Not my practice blog, by Scott Knaster

Crazy ballgame woman

Recently my son and I went to a Giants game on a weekday afternoon. We decided to splurge and get tickets in the hoity-toity club level -- an area with better food, great views, and an indoor concourse where you can escape from the weather if you want to. In the first inning, Giants first baseman J. T. Snow hit a long drive to right-center field. My son and I stood and cheered as Snow chugged his way to third base -- a triple, one of the most exciting plays in baseball.

As the play was ending, I felt a tug on the back of my shirt. I turned to see a woman in her sixties sitting behind me. "I can't see", she said. "You blocked my view of the entire field." I was dumbfounded. I've been attending baseball games for 35 years or so. I have never, ever been asked to sit down WHILE A PLAY WAS GOING ON. I wasn't sure what to say. "Um, I was watching the play. It was a triple!"

"Well, I couldn't see it. You blocked my view."

"If you want to see, you could stand up too!", I suggested helpfully.

She pondered that for a moment, then gave me a condescending look.

Then I thought, she's kidding. So I asked her: "You're kidding me, right?"

She: "No, I'm not kidding. You blocked my view."

Me: "Do you tell everyone who stands up in front of you to sit down during a play?"

She: "This is the first time it's ever happened, and I've had these seats since opening day."

Now I was sure she was kidding. But I asked again, and again she said she was serious. And just then, another Giants batter hit a long drive. I looked around the ballpark. People were standing up, cheering, watching -- but not in the immediate vicinity of the club level. Here, people clapped in their seats. This was a revelation. Apparently, I was paying the price for the nice seats by having entered a low-cheering zone.

I could have pushed it, but I wanted to enjoy the game, not fight with some woman. For the rest of the day, I was careful not to block her -- either I didn't stand, or I stood one space over (the seat next to me was empty). So, was she crazy, or has this become the norm in the club level?

Yum!

(From Engrish.com.)

This Might Be A Wiki

Like most geeks I know, I have a list of Things To Do Someday. When I don't have time to actually tackle a project (which is almost all the time), I put it on the list instead. One of the items on the list is to build a great web site for my favorite band, They Might Be Giants. My site would include a list of songs and albums, lyrics, ideas about what the songs might mean, concert dates and reviews, and so on.

Well, how wonderful to discover that somebody else has already done it, and even better than I could have imagined. This Might Be A Wiki has all the groovy stuff, plus it's a wiki, which means there are smart folks adding information to it every day. There's TMBG news, song interpretations, info about band members, folks who sing & play on TMBG songs, videos, peripheral projects like State Songs, Mono Puff, and the late, lamented Hello Recording Club. It's thorough and obsessively wonderful, and you can contribute your own wisdom. OK, I can cross that one off the list! Well done, folks.

Hacking iPod + iTunes

My new book, Hacking iPod + iTunes, is now available! There are a few iPod books out there, but I wanted to write one that's different. I'm interested in the odd edges and obscure features of the iPod and iTunes, so I wrote about that and didn't spend any time on the basics, which are well-covered in the other books. It was great fun to write, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I have a thorough section on how to see and move the songs on your iPod using only the Finder, no Terminal and no third-party software, which as far as I know nobody has described before. I also have a long list of sources for legitimate free music; descriptions of some of the wackier software, accessories, and cases you can get for your iPod; and an extensive section on Note Reader features, including a full description of museum mode, which lets you replace your iPod's main menu (that's how I did my Super iPod hack at ADHOC last month).

There are some reviews already at Amazon, two good ones and one bad. I'm grateful for the good reviews, but disappointed about the bad one because it seems like the reviewer saw the title, expected a more deeply technical book, didn't get one, and so trashed the book for not meeting expectations rather than reviewing it for what it is, or simply returning it. I wish I could respond, or even contact the guy, but I don't see that Amazon's review system has a way for me to do that, other than writing my own shill review. Of course, people seem to be buying the book anyway, and I've gotten a bunch of positive e-mail about it, so it looks like it's working out OK.

If you read the book (thank you!), please leave a comment to let me know what you think, and I encourage you to post a review on Amazon. And please let me know of any nifty iPod or iTunes news or other stuff -- I'm posting those at the book's site.

BarterBee.com

I'm trying out a new site called BarterBee.com. The idea is brilliant: it's basically eBay without money. Here's how it works: for $5 a month, you become a member. You and other members list the stuff you're willing to part with: CDs and DVDs (and soon, video games). You assign a point value to every item. A CD might be 2 points, a DVD maybe 4. Your account starts with 5 points -- you get more when you trade away your stuff, you spend points when you get stuff. You search for the items you want. If you see one you want, you let BarterBee know, and an e-mail is sent that instructs the member to send you the item. When you register, BarterBee sends you envelopes to put your stuff in -- very convenient.

