March 27, 2004

Sub Pop. Good Stuff.

Lately pretty much every band on my playlist is from the label Sub Pop. What bands, you ask, are you listening to that are or were signed on Sub Pop? Ahh, here they are in order of current favoriteness.
1. The Shins. The Shins are hard to describe or compare to. Very, very creative and catchy tunes and lyrics. Try it. Go on, you know you want to.
2. Postal Service. I guess I am just bad at describing music, but Postal Service is electronic-indie-goodness. Composed of memebers of other bands (informative huh) they are very good.
3. Iron and Wine. Enough commentary. They're good. Do it.

Other good Sub Pop bands (if you're still lacking music) are Looper (gone from Sub Pop now), Sebadoh, Sunny Day Real Estate (no longer on Sub Pop... or together for that matter, Combustible Edison (fun lounge music while it lasted) and, well, Pinback isn't Sub Pop, but they're on my playlist too.

Enjoy.

Posted by Marcus at 06:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 26, 2004

Quicksilver

This will change the way you use OS X forever. Thanks What Do I Know.

Posted by Marcus at 10:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2004

Flash Drag and Drop Quiz

Flash is trying to make a programmer out of me. I took a Java class in college and really did not feel that I was cut out to program. Flash is starting to change my mind. While I've known Flash for several years, I hadn't really started learning Actionscript until about 3 months ago. This is my work-in-progress quiz. It's all actionscript--only one keyframe (several layers) in the whole movie. Note: I didn't design the thing... just programmed it.

I think that for someone who is naturally a very visual thinker, Flash is a great way to learn to program object oriented code. You can start off little by little and still get great results.

Posted by Marcus at 09:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2004

Farewell Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is, by far, my favorite browser on the PC, and I've used it (previously as Firebird) almost exclusively on my Mac at work for the last 5 months as well but alas, no more. I cannot figure out why, but it is several times slower than Safari on my 1.6 ghz G5. I can have the two browsers open side by side and Safair will have loaded a page with all it's graphics before Firefox finishes saying "Resolving Host." So, until something changes, farewell Firefox.

Posted by Marcus at 08:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 23, 2004

First Websites...

Remember when you created your first website? My brother-in-law who happens to be my wife's twin just created his (with a little help and server space from me) here: benreedjohnson.com. I especially recommend the family page where I gained some valuable insight into the childhood of my wife... aside from relating to me personally, it's funny. He's also started a weblog tonight... should be interesting.

Posted by Marcus at 09:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 22, 2004

Guitar and Video Games

Ok, so there was no guitar, but it's a great Sunny Day Real Estate (now the Fire Theft) song. Last night and tonight I spent a couple hours playing video games after a couple months of solid work from basically morning until bedtime. It was very, very theraputic. The game of choice? Halo for the PC, 1 vs. 1. I started playing with a bad headache last night and by the time I was done, I felt great! Video games do have a purpose after all...

Posted by Marcus at 10:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 21, 2004

Cash - Here to Stay

Saturday I heard a talk show host, rather unsuccessfully, trying to defend his position that a society where there was no cash, only credit cards would be used. I find the idea that this could happen interesting, but I really doubt it would ever happen for the following reasons:

1. Peer transactions. Yesterday I bought a couple bikes off some friends. Unless they had a credit card reader in their house, this transaction would have been much more difficult in a cashless society. How would kids pay for things? Can you imagine a 10 year old with a credit card?

2. Anonymity. People are skeptical of how much the government (or any organization) knows about them. There will always be a legal way to purchase things anonymously… at least there should always be a legal way.

3. Responsibility. Too many people dissociate real money with plastic. Cash is the only way many people actually realize they’re spending their money. Without cash, the amount of consumer debt would probably skyrocket (if that’s possible from how high it is already).

4. Tradition. All other reasons aside, I don’t ever see the day when people outgrow the natural desire to have cold hard cash. It makes you feel like what you worked for is real. It’s what people have done since the end of bartering and old habits die hard.

While technology has taken an obvious foothold in many areas of life and lots things are changing, don’t count on the day that cash will disappear for good.

Posted by Marcus at 07:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack