2006.01.15
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Anil Dash on the iPod. Sorry, but the iPod is the only player which has a feature set that's useful. Everyone I've talked to has said "Oh, my MP3 player is good". I then ask them how they get their files on and off: "A simple drag-and-drop interface". Fine, but simple drag-and-drop interfaces are useless when you're doing podcasts. It needs to be a simpler automatic synchronisation. And the iPod is the only device to support files longer than four minutes long by keeping your place when you sync up. Ignore the shit in this post about headphone colours and sheep - that's nonsense. Trumped up Theodor Adorno worship does not a decent critique make. Pointing out what features the iPod lacks does. And it does lack some. It lacks openness in it's use of FairPlay DRM (which is nothing but a mild inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless - it just adds another step when I download music to convert it to MP3). It lacks the ability to easily set playback speed on podcasts without converting them. But other than that, it's the only usable MP3 player I've found. 2006-01-15T20:22:48Z
Excellent. I proposed this idea way back when, and everybody ignored it. Glad that somebody did it. 2006-01-15T20:11:34Z
This whole London witchcraft thing is fucked, fucked, fucked up. 2006-01-15T20:09:48Z
Ubiquitous computing. Who's building it? Not the usual suspects. 2006-01-15T19:46:01Z
Ruthless Reviews on The God Who Wasn't There. I agree: it really ought to be twice the length! 2006-01-15T19:28:28Z
Lya Kahlo did a survey of Christian boards and presents her results. Interesting. (Via Pharyngula) 2006-01-15T19:13:20Z
Johann Hari: "We have never needed Richard Dawkins more than we do now. In this country, we have produced at least eight followers of a religious death-cult who were prepared to commit mass murder in order to gain access to Paradise... And the response of our government? They are proposing to spend billions of your tax-money on indoctrinating a whole new generation into these faiths with a massive expansion of religious schools, many run by hardline Madrassah-mongers and Creationists and new legislation to forbid fierce criticism of these religions. The response of the wider culture is just as appeasing: we have meekly accepted that in this country, a religious mob threatening violence can close down plays that dare to criticise their superstitions." 2006-01-15T19:02:33Z
Josh Rosenau is poking both Dembski and his disastarous 'festschrift' for Phil Johnson and snickering at Casey Luskin's stupidity. Oh, good times! 2006-01-15T17:21:42Z
Brent Simmons is having fun with the Keynote and the brushed metal stuff. I use Shiira because I love WebKit but hate brushed metal crap. 2006-01-15T16:15:32Z
My WordPress server is up. It's like wordpress.com, but I'll add more themes. Start your new blog now! 2006-01-15T03:39:48Z
You respect the 'boys in blue'? Guess you haven't read this. 2006-01-15T03:09:53Z
I finally downloaded Google Earth. It's phenomenal. I zoomed right in to my college and could see the cars parked in the damn car park. What an amazing bit of technology. 2006-01-15T00:45:30Z
Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org
I am a vegetarian, an atheist, like to code in Ruby and Scala (and Java, but let’s not talk about that), and noodle about with microformats and the Semantic Web.
I have an MA in philosophy from Heythrop College, University of London. My philosophical interests are in analytic metaphysics, ontology, modality, the work of Armstrong, Lewis, Kripke, Russell and Plato. I have a strange, unfulfilled interest in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. I’ve been influenced by Gadamer, by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rawls and Nozick.
Musically, I like jazz fusion, soul and P-Funk. My musical nirvana would be a mixture of Beethoven, Miles Davis and George Clinton topped with a side-serving of Erykah, Jill and Angie.
I also write for the Citizendium, an online encyclopedia project. If you know about stuff, you should join in. I occasionally produce audio recordings for The Pod Delusion.
