Bottle Cap Update!

Looking at the glass front pop machines at work, the Mountain Dew and diet Mountain Dew have arrived with the yellow caps for the iTunes Promotion, but the other Pepsi products have not. Got my first song cap at lunch! From reading the bottle, for each free song redemption you also are entered in the free iPod Mini giveaway. And they’ll be giving away one every hour! This is my best chance yet to get into an iPod. ***fingers crossed***

By the way, if anyone out there gets a cap with a free song code on it and doesn't plan on redeeming it---you could always send the code to me. Create your own little link in the Golden "pay it forward" Chain. Just email it to me. And Thanks in advance for your support. :-)

Happy 21st Birthday Mac!

You may not realize it, but today is the birthday of the Macintosh computer. Now, you may not be a Mac enthusaist like I am (hurrah if you are), but this is actually an important day for all computer users. It was on this day in 1984 that the flood gates for the GUI interface and the MOUSE were opened to the masses. Before this date it was only the R&D people at Xerox and Apple and the few eliet that were able to get into a Lisa machine who could experience this liberation of the point and click. For the rest of us it was still C colon this and backslash that---just to pull up a simple word processing document. Although, IBM style business machines would be slow to follow, we can thank this initial offering to the demise of the command line prompt.

Watch the famous commerical here to celebrate. It still sends shivers, doesn't it?

And as if to mark the occasion, Pepsi and iTunes are teaming up again to give away free music! Starting on January 31 I start collecting bottle-caps again. And this time they're giving away iPods to boot. Life is good.

Also, the reviews are coming in on the iMac Mini and iShuffle---and both are getting glowing reccomendations. The main criticisim that I hear is that neither are a remarkable new technology. And my response is, "Well, duh!"

Ok, forgive me if that is harsh, but here's the thing. Apple has suffered for years bringing out bold new technologies that were hailed as inovations and lauded by the critics, but went on to be complete flops because they couldn't move them. The pubilc wasn't ready. But then they saw thier ideas get repackaged by other companies who tweaked them a bit and marketed them brilliantly and had a smashing success. Examples that come to mind are the GUI (of course) that became Windows, the Newton (1993) that came back from another company as the Palm Pilot, and they were also one of the first to market with a consumer grade digital camera---and that market is exploding with no Apple branded camera in sight.

Now, I'm not going so far as to say that these ideas were stolen. What I'm pointing to is that very similar products brought to market at very different times and marketed differently, had very different results. And I'm saying that it looks like Apple has learned thier lesson well. They are now taking known technologies, combining them in interesting ways (with steller design), and marketing them in such a way as to excite the imagination of a buying public in ways no one else has. Maybe they didn't invent the ship, and they might not even be the first to sea, but they're sailing over the horizion in ways no one else has.

And I'll admit that Steve Jobs is a bit of P. T. Barnum, but the dude is the only showman in the tech sector and that group of geeks needs him. I for one would buy a DVD set of the last 21 years of Steve Job's product announcements. C'mon, the guy knows how to stage an event. Couldn't you just see it, the DVD menu would list all the Keynotes and then at the bottom, it would have a link labled "And one more thing. . ."---and it would be the special features section where they would have all the Apple T.V. ads for the last 21 years. Ohhhhhh baby, where do I sign. I'm in line already.

I love this company because of where they have come from and where they are going. It's always exciting and interesting and unpredicitable. That and because thier stuff is truely just so much fun to use. And it looks like they are just getting warmed up. To me, it's like watching Rocky 1 & 2 back to back. Only it takes decades to play out. Ride the wave and enjoy the view---Apple is bringing the you the digital future!

This weeks Bookworm

Here are the questions and answers from this weeks ThursdayBookworm.

1. How many books do you own (and if you're not a nerd like me and don't know the exact number, guess-timate)?

We have quite a few. The problem is we only have one bookshelf of any substance, and then just another little one. Consequently we have books all over. On tables, in cubbys, in boxes in the attic, on dressers and desks, on the toy shelves and shelves above the toy box, and in my daughters room on some plastic planter tables that we've put together as makshift shelves. But books we have, filling up all those places pretty much to capacity.

