The Grammys

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The curmudgeon in me says once again…’people are stupid’

I watched the Grammys last night. The music of today is in a very sad state when a 67 year old pianist playing a 84 year old composition is so far and away the best thing of the entire show….

That was Herbie Hancock playing George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue (dualing pianos with Lang Lang, who I had never heard of…). The composition and the performance were in stark contrast to:

  • “I want to check you over for ticks”…could have been done by Weird Al
  • All the howling that passes for soul and emotion
  • The simple craftsmanship of hip hop. 

I do confess to liking the Foo Fighters though…and Kid Rock was a little surprising. Amy Winehouse, lots of hype. She’s kind of interesting, but a major talent? Compared to? You decide…

Use Firefox or Safari

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If you are using it you are a weenie. The CSS implementation for IE is just painful and if you have visited me using it, you know what I mean. My home page is screwed up…but I am too sick of messing around with it just to make it work in IE. No one should use IE.

MAMP is awesome

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MAMP is a single distribution of Apache, MySql, and PHP that totally rocks. I have been using it for testing web sites on my new mac pro (more about that another time). Its cool to see how far some things have come since I last went on a coding binge a couple of years ago. Yes, there are many more moving parts but things are looking up in terms of development speed. I spent the last year in an all MS shop and guess what? It still sucks…as bad as ever. Visual Studio has lots of promise. but isn’t that always the case with MS? Its always ‘going to be great’…in the next rev. Anyway, I am  thrilled to be learning some mac development…lots more later.

Politics as Usual

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My one and only post on this…(right)…I am very depressed about the current election trends. Once again, it seems everything is about style over substance. And the criticism by the media is completely to blame in my opinion. There is no reasoned, rational reporting, it is all ‘entertainment’. Anytime I want to get really depressed, I read the “Daily Howler“. This is a site I have been reading for years. Basically, the guy is a media analyzer who points out inaccuracies, scripts, and biases in the media. If you ever wondered why so many people are so stupidly brainwashed, this is the place to discover the answer.