Randomly Thursday

Random Thursday stuff:

Why yes, I do find it alittle ironic that the “The Streets of San Francisco”, which was produced by Warner Bros. and aired on ABC, is being released on DVD under the Paramount and CBS labels. But I’m glad it’s happening, anyway.
I’m very much hoping my new hometown has the good sense to reject those special delusions of grandeur that only a publicly-financed stadium built on the site of a bulldozed, poor, black neighborhood can provide. Is it 1957 again? Has Robert Moses risen from the grave and landed in Winston-Salem? God, I hope not.
In case you haven’t visited lately, Groceteria now features a new photo journal on the front page. I’ve been pretty good about keeping it up so far.
Also, someone has a whole new site. He writes about ballparks there too. I’ve limited my remarks to a certain message board where I should probably know better than to try challenging people’s definitions of “urban”.

Technology

My mom’s finally upgrading her original Bondi Blue iMac from 1998. OK, I’m actually upgrading it for her, which is kind of fun on some level, I guess. I get to configure a whole new computer without having to pay for it. And I get to move her off AOL once and for all, which is a huge bonus.

It was strangely surreal walking around the Apple store with my mom. There were no Mac Minis in stock locally, so we had to go to The Streets at Southpoint in Durham yesterday. It’s unfortunate that most Apple stores are in such repulsive, icky malls. The hipster fashion victim factor in this particular mall is way off the chart.

On the geeky homefront, I also finally got my phono preamp today, so I can connect the turntable to the computer and start digitizing vinyl. We’d been doing a bit of that before, but with a far more cumbersome system involving a component DVD recorder and a mini-disk unit. This way will be better and easier, and soon my considerable collection of 1980s New Wave and indy rock (not to mention obscure Top 40) will be comfortably enclosed in an iTunes wrapper.

FYI, right now I’m working on “Vertical” by Horizontal Brian.

Also, thanks to a really long set of AV cables (a Christmas present from my hubby), I now have my DVR connected directly to the computer for video input and DVD burning.

I may never leave my office again.

Not Everything Should Be Interactive

What a great column:

Here’s what my Internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my attempt to engage in a conversation with you. I have more than enough people to converse with. And I don’t listen to them either. That sound on the phone, Mom, is me typing.

…

Not everything should be interactive. A piece of work that stands on its own, without explanation or defense, takes on its own power. If Martin Luther put his 95 Theses on the wall and then all the townsfolk sent him their comments, and he had to write back to all of them and clarify what he meant, some of the theses would have gotten all watered down and there never would have been a Diet of Worms. And then, for the rest of history, elementary school students learning about the Reformation would have nothing to make fun of. You can see how dangerous this all is.

Not everything should be interactive.

Someone actually had the audacity to say it.

Imagine.