A Sorta Homecoming

Tue 6 May 200308:15 PM

I swear this is not turning into a blog about my dog, but I want to offer a little closure to the past few posts and let people know that Mister President is back from the dog hospital this afternoon. He’s pretty alert, his appetite is as healthy as ever, and I fully expect him to be causing trouble again by the end of the week.

Toy Fare

Tue 6 May 200312:32 AM

I went to see Mister President today during visitors hours at the Animal Medical Center. They brought him in to an examination room walking on his own accord, groggy, a bit sedated and wearing an ignoble Elizabethan collar. The sutures holding together his stomach definitely look like serious business, and I felt so bad for his discomfort. He looked pitiful and unhappy, but the doctor said his condition is good and with luck I’ll be able to bring him home tomorrow afternoon. She gave me a little present, too.

Belly of the Beast

Sun 4 May 200308:10 PM

Those who are unsympathetic to the plight of animals, squeamish at even descriptions of bodily discomforts, or generally indifferent about the details of my personal life should skip over this post. The subject is my dog, Mister President, and his continuing medical misadventures.

Gene Pool

Sat 3 May 200303:37 PM

The summer movie season effectively kicked off last night with Bryan Singer’s “X2: X-Men United.” With these would-be blockbusters, it takes a dogged determination to avoid being inundated by advance publicity; I tried my best over the past few weeks to avoid trailers, television commercials, critical reviews and entertainment journalism, all in an attempt to preserve as much novelty as possible for the 10:00p show on opening night. What little publicity I was unable to avoid seemed really positive — the ‘buzz’ was good, sometimes outrageously positive. I worried that my expectations were already being inflated but I shouldn’t have, as “X2” is a complete success.

My Stereo Runneth Over

Fri 2 May 200303:19 PM

For several months my consumption of new music has been pretty tame, but this past week saw a surge in album acquisitions; there are currently about six new sets of tracks in heavy rotation on my iPod. It’s not just the buzz around the iTunes Music Store that has me playing the part of the good consumer; I’m also gearing up to make another Squat mix, which entails gathering lots of new source material.

Instant Gratification

Fri 2 May 200312:51 AM

Having now actually made two purchases at Apple’s iTunes Music Store, I can report that the service, once you get it running, is frighteningly easy to use. It took me a day or two to register with the store because the initial frenzy of its debut had Apple’s servers tied up in knots. But once I did, I found that downloading a song was really as simple as clicking on a single button. Dangerously simple.

The One Where Chandler Goes to the White House

Thu 1 May 200301:04 AM

If you’re familiar with the concept of ‘jumping the shark’, a kind of death watch for the creative plausibility of any given television show, then you might be tempted to say that NBC’s “The West Wing” has seen the aerial view of a fin. See, they’ve gone ahead and had Matthew Perry turn in a few guest appearances, which is just the oddest ploy to boost ratings that I can imagine, in spite of the continued success of “Friends.”

Turn On, iTunes In, Shop Out

Tue 29 Apr 200301:57 PM

You’d think, from all the hype, that Apple’s foray into the online music business is some kind of spiritual epiphany, so potent is the Apple publicity machine. This new service, which debuted yesterday as a part of iTunes 4, breaks ground in that it has, for the first time, united all five major label record companies behind a single effort to sell and distribute music digitally in a kind of legally blessed Napster. As is to be expected from most Apple endeavors, the service is singularly elegant and overeagerly hyped.

Six and a Half Posts About Six.5

Mon 28 Apr 200302:33 AM

The latest iteration of this site, version Six.5, goes public today. Here is the quick take-away: The past several years’ worth of posts are now all available and tagged for easy browsing, thanks to SixApart’s wonderful Movable Type software. Everything has been pretty seriously redesigned and is now very nearly compliant with Web standards — no old-style HTML tables have been used in the layout. Yay! There are still a few stray areas that need to be incorporated into the redesign, and some last minute tweaking for CSS and XHTML validation, and that will happen soon.

Ubiquitous, Cheap and Out of Control

Mon 28 Apr 200301:57 AM

The problem with the record industry is not piracy, it’s that its primary product — the compact disc — has been completely devalued. There are some pretty convincing arguments for this that the RIAA obstinately refuses to acknowledge: principally, that the cost of CD’s is out of proportion with both recent inflationary history and the cost of competitive entertainment media like, specifically, DVD’s.

About

Subtraction.com

Khoi Vinh’s Web site

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A Sorta Homecoming

Toy Fare

Belly of the Beast

Gene Pool

My Stereo Runneth Over

Instant Gratification

The One Where Chandler Goes to the White House

Turn On, iTunes In, Shop Out

Six and a Half Posts About Six.5

Ubiquitous, Cheap and Out of Control

Khoi Vinh’s Web site