Why thank you Ayn Rand, I think I will

Does it get better than Atlas Shrugged? I guess you could say The Fountainhead. It depends on what side you want to get at the whole thing. I won't get too preachy about it but I will say that if anyone wants to know the predominant source affirmation of my ideals, it's contained in those two books. Shut your face.

Weekend In The City: Bloc Party's newest joint - Get it

I don't like to talk too much about things that I like or dislike. I like to recommend things or not recommend them. Similar to Vice Magazine's newest rating system, either "get it" or "f**k that it's crap don't get it." The new Bloc Party is a Get It. Get it? Get it here.

Album of the week Many weeks: Technique by New Order

Holy moly. I know that it's silly to say that an album can change someone's life, so I won't say that. But this album, in it's entirety, has stayed with me more than any. I am THE New Order fan. I have it all, vinyl, cd's, videos, all of it. Technique is the perfect New Order album, hands down. I dare say that New Order hasn't been New Order since this recording. Get it here.

If I could, I'd install Ubuntu on my little brother

Okay, so I love my iBook. But I don't like the price of Apple hardware. In fact, I hate it. Don't even try me on Windows, which I avoid like the plague. At the end of the day, I like inexpensive hardware and open source software that gets the job done. Whenever one of my friends starts whining about their windows machine letting them down, I always say: "Delete windows, install Ubuntu, be happy." You can read about it all over the internet, and you can try Live Discs without installing anything. I found this on LifeHacker today. If you're not using Ubuntu and reading LifeHacker, you're not even trying to get things done (no pun intended).

Toast

Okay, I know I hail all things open source, but at the end of the day, you need to get stuff done. When I can't get it done with freeware, I pull out the big guns. Toast 8, the newest verison of Roxio's disc burning application for OS X, is where it's at. From the site:

"Roxio Toast® 8 sets the standard for burning CDs, DVDs, and now Blu-ray discs on the Mac. Create superior sounding audio CDs with crossfades. Enjoy your TV shows anywhere with exclusive EyeTV burning and TiVoToGo™ transfers to DVD or iPod®. Copy your audio CDs, movies and DVDs. It's your digital life, Toast It!"

Yup. It really is all of that and hook kick to the face. Check it out here.

DVD Ripping 101, OS X style

Hands down this is pretty much the way things get done. When Roxio's Toast and Popcorn yell at you and say "No! You're being bad!" Mac The Ripper says "You ready? Let's do this." From their site:

"MacTheRipper is a free DVD ripper (extractor) for Mac OS X. It can extract commercial DVD movies to your hard drive, minus all the copy protections and region controls put in place by DVD publishers. You can then use various tools to burn the movie back to DVD-R for use in DVD players, or convert the movie to different formats for playback with a variety of devices. MacTheRipper is intended to backup DVDs you have legally purchased for personal use. Any copyright-infringing activity you choose to perpetrate using this application is illegal, immoral, and beyond our control."

Fair enough. Download it here.

Torrents anyone?

For those of you that are using OS X and don't know how to download .torrent files, here's a basic tutorial. First of all, you need torrent client software. I recommend Azureus. After you download and install Azureus, you should add the Pirate Bay search engine to your Firefox browser. Then you simply do a search for the file you are legally allowed to download because you already own it. When you find the desired file, Firefox will ask you to pick a default action to choose when handling .torrent files. Go ahead and select "Always open with Azureus." And then wait. A long time. But it's sooooo worth it.

Why Toast when you can Burn?

For you OS X kiddies out there. I handle all of my disc burning needs with Burn. Open source, free, OS X only. It even handles some format conversions also. One of the best free apps I have ever used.

VLC

VLC is an amazing piece of software that will play just about any audio or video format I throw at it. I use it on both my iBook G4 and my Ubuntu box. I just gets better and better everytime. It's cross-platform, free, opensource, and it just works. Get it here now.