At Symbol (@) Paperweight:

At Symbol (@) Bookend:

In the Barnes & Noble brick and mortar, I noticed that they also had ampersand symbols (&). So cool!

So I waited forever and a day, and received nothing. I recontacted customer service, informing them that I would like either (a) a refund (b) my music. They say, hey, we’ll send you the music. I rejoice.

I wait forever and a day. I receive no music. I cease rejoicing and I contact customer service. They refund my credit card.

Now I see that the company is closing its doors. Is there a correlation between botched customer service toward the end and this closing of doors? Perhaps. Might it have been something to do with the terrible ASP coding and mystery navigation on the site? Maybe. No one will ever know.

Now I seek a new online music recyclery, as my local brick and mortar used CD store does not always carry my desired selection. Spun appears on the exterior to be an acceptable alternative, although I have not yet committed a transaction through them. Anyone worked with Spun.com before?

The article and I both agree that Sudoku Widget by bdb’s world of fun is the best Sudoku widget for the Mac. Version 1.5 – formerly 2.0 Beta – features 4 difficulty levels, a timer, high scores, pencil markings for notes, and a “solve” feature in case you’re stuck.

Other Sudoku widgets may offer different features, but this week’s highlighted widget offers the best dashboard Sudoku-ing experience. The Sudoku iPod game offered by Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which is one of the best implementations of a sudoku application that I have seen, highly mimics this widget. For a full-fledged application to mimic the functionality of a widget definitely adds merit to the widget. This dashboard sudoku will not bring you the frustration that many other present.

Additionally, version 1.5 features a pretty whale in the corner, yay, green earth.

Download the (free!) 9 minute preview (iTMS link) and subscribe to the video podcast.

“Hmm,” I mumble. I close iTunes again. Again, it relaunches itself.

Benjamin Franklin defined insanity as the repitition of acts without variation in expectation of different results. I am certifiable: I close her a third time; to my shock, iTunes relaunches a third time.

It turns out, running the Apple iTunes Controller widget will sometimes result in this behavior. I disabled the iTunes widget, closed iTunes, and the beast did not relaunch itself. There was much rejoicing.

Stats

I switched from an HTML self-hosted blogging solution to WordPress in mid-July of 2006. My site on the HTML blogging system disappeared in August (although not being updated, it was still receiving hits until August).

It amuses me how drastically my traffic dropped. I had been blogging with iBlog for three years and evidently had built up some solid traffic (mainly through search engines). I can see that, although starting small, continued posts of substance increase site traffic; the traffic has been gradually building since that nosedive in August.

Seashore

I took this screenshot and realized that I had no way to highlight the lowpoint. iPhoto doesn’t let you just draw on images, nor does Aperture. I do not have PhotoShop. Gimp for OS X requires additional X11 features that I never got around to installing. What to do? Seashore to the rescue! Built with Cocoa, it runs natively in OS X without any help from X11. It is still a work in progress, but it is a definite download for those users who do not desire to install X11.

Why should I use it?

Using products like GIMP and Seashore encourages a world of free open source software. You can sell the products of the software (i.e., your photos or drawings), but you cannot sell the software itself. The entire world can improve the software rather than a group of people hired for the task.

I’m really into modern folk right now and pandora is perfect for just chilling and finding new stuff.

I’m working on a neo-classical station (oxy-moron?), starting with “Perpetuum Mobile” by Penguin Café Orchestra. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

The band gleaned the title of this song from the compositional technique of perpetuum mobile (Latin), moto perpetuo (Italian), perpetual motion (English). I will hereafter refer to the song by Penguin Café Orchestra as “Perpetuum Mobile”, and the musical term as “moto perpetuo” in order to avoid confusion and redundant clarification. As one could gather through hearing the song, the moto perpetuo technique features a “continuous steady stream of notes, usually at a rapid tempo” (wikipedia – perpetuum mobile).

“Perpetuum Mobile” happens to feature moto perpetuo in regard to song technique and also with the composition. When a song is composed moto perpetuo, a piece of the music is repeated without a halt in the melody. Thus, the song may sound as if it goes on for a length of time that for exceeds the length of the repeated section – it may have been repeated any number of times. A repetition may change in pitch or tempo, as “Perpetuum Mobile” explicates.

Do try “Perpetuum Mobile”. It is beautiful. You can purchase the sheet music; it is available through the collection “Numbers 1–4 and other pieces”. It is available via Penguin Café Orchestra’s shopping site (currency in pounds) or Edition Peters (currency also in pounds). I have been unable to locate an American source to avoid importing and currency exchange and exploded prices, so anyone finding one – please, leave a comment.

This animation is extra-special, as it is based off audio from a real-life conversation between her two boys, aged 4 and 6 at the time, incredibly, incredibly enriched by their imagined world.

His drums & piano duet, “Amateur“, is a new favorite on my playlist.

Via Kottke.

Edit: I didn’t see how to post youtube videos before. Now it’s posted here as well.