kevan.emmott.net

My predictions (wishlist?) for iTunes 8:

Given multiple computers in households, additional devices such as AppleTV and iPhone, etc., iTunes needs to either move to or have an optional capability to run as a server. I want an iTunes Library to act as one central repository for all my media. It should be able to have purchases added to it from multiple locations, and be synced and/or streamed to even more locations. The iPhone versions of the iTMS/App Store already have this sort of capability (buy on the iPhone, gets pushed back to iTunes on sync), and this would add incredible capability.

Think of a implementation-hidden, UNIX-y approach to your home Media Library. One component (the Library) stores all the media, and gives hooks for adding purchased content, regular content, downloading subscribed content (season pass TV shows, podcasts, etc.) Clients to this Library can be anything. iPods, AppleTVs, other front-end focused instances of iTunes.

Now add the ability for either a revised AppleTV or a brand new device to act as the Tivo media grabber that could dump captured TV content (HD/cablecard/firewire grab capable) into the library.  Add streaming over the web to iPhones/iPod Touches a la Simplify Media…

iTunes is close to this already. But if it could run in an asynchronous or headless mode (not monopolizing the Library files or requiring the front end to always be running) and allow remote devices to add files, Apple will have a no-compromises solution to the whole household’s media.

Some recent tweaks to the site. Still doing most things daily at my tumblog, and posting pics to flickr. Here’s hoping things calm down enough to post more frequently here!

So I’ve jotted down little mini one-line reviews of some movies we’ve seen. In the future, I’ll just make those individual posts tagged “movie”. For now, here’s the ones I’ve done in the past:

• I (heart) huckabees - quite odd, not sure where they thought they were going with this.
• Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - excellent, if absurd and stupid as this type of movie always is. A next gen Office Space + Dazed and Confused + Holy Grail/Quest movie.
• Dodgeball - quite funny, a farce, great cameos (Chuck Norris, Lance Armstrong, etc.), quote- and meme-able (ESPN 8, “The Ocho”), good time
• Garden State - great, fun, touching, quirky - gives Zach Braff a lot of credibility in Tinseltown

Make me an offer.

(Steve Jobs strikes again.)

Trying out a new, simpler theme with Gallery, and uploaded pics from the Christmas activities we’ve done so far. I’ve got a bunch of albums to upload from the fall still, so look for them to appear at adventures soon as well.

… the goose is getting fat! (or is that me on all this office snacks that keep appearing?)

Having the news channels on all day long at work is just weird. I’m sort of tuning them out, but I know way too much about useless things happening around the world.  And I get to experience all those cultural memes like the HeadOn advertisements.

Keith Olbermann, being justifiably scathing: Crooks and Liars » Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: “Your words are lies, Sir.”

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies, that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” …you told us yesterday… “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas Corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush… they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

The goal of a terrorist is to cause terror. Last week’s arrests demonstrate how real security doesn’t focus on possible terrorist tactics, but on the terrorists themselves.

…

And if you want to know what you can do to help? Don’t be terrorized.

…

If we refuse to be terrorized, then they lose — even if their attacks succeed.

From Schneier on Security: Last Week’s Terrorism Arrests

So I switched projects at work - and I ended up working on an Air Force project at the Pentagon. Probably not what my parents expected, and I’m sure not what my high school teachers (at the Quaker K-12 school I attended) would have guessed. Lots of security clearance/classified stuff, pass swiping, a significant amount of money (like everyone in my entire area is sitting in an Aeron Chair), and boatloads of acronyms… technically, for example, I’m doing work for AF/CVAC, in the CRC, which is next to the CAT, all inside the RSAC. Anyways, I just read this NPR article: A (Nearly) All-Access Pentagon Pass, which captures some of the feel of the place, including Rumsfeld telling a “joke”: “You know why a yuppie can’t say the Pledge of Allegiance?” I won’t spoil the punchline for ya.