Magic Jewball

Typing this post is going a bit slow because I’m simultaneously watching the Elena Dementieva-Shahar Peer match. Not on TeeVee, naturally. You think they show this kind of match on TV? Of course not! ESPN has just finished American vs. Other Person and is now moving into Hot Blonde vs. Hot Blonde. (In case you didn’t recognize those matches, they were Serena vs. Azarenka and Sharapova vs. Vesnina). No, I’m watching this match on ESPN’s web service, ESPN360.com. This is what I’ve always dreamed of: the outer courts and lesser matches of the distant slams, all laid out for me to choose. And just like my dreams, it’s kind of fuzzy. But that’s OK! Because everything else is just perfect.

It’s very much like being at the US Open, only less sweltering and more “lying on the couch with a laptop on my belly.” Also, it begins in prime time and goes all night when I should, theoretically, be sleeping. But otherwise, it’s just the same. No stupid commentary about the players’ outfits (or asses), no commercials (during changeovers you watch the players in their chairs, just as you do in Queens), crowd chants again become part of the match (you can’t hear those on TV and when the whole crowd laughs, the announcers never tell you what’s so funny, the bastids), and you can even hear the scores being called from nearby courts, just as though you were there.

Here’s what it looks like on my screen. Click to enlarge to actual size. As you can see, it’s The Democratic Party vs. Urine. Or, they shortened the players names to three letters. Also, our girl Shahar is being manhandled by Dementieva. And not in that sexy way.

By the way, I know how few of you are actually tennis fans because my status message on gTalk is “mentally in Australia” and pretty much every one of my regular contacts IM’d me to ask, “what’s going on in Australia?” Oh, the humanity.

Apropos of nothing, this is post #411.
Mary J. Blige – What’s The 411?

I admit it. When I need a pick-me-up, I read Missed Connections on Craigslist. About 25% are real, honest-to-God, “we had a moment there, I wish I had asked for your number.” Another 25% are simply, “hey hot lady! I love you!” At least 25% are, “I’m lonely, wanna sleep with me? Anyone?” And the rest are a mix of misplaced personal ads (“Married guy looking for married woman, no singles please”), chain letters (“if you post this on every CL board, you will have sex tomorrow”), searches (“has anyone seen Anna Montez? She was my roommate and we lost touch”), and the like.

But never in my history of reading MC have I read a preemptive, “it wasn’t a missed connection, you hag.”

Ouch.

10cc – I’m Not In Love

It’s Monday in Australia and you know what that means: tennis is back! Game on! So far I have nothing to say about that, though. Lucky for you, non-tennis fan. Tomorrow it’s Monday in the US and if you had as many tech feeds as I have, you’d know that Macworld begins. What does that mean for me? Nothing! Despite having a MacBook Pro and really loving it, I’m not a fanboy. Or fangirl, although I’ve never heard that term used. I don’t even use any of the programs that came with my Mac, other than iTunes and I’m actively looking for a replacement for that. So I thought I’d use this occasion to describe to you all my favorite non-Apple programs that fill my hard drive with utility. Also, lots of people probably got shiny new Macs over the holidays and your minds are fresh and open!

If you are a non-tennis fan and PC user, today is not your day on J-Ball. Come back tomorrow. No, actually, many of these are available for PC. And they’re all free! I’ll go in alphabetical order.

Adium is the program I use instead of iChat. Adium is the sister-program of Pidgin for PC’s and I can see all my AIM and gTalk contacts in on place. It also plays Crowded House’s “I get your tongue in the mail” line when I get e-mail. But that was my customization.

Audacity lets me edit song files. Make your own ringtones!

Burn does just that. It burns CD’s and DVD’s. This is how I make DVD’s because I find iDVD clunky and full of all kinds of stuff I never use.

Cyberduck is yet another bird themed program that I use for ftp.

DoubleCommand lets me remap my keyboard. I use that for precisely one thing: to make shift-delete do a forward delete. The fn key is way too far away to make this convenient the way Apple has it set up.

ffmpegx is what I use to convert video from one format to another.

FireFox is the browser I use instead of Safari. Safari makes sites look prettier but FF has all those add-ons that I can no longer live without.

Gimp is the open-source (read: free) substitute for Photoshop, if you do Photoshoppy type things.

Handbrake rips my DVD’s to my hard drive so I can load them onto my iPod. Then people can look over my shoulder on the subway while I watch The Simpsons.

Max is a program that encodes CD’s. That is, I use it to rip CD’s to my hard drive because iTunes doesn’t use LAME, what I consider the best encoder. You can also use it to encode in lots of other formats, like Ogg and FLAC and others. Occasionally, I use iTunes-LAME, which encodes right in iTunes.

MPEG Streamclip is what I use to edit video. I find iMovie iAnnoying.

Quinn is Tetris. That’s all you really need to know.

Senuti (read it backwards) moves songs from my iPod to my hard drive. Sometimes I rip a CD at work and then I want to listen to it on my home computer. And there we are.

Skype is a “phone over Internet” program. It’s free to call people who also have Skype and reeeeally cheap to call those who don’t. You’ll need a headset.

SuperDuper! is the back-up program I use. I don’t have Leopard but even if I did, it doesn’t make bootable back-ups. It’s free for the basic and like $28 for the version with the bells and whistles.

Thunderbird is the e-mail program I use instead of Mail. I use it because it’s cross-platform, so I keep it on a USB drive and tote it around between my work PC and home Mac. You need a special script to do that but it’s easy. Even easier is if you have either two PC’s or two Macs.

