I got a new digital camera a while back ... i settled on the Sony Cybershot T200, buying a black one for myself and a red one for Veronica. I was seduced by the gadgetry of the device, especially the large touch screen display and the face recognition technology. I've been generally pleased with its performance ... its 10 MP resolution beats the crap out of my old Nikon Coolpix 3 MP, and the touch screen works pretty well. I got some use out of it at the March MIPS junior faculty retreat in Carmel. Four days with my Stanford chums hanging out in a house just across Highway 1 from the Pacific. We spent most of our time discussing science and academics, but had time to relax with each other, going on a few hikes, having dinner at Clint Eastwood's pub, and playing games of poker, Motorstorm, and Madden.

In other technology news, my indoctrination as a Mac disciple continues as i've recently taught myself a bit of Applescript. I was able to write a tagging program that speeds addition of new music to my iTunes library, automating importing files, sorting them into directories, adding tag information, and locating and loading artwork. I've also become enamored of Growl, a background application that allows posting of notifications from a variety of applications. I've got it set up so when i'm working on something in another program (like writing this blog post in Safari), iTunes posts little temporary windows to let me know what song just came on. Coupled with Sizzling Keys, i can monitor and control iTunes from any other application using a few hotkeys. So logical, and simple.

Been stockpiling more music with my recent Applescript and iTunes advances. Although, as i learned when newly-engaged Kevin and Shyoko came for a visit recently, i'm hard pressed to tell anyone off the top of my head what i've been listening to lately. Let's review my recent iTunes additions ... the Courteeners are arguably the best of the "brit-wit-rock" wave that i've heard (side note: perhaps unsurprisingly, i just made that term up. See Art Brut for a reference point.), the new Voyager One record keeps the shoegazing standard flying high, i've discovered Mark Unrest Robinson's fabulous post-punk project Flin Flon, and the Gossip's Live in Liverpool is totally f@$#ing rad. Meanwhile, although i still love them to death, i'm not hugely impressed with New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody duo Flight of the Conchords self-titled debut. The studio versions of many of the songs are lacking the spontaneity and humor of the live renditions. But that means i'm very excited to see them play live in San Francisco in a few weeks. Veronica and i were able to snag two tickets on Ticketmaster in the four minute window between when they went on sale and when they sold out.

Any lingering fac13 readers who've been trolling the site for ted news in the last month or two will have noticed that in addition to my stream of posts drying up, my listening statistics have also gone unupdated. This isn't because i've stopped listening to music, but because i have yet to adapt my iTunes-monitoring code to the Mac. I was hoping that i could write something in Applescript, but it seems Applescript doesn't have a mechanism of receiving iTunes events (things like when a track starts or stops playing), which are necessary for my background iTunesLog application to keep track of what played when and for how long. There's definitely a way to do this, but it may involve me learning Carbon, Cocoa, and/or Objective C. Always a new challenge.

I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Grand Theft Auto IV next week. I've been occupying my video addiction with finishing the oh-too-short God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP, and playing errant games of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 on the PS3. I must agree with the critics that PES2008 isn't quite up to the standard of earlier PES/Winning Eleven titles, improving marginally in visuals and gameplay but taking a big step back in performance with totally unacceptable slowdown. However, it still has a long way to fall before it hits the lows of FIFA. How that game gets decent reviews by the gaming community is beyond me. I find it totally unplayable. V is ready to kart it up with the forthcoming release of Mario Kart Wii. Her sister has been trash talking after she finished collecting all 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, something i finished off a while back. Veronica's star sum stands at a paltry two, so she's eager to reclaim her video cred. The emergence of a new Mario Kart should renew the fight for my kart krown. Gary took it temporarily, but as i recall i cleaned up at our last encounter. I fear no comeuppance. NO COMEUPPANCE!

I'm enormously disappointed in Ben Stein. I'm not exactly sure what sort of standard i was holding him to, but it certainly didn't include him co-writing and starring in a pro-creationism documentary. Especially one as fundamentally flawed as Expelled: No Intelligence Required, in which evolution and evolutionary biologists are portrayed as the cause of all the world's problems, including abortion and naziism. Look people ... the reason intelligent design doesn't get any attention in schools or universities is because it's not a theory. It's not science. It doesn't predict anything, or give us any understanding of the universe. It chalks the origin of life up to a shadowy "intelligent designer" and leaves it at that. Why is a fly's wing shaped that way? Because that's how it was designed. Kind of defeats the purpose of biological inquiry if you can answer all remaining questions with that sentence. I'm a bit surprised that intelligent design theorists lament being driven out of academia, because i would think that their work is done. Life was created by some godlike figure. End of story. No more study required.

