried… or should I? …

So I’ll be wireless soon enough and in the mean time, well… let’s catch up with other stuff shall we? Let’s do something crazy and instead of surf… watch a dvd! (Ain’t that exciting :D)

For all you silly people still using that, there’s still hope ;) Google brings you a great new tool called Picasa, a program to organize your pictures in a way that can only be described as a “total iPhoto rip-off“. Which is a good thing I guess.

This Windows tool is completely free and doesn’t even look like a Windows program! What more can you want? Well, it has super smooth scrolling through tons of pictures, zooming in and out of your library, sexy slideshow interfaces and a star rating system. You’d think it IS Apple’s iPhoto but it isn’t. It’s a very good copy though and I wonder if they can really get away with making such an obvious replica.

Still, it’s a great tool if you’re stuck on the Windows OS. And there’s this weird timeline gimmick which looks funky, not pretty, but funky. I’d say, give it a try and you’ll learn just a little what working with a Mac feels like. Keep them coming and I might not be ashamed to be seen behind a PC again ;)

Just thought it would be nice to see all the pods together in the source list. It wasn’t easy since the USB2 and Firewire ports are placed so closely together, but I managed to plug them all in at the same time ;) Over the top? I don’t know :P