VLC is what I use instead of Quicktime. It plays lots of video formats that QT can’t or won’t.

Wiretap Pro (I have the paid version but the free one does quite a lot) records any sound the Mac is making. This includes cassettes that I want to import and make into mp3’s, Skype conversations with sketchy customer service people (check legality in your state – in NY only one person needs to give consent), Internet radio interviews, etc.

I should also mention Songbird, which is Mozilla’s (the FireFox and Thunderbird people) alternate to iTunes. But it’s in Beta and is full of bugs. So I downloaded it but never use it.

I also have lots of candy in my menu bar.

Alarm Clock makes the most expensive one you’ll own. I use it as a kitchen timer, actually.

Google Notifier tells me when I have Gmail.

You Control Tunes puts the controls to my music in the menu bar so I don’t have to switch programs when I’m in another and want to change songs or pause.

Show Desktop is something I missed from PC’s (actually, that’s their slogan: “The only good pc feature, now on the macintosh”). It automatically hides all your active windows so your desktop is clear.

If you have any others, please share! I’ll need something to distract me from Nalby’s foibles this week.

Title comes from:
The Who – Substitute

Ever wonder how I pick these songs? Random detritus of the past? Well, a good amount of the time, they just pop up on shuffle during the week and I think, “I forgot this song existed! Yes! iPod Song of the Week!” This is one of those weeks. Actually, I usually skip right past this song when it comes up on shuffle because it means a certain something to me and there’s nothing more disconcerting than a song full of meaning popping up while you’re cruising the aisles at Target looking at ziploc bags. But this time I actually listened, as it had been a while, and I thought, “yeah, this song is still the shit.”

There are certainly catchier songs by Morrissey. Funkier. More clever. Songs where he pronounces the word “playboys” with three syllables. But this song is just so unusual that I dig it the most. It has no chorus and just plows along as a wistful look back upon the occasion of moving house, the house the character has lived in his whole life. And it’s a long song (nearly eight minutes with no chorus!) because there’s a lot to look back on. It’s just bits and fragments of (naturally) a pathetic life and the music is as poignant as the tale.

“There were bad times on Maudlin Street,” croons Morrissey. Indeed.

Napster:
Morrissey – Late Night, Maudlin Street

Streaming audio available on the iPod Song of the Week page.

Well, not a restaurant, really, a fast-food place. That’s a kind of restaurant. The kind of restaurant where you are your own waiter and your service to yourself begins when the guy behind the counter yells, “#2312!” There aren’t many fast-food places I can frequent, being liberally Kosher as I am. But this month, my favorite vegetarian mini-chain, Zen Palate, opened a Faux McDonald’s in East Midtown and as soon as I had an easyish day that enabled a two subway trek to food-gather, I went for it.

The funny thing is, it’s near Grand Central, which has so many fine food choices (including a Kosher deli) that I nearly didn’t even leave it to get my Zen Burger. But I kept my eyes on the prize and finally found it in all its orangey glory. I would post pictures except for the small fact that I don’t have any. But I’ll link you to some at the bottom! Anyway, the line was out the door, even though I take a somewhat late lunch. I kind of wish I had polled people to ask them why they were there. Were they vegetarians? Bored with real meat? Thought it was healthier? Who knows! They were a mix of normal business people, hipsters, and average joes. There was one Muslim lady and a woman who was clearly a frum Jew (word to the frum, there is no hechsher that I know of). I guess the concept was supposed to be strange because there were two people stationed along the line to answer questions. I’m not often at McDonald’s, but I’m pretty sure they don’t do that. The frum lady, who was a few people in front of me, asked a lot of questions, like “is there real beef in the ZenBeef Burger?” I wanted to say, “Listen, the word Zen is like that slash through the equal sign. It means not. It’s beef, not.” When he approached me, I did have a question, “When are you coming to the West side?” He was very enthusiastic and told me they were opening 1500 locations in the next decade, including one imminently in Hollywood. Perhaps he thought I said West coast.

They had all kinds of combos of NotBurgers or NotChicken or NotShrimp and fries and drinks, and I understand their iced tea is fab, but I wanted the most FauxDonald’s I could get. So I got a Southwest burger (it had chipotle mayo and the word chipotle is just magical – it’s like the sun dried tomato of the new millennium) and Chicken FakeNuggets. By the way, these are my names, they’re all called ZenThis or ZenThat. Mine are more descriptive, though. And then I waited in a crowd of people for my number to be called. They were all glowing – it was kind of like the Apple Store for food. Which sounds strange because something called the Apple Store really should sell food.

And then I got my lunch and hauled ass back to my office. Total time, one hour. And it was great! Which is terrible. Now I’m going to be addicted to fast food like the rest of America. But maybe they will come to your town! I hear there’s a good chance of that if you live in Hollywood.

I heard about this place from a blog I subscribe to called Midtown Lunch. Which is pretty much what it’s about. He never describes anything near me, I guess I’m only on the fringe of Midtown. But it’s a fun read! And you can see Loud Orange pictures there.

Hey, instead of a song, let’s have a look at how McDonald’s is selling burgers abroad, shall we? “Rediscover the taste of liberty with the Big Tasty.” Also, stereotypes of the old West. And mullets.

[youtube width=”425″ height=”355″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-XFAgyWpto[/youtube]