Need beer mugs.

Added althouse and pictoria, two excellent photoblogs to the sidebar.

Disclaimer: althouse has strong Republican views.

So, Winamp now supports aacPlus. The aacPlus format (also known as HE-AAC for High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) makes music compressed at 48kbps sound like an MP3 compressed at 128kbps. The upside of all this is that people with low-bandwidth Internet connections can (finally!) listen to really good quality music online.

Here's what you do:

1. Download and install Winamp 5.05
2. Scoot over to Tuner2
3. Listen! (Click on the shiny "listen now" buttons :))

Highly recommended are SomaFM Groove Salad and Tag's Trance Trip.

(People with high-bandwidth connections do not despair. aacPlus also makes possible 5.1 Surround Sound streaming audio at 160kbps! (Tuner2 has some streams.) All you need is a 5.1 Surround enabled soundcard and speakers and voila! Your gloating rights are back again!)

Firefox 1.0PR was released yesterday. A better web browser than Internet Explorer, it features built-in popup blocking (no annoying popup windows to close), no ActiveX (no spyware hijacking your PC) and tabbed browsing (multiple pages in one window so less clutter).

Now would be a good time to mention that the majority of visitors on this site (67%) use Firefox. It's just a 4.5Mb download, so time for you people to upgrade!

Recommended Music

I own all the albums listed below. I own many others too but these I still listen to.

The Beatles
The idea is, that you buy all their albums. Begin with this one:

Rubber Soul

Pink Floyd
Make sure that you listen to the whole album in one go. No picking and choosing songs. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Dark Side of The Moon

Wish You Were Here

U2
Consistently strong lyrics, Bono's great vocals and Edge's unique guitars on everything except their last album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, which was below par.

Joshua Tree

Rattle And Hum

Achtung Baby

Nirvana
This is one spooky live album. Again, you have to listen to the whole album as one.

MTV Unplugged in New York

Air
Air picked up where Pink Floyd left us. Music to make love by. Moon Safari's an instant masterpiece, Talkie Walkie is a only average.

Moon Safari

Talkie Walkie

Zero 7
The perfect complement to Moon Safari.

Simple Things

Thievery Corporation
More wholesome electronic jazz.

Mirror Conspiracy

Lemon Jelly

lemonjelly.ky

Lost Horizons

Daft Punk

Discovery

Soundtracks / Various artists

Trainspotting

Ah! The perfect slobfest weekend, when you do nothing much but sleep in late, watch crappy (and occasionally nice) movies at home. When lunch consists of French toast and sausages at Mickey's and dinner is takeout from Taco Johns. When you discover good music which you had missed so far (more on that later.) When the guy at the comic shop hasn't one but two JLA issues waiting for you.

When the weather is so nice that you should be out running and jumping and having a barbecue, but you prefer to lounge in your balcony. When an old friend calls you long distance, and then your call is interrupted by another old friend who hasn't been in touch. When you group chat with your buddies at 2:00AM on MSN and all complain about how life has lost its edge. When you have a million chores to do but you don't do any (except laundry 'cause you need fresh underwear!) When you suddenly discover that the touch pad on you laptop has a convenient switch off button, so you don't mistype. When you finally get time to update your damn blog!

Anyway about that music thing. So the band I just discovered is the Velvet Underground (specifically I listened to and immediately ordered The Velvet Underground and Nico.) Anyway, here's a thought, rather that flooding my sidebar with recommendations, I'll just make two separate posts and link to them from the sidebar! My genius has no limits!

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

- Venus in Furs, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground and Nico.