kevin barnett

Continuing the brilliant and depressing legacy of Trent Reznor’s Hurt:

Maynard James Keenan has been busy! If the wine is as brilliant as the presentation, then I am looking forward to having a bottle. Sadly, the 2005 “mystery” blend Chupacabra is sold out but it appears more 2005 varietals are on their way into bottles. If I get my hands on one, I’ll do a full review via my profile on Cork’D.

I was just listening to LCD Soundsystem - Time To Get Away

If there was ever a prescription for HDTV envy, it’s watching the amazing BBC/Discovery Channel mini-series Planet Earth. Shot entirely on HD over a five year period, the series documents the familiar and very un-familiar variety of life on our planet. More importantly, it gives us an up-to-date status on how various habitats are dealing with the effects humans are having on the planet. I would challenge anyone to watch it and not, even for a brief moment, be captured by the passions of environmentalism.

I was reminded of my odd fascination with ocean-floor tube worms, as shown in The Oceans which is my favorite episode to date. However, Pole to Pole has some of the best scenes I have ever seen in the genre of nature films. Not that Youtube videos could ever do them justice:

After watching these clips, I have to say that I prefer David Attenborough’s narration for the original UK series over Sigourney Weaver’s narration for the US series. If Discovery had to change it, I suppose the choice for Sigourney is appropriate; Gorillas In The Mist, anyone?

The performance of embedded Flash movies on Mac OS X pisses me off. Several bugs exist, performance and otherwise. Apple and the Safari team even admit to an “archaic Mac plugin framework” yet we hear nothing from them on plans to address this issue.

One such bug that continues to plague me both in design and user experience is the issue of using DHTML drop-down menus (Suckerfish, etc.) on top of Flash movies. In Safari and under certain conditions in Firefox, the Flash movie will “flicker” after the drop-down menu has been initiated and mouseover’ed. After researching and testing possible fixes, I have found two successful band-aids.

The fix for Safari? Remove any CSS :hover states from your list-item anchor tags. Yes, hyperlinks are boring and less intuitive without a mouseover state but at least your menu will be functional. Obviously, a browser check or Safari CSS hack (if any still exist) would be preferred.

Mac OS X Firefox can also have issues with drop-down menus on top of a Flash movie, especially if the drop downs have any CSS opacity attributes declared. The fix for Firefox? Remove any opacity attributes declared on the drop-down menu list tags.

These fixes present an inconsistent experience for Mac users (like me) and require hacks and/or browser detection which makes web designers and developers cringe. In most cases, it will perpetuate the all-too-common occurrence of web developer(s) to give Mac users the middle finger and ignore the problem. If Apple wants to continue to attract switchers, they need to embrace the fact that the internet is the most important “iApp” to consumers.

I was just listening to Mike Doughty - Rising Sign

First off, what in the hell does that mean? Under the weather. A quick Google search reveals:

The phrase “under the weather” came from British sailing ships. When a sailor became ill he was confined below deck out of the weather, so it was said that he was under the weather.

For the past week, I have been dealing with a festival of sinus issues, scratchy throat and flu-type aches. I was down for four days and bounced back to a near-100% day yesterday. Today, I’m back to 60-70%. Strange, but I am suspect of spring allergies. The difference between yesterday and today must be that I had a vent open in my bedroom, breathing the outside air while sleeping.

Allergies are something I never have a problem with but after moving to a new part of the country, you never know. I remember feeling invincible from the cedar pollen in Austin, TX while others dropped like flies. Chicago was when I first suspected allergies although I don’t think they were necessarily related to pollen. I’m not sure what makes it’s way through New York other than the blooms of bacteria on the streets and subways but it’s most likely something in the air.

My friend Mike, who blogs (brilliantly) at The Lunar Gemini inspired me to write this post for no reason other than to document personal illness. Perhaps after a few years of doing so, it will reveal patterns in which predictions can be made. I also wonder if we could somehow link through to local New York bloggers who are all being hit with similar symptoms in order to somehow measure the ills of the season. If you live in the area and happen to come across ye ol’ blog, write up a post and hit me with a trackback. Oh, and feel better.

I was just listening to Nightmares On Wax - Flip Ya Lid

Aside from the iPhone which probably deserves most of the hype, I think the Apple TV which started shipping this week, does not.

The Apple TV can connect via HDMI/Component cables to HDTVs to deliver photos and iTunes content; movies, TV shows, music and podcasts. First coined by Steve Jobs, Apple says “Apple TV is like a DVD Player for the 21st Century”. I disagree.

First, let’s consider the content and alternative ways to distribute this content to your television. Since the birth of the iPod video, there are all sorts of docks and cables — including Apple’s own iPod AV kit — to get all of this content on your television. And they don’t cost $299.

But what about HDMI and HDTV? This has to be the biggest farce of Apple TV and nobody seems to be talking about it. Since none of the videos, TV shows and movies sold on the iTunes store are of HD quality, I really don’t see a point. Minimum HD resolution, 720p displays at 1280 x 720. iTunes store video formats are limited to 640 x 480, neither HD quality or aspect ratio. Not to mention the older videos iTunes customers may have when they were pushing out 320 x 240. I’m sure they look great on the iPod but certainly not on an HDTV.

Other nitpicks I’ve read about Apple TV include storing photos on the local drive instead of streaming. Coming from someone who shoots with a digital camera outputting 8+MB for each photo, I think I could fill up the 40GB hard drive sooner rather than later. And Apple may insist on having a minimalist interface but when it comes to remote controls used from the couch, people insist on having a lot of buttons to control a lot of things. As such, the tiny Apple remote, which lacks volume control, among other things is useless.

Aside from all of these issues, journalists and analysts are reaping praise upon Apple TV. Perhaps it’s because they want to see AAPL’s value to rise and convince others of the worthy investment. I just don’t see the value, especially when the iTunes store doesn’t sell HD quality media. And until they do, they should have a hard time competing with DVD formats that do support near-to-true HD quality support digital surround sound. Unless consumers are as dumb as Walt Mossberg and Piper Jaffray suggest, this device is going to flop.

I was just listening to Dntel - Dumb Luck