Total volume of music files on my computer

41.82 GB (8,840 tracks) at home, 19.27 GB at work. There’s some overlap though. And, actually, if anyone knows of a good tool to reconcile several iTunes libraries, I’d be real happy to hear about it!

The last CD I bought

Last time I bought physical CDs, I bought a bunch of them at once:

• Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces
• No Roots by Faithless
• Uh Huh Her by PJ Harvey
• Yoshimi Battles The PInk Robots by The Flaming Lips
• Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt
• Remedy by Basement Jaxx
• Rooty by Basement Jaxx
• Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco

The last album (all media included) I bought was Geogadddi by Boards of Canada on the iTunes Music Store, which I bought tonight.

Song playing right now

“Music Is Math” from the album Geogaddi by Boards of Canada

Five songs I listen to a lot, or mean a lot to me

So difficult to choose only five songs and it’s a little late so it’ll have to be five songs that I like and no explanations, in more or less random order…

• “Signal to Noise” by Peter Gabriel on the album Up
• “J’ai Poussé Trop Vite (Version Inédite)” by Eiffel on the album Le Quart d’Heure des Ahuris (Bonus)
• “I’m Amazed” by Frank Black on the album Frank Black Francis
• “Agenda Suicide” by The Faint on the album Danse Macabre
• “Reanimator” by Amon Tobin on the album Permutation

Five people to whom I’m passing this baton

• Robert Sfeir
• Brian McCallister
• K’
• Sylvain Pajot
• Patrick Burleson

As Eric Blair said in his passing of the baton, some people in my life really need to get a blog!

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Things I’ve done are in bold. This had been on my to-post list for a while…

1. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
2. Swam with wild dolphins
3. Climbed a mountain(Grande Rochette, La Plagne, French Alps, though I started pretty high up already…)
4. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
5. Been inside the Great Pyramid
6. Held a tarantula
7. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
8. Said “I love you” and meant it
9. Hugged a tree
10. Done a striptease
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris(it’s kind of hard not to when you grew up a mere 10 km away from it)

