Some great photos of weird Japanese Vending Machines. I wish we had all these cool vending machines here in America. All we have at work is one boring Coke machine. Maybe I can convince the boss to put in a rhinoceros beetle machine!
The New York Film Festival
I just found out that Satoshi Kon’s new film Paprika is playing at The New York Film Festival today at 12:30. If I hopped on the next train to NY, I could maybe get there on time, but it looks like I probably wouldn’t be able to get a ticket, and I’m in the middle of doing laundry anyway. Oh well. I hope I get another chance to see it on a big screen at some point. I’ve seen all his other films in actual movie theaters, and I’d like to see this one in a theater too.
NJ Tax
NJ is now charging sales tax on a bunch of stuff that didn’t used to be taxable. From my perspective, the two most annoying categories are comic books (periodicals) and downloaded music. I notice that massage and tattooing are taxable now too. I don’t think either of those categories is going to be a problem for me.
A9 no more
A9 has dropped their toolbar, the instant reward program, and a few other features. I was never 100% satisfied with their search results, but they were pretty good, and the 1.57% off on everything at Amazon was too good to pass up, so I just kept using them. Without the toolbar or the instant rewards, I’ll be heading back to Google for most of my searching. And switching back to the Google toolbar, of course.
“Weird Al” Yankovic
The new Weird Al album is out today! I’ve already heard “White and Nerdy” and “Don’t Download This Song”, and they’re both great. I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting this album, but I’m not sure if I should get the actual DualDisc, or just get it from iTunes.
ADV Universe Digital Store
I’ve been thinking for some time that (legal) digital downloads of anime would be a great idea. The episodes are relatively short, and there are lots of them. There’s a relatively small but very dedicated fanbase. Animation compresses well, compared to live-action. It just seems to me that anime is a much better fit for the iTunes treatment than most of the stuff that’s already up there on the iTunes store. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any sign that Apple is interested in this.
ADV has just opened their own store for digital downloads. I’m a bit disappointed in their model though. They’re charging $5 per episode, which seems a bit high; I think $2 or $3 would make more sense. They’re using Windows DRM, too, so you can’t play the files on a Mac. Nor can you burn them to (watchable) DVDs.
I guess I’ll stick with watching whatever shows up on Cartoon Network, and buying the occasional DVD.
podcatchers
I’ve been using Juice to download and manage podcasts on my Mac for quite some time now. When Apple added podcast support to iTunes, I though about just using that, but there are a few things I don’t like about the way iTunes does stuff. Also, iTunes doesn’t have BitTorrent support, and a couple of the podcasts I subscribe to use BT. Juice is pretty good, but it’s a bit slow on my machine, and there are a few quirks. I’d like to try out Transistr, but it’s been in “coming soon” mode since January, I think. This recent blog post indicates that they’re making progress on it, though. I don’t know if there are any other good podcatchers for the Mac.
Karl Pilkington
I finished listening to the first season of the Ricky Gervais Show today, on my way home from work. Here’s a recent article about Karl Pilkington, “the odd-thinking fall guy” of the show, as the article puts it. I did enjoy the show, though it falls into a bit of a predictable pattern after a while. Still, I think I’ll pop for the second and third seasons from iTunes.
Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow
Here’s a good article about the decline of Roger Rabbit at Disney. I loved the original “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” movie. I’m not sure I care that much about Roger as a theme-park attraction, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Espresso’s New Wave Hits Town – New York Times
Here’s a good article on coffee in NYC from the New York Times. Maybe I’ll hop over to one of these places the next time I’m in the city.