I've never counted, but part of me wants to say that we've got over a thousand. But then again, maybe it only feels that way. I would think at least 500. I once visited this guy at school that had one whole wall of his bedroom in the "married dorms" (which were small apartments) filled floor to ceiling with bookshelves---and the shelves were solid full of books. It was magnificent. I would like to have shelves like that all around my house. Someday, maybe.

2. Do you keep books to add to your personal library, or do you trade them/give them away?

I rarely give books away, or trade them or sell them. I'm a bit of a packrat I guess. I think that for most of them it's just a case of not knowing who would want them. Then there is how to get rid of them. I think at some point I may try Amazon or Ebay and see if I can't lighten my load a bit. For the ones I can't get rid of that way, I guess there is always goodwill.

The books that I would actually get something for, of course I want to keep. Those are the treasures. I keep them and hope I can share them with my kids as they get to the age that they can appreciate them.

3. If you keep books, what makes you keep them? What kind of books do you keep?

The books that I really hold onto are books that have been gems. Typically not casual reads. I enjoy a casual read, but I really like masterpiece type writing. Everything from the classics, like Charles Dickens, to contemporary kids fiction like Lemony Snicket. Books that have a real sense of style and seem to have a sense of existence outside of the life of author.

It's like there are books that you read and you can see the toil of the author struggling to craft something. Other books it seems like the story has pushed it's way through the author as simply the most able bodied available portal to come into existence through. It's this last kind of story that I like to save.

I like the opening lines of the really good books. Also first paragraphs, but especially first lines. Sometimes I'll stand in front of that one lone bookshelf where we've put all the most excellent books that we own and I'll just go down the rows, pulling books out one at a time and reading the wonderful first lines out loud to myself. It's like music without notes and it feels nice---relaxing and transporting. The line itself can be wonderful on it's own, but typically it calls back, in that one line, all the fun of the story and some memory associated with that story or author from my life, as vividly as a photo album. I'll read the whole first paragraph if it pulls me in, but usually just the first line.

I like to smell them too.

4. Do you have a guilty pleasure book- something you would never want to admit to reading?

Reading has always been so personal for me that it's never been much about status, so I've never had anyone to be embarrassed in front of with what I read. I have read things that I would be uncomfortable if certain people found out I read, because I don't think that they would understand. Like if some of my church friends found out how much I enjoy Vonnegut. I think they may feel a little confused as to why I would want to associate with a "foul mouthed, pornographic humanist". But I don't judge them for how they feel. And I don't judge Mr. V. for the things he says that I disagree with either, because he is a foul mouthed, pornographic (at times) humanist.

I think that both of them might feel I should be a little more judgmental of the other, but it's just not my way. I have to much to learn from both.

5. Have you ever gone without something you needed to buy a book instead?

I couldn't say that I've ever gone without, but I have bought books when someone could say that I would have been just as well to just check it out from the library. I think I put more money in books than I do into clothes for myself, I'll say that. Not much of a clothes person. Just enough to be practical.

I remember when we were really hard up early in my marriage, we didn't have anything to spare for presents. For my birthday I asked for, and my wife gave me, simply as much time in Barnes and Noble to browse as I wanted. Whenever we had been in there before she would be finished long before I would , and she would have to call me out so we didn't screw up our whole day's schedule. On that day she let me loose and didn't call me out---just let me have my fill. We were there for several hours. I could have stayed longer, but I saw that she was being very patient but was getting very bored. So I sacrificed a little to return the favor. It's still one of my most memorable birthdays ever.

Ok, supreme geek rapture---right here!

I was over checking out this weeks ThursdayBookwork (which I'll be filling out here shortly) and saw that she blogrolls the participants on that site's sidebar, and I was on there. I made my first blogroll! Which I though was pretty cool----I'm slowly seeping into the blog culture.

And then I had a though. But I didn't know if I should dare even think it. But I did, and then I went there: google.com. Could it even be possible. I typed it in to the search, "cyberjazzdaddy" and took a deep breath and clicked Search. And lo and behold! I was there. My blog came up on a google search! I am now officially part of the fabric of contemporary human consciousness called the Internet (insert sinister laughter here).