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Stayed up all night long, and watch the sun rise
15. Seen the Northern Lights(you can sometimes see them at the extreme north of Scotland)
16. Gone to a huge sports game(assuming NFL games count)
17. Walked the stairs to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
18. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
19. Touched an iceberg (unless if I assume like Dori did that walking on a glacier counts)
20. Slept under the stars
21. Changed a baby’s diaper
22. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
23. Watched a meteor shower
24. Gotten drunk on champagne
25. Given more than you can afford to charity
26. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
27. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
28. Had a food fight
29. Bet on a winning horse
30. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
31. Asked out a stranger(not successfully though )
32. Had a snowball fight
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can(in many occasions, too!)
35. Held a lamb
36. Enacted a favorite fantasy
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip
38. Taken an ice cold bath (do showers count? if yes, then yes)
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar
40. Seen a total eclipse
41. Ridden a roller coaster(last time I did, I ended up in the ER so I might not do it again anytime soon!)
42. Hit a home run (growing up in a country that doesn’t care a bit about baseball doesn’t help, not that I care either anyway)
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking(though I probably didn’t realize at the time that I was dancing like a fool! )
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (not too difficult to do in Europe)
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
48. Had two hard drives for your computer(my work computer has four of them right now and that’s not even counting my connected iPod)
49. Visited all 50 states (not yet, tracking here)
50. Loved your job for all accounts
51. Taken care of someone who was shit-faced
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied(still do)
53. Had amazing friends(still do)
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
55. Watched wild whales
56. Stolen a sign
57. Backpacked in Europe
58. Taken a road-trip
59. Rock climbing
60. Lied to foreign government’s official in that country to avoid notice
61. Midnight walk on the beach
62. Sky diving
63. Visited Ireland
64. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them(if you eat at teppanyaki restaurants then you do)
66. Visited Japan (not yet but definitely on my to-do list)
67. Benchpressed your own weight
68. Milked a cow(and a goat too)
69. Alphabetized your records(by artist then within an artist, chronologically)
70. Pretended to be a superhero
71. Sung karaoke
72. Lounged around in bed all day(happened several times while reading books)
73. Posed nude in front of strangers
74. Scuba diving
75. Got it on to “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye
76. Kissed in the rain
77. Played in the mud
78. Played in the rain
79. Gone to a drive-in theater
80. Done something you should regret, but don’t regret it(anyone who says no here is probably lying)
81. Visited the Great Wall of China
82. Discovered that someone who’s not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog
83. Dropped Windows in favor of something better (never had to since I’ve always been a Mac-head)
84. Started a business
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
86. Toured ancient sites
87. Taken a martial arts class(practiced judo, aikido and currently practicing kendo)
88. Swordfought for the honor of a woman
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
90. Gotten married
91. Been in a movie(homemade ones count, right?)
92. Crashed a party
93. Loved someone you shouldn’t have
94. Kissed someone so passionately it made them dizzy(at least, I think it did )
95. Gotten divorced
96. Had sex at the office
97. Gone without food for 5 days
98. Made cookies from scratch
99. Won first prize in a costume contest
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice
101. Gotten a tattoo
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on
103. Rafted the Snake River
104. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
105. Got flowers for no reason
106. Masturbated in a public place
107. Got so drunk you don’t remember anything
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug
109. Performed on stage
110. Been to Las Vegas
111. Recorded music
112. Eaten shark
113. Had a one-night stand
114. Gone to Thailand
115. Seen Siouxsie live
116. Bought a house
117. Been in a combat zone
118. Buried one/both of your parents (luckily not)
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off
120. Been on a cruise ship
121. Spoken more than one language fluently(still do)
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone
123. Bounced a check(but not due to lack of funds)
124. Performed in Rocky Horror
125. Read – and understood – your credit report
126. Raised children
127. Recently bought and played with a favorite childhood toy
128. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did(one of my ancestors fought along La Fayette)
132. Called or written your Congress person
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
134. …more than once? – More than thrice?
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
137. Had an abortion or your female partner did
138. Had plastic surgery
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived(motorcycle accident on the Paris beltway: to this day, I don’t know how I escaped with only bruises)
140. Wrote articles for a large publication
141. Lost over 100 pounds
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback
143. Piloted an airplane
144. Petted a stingray
145. Broken someone’s heart
146. Helped an animal give birth
147. Been fired or laid off from a job
148. Won money on a T.V. game show
149. Broken a bone(toe, another motorcycle accident…)
150. Killed a human being
151. Gone on an African photo safari
152. Ridden a motorcycle
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100 mph
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
157. Ridden a horse
158. Had major surgery
159. Had sex on a moving train
160. Had a snake as a pet
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
164. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
165. Visited all 7 continents
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
167. Eaten kangaroo meat
168. Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground (WTF?)
169. Been a sperm or egg donor
170. Eaten sushi
171. Had your picture in the newspaper
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime
173. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about (not sure)
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions
175. Gone back to school
176. Parasailed
177. Changed your name
178. Petted a cockroach
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes
180. Read The Iliad(even translated part of it)
181. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them
183. …and gotten 86′ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you
184. Taught yourself an art from scratch
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
187. Skipped all your school reunions
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
189. Been elected to public office
190. Written your own computer language
191. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
193. Built your own PC from parts (no but had to do it several times at work)
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
195. Had a booth at a street fair
196. Dyed your hair(bright orange!)
197. Been a DJ
198. Found out someone was going to dump you via LiveJournal
199. Written your own role playing game
200. Been arrested

Last updated November 2, 2004

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While both softwares are still in beta, they’ve become essential to my daily routine. The built-in browser in NetNewsWire and its ability to remember tabs from session to session makes it worth it by itself and resulted in me not using Safari for news reading anymore. I used to open my “to-read” articles in Safari tabs. Big problem though: if I had to reboot or Safari crashed for some reason, I would loose all my queued articles or have to hunt them in the browser history. Not anymore! The flip side is that I currently have 55 open tabs in NetNewsWire with article begging me to read them! My problem is that I open tabs way faster than I can close them.

