At first I was happy using Garageband with my MacBook, but I really wanted to use my pod_xt_ with it as well, but since Line6 didn't have any Intel drivers ready...oh wait. They recently released new drivers! This meant I could connect my pod_xt_ to Garageband and use that as a sequencer. Very interesting. I'll churn out something soon enough and post it when it's ready, but until then, drool some over the Line6 TonePort KB37, a come-all-end-all-machine for recording everything, keyboard included.
Come tomorrow, come the start of the annual Stockholm Beer & Whisky Festival. Yes, I'll be heading there with Zak and Anos, almost like two years ago. Let's see if I spot the Heresy again! Too bad the home-brewing community isn't allowed to serve alcohol this year, but only talk. Still, there will be a buckload of beers and whiskys ready for tasting again. I remember the old whiskys one could sip a single centiliter of, mm. Short and sweet. I somehow guess the liquids will be the best of the show - of course - because the food and the entertainment was very crappy in 2004. Oh, nag, nag. Should I be happy? I'm rooting for the boys in the band to deliver like this come tomorrow night.
By no way, I love bizarre imagery, designed to clarify and inform, but end up making people laugh (even if the info is fully understood).
I wrote about Dodgeball a while back, which is a service designed for Northern Americans who want to know when their friends are close by, physically. Now, Plazes want to launch a "full blown SMS interface" to their service, which allows people to point out where they physically are. I've just enrolled for the alpha test, but there are two things bad about this: 1) the closest current Plazer SMS-service is in Germany which means SMS's are sent abroad, which costs some and 2) I can only think of one single person who would enroll in such a scheme to try it out. We'll just have to see how many are willing to take this on! As I wrote before, on Dodgeball, it's only a matter of time. People want to know if their friends are nearby - and I'll bet they're very willing to shut that service off from their Blackberry, Pocket PC, mobile, Zune, whatever, when they feel like it. Aah, the comfort of not being reachable.
Lifehacker have posted this guide to the latest developer release of Firefox, pictures and all. I like the built-in spell-checking, the little anti-phishing feature and built-in restore-my-tabs-feature the best, from what I've seen.
Facebook recently opened its doors to the great public. Previously only open for corporate users and students, all services are now offered to all. I registred and boom, I was offered to have Facebook search my GMail, Yahoo! Hotmail and AOL accounts for people I know, who already are registered at Facebook. Having done that, my aspergerish side took over and filled out my profile, added the RSS-feed of my blog (which Facebook gladly sucked in) and asked them to register my workplace. I then looked up a few interesting groups and befriended Peter, whom I already know (in real life, whoa). So, what does this amount to? Well, Facebook is a bit like MySpace, but seems a lot less cluttered and much more organised. It allows you to branch out, although not giving you the chance to wreck your profile page by adding MIDI-music, a QT-film and a background picture vile enough to induce epileptic seizures and paranoia simultaneously. Either way, the people who have constructed Facebook have thought it through, and it's fast. Really nice and fast. I mean, I love flickr, but I'd give a lot to get some speed in there. Anyway, here's a good comparison of Facebook and MySpace. BTW, rumours are saying Yahoo! want to buy Facebook for 1 billion USD. We'll see what happens. My Facebook profile is here.
Grand Central isn't merely almost the nickname of a sometimes great funk band, but is now a major bomb-dropper; the site allows you to connect all your telephone numbers to one single number, meaning that for instance, you can have all your phones ring when one of them rings. Or you can just direct all calls to one of your numbers. And you can set up a service so that each caller gets treated differently. Should be something for DEMO '06. It's in beta, and only for the USA and Canada. Blast.
How about, then, something that will appeal to Swedes only? Tjuvlyssnat lists overheard conversations and many are great.
Widgetbox is a nice idea; a categorised list of widgets for your blog. Looks nice, anyway.
Looks like Iconoclast brings celebs nearer to viewers (yeah, I'm joking) but might actually be interesting, considering the guests and who they're mashed together with, for instance Quentin Tarantino with Fiona Apple, Dave Chappelle with Maya Angelou and Paul Simon and Lorne Michaels.
The Guardian likes the Sony Ericsson M600i; I am now running the latest firmware, and the big difference from the start, where the phone's slow, spontaneously reboots and, when it's finished, tells you it did so to "increase performance", you wait for 20 seconds to get to see the web browser, the menus are killing you with their slowness, apps crash...now, the browser's reached in a few seconds, a font is smaller (at times, such as when you're unlocking the phone) and I can POP my GMail without having to accept their certificate every time I POP. Still, the good bits outweigh the bad ones. I love being able to create a task for rejecting somebody's call to me. I like the calendar, but I hate the snooze function which only lets me snooze five minutes at a time. I like using the SMS function and e-mail. I love the voice-quality; the people I speak with often are amazed when I say I'm using a mobile phone and think I'm joking. Love and hate. Looks like Apple's going to start making mobile phones soon, though. I wonder if those will shutdown spontaneously?
I've just bought a MIDI-keyboard! Yeah, I decided that clicking one...step...at...a...time kills my creative process and is really hellish when working with drum-parts, so I got me an M-Audio Keystation 49e. Mm, looks nice.