[Update: He replies in his comment to LibraryLaw.]
Author Archive for Britain
So, Denis came over and worked his elfin magic and put XBMC on my well-out-of-warranty Xbox. A little bit of faq-scanning, trial and error, and a lot of bugging Denis on the instant messenger later, and the fun is finally beginning.
Last night, I forgot to tape Lost. Well, actually, I set the VCR to timer record while out eating 50cent legs at BW3, but I forgot to turn the VCR off so it would start recording. I have often offered to grab a missed episode off the ‘net and screen it for the wife, but have always had to find a VCD version, burn it to a disc, and hook up Abbey’s DVD player, which is one of the remarkably accomodating kinds that will play pretty much any kind of disc, to the TV, so we could watch an extra-grainy version of, say, the Big Brother 4 finale. But today, I pulled down a copy of last night’s “Lost” while out of the house at work, and tonight followed these fairly simple instructions [but not to the letter] to make a couple of directories available to the Xbox. A few minutes later we were watching it! Like a jerry rigged Video-On-Demand.
The picture quality was great, if just a smidge blocky in the dark scenes, and the 50-foot ethernet cable doesn’t really fit with the decor in either my den or the living room. So this won’t exactly replace the VCR for us, but it’s nice to catch the shows that occasionally slip through the cracks.
Several Brasilian funk compilations in mp3 at Funky Do Morro. No, this is not some sort of cool, latin-flavored jazz, this is guys shouting in Portuguese over Miami Bass or Freestyle beats, and is oddly compelling if occasionally repetitive. And yes, this is the music that allegedly drives its teenage Brazilian fans to dancefloor gang wars.
Bare Bones software cutesied up the BBEdit icon, changing the B to this goofball cartoony font. Jon Hicks hated it so much that he knocked out a professional-looking replacement icon over lunch one day. I like it even better than the old one that the cutesy one replaced, and replaced the BBEdit Lite icon in my dock with this’n.
[Regular readers: yes, this is one of those cycles where I post a lot.]
I wish iTunes had this — the two free tracks make me want to apply for dual citizenship of the U.S. and the Zulu Nation. Will have to look for it in a “real store” the next time I have “real $.”
[UPDATE Jan 2004: The iTunes store got it a few weeks after I bought the CD. Bowmp bowmp got that vibe. Time to get live.]
When did the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion drop Jon’s name from their title? It appears to be the same rockin’ lineup, which is fine by me. Were they tired of saying the whole name? It’s not like JS said the band’s whole name all that often in his endless [rockin’] namechecks. It was always “BLUUUES EX-PLO-SHIAAAAN!!!”
If this is a move toward a more democratic blues explosion, then that’s delightful. Good on them.
Went to Brose ElectriCAL yesterday to get a chrome triple-switch plate
cover. Believe it or not, these are not all that easy to find — plastic, gold-plate, brass are easy, but not chrome — and I would’ve gone there first if they weren’t south of us and off of 275.
I asked, while I was checking out, if they were any relation to “the other Broses,” and the clerk just shook her head and was even more curt for the remainder of the transaction, including cutting me off in mid-apology to refuse my credit card [cash only]. I get the impression that there is probably some fantastic secret war between the various Broses, possibly involving amazing electrical weapons unseen by human eyes [I mean, un-elevated humans, of course, wink wink nudge nudge!]. Or maybe it was just the end of the work day, last-fifteen-minutes stress going down.
Submitted for your approval: the two websites of electric stores called
Brose.
- Brose Electric of Oakland [Clarkston], who claim affiliation with Brose Electric of Allen Park, who do not apparently have a website.
- Brose Electrical [Livonia].
What weirds me out about these websites is that neither Brose mentions the other Brose, not even to deny affiliation [“not affiliated with World Vision International, a religious and charitable
organization”]. But their websites look nearly identical and are
both copyright 2000. I will get to the bottom of this. We have top men
on it, Dr. Jones… TOP MEN.
A similar parallel phenomenon: every city in Southeast Michigan, by
2020, will have a pizza/sub shop called Mancino’s. Of the presently
operating Mancino’s stores which I have patronized, it seems a good 90% are completely independent of other cities’ Mancino’s. To complicate matters, I have recently also enjoyed eating at Bellacino’s [which admits to being a chain, headed by… you guessed it, Joseph Mancino]. It’s a ball of confusion, covered in savory tomato sauce, sprinkled with mozzarella and served up hot on a fresh-baked bun.
