It was an inspiring sight this morning in Iowa City. A snow had fallen overnight. It was a wet snow that clung to the trees. Everything was white as I drove to work. Beautiful.

Tonight I’ve still got that image in my mind. It’s inspired me to make another Holiday mix this year. Instead of avant garde classical as I did last year, I’ve got the weather on the mind. Note the themes in the song titles. This is just a rough list:

1. Snow Days Trip Shakespeare
2. Mad As Snow Kitchens of Distinction
3. Night: Part One - Snow George Winston
4. The Fox in the Snow Belle and Sebastian
5. Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside) My Bloody Valentine
6. How to Bring a Blush to the Snow Cocteau Twins
7. Winter Rations Sam Knutson
8. Walk Out To Winter Aztec Camera
9. I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm (Stuhr Remix) Kay Starr
10. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (A Shrift Remix) Andy Williams
11. It’s a Cold World Frankie Knuckles featuring Jamie Principle
12. In The Cold, Cold Night The White Stripes
13. I’m Cold The Cure
14. So Cold In Ireland The Cranberries
15. Six Hours to Louisiana, Black Coffee Going Cold The KLF
16. Freezing Philip Glass
17. Season Cycle XTC

    That’s 62 minutes of music, so I’ve got a little more time to work with. But most of all, thank you to iTunes for letting me search my music library in a flash. Speaking of flash, I had some more ideas as I was writing this. I came up with four more songs:

18. Like The Weather 10,000 Maniacs
19. Two Fine Days (And a Thunderstorm) Dif Juz
20. Electrical Storm (William Orbit Mix) U2
21. December David Gray

I suppose two songs about thunderstorms don’t exactly fit the winter bill, but hey, they’re about the weather, right? Okay, that brings us to 77 minutes of music. Perfecto.

What weather songs do you like? I’d accept any suggestions to finesse this winter mix. Ciao, ciao.

Happy Holidays, everyone! I’m sending this message off from the past into the future. I will be away from the computer most of the long weekend. Until I return, many wishful wishes of wishing a wish upon a star and this.

My neighbor dropped by this evening to give me some mail for me that the mailman had put in his mailbox. The mailman was having a bad day, he suggested. Or maybe the mailman just got tired of delivering all of the junk mail they send me. The misdirected mail from today included 4 (four!) credit card offers, a telephone offer from Working Assets, and something from “Explore Minnesota Tourism” enticing me to “Order your FREE Winter Getaway Kit!” The strange thing is that the mailman delivered some of my mail to my mailbox. Looks like I got the interesting bits, and my neighbor got the junk. I’m still wondering who would take a vacation to Minnesota in the winter. Jesus! That’s cold.

For those of you following the copyright wars, here’s the latest salvo via a news blurb from Edupage, an electronic publication of Educause:

A bill passed by the U.S. Senate expands certain protections for copyrighted material but excludes proposed language that would have made file trading on P2P networks a criminal offense. Under the bill, which is similar to one already passed by the House of Representatives, those found guilty of videotaping movies in theaters face up to three years in prison. In addition, people who put copyrighted movies, music, or other content online prior to its official release will also face harsher penalties. The House and Senate versions of the bill must be reconciled before it can be signed into law. Last month the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a measure under which those found to have shared more than one thousand songs on a P2P network could face three years in prison, but that measure was stripped from the Senate bill after strong opposition from groups that said such a measure would represent an unreasonable expansion of copyright law. The Senate bill also did not include language that would have made it illegal to remove certain parts of copyrighted works. Representatives from the movie industry had argued that services that edit copyrighted movies to make them appropriate for younger viewers violate the movie studios’ copyrights, but the Senate did not approve that measure.
Reuters, 22 November 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=6886714

Be careful out there, folks.

Have a look; we redesigned Manufactured Environments. We’re still using CSS for layout and XHTML 1.0 Strict. If you encounter any quirks, let us know what browser/platform, and if you can send a screenshot that would be great. Also, we rolled in trackback functionality—so perhaps we’ll have trackbacks, if everything is working.

Screenshots: old design. new design.

Jose points to some Italian chocolate that’s the equivalent of crack cocaine. He writes:

it’s made using old processes to produce a unique chocolate bar unlike any other, and one that’s extremely addictive. the bar is not heated so hot that the sugar melts, so you have a crystalline mixture of cocoa and sugar and spice.

The chocolate is made by Antica Dolceria Bonajuto. Sounds great. Care to send me a bar, Jose?

In other news, Hawks win!

Remember DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album? I wrote about it back in February here and here. The people hosting the Grey Album sound files are getting harrassed by various lawyers so download them while you can. But the special icing on the cake for all you hipsteristas is The Grey Video, a fine, fine mashup of Beatles & Jay-Z footage. It’s a blast. Watch the Grey Video while you can.

Update: The greyvideo.com site is down. Andy has a list of mirrors.

I put my name, Daniel R Stout, into the Internet Anagram Server, and it came up with “tainted soul.” Oh, dear. At least that’s better than Dori Mondon’s who put the “odd in moron.”

The University of Iowa where I work is selling the scoreboard and Sony Jumbotron from the football stadium, Kinnick Stadium, which seats 70,000. What’s interesting about that is the athletics department decided to sell it on eBay. Check out our University of Iowa Jumbotron on eBay. There’s only two days left on the auction so bid now. Bids of $10K+ and higher are now being accepted!

FYI, I checked around and this is official. The auction listing made me wonder if it was for real (it’s sparse on details and the seller has not accrued much whuffie in the eBay sense of the word). The reason they’re selling it is they’re starting a $90 million renovation of the stadium.

Engadget blurb here. Boing Boing mention here.

[Tip of the hat to Faust.]

I’m back from the conference and back from my post-conference vacation. Feels good to be home in the City. We’re going to a men’s basketball game this aft. But damn, it got cold here while I was away. Time to fish out the winter coats.

In the meantime, enjoy this little piece over at Andrea’s site, entitled A Day in the Life of Joe Republican.

Well, as you know by now, Bush won re-election. It is a black day. Time to move on. Okay, I’m off to Des Moines this morning for a conference for a few days. More when I get back.

Hey, what are you doing sitting at home? If you haven’t voted, then it is time to get out and do your duty (if you’re a US citizen). I’m on my way to Vito’s to watch the results. I had been anxious in the days leading up to the election, but today a calm has passed over me. What will happen, will happen. Of course, being here in Iowa, I’m interested to see how this battleground/swing state goes this time. We narrowly went for Gore in 2000. And it’s another close one. More later.

Yeah, cell phones are really great and all, but there ARE limits! I was on second floor in my building today when I felt nature’s call. I went to the nearest bathroom, and there was some guy sitting on the toilet taking a dump…and talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend! There are lines in the sand that should not be crossed, people. One of those lines is talking to people on your cell phone while you’re doing your business in the bathroom. I wondered later if his girlfriend knew what was going on. The moral of the story? Don’t be a sap, Jack. Put the phone away before you unzip.