Virtual Thought

So I was already in love with Quicksilver. But, lately, my love affair has reached unhealthy levels. Seriously.

Besides the Yojimbo plug-in (which is super-handy) I found out these OTHER cool things!

Let’s say that I need Quicksilver to remind me about something in 10 minutes. So I hit Command-Space, hit ’.’ so I can type some random text in (“Leave the house!”), then hit tab. The first choice is Display as Large Text. So I hit CTRL+Return. That takes the saved Quicksilver command (Display as Large Text) and, if you scroll down, you can choose Run after Delay… When you hit Return, you can then type in “10m”, hit Return again… and voila! “Leave the house!” in 10 minutes! I’m in love!

But it gets better!

Suppose I download the web search module… then suppose I go to Catalog > Custom… I then hit the ’+’ and add this URL:

http://www.yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=***

...and I give it the name ‘ys’. Now I can do cool stuff like hit Command-Space, type ‘ys’ (Yubnub Search) and hit return, then type ‘gim scarlett johansson’... and I have neato Google images of Scarlett Johansson because of Yubnub.

Ooh! Ooh! And what about this?

http://www.google.com/search?q=-inurl%3A%28htm%7Chtml%7Cphp%29+intitle%3A%22index+of%22+%2B%22last+modified%22+%2B%22parent+directory%22+%2Bdescription+%2Bsize+%2B%28wma%7Cmp3%29+%22***%22&btnG=Search

So, yeah, buried in there is a Google search for MP3s (or WMAs) across sites with parent directories named, uh, well, whatever (like “Nine Inch Nails” or “Björk” or whatever). So maybe I’ll name it ‘ms’ (Music Search) and now have a great, Quicksilvery way of searching for music online!

Wow.

So I ran Monolingual on my laptop to remove all those pesky international files that I don’t need, trying to save some space.

Problem was: After I ran it, everything I typed in lowercase appeared as kanji. Seriously. Katakana, I think.

Whoops.

A restart cleared things up. But, for a while there, I thought I would have to reinstall OS X. Whoa.

Godammit, before I could get off my ass and write a tumblelog using Rails someone created exactly what I wanted in tumblelogs.

So here’s my tumblelog.

And here’s Leo Laporte’s tumblelog.

The old Intel building in Austin goes bye-bye.

Check out this post on the Bandwagon blog if you want free accounts for storing your iTunes music. And, yes, I totally did this for the free account. ( =

Posts have this nasty tendency of accumulating, un-written, in my Wordpress queue as drafts. I had these two links sitting around for a long time: One link saying that DRM is here to stay and won’t affect user-generated content and the burgeoning independent media industries and the other saying that DRM hasn’t protected a thing and should be removed entirely.

Somewhat explosively, Steve Jobs posted an essay last week saying that he would sell songs from the iTunes music store without DRM if only the big bad RIAA would let him.

So.

I posted those two links from long, long ago to make a point: I never thought those links would have a shelf life. Commercial DRM, as far as music is concerned (since video DRM doesn’t seem to be going anywhere except to be hacked most egregiously), seems to be counting down to some zero hour; here’s hoping that I live to see no DRM is used at all. I think this is much more constructive than asking that a DRM system somehow, non-sensically, be opened-up so that everyone can lock down their users in the same way! (Man, Norway, you should’ve asked for the whole enchilada and just outlawed it entirely since even a majority of music execs don’t like DRM)

Apple has claimed that they would sell music without DRM (which would be a change of policy for them) and that seems like the beginnings of a sea change. Coupled with EMI’s recent announcement to stop using DRM on its tracks I think this is a very exciting time.

There are a ton of good analyses of the tides in this debate, notably at DaringFireball… Gruber does a great job laying out the currents (to over-extend that analogy).

Here are more links on the subject from Electronista, the inestimable Mr. Doctorow, Cult of Mac, the Associated Press and some more Daring Fireball.

Check out the pretty YouTube video by Assistant Professor Michael Wesch of KSU.=

So that’s what Web 2.0 means. ( = JK/NR!!!11

Here’s the KSU Digital Ethnography homepage.