Suffering The Benz – Page 311 – Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right

An Apple a day …

Post author By Bob Benz
Post date January 4, 2004

My Mac continues to astound me. I’ve started moving my digital photo archive into iPhoto, a very cool database approach to storing digital images. It also has a feature that makes it easy to publish a slideshow to my .Mac account. Here’s my first test, using, of course, photos of my Big Green Egg. It couldn’t have been easier to publish the photos. I need to geek around a bit to see if I can adjust a few things, but I’m impressed.

From a business perspective, Mac also gets it. They have managed to sell me a .Mac membership, and I’ve already downloaded numerous CDs and songs from their online music store. I’m buying gadgets and add-ons for my iPod. This stuff is like crack. And it’s legal.

My one disappointment was the Apple Airport Extreme wireless base station. I couldn’t get it to work in a reliable manner with my PC/Mac network, and I’m going to sell it.

Bad Bob

Animals taste good

Post author By Bob Benz
Post date January 3, 2004

I see that PETA is trying to make hay over the mad cow problem. Their approach is almost hilarious. Seems they want to assure us that if we just quit eating meat, our food supply would be warm and fuzzy safe.

Here’s the bad news: More people have died in the U.S. during the past year eating vegetables, green onions, specifically, than have died of mad cow disease. Tennessee and Pittsburgh both have had nasty hepatitis outbreaks linked to bad veggies.

Guess that wouldn’t make good copy for PETA’s propaganda …

In the meantime, I’ll keep nibbling on cows and chickens and pigs.

Music Bob

Songs of Sahm

Just downloaded the Bottle Rockets’ Songs of Sahm, a tribute to the late, somewhat obscure Texas songwriter Doug Sahm. It’s a keeper. These guys never fail to blow me away. If you’ve never heard them, start with The Brooklyn Side. Great songwriting, especially Idiot’s Revenge, Welfare Music and Thousand Dollar Car. Not a bad cut on the whole CD.

Here’s a review, though I don’t really agree with the premise: That Songs of Sahm is somehow an aberration in the Bottle Rockets’ catalog. I’ve always liked the diversity of their sound, and these takes on Sahm’s work don’t strike me as being out of sync.

An odd thing about iTunes: Not sure how they’re setting up their database, but the music often sorts by the first name. So Bob Dylan sorts under the “B”s. Also, they have The Bottle Rockets and Bottle Rockets. They need to field that data. Kinda quirky …