Of course, there are a lot more new features than just an embedded browser. Plus, there is more to come (not everything has been announced yet)! Give them a spin, you won’t regret it.

Here from the album Moffou by Salif Keita

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Daniel Wilson points us to a letter to the NYT editor which equates Bush to a PowerPoint person. Tufte argues, in a Wired editorial, that the standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch, that its pushy style seeks to set up a speaker’s dominance over the audience… Seems almost like a description of Bush’s attitude to me!

Elsewhere, at the Gadflyer to be precise (via Backup Brain, twice), more points are made that despite his tough, resolute attitude, Bush is not much more than a coward and flip-flopper.

One might argue that, since the USA are considered the most powerful and influential country in the world, foreign countries should have a say as to who the next US president should be because of the potential impact his/her administration could have on their own societies. That would be, of course, an intolerable interference in the American internal affairs. Yet, Philippe Martin in “The world against Bush” points us to an interesting study:

The French newspaper Libération writes: Georges W. Bush is lucky that the election of the world’s leader is reserved to a small part of its population: Americans. If the whole world could vote, John Kerry would be assured of a crushing victory.

Liberation based its article on a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) from Maryland’s University, that was released on last Wednesday. It says:

In 30 out of 35 countries polled, from all regions of the world, a majority or plurality would prefer to see John Kerry win the US presidential election—especially traditional US allies. The only countries where President Bush was preferred were the Philippines, Nigeria, and Poland. India and Thailand were divided. On average, Kerry was favored by more than a two-to-one margin—46% to 20% (weighted for variations in population, the ratio was not significantly different).

See the full report on PIPA’s site.

BTW, the study doesn’t mention it, but I’m sure that Bin Laden and his fans would vote Bush too. No one else would play their game as well as he does!

I have posted about the last point, I don’t think there’s much doubt about this either…

Backup Brain points us (again) to a Gadflyer article about Al Gore’s analysis of Bush’s character: “W stands for weak”. The analysis itself is taken from a New Yorkerprofile of the former Vice-President, in which Tipper Gore also said: What did you expect? I live with the man who invented the Internet when asked about the couple’s matching Apple laptops. I know it has nothing to do with politics but this is my weblog and I cannot resist a little bit of Apple propaganda. Returning to Bush, his weakness is not surprising considering the guy doesn’t even know where his heart is (via DasGenie: !Scrap)… More from the Gadflyer about using the Republicans’ own tactics against them in a good example of framing the discourse towards getting Kerry elected. And with this, I shall refrain from posting about politics for a while.

Girls (idiotech Remix) from the album Always Outsiders Never Outdone by Prodigyremixed.com

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Engadget

Microsize Boy from the album The Attraction to All things Uncertain by tweaker

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Boing Boing Blog

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More on the same subject by Aaron Swartz who provides an example of how Republicans framed the debate in the 2000 elections. Seems like Lakoff’s book is going to end up in my “to-read” queue…

Satellites from the album Satellites by Tundra

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Boing Boing Blog < Gadgetopia

Backfire The Chaff from the album Staggering Statistics by The Staggering Statistics

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As noted in a previous entry, writing a bookmark manager had been on my mind for a while. I haven’t had time to really sit and write down what I was planning on doing. The idea itself wasn’t very clear to start with and the existence of online bookmark managers (del.icio.us, spurl, hyperlinkomatic, I’m probably missing others…) doing more or less what I thought about doing didn’t really make me feel the need to press forward with this endeavor.

