Monthly Archive for June, 2006Page 2 of 2

On My Ipod

Published
by
Amit
on June 19, 2006
in Gear
. 0 Comments

Right now, the Red Hot Chili Peppers new CD Stadium Arcadium and Gnarls Barkley. Both great CDs.

A few songs that have been on my Ipod forever recently resurfaced and for some reason, they resonated:
I see the same shit everyday/the landscape looks so bleak
I think Ill take the first one of yous home/that does something unique

a. di franco, face up and sing

you left my heart empty as a vacant lot
for any spirit to haunt

u2, who’s gonna ride your wild horses?

You know what else is a g.f.s? Johnny Cash - Hurt.

everyone i know/goes away/in the end.

Brilliant.

Do you remember getting chills the first time you heard the guitar intro to that song? Remember when you heard the piano intro in “Trouble” from Coldplay for the first time, before they hit it big? Most people go through their whole lives without creating anything as illuminating as the first 20 seconds of those songs. Remember when you found out that “Creep” was not Radiohead’s best song, just the one with the most commercial success? Those moments seem to come less frequently these days. Is it because the older you get the more numb you become? Or is music just not as good anymore?

The Best Advice I Ever Got.

Published
by
Amit
on June 19, 2006
in General
. 0 Comments

So today I was reading this manifesto from a fellow named John T. Gatto, called “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, And Why.” The thoughts in his piece were really interesting. I think it is about right. The piece kept bringing me back to the best advice I ever got from anyone. I was maybe 13 or 14, and it was from Steven Sadowski, my scoutmaster when I was in Boy Scouts. It was this: “Learn to play the game.” I never got to thank him.

Thanks, S.S.

102 Movies To See Before You Die.

Published
by
Amit
on June 16, 2006
in General
. 0 Comments

Or so says Roger Ebert. Of the list, I’ve seen the following:

“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
“Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
“Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
“Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
“Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
“Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
“The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
“The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra (well, almost all of it, in parts, over the years, around Christmastime, on “WPIX” (not the WB, as it unfortunately is called now)
“Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
“Mad Max 2″ / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
“The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
“Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray (couldn’t make it through though)
“Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

That’s only 33 of 102, or 32.352941176470588235294117647059% literacy! Pretty shabby in my opinion. Thank god for Netflix!

A Great Quote.

Published
by
Amit
on June 5, 2006
in General
. 0 Comments

I was walking on 41st between 5th and Madison and saw this quote on a brass plate embedded in the street:

If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you can’t tell it about other people.

- Virginia Woolf

I’ll try to go back there and take a picture.

Here are two more I like:

For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’

- J.G. Whittier

The walls we build around us to keep out the sadness also keep out the joy.

- J. Rohn

Internet Explorer is for suckers

Published
by
Amit
on June 2, 2006
in Suckers and Technology
. 1 Comment

Part 3 in my series, Things for Suckers. Now, don’t get my wrong. I love me some Microsoft. They make Xboxes, they make sweet sweet Office, and I love XP. I put my money where my mouth is - I even own shares of Microsoft at about $24.50. BUT there is no doubt that Firefox straight up OWNS Internet Explorer and anyone that uses Internet Explorer is a complete sucker. The use of Tabs alone is reason enough to use Firefox over IE.

Firefox is customizable, and I customize the hell out of mine. Among the plugins I have:
Google Send To Phone - puts a little cell phone in the corner of your browser that you can use to send text messages.
TabSwitcher - pretty self explanatory
Autofill - fill in personal information into form pages.
Google Notebook - store little notes about webpages and such. You know you have made it when Google is making plugins for your browser.
SessionSaver - Sometimes Firefox crashes (pff, as if IE doesn’t!) and you want to remember where you were.
Stealther - I use this at work for obvious reasons
Gmail Space - Use Gmail as a hard drive. Sweet.
Firefox Extension Backup Extension. It backs up your extensions.

I also have MozBackup, for saving all my settings, bookmarks, and so forth so that I can put it on other computers or revert to an old setup. Finally, I also have GreaseMonkey, which has its own plugins. For Greasemonkey, I have: Remove IMDB ad column (sorry!), Linkify Plus (automatically link unlinked URL’s), UPS/FedEX Tracking Linkify (link tracking numbers in emails and such), Expedia Expanded Search, Gizmodo Hide Ads, Flyertalk Adremove, Hide Google Adsense Ads, IMDB Links in Netflix, Netflix Links in IMDB, and Remove IMDB a9 Search. Now, show me how to do all that shit in IE! I thought so.

I have a little Google bar to search on the quick, I have a bunch of frequently used sites on little buttons, and I have Gmail Notifier to let me know when I have email. My god Firefox is so sweet and owns everything out there. There isn’t even a close second.

So finally I had to write this page because I found a site which has all the best plugins. It is called “I want a Firefox Extension to…“, and it helped me find some of these plugins. I just got Performancing, and am using it now to make my first post directly from the Firefox Extensions list. I think I am going to name my first born Firefox.

Make a $275 pen for 10 bucks

Published
by
Amit
on June 1, 2006
in Brilliant Ideas and Gear
. 0 Comments

275 bucks for a pen just doesn’t seem worth it, no matter how well it writes. So, while I’ve bought Mont Blanc pens as gifts, I would never get one for myself. But some guy figured out that the refills of Mont Blanc pens are nearly identical to the refills for Pilot G2 Pro Pens. Here is a tutorial on how to take Mont Blanc Refills and put them into a Pilot G2 Pro. I may have to try this - I use Sanford Uniball Onyx pens at work now, and they work well, but they bleed when subjected to water.