Oh well. Chuck Norris likes the movie, so what do i know.

I must be on a science vs. religion kick, as i just finished reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. Try reading a silver book with that title emblazoned on the cover in big orange letters and see how many horrified looks you get from people. Dawkins is a pillar of modern evolutionary science, and more importantly for this book a staunch atheist. This is his treatment of why God most likely does not exist, and why religion is an increasingly outdated, unnecessary, and detrimental construct of humanity. In places he delves into, for lack of a better phrase, bitchy tit-for-tat with his fundamentalist religious opponents, much like his contemporary Sam Harris in his near unreadable vitriolic Letter to a Christian Nation. But on the whole he brings up a number of good points. I'm not ready to completely exclude religion from culture ... Dawkins failed to convince me of why a life containing science and religion in segregated aspects is not ok ... but he clearly demonstrated evidence of the negative aspects of America's reversion into fundamentalism.

From a trailer i saw for Expelled, i believe Richard Dawkins is interviewed in the film by Stein, in a sort of Michael Moore/Charlton Heston-type ambush. I guess the right wing decided that if they can't discredit Moore, they can adopt his tactics.

I watched a subset of Ben-Hur for the umpteenth time after film icon Heston's passing. As i've mentioned previously, i have never managed to sit down at the beginning of the movie and stay tuned or awake for its entire course. Great flick nonetheless ... i finally got to see the pivotal chariot race scene. I tried to summarize the movie's plot to Veronica, but reducing a four hour film into a few sentences is near impossible. And by the time i mentioned the appearance of Jesus, she was completely tuned out.

I've become a closet Kanye West fan after his excellent show at the HP Pavilion last weekend. How long before i'm in a ghetto fabulous Chelsea outfit? Wouldn't that be something? Hrm ...

My level of support for Chelsea is being sorely challenged this season. A casual observer will wonder why, considering that the club is only 3 points behind leaders Manchester United in the Premiership, and plays them at home this Saturday, and shortly thereafter plays nemeses Liverpool at home in the second leg of their European Champions League semifinal. My frustration is basically summarized by the footballing media's ever more explicit admission that Chelsea are hated. "Universally disliked", i believe was the most recent term i encountered. If you read the soccer websites (and being an American footie fan, that comprises about 90% of my soccer-monitoring activity), then Chelsea losses are greeted with flippant enthusiasm and Blues wins are dismissed as "boring", or "lucky". When Chelsea lost the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal against Turkish side Fenerbahçe, the Soccernet headline read "Turk that, Chelsea!". If United or Liverpool had lost under those circumstances, i can assure you the headline would've been stripped of its mockery. Our zombiefied coach Avram Grant gave a bizarre press conference after last week's win over Everton closed our Premiership gap to 2 points, in which he answered every question with one or two words and refused to elaborate on anything. When asked if the result put the club back in contention for the title, he replied "i don't know" Unconventional to say the least.

I've been a big critic of the construction of the current side, and would be the last to argue that we're a more functional, attractive, or effective side than United. But the amount of venom directed at the club by the press is staggering, and clearly biased. So you don't like Chelsea because their owner buys whichever players he chooses? Fine. Try to keep that distaste out of your match reports. Isn't that one of the fundamental tenets of journalism? I almost understand why Grant would simply refuse to talk to the press. At one point he did comment that the journos would write whatever they felt like, so they didn't really need answers from him to complete their pieces.

This season's outcome? I think we'll use our away goal advantage to get past Liverpool next week and into the Champions League final, where my guess is we'll lose to United. In the Premiership, even if we beat United on Saturday (my prediction is a draw), we still need them to drop points in one of their two remaining games. So bridesmaids to the crown for the second season running, second-best to Manchester in two competitions. Next season, who knows. I find it hard to believe that the Avram Grant experiment will last into the fall, but what big managerial icon we'll find to step into this circus, i don't know. Rumor has it Roman Abramovich is ready to open his checkbook again. Lionel Messi? Steven Gerrard? Kaka? Ronaldinho? I doubt we'll secure any all-world names, but then if United have demonstrated anything it's that the most fruitful approach is to identify and buy talent at an early age. Chelsea's "spend on superstars" policy has resulted in the club stockpiling big names who are past their prime.

I just realized that i've jinxed my Blues by picking them to make the Champions League final, encouraging the footballing gods to smite me by inflicting another humiliating defeat on us at the hands of our scouse rivals in the semifinal second leg. Oops.