http://www.youtube.com/v/Tz0hiXnd9ns

After having submitted my previous LJ at around 12 AM (its the usual time that I go to bed), I finally dash off to bed, and wait until sleep makes its nightly rounds. Then, at around 3 AM, I suddenly wake up, with absolutely no sense of sleep or tiredness in my eyes. It was completely unprovoked; no sound has started me up, I don’t remember any dream that I had for that short while, and nothing had mentally reminded me to wake up with such a…..well…..start.

Wierd.

So after a shower and “resleep” before 4 AM, Mom wakes me up a around 5 as usual, with the morning routine of getting ready for our respective destinations. I get here to school at 6 AM, and go to sleep for the next two hours (as usual, since class starts at 8).

I dream of me and Mom walking down a dusty desert road at dawn (me lacking a belt for my pants, so I’m subconsciously holding on to them as I walk), Mom walking in front of me as we cross a deserted intersection. To the left of me, I see a great big red, torn down billboard for (what I mentally recognize to be) Chick-Fil-A in the distance (the trademark had disappeared though, so it might’ve been from another dream I had).

Then, as we get to this bus stop further down the road, a guitar starts playing.

I recognize it as the start for Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic”, and so I start singing. Not surprisingly to me in the dream (but very surprisingly to me in retrospect!), so does Mom! All of a sudden, it seems as if this is some sort of music video, as she compliments me with alto voice and we walk around, singing (with full music in the mental background), as if there isn’t a care in the world.

At the busstop, I see, seated, other people waiting for the bus, including both of my sisters and (strangely enough) Stevie Wonder and the late Luther Vandross (he was graying a bit, btw). None of them were paying attention to us.

It all seems normal to me in the dream. And I felt happy.

Then I woke up with a start (it was around 7:30). Unfortunately, it was in the middle of the bridge (“Life has a funny way….”). In a lucid state (I wasn’t entirely awoke yet) I tried jumpstarting the dream so that Mom (whose face I never could “see” in the dream) and I could finish the song, but it wouldn’t go.

So, I got up and walked to class.

Wierder.

If you were watching the Apple Special Event yesterday (requires Quicktime), you would’ve seen, besides the iPod and iTunes announcements, the revealing of the code-named iTV that will be out (and renamed) by Q1 of ’07.

What’s iTV?
It’ll be a set-top box for the TV, just like TiVo, that will connect to iTunes on your Mac or PC via WiFi and play all that you have on iTunes (Music, Photos, Podcasts, TV shows, and now Games and Movies) on your TV.

It won’t have a DVD player (you could probably rip that on your PC, anyway), but it will be almost the first of its kind. And it’ll cost US$299.

However, this interests me not as much for the whole downloading-to-TV concept as it does for how one won’t have to use “disposable” records in order to see or hear what they want.

But how far can this be pushed? What could arise out of this?

Here’s my idea:

http://www.youtube.com/v/U9ORFOVDFjo

From Digg: Microsoft’s new Desktop Feed Reader.

But then take a look at THIS.

Microsoft Max website.

compared to…..

The website of RK Launcher, a Dock clone for Windows.

…………………………..

Not that I’m as big a fan of artistry as I was years ago, but seriously……..that’s NOT cool.

<lj-cut text=”Late Saturday night browser rant”>OK, so a debate constantly rages between users (or, better yet, *fans*) of Firefox and Opera, the two cross-platform alternative-browser heavyweights. Opera fans fault Firefox for its seemingly-instatiable memory hunger (“its a feature!”) and its failing of the Acid2 standards test  for CSS rendering (which Safari passed first), while Firefox fans fault Opera for being closed-source (the company doesn’t see the need for it) and its lack of Firefox’s extendability (Opera aims to be an all-in-one internet suite like Netscape Navigator, a Firefox ancestor).

I guess that they both make up for what the other one lacks. They both have Dashboard-like widgets (Firefoxit and Opera Widgets), for example, but Opera’s widget feature gets far greater press than its Firefox counterpart. Opera also has in-browser Bittorrent capability (which I should probably try out sometime); maybe they should do like Shareaza and also add support for the other two heavyweights of Peer-to-Peer filesharing (Gnutella, used by Limewire; and eDonkey2000).

At the same time, I have my gripes about both browsers. Marketing, for most people, eventually gets old and dry (unless its a Google logo; those never seem to get old with Photoshoppers); the same goes no different for both Firefox and Opera. I thought that the Firefox Flicks thing was an unnecessary waste of time, and many people looked upon the increasing zealotry with a greater sense of disgust. Opera, I think that the logo (a big, red “O”) and the name (Does this browser sing?) just doesn’t give that much of a description for this browser’s much-vaunted capabilities (unlike the others, such as Explorer, Navigator, Konqueror, Safari, Firefox, Camino, etc.).

And let me just say that, even before I used either Firefox or Opera, I almost always stayed away from IE; at the time (early 2004), our ISP was MSN (first dial-up, then Bellsouth DSL coupled with MSN’s services), and we primarily used MSN Explorer. True, it didn’t have tabbed browsing and all of the niceties of FF which I now take for granted, but the email feature (for MSN mail rather than Hotmail) was actually far better than even today’s Windows Live Mail. I look back at MSN Explorer (which won’t be included in Vista or with Windows Live) with a pining nostalgia, albeit a weakened one as time goes by.

So yeah, browsers and stuff…..</lj-cut>

Made possible using the Stylish extension for Firefox, with the “Brushed Look for Gmail” style.

Niceness.

Miami Herald fires 10 journalists who admitted to being (sumptuously) paid by the U.S. government to host programs on the U.S.-funded TV/Radio Marti, due to conflict of interest.

And some guy who’s Macbook supposedly turned into flames due to a battery problem has (probably) been busted by the Diggnation for engaging in fraud against Apple.

Unfortunately for him, he can’t type a lick of post-5th-grade English.

Look at the bottom, and you’ll see that they’ve posted both his Myspace and home address.

This kid is fucked.