Hmmm, I think I'm starting to sound like Steve Martin in the movie "The Jerk" when he's jumping around the filling station exclaiming "The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here! I'm in the phonebook! I am somebody!!"

Oh well. As I've said before---it's the small things, right?

Now, I recognized most all of the search results that it brought back (there were 11! Can you believe it!) because most of them were done by me. Google had picked up links back to my blog that I left in other people's comment areas. Seems de-lurking has it's fringe benefits. But then there was this one that I didn't recognize---for a blogtelevision.net. I was upset at first. I had thought the name "cyberjazzdaddy" was unique enough that I wouldn't have to worry about duplication this fast. Now here it was on this other foreign site. But then I noticed that the content it was quoting was something I had actually written. Turns out that this website picked me up because I referred to a video-log entry on another guys site called avoidinglife.com. Interesting. Google was referring to this site, referring to me, referring to him. And that's why it's called "The Web".

And at this point you may be asking yourself, "Why am I still reading this"?

A Reading Family

Every night that I can, right before bed, I try to read aloud to all my kids (there are four of them) from a book that everyone can enjoy. We've just finished a two month marathon of Judy Blume's Fudge books. Those were a big hit.

Right now we are reading "The Tale of Despreaux" , a book that they didn't know at first and so were reluctant about, and for which they certainly showed no excitement. But now that we've gotten into it a bit, it's a totally different situation. After I've finished reading for the evening, there is quite the display of whining and begging and pleading for me to keep on reading.

But they also like reading on their own, so I've posted pictures below of them with the books that they are currently reading. I've called them by their nicknames. Their ages are Kittenmitt 14, Robo 9, Leemur 6, and my youngest is not pictured (because he wouldn't sit still long enough with a book to let me get a photo)---he's two (almost three--on Jan 28th).

Leemur's Read

Leemur read
Originally uploaded by CyberJazzDaddy.

Our little man Leemur likes to get books out of the school library!

Robo's Read

Robo read
Originally uploaded by CyberJazzDaddy.

The RoboBoy got a set of the Series of Unfortunate Events for Christmas and he's been slamming thorugh those ever since. He's seen the movie and enjoyed that, but he seems to like the books better.

Kittenmitt's Read

Kitten read
Originally uploaded by CyberJazzDaddy.

My daughter reads a lot of different things, but at the moment she's into the Manga comix ----Japanesse graphic novel serials that read backwards from what we are used to (they start at the right and read to the left). You can't really get them at our library, and so to keep from dishing out tons of money on these things, Kitten has gotten into sort of a lending circle with her friends at school and they share thier copies around with each other. My babies first experience with a social co-op. I'm so proud!

Art by Jack Frost

window 1
Originally uploaded by CyberJazzDaddy.

The ONLY good thing about the weather when the temp reaches sub-zero temps like it does this time of year (and I hate life everytime I'm outside) is that we get these weird and wonderful feather frost designs that form themselves on the windows.

The Play's the Thing

I have always enjoyed some of the Blog Theme items that I've read on other people's websites and I thought it would be fun to participate. This one is actually the second one that I am deciding to do with my blog (the photo thing from Shells I mentioned before---5 photos on the 5th of the month in 2005---was actually the first). The one I'm doing today comes from ThursdaysBookworm.

Each Thursday she asks book oriented type of questions. What's funny is that the person running the site, Brandie, has created a cool little site there that has this woodgrain bookshelf/librarian feel to it. But then she has this link to her personal blog on the site----and clicking on that brings up this site filled with hot pink attitude called Second Time Around . The tag line is "You say B**** like it's a bad thing". And sometimes she delivers on that with both barrels. This mall-babe Jeckel and Hyde weblog duality amused me.

