Hooray! iTunes 5.0 (just released) no longer uses the awful brushed metal look. That’s enough for me to upgrade right there.

If you were to ask me if I consider Aqua Teen Hunger Force to be extremely dumb or brilliantly funny I would have to answer, “Yes.” Watch two episodes before dismissing it.

Pandora creates streaming radio stations based on what you like to listen to. It uses a nifty and not terribly overwrought Flash interface and, more importantly, bases its recommendations on the Music Genome Project, which I’d never heard of, naturally…

“Together our team of thirty musician-analysts have been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics … and more - close to 400 attributes”

So far, so good.

I don’t know if vinyl records sound better than CDs. I don’t have the ear nor the equipment to know the difference. What I do know is that I enjoy listening to vinyl. It has less to do with the sound quality as it does with the experience.

There’s something about flipping through a stack of records, choosing one, pulling out the dust jacket, placing the disk on the turntable and positioning the needle that makes me feel somehow more involved with the process of listening to music. Compare that to hitting “shuffle” in itunes and having stuff automatically pour out of your crappy PC speakers. Neither is inherently better, but they sure are different.

My dad asked me recently if you could still buy records. I said that I’d just bought a dozen or so at the used records store. He said that he meant new records and I honestly didn’t know the answer. At least until my trip to Schuler Books today. Sure enough, there was a smallish rack of brand new vinyl records. Right there on top was Tom Wait’s Mule Variations which I love, so I bought it and took it home. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go turn the record over again.

Another Java guy, David Geary is loving Rails and suspects that Rails has reached a tipping point. He explains this in the context of Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. This quote stand out…

“That’s stickiness, and Rails has it in spades. Zero-second turnaround time; drop-dead simple and intuitive database access; simple, built-in testing; killer Ajax support; scaffolding; convention over configuration: those are the things that stick when you see them.”

I think that of his three factors, “stickiness” is the standout. Almost everyone who uses Rails for more than an hour or two wants to stay up all night and rewrite every web app they’ve ever written. I should know, I’ve already started doing just that.

Tim Bray does a little mining for Rubies. The whole piece is good, but it’s the last line that counts…

“Conclusion It sure looks like more than a fad to me.”

Jessica’s friend Aubrey walked by while my turntable was playing (Iron Maiden’s Killers, in case you wondered) and the following exchange helped me realize how old I am…

Aubrey: What’s that?

Me: What?

Aubrey: That thing, is that a record player?

Me: Yes, why?

Aubrey: I’ve never seen one before - it’s cool.

Sigh.

From lesscode.org, Ryan Tomayko almost accidentally chooses Ruby and Ruby on Rails…

“The long and short of it is that my evaluation turned into what looks to be a long term relationship. I’m committed to my responsibilities on the Python projects I have going right now and I have a ton of existing applications and utilities written in Python that aren’t going anywhere but Rails ganked 80% of my future code somehow. What’s cool is that because I’m dealing with freedom languages, I don’t feel like I have to make a single choice here because they work equally well in my environment (and most any environment). What’s odd is that it wasn’t Rails that finally pushed me over so much as Ruby and its mysterious perfectly placed support libraries and utilities.”

[link]

Shaving just isn’t any fun. I tend to use cheap-ass razors and even cheaper shaving cream that smells like deodorant. I can only shave every other day at a mininum or my neck turns into hamburger. Although annoying, this has never been something I’ve considered doing anything about. Then, the always valuable Lifehack posts a link to A Simple Guide to Shaving. After following a link to classicshaving.com, you just know I’m going to end up with some fancy badger hair brush, double-edge safety razor and an assortment of creams and lotions. But I’ll be smooth, baby!

I just discovered that one of the few issues I have with Gmail has been fixed. You can now change the “From:” header to something other than your Gmail address. I never liked having my mail come from gmail.com, especially when sending office email, but the benefits for me outweighed any possible confusion. Just followed these instructions and all is well.