Little Beauty

Raw and Uncensored

I come out my front door after dark tonight and find this little "beauty" sitting on top of a web, freshly-spun right by the outside light, where all the bugs gather up. I see a lot of spiders around the house (mostly inside), but never anything like this monstrosity. The ones that I do see a lot are fast, long-legged, thin-bodied Hobo spider look-alikes that don't even seem to weave webs. I have no idea what this thing is and I am not even sure I want to know what kind of neurotoxin or necrosis agent it carries in that huge nutsack on its arse. I just thought that it looked rather cool and began to take about 20 pics with the ole digicam. I think that the one above turned out the best, so enjoy. :)

Rotten Apples

I posted this before in a web forum thread discussing the new iPod Nano and decided to post it here too. By the way, "ihpod nanoe" literally translates into "little gimp" in Finnish. I kid you not!

"Is all Apple software as "awesome" as the QuickTime player? Damn, I hate that thing. I really wish I didn't have to ever install it again, but there are still a lot of QT video clips on the net, despite the inferiority of the format and the buggy and bloated propriatary software.

As far as Apple and iPod, I don't like them. I don't like their trendy designs that try to appeal to the AOL yuppie crowd, their lack of features compared to other players, their proprietary music stores, etc. I don't even think that iPods look cool. They look like bars of soap to me, but to each their own...

I myself own a Rio Forge 128 MB with a 1 GB SD card. It fits my needs nicely. It has very nice ergonomics, perfectly fitting inside of your palm when you carry it, giving your thumb easy access to volume and navigation controls. The navigation is very easy. I can't really imagine how it could be simpler.

I also don't use any propritary music management or "store" software. I either rip my CDs or buy unprotected MP3s online, stick the SD card into a reader built into my monitor and copy the MP3s from Explorer or Konquerer. Very simple, very effective, no extra bloatware installed..."

In addition, I've read something funny posted by a guy who actually sells iPods at a store. He said that a lot of dumb yuppies coming in and looking for one don't think that it's an MP3 player. They are under the impression that it does something more than all the other MP3 players out there, while in actuality the iPods usually lack features compared to the competition. That cracked me up.