Posts from July 2007

The NY Times comes out today for withdrawl from Iraq and starts out its page long editorial with these words:

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

I agree with the editorial. Bush would love to wait and hand off the mess to the next President, but that’s not going to happen. There are too many Republicans who want to be re-elected in 2008 who aren’t going to go down in flames over their support of the war.

The 2008 election is not going to be about Iraq the way the 2004 and 2006 elections were. We’ll be well on our way out of Iraq by next November.

And that’s a good thing. Because we’ve got bigger issues to work out.

So I guess I upset a few loyal readers including my brother with my earlier post.

The truth is I care a lot about global warming and our reliance on carbon fuels (related but not the same issue).

But I am tired of these big concerts that try to inspire us to do more. They don’t work for me.

Bob Lefsetz says it better than I did this morning.

Great line in Jeff Pulver’s post about why he got an iPhone.

I am no longer an iPhone Refusnik…but rather an iPhone Confusnik.

Me too. On July 4th in the evening, I agreed to buy an activated iPhone from a friend for his cost (not including the AT&T contract). I’ll be using it as an iPhod, which is an iPod with wifi, a browser, maps, etc. I am not going to use the phone or the email. I’ve got a Curve for that. Basically I am replacing my iPod with an iPhod.

I don’t have the iPhone yet, but I’ll get it this week. But I am already confused about what I’ll be able to do and what I won’t be able to do.

I am particularly concerned that I’ll have to use iTunes to synch music and photos instead of being able to drag and drop. This post explains there is no way to get music and photos onto the iPhone without using iTunes. I’ve got way more than 8 gigs of music on my laptop and I’d really like to manually drag and drop the music I want on my iPhod.

I think someone should create an alternative iPhone sync program. Apple is starting to use iTunes to lock us all into their world. I don’t like to buy my music from Apple and I don’t like to be forced to use their software to connect to their devices.

Almost makes me want to go back to being a refusnik.

I am boycotting this event. First, there are hardly any acts that I want to see.  Second, I agree with the Arctic Monkeys.

"It’s a bit patronising for us 21 year
olds to try to start to change the world," said Arctic Monkeys drummer
Matt Helders, explaining why the group is not on the bill at any of Al Gore‘s charity concerts.

"Especially when we’re using enough power for 10 houses just for
(stage) lighting. It’d be a bit hypocritical," he told AFP in an
interview before a concert in Paris.

I’ll go to the beach instead.

Speaking of the boys from Sheffield, here’s a video of them from Glastonbury 2007 covering Shirley Bassey’s James Bond theme song, Diamonds Are Forever.

Kings Of Leon did it to me. That opening to Joe’s Head. It took me back to the 70s and the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I was always more of a Skynyrd fan. The Gotham Gal is more Allmans. We grew up on it and then kind of left it behind. But now I am back with a vengeance

This is music for the simple man with the whiskey bottle in hand. And I love it. Two records that stand tall in our vinyl collection are The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East and One More from the Road by Lynyrd Skynyrd. They’ve been getting a lot of play on the turntable this week.

But the south has risen again. Maybe it never fell. Bands like My Morning Jacket from Kentucky, Kings Of Leon from Tennessee, and The Drive By Truckers from Alabama by way of Athens Georgia are making southern rock in the 21st century that sounds both new and old at the same time. I’ve seen MMJ and KOL live and they are truly great. They’ve picked up where the Allmans and Skynyrd left on and are keeping the southern rock genre vital.

Here’s an imeem playlist that I put together with some highlights of this week’s southern rock binge. I hope you like it.

We went to see Sicko last night. I really dislike Michael Moore and his movies. He’s a jerk and his movies are boring and repetitive. It’s like he is trying to hit us over the head so hard that we’ll listen to him. Whatever.

But the premise behind the movie is spot on. Why does the US resist universal health care when countries like Canada and the UK have shown that it works? I have no idea but I think this coming election will see universal health care be a vote getter, big time.

  Turntable and Sonos 
  Originally uploaded by fredwilson.

I finally got Sonos working at our beach house this week. I’d been using an old Dell machine running Rhapsody connected to our beach house stereo system. It worked but had issues.

Sonos with Rhapsody is the killer music solution. I know I’ve said that many times on this blog and am now sounding like a broken record. But it’s true.

Speaking of records, our beach house is home to our vinyl collection (and mixed tape collection). So we often go back in time and pull out records. There is something so great about holding the record jacket, pulling the record out, placing it on the turntable, dropping the needle right at the start of the song. Old skills that we had nailed that we don’t use so much anymore.

And no doubt about it, vinyl is a warmer richer sound. I am thinking of getting vinyl copies of my favorite records that have come out since 1985 since that’s when we stopped buying vinyl for the most part.

Anyway, turntable plus sonos is an even more killer music solution. I love it.

Seeing that this blog is currently the first web link for the search term "unlocked iphone", and seeing that I am interested in doing everything and anything to support and popularize the idea that a phone needn’t and shouldn’t be tethered to a wireless carrier, I hereby accept any ads for legit unlocked iPhones. Legit means the phones actually work when you put a sim card from another carrier in them. I don’t really care if they are legit in the AT&T/Apple view of the world.

Leave me a comment to this post and I’ll contact you and we’ll figure out how to make it happen.

Getting closer.

I love the name of that blog.

And TUAW says that if you take the sim card out of an activated iPhone, it acts like a wifi enabled iPod with a browser. The iPhod. Which is all I want because I don’t want the iPhone for mail and phone anyway. I’ve got the curve for that. Anyone want to sell me an activated iPhone without the AT&T contract? I am all ears.