Recently, however, posts on the subject have appeared in weblogs that I read. First, it was Buzz Andersen announcing that he just released a beta version of a Cocoa del.icio.us client, Cocoal.icio.us. Then, Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch posted about what a better bookmarking system could be like. These two posts provided the one-two punch that woke me up from my dogmatic slumber, er, complacency. Ahem, too much Kant reading in my previous life I’m afraid…

Anyway… This post is the first part of a two-part article meant to provide a place for me to put down some ideas on the topic of bookmarks from a knowledge management perspective. My purpose is to sort out my ideas and see wether it is worth it for me to spend some of my free time writing a bookmark manager. To this end, in this first part, I will look at the state of the art for bookmark management by providing an overview of what I think the key issues are and possible solutions to these issues. Part 2 will elaborate on desiderata for a knowledge management tool based on bookmarks and will extend the topic into the realms of social networks and what, if anything, they can contribute to an ideal solution.

This post will certainly be updated as time goes. This is but a first attempt at organizing my ideas so please bear with me as I try to work this out.

Bookmark management SOTA

Jonathan Rentzsch posits that bookmarking revolves around three operations, namely: creation, maintenance and use. This is an interesting point of view on the subject. That post also made me discover HistoryHound. My big beef with bookmark managers (and this seems quite a commonly held opinion) is that bookmarks are usually inefficient since it is so hard to find them again after you’ve accumulated a sufficiently large number of them. The crucial idea here is that I don’t use bookmarks (and I don’t think I’m alone in this case) as they were initially intended to be used i.e. a small number of frequently consulted pages. Rather, whenever I come across an interesting page, which I might or not have the time to read at that precise moment, I bookmark it so that I can find it again later. In a way, I use bookmarks as a knowledge management tool, a brain dump.

The big issue is obviously how to find the information again when I need it. I could categorize my bookmarks so that I can find the information I’m looking for more easily the next time I go hunting for something that I remember having encountered before and that I might have bookmarked. However, as noted by Rentzsch, browsers rely on hierarchies to organize bookmarks and those are too arbitrary to be really useful: a bookmark might fit in several different places of the hierarchy but can only (without having to jump through hoops) be filed in one spot. Also, I might have filed a given bookmark under a given concept in the hierarchy but this concept might not be the one I’m thinking of when I’m seeking to retrieve the information: I end up looking in one spot of the hierarchy when the information is really somewhere else. HistoryHound is of help here. No need for categories anymore: just put the bookmarks wherever and let HistoryHound index their content. Retrieval is just a matter of using a search engine on your bookmarks’ content. Full text indexing is definitely a must when it comes to knowledge management via bookmarks.

Another issue is the fact that bookmarks need to be available wherever and whenever you need them, regardless of the currently used browser. This obviously disqualifies “native” browser bookmarks and one needs to turn towards one of the aforementioned online bookmark social softwares: using one of theses services makes your bookmarks available from any browser as long as you can go online. Moreover, these bookmarks services also provides assistance when it comes to organizing the information: they all provide ways to assign tags/keywords to bookmarks to facilitate their later retrieval. Since these tags need not be placed in a hierarchy, part of the rigidity associated with traditional bookmark organization tools disappears.

In my quest for knowledge management, spurl has taken a slight lead: it seems to do all that del.icio.us does (you can even import your del.icio.us bookmarks and synchronize your spurl’ed bookmarks with you del.icio.us account) BUT also provides full-text search on your bookmarks. Spurl, thus, more or less manages to combine HistoryHound’s usefulness with online services’ availability and flexibility. However, spurl doesn’t let you re-index already stored bookmarks. This means that the bookmarks that you imported from del.icio.us or from your browsers are not indexed. This also means than once the index is created, the information is sealed: it won’t evolve with the page at the other hand of the link. Moreover, contrary to del.icio.us, spurl is not RESTful. It is therefore more difficult to integrate it with other knowledge sources such as a personal weblog, though this issue is alleviated by the fact that you can keep your spurl’ed bookmarks in sync with a del.icio.us account. Spurl would therefore take care of the bookmark storage and retrieval while the sync’ed del.icio.us account would provide an interface to other services.

My Own Summer (Shove It) from the album Around The Fur by Deftones

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