So far, I've listed a few CDs and DVDs I have dupes of or can bear to part with, one of which has been sent to another member, and I've requested one CD from someone else. Both transactions were easy and smooth. BarterBee is a great idea, and it's reasonably well-executed. All it needs now is a few tens of millions of members, so that you increase the chances of finding what you want.

Dashboard

The Dashboard feature in Mac OS X Tiger got a lot of attention when it was previewed back in June. Now there's a web site that's collecting cool Dashboard modules (called widgets). Last time I checked, there were 19 widgets posted, including an English-to-Australian translator, a stock quote reporter, and several games. Of course, you need a pre-release of Tiger to use them.

Issac Hayesimov's Three Laws of Robotics

From Engadget comes this great mash-up – Isaac Hayesimov's Three Laws of Robotics:

A robot must risk his neck for his brother man, and may not cop out when there’s danger all about.

A robot must be a sex machine to all the chicks, except where such actions conflict with the will of his main woman.

A robot must at all times strive to be one bad motha-shutchyomouth.

Right on!

Oracle of Baseball

I'm about to enter an intense period of baseball: first, it's Giants-Expos tonight with my family. Then, my son and I will see the same teams in an old-fashioned single-admission doubleheader tomorrow, which is two games, one after the other, for the price of one. In honor of this 3-games-in-24-hours glut of baseball, today I'm posting about the Oracle of Baseball, a really cool site that links any -- and I mean any two players in major league baseball history by their teammates. Here's an example linking Giants 2003 rookie Kevin Correia with the legendary Moonlight Graham (who was made famous in the movie Field of Dreams):

Kevin Correia played with Benito Santiago for the 2003 San Francisco Giants
Benito Santiago played with Rich Gossage for the 1987 San Diego Padres
Rich Gossage played with Minnie Minoso for the 1976 Chicago White Sox
Minnie Minoso played with Phil Cavarretta for the 1954 Chicago White Sox
Phil Cavarretta played with Charlie Grimm for the 1934 Chicago Cubs
Charlie Grimm played with Red Ames for the 1918 St. Louis Cardinals
Red Ames played with Moonlight Graham for the 1905 New York Giants

Very cool. Minnie Minoso and Rich Gossage seem to get into a lot of these. Maybe that's because they played 17 and 22 years, respectively.

And if I was a bigger nerd, I would take my laptop to the games and blog from there using the Giants free ballpark WiFi.

(Thanks to Dave's Picks for the link.)

They Might Be Giants in Santa Cruz

Last night I saw my favorite band in the world, They Might Be Giants, at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. They were great, as always, although they seemed a little tired. Also, the set list was front-loaded with stuff from the brand-new album, The Spine. While this is fine for a TMBG geek like me, it reduced the general energy level. Highlights included a rockin' Birdhouse in your Soul and a superb Dr. Worm.

I try to keep up with TMBG but it's become impossible lately, due to tons of downloads available on their various web sites. (Note: this is a good "problem" for a TMBG fan like me.) And now they're going to test my wallet: most of the live shows on this tour are available for download at $10 a pop at their download site. Yow! Hey guys -- how about a bulk discount?

Rock on, They Might Be Giants!

And now, courtesy of Mark the Red, here is last night's set list:

show at the catalyst 8/15/04

(start: 21:30)

thunderbird
the spine
memo to human resources
experimental film
robot parade
birdhouse
cyclops rock
bastard wants to hit me
stalk of wheat
drink
particle man
fake-believe (from the next kid's album)
dr. worm
clap your hands
violin
nyc
it's kickin' in
fingertips
older
damn good times
end of the tour

(1st encore)
poke your eye out (special song written for the catalyst)
john lee supertaster
james k. polk

(2nd encore)
twistin'
sleepwalkers

(end: 23:00)

Closing Time

Recently I heard Jacob Slichter, the drummer for Semisonic, on the KFOG morning show talking about his new book. Semisonic is best known for the sweet Grammy-nominated 1999 hit Closing Time (hear a sample with iTunes).

It's clear when you listen that Closing Time is about what happens when the bar shuts down for the night and everybody has to leave:

Closing time
Open all the doors and let you out into the world
Closing time
Turn all of the lights on over every boy and every girl
Closing time
One last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time
You don't have to go home but you can't stay here

But according to Jake the drummer, there's more to it than that. He says singer Dan Wilson wrote the song when he was about to become a father, and the song is also about "getting kicked out of the womb" -- being born. A further examination of the lyrics suggests he might not be kidding:

Closing time
Time for you to go out to the places you will be from
Closing time
This room won't be open till your brothers or your sisters come

Cool.