Anyway, here's my contribution to the Thursday Bookworm:

1. What would you consider to be the best play ever written, and why?

I don't know if I could give a "best play ever" award--although if forced I think I'd give it to Shakespeare for Hamlet (because of the overall impact that it has had on Western Culture and beyond). But my two personal favorite plays are "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Becket, and "Star Spangled Girl" by Neil Simon. I know, weird combination. I just like them. The Simon play just cracks me up---he's always been a favorite playwright, but I like Godot for the language. It's like a staged poem for me. I've seen it directed with a strong emphasis on the comedy, and on the tragedy---but for me, the existentialism in the show (and I think in general) is more about living fully in the beauty of any moment, be it despair or rapture. If I ever directed this I think I would give it a more lyrical slant with a childlike-wonder quality thrown in.

2. Who would you say is the most prolific American playwright/dramatist of all time? And from any other country?

If this question is asking about prolific in the sense of the number of plays written, who's written the most---I have no idea. I've know of some semi-professional playwrights who have written hundreds of plays, but the ones I read from them I didn't like very much. I think there is more quality work out there (to say the least) from playwrights who have maybe not written as much in terms of volume.

In regards prolific U. S. writers in terms of prolific meaning "abundant inventiveness"---or maybe even simply just making a statement about the nature of the way of things that was particularly resonant, I would have to consider either Tenessee Williams or Arthur Miller. My personal vote would go to Miller because I think Williams deals mostly with his own inner demons in his writing, while Miller reflects more from the culture at large.

My wife is really into Horton Foote and his pays from the Orphan's Home Cycle series---Cortship, 1918 (which she directed as her thesis show in Undergrad), and Valentines Day.

3. Are there any plays or playwrights that you don't particularly care for?

I don't have any playwrights that I can say I don't particularly like. I haven't been reading plays in a while, so there may be some out there that I would take exception to. I can remember in college getting frustrated with Christopher Durrang. I liked him at first, found him to be very clever, but then it was like he hit a rut. He kept repackaging the same play----it was always a "I'm gay and I hate Catholics and my family was real messed up" play of one sort or another. He did it right in "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" and he should have moved on after that. But, that was a while ago, maybe he has---I haven't read any of his stuff in the last 10 years.

I also didn't care for the surrealist playwrights who wrote plays that were totally unstageable. I mean, what's the use in that---if you can't stage it, just write a book.

4. Have you ever performed in a play? Which one(s), and which role(s) did you play?

I got my Bachelors and Masters in Theater, so I've performed in quite a few plays. Everything from an idiot father in Simon's "Fools" to Reverend Hale in Miller's "The Crucible". I tended to play supporting roles, usually character roles, and thought at one point that I wouldn't be really accomplished until I started playing lead roles. So, finally, I got cast in a lead---I played Mortimer in "Arsenic and Old Lace". But, in the end, it was the role I found the least enjoyable. I found I liked to make people laugh and be a little goofy and I could do that more as the supporting sidekick characters. So I went back to those for the short time I acted after that.

I found that I like being out in front of stage to see the performances more than being on stage in them. So I enjoyed doing Tech and writing and directing much more. I ended up sticking to those as much as I could.

5. Have you ever written, or attempted to write, a play of your own?

I have written several things---one half of my double major in my Masters program was in script writing. I wouldn't qualify anything I've written as a serious piece of dramatic literature but I have produced everything I've written and it has entertained audiences.

I guess I should qualify that a bit, everything I have done was written to be produced. I would be in situations where we wanted to do a play and so I would write a show. Typically, I would have the good fortune of already having a group of actors and I would improv with them for a while and then would write a script to play to their strengths.

It really got around two things that I quite disliked about theater---trying to pick a script that would be suitable in the limitations of a given production situation, and casting. By writing the show, I would write specifically for the space, budget, and players. It became a model I prefer to work in.

However, I have only re-staged one of my scripts because once the first situation is gone, then you are back to trying to get everything in order to address the needs of the script. The one script that did get produced a second time was one in which I had written a character for my wife who was pregnant with our red-head at the time. So I wrote a role for her that required the character to be 7-8 months pregnant! However, when she directed it the next summer, she found that she found, of course, that she needed to come up with some padding for that character. It's that sort of thing that keeps me from doing these things twice.

