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Thursday, September 11, 2003

Regrets...
I've had a few.
But then again,
Too few to mention!
--"My Way",
written by Paul Anka
When I hear that song, I think of Frank Sinatra, and sometimes Elvis or Sid Vicious -- all of whom have been known to perform, in their own unique manner, that wonderful song. Wonderful because -- though I don't always enjoy hearing it, I've heard it so much -- the song is a wonderful personal anthem. That's something we all need: a personal anthem. A song that praises our individuality; a mark of devotion to oneself. After all, they say you're going to have a helluva time loving anyone else unless you've first learned to love yourself, right?

This is not to replace your love for your God, or your spouse, or your family. I'm simply saying that we all need to give ourselves a bit more self-love at this time of year. (No, not that type of self-love !) Too many of us beat up on ourselves throughout the year, and then nearly destroy ourselves at year's end. No wonder there are so many suicides during the Holidays; the messages bombarding us are to Buy Buy Buy and to Give Give Give -- but what if you have nothing to give but love? If you have a dearth of that good stuff, then you'll have a bitch of a time spreading it around to your neighbors.

So be good to yourself, whether you're Christian, Pagan, Wiccan, Athiest, Hindu, Islamic, Mormon, Podcastin, or otherwise. Don't take the pills, they won't do you or anyone else any good; you'll simply miss out on the Next Big Thing (which may turn out to be Your Next Big Thing). Just do things your own way, singing that little hymn as you do so:
For what is a man,
What has he got?
If not himself,
Then he has naught.
To say the things,
He truly feels,
And not the words,
Of one who kneels.
The record shows,
I took the blows
And did it my way!

Friday, September 09, 2005

I still haven't found out whether Motorola's new ROKR phone is able to receive podcasts wirelessly. I've discovered some evidence that it doesn't. Plus I held one today, and though the salespeople didn't know how the device operated, they showed me its USB port, which means either the device has multiple ways of transferring iTunes to the device (wirelessly and via USB), or only one (via USB).

So here's the story: the girl was sick today, so I headed to the pharmacy to fill some prescriptions, and while waiting for the drugs to come down the pipe I headed to the Cingular store across the street. The store had a ROKR available to play with, so I took it from them and began weighing its value.

The ROKR is a sturdy-looking phone, Plain Jane and rectangular (as all mobile phones generally are), with rounded edges and a silver-ish keypad. It's slightly larger than my Nokia phone, in thickness, height, and width. It had a decent color screen, and I noticed it also had a camera on the reverse side. The software appears to perform similarly to an iPod's, though the particular unit I was playing with was having some trouble playing the iTunes. According to the salesperson, the phone probably needed to be reboot. (They had just received the phone in the morning and hadn't yet had much time to figure out how to use it.)

There have been mixed reactions to the phone. Some analysts don't see a need for a cellphone/digital music player hybrid. Others do. Fact is, we don't yet know if consumers are going to buy the device the way they have the iPod. My opinion is that the ROKR will be desired if it can do something truly different: download iTunes and podcasts wirelessly using GPRS and/or Wifi networks. Then it would essentially be a portable Internet radio receiver, not just a cellphone that stores iTunes. I don't want to be stuck with iTunes music! The iTunes Music Store doesn't even sell all my favorite recording artists! Deliver me the podcasts, and then I'll consider pitching dollars for iTunes...
posted by Harold  9/09/2005 12:50:00 AM
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I once posted, in this space (this right column), the following:

If I had friends they would be listed here

That particular bit o' text, that silly and idiotic phrase, was repeated a dozen or two dozen or so times and was intended to be temporary. I had been working on a project -- a new layout for this blog -- and had intended for that text to be placeholder content. That is, the text was supposed to temporarily replace the content that had previously occupied this column (which was a list of links to friends -- that is, other blogs and web sites I linked to). I didn't know what content I was going to place into that (this) space, so I placed a bunch of duplicate phrases here as a placeholder so that I would remember to fill in this space again later.

At the same time, I thought I was being cute with the heading:

NEW & IMPROVED FRIENDS!

The fact remains: I still don't know what content to put here, in this column. Links again? Pictures? Video? Audio? Ads? Oh, hell no! It hasn't come to me yet, but I'm sure it will eventually, and when it does it'll come quick and (as usual) with consequences.