Another Milestone

Well, I did get a bit of a wish granted over Christmas break (that I mentioned in my first entry).  My wife and I actually sat down and did some internet together.  It wasn’t actually “sender/receiver” between the two of us, but I was online on the Powerbook and she was looking over my shoulder.  We were talking (IMing) to friends that I met originally through her and she was dictating to me and I was typing what she wanted to say.  It was through Yahoo so they could send us a webcam invite, which they did, and my wife thought that was pretty fun too---being able to see the people on the other end of the IM. 

 

Step by step, inch by inch.  This could be a breakthrough year.

 

On a separate note, I’ve crossed over the 5000 ratings mark on Lauchcast---putting me officially on the Addict level.  And for those interested, “One of Us” by Abba was the 5000^th song (not that that’s representative of my general musical tastes, although I do kind of like the song in a “don’t let this get out” sort of way).  The next level comes after another 5000 ratings---can’t say that I see that happening before this next December.  That’s a steep hill to climb, that one.

 

 

Red Letter Day!

Ok, today was very interesting and exciting. It started out that today was the MacWorld keynote address in San Francisco---where they make the product announcements. But I'll get to that in a minute.

But before I go there, I must tell you how excited I was to find that I got my first comment on a blog entry today as well! That's the other thing that made today kind of cool. I was just looking down through the posts to see if that comment number at the end of the posts had changed to something besides a zero. I do this each day in what I regard as a fruitless activity, but just to check---even thought it causes me to wonder each time if anyone has ever even read anything I've written here. But I feel like the concern of neglecting someone who took the time to comment justifies this empty exercise.

Today it was different though. Today there was a little Easter egg at the bottom of my Dec 22 post! Or should I say, a lack of a goose egg. I had a comment! This is a very cool moment for my blog life. I honestly didn't think anyone had ever poked in on me here. So this thank you goes out to Michele, whoever you are. If she had left a link that connected to another blog or an email address I would have sent an email I swear. But anyway, there it is. Very cool surprise.

I have surfed blogs for years now and until recently haven't posted comments. I always felt just a bit like an intruder when I was looking around in peoples websites, and it just didn't feel right----like leaving a comment would be like walking into someone's conversation and shoving in an unsolicited contribution (at which point the conversation stops and everyone looks at you, not knowing what to say or how to really talk to you. At which point you give everyone a polite nod and a smile and slink back out of the group---they close the space where you stood and pick right back up where they left off as you go stand by a wall with your drink. As you can see, I've got baggage).

But then Karen over at "A Slice of Keroni" had a post offering Lurker Amnesty. For Lurkers, or people just poking around without letting the owners know that your there, she encouraged them to leave a post just saying that they were there. So I did, and she wrote me back. It was very cool. Now, I try to take the time to post a comment more often than I have in the past.

So, if you're reading this, leave me a comment and I'll send you an email (if you have your email addy on your profile).

In other news, that I mentioned earlier, the Apple folks have rolled out some very cools stuff today. Get ready for the landscape to change! Things just got interesting. Check it out over to Apple's website.

Getting into it!

Ok, so the flicker post is me getting all funky on the web. I’ve set up a Flickr account (I suppose that’s obvious) for photos and such. I'm trying to get everything working so that I can have all the bugs worked out in time to participate in the photo meme started by Shells at technicolorday.com. She had an idea that she would post 5 photos on the 5th of each month throughout 2005. I liked that idea and am working to participate. So far so good.

It’ll also allow me to put photos in regularly, just for blog purposes.

I am also intrigued to find out about a new concept that’s catching on---videologs (vlogs). Check out this guys video at avoidinglife.com here.

I’ve been doing digital video for about 5 years and loving it (even though I don’t get to do it a whole lot because it’s is very time consuming and the family doesn’t like it when daddy disappears into the cave ---aka his office--- for such long periods of time). So I try not to mess up my family time with it too much, but this would give the whole thing a family participation kind of feel to it. In the past I've just done weddings and such. I loved it, but I wanted to be with my family more.

We're gearing up to see what it would take to help my daughter fulfill her dream of going to Japan for a year of foreign exchange. I would love to be able to equip her with a weblog, digital camera, digital video camera, and iChat A/V so that she could keep in touch to the hilt!

By the way, tomorrow is the MacWorld San Fransisco keynote address where the new Apple products are announced. Is eveyone excited! (I am!)

(And yes, I have active links on this page, thanks for noticing. I'm getting this whole blogging thing in a full featured way---slow but sure.)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Absent?

I know that I’ve got a bit of a gap here in my posts, but it’s not that I’ve been ignoring things. I just got stuck with a post I’m trying to make. I was so struck at all the coverage and responses to the tsunami that I wanted to have a post that was kind of a survey of what was happening in the blog world----how people were dealing with their reactions to the event, how they were reporting on it, and what people were doing to make a difference.

And not just the bloggers---I was particularly impressed with the likes of Apple and Amazon that dedicated significant website homepage real estate to encouraging people to contribute. Apple did it on their main site and on the iTunes store.

I got kinda hung up in the creation of it though. I wanted to include links to all the sites I mentioned in my entry. These are blogs that I read on almost a daily basis. But that’s the part that hung me up. I mean, I know basic HTML, but I’m still learning how to embed things in my blog posts through Blogger. It’s all fragmented right now, but I’ll get it figured out and posted yet, I just haven’t had much time to tinker. So that’s why the gap. But you’ll notice I wasn’t panicking because I feel like I’ve got some good momentum here and I’m not gonna let that slide.

You know, I fist got my introduction to what could be considered a modern day example of a weblog when I was taking a class on html. It was actually during the class that I found it. The class itself was going pretty slowly (I could get the concepts and was ready to move on before other folks---and the teacher was helping them while I twiddled my thumbs). I was at the back of the room, and in front of a computer hooked up to the internet, with nothing to do---and what comes naturally with that sort of situation? Of course, WEB SURFING! So I quietly opened a browser and put my children’s names in the search to see who was out there sharing their name. They have what are regarded as unique names in the States, but are considered fairly normal by the standard of the British Commonwealth countries. And that’s when I ran across a site in Australia called geekbee.com.

This weblog author caught my imagination. She had interesting, vibrant designs that changed frequently. She posted her photography, her weblog and she had a cam that took shots of her---or sometimes her room or odd little perspectives of her environment that I thought were very clever (like shots of her cereal floating in the bowl in a sort of fish-eye wide angle shot). I didn’t think that this online journal was part of something much larger at first, I just thought that it was this particular person doing this cool thing.

I followed her site for some time, but one day she said she needed to go offline for a while (which I find is not uncommon for bloggers). The site was inactive for a bit and then the URL became empty. I kept checking, hoping she’d come back, but she never did, and finally geekbee.com expired and there was nothing.

Some time later, I was surfing around some random weblogs, after I’d discovered that there was a whole universe of these things out there, and on one I notice a website that referenced her name on the blogroll! My heart skipped a beat. It was odd, it really did excite me. It was like someone had died in an accident but the body was never recovered and then you find out that they are alive and have been living in this other place the whole time. It was exhilarating---and it struck me how strange it was that it effected me like that. I had never even communicated with this person. She didn’t even know that I had been reading her page.

The link on that blogroll referenced beeep.net as the site. “She must have registered a new name”, I reasoned. I went to the site to see if it was the same person. It seemed to be her style of design and writing but nothing definitive---and worst of all, the blog was password protected. There was a statement saying that you could ask permission to be granted access, by an email, but that she made no promises. Didn’t sound too promising, but what could it hurt, I thought. So I sent my request to her---I expressed that I had followed her writing for a while and how disappointed I was when it went away---and that there were things that she was in the middle of at that time that I wanted to find out how they went.

Then, after about a day, her reply came. She said yes!

She wrote back saying that she thought it was cool that I was interested in what she wrote and that she would grant me permission to get in (she was very nice). I was almost as thrilled to have her write back to me as I was to find her site again. I’ve been reading again ever since. She’s on holiday in Brittan right now, but she should be returning soon.

I’m anxious to hear how things have gone.