“I have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP, and this afternoon I will be doing the same to my laptop… Windows XP is both faster and far more responsive. I no longer have the obligatory 1-minute system lock that happens whenever I log onto Vista, instead I can run applications as soon as I can click their icons. Not only that, but the applications start snappily too, rather than all waiting in some ‘I’m still starting up the OS’ queue for 30 seconds or so before all starting at once.”

Review of Windows XP

flickr now has stats! It’s a Christmas miracle. There is data available per day back to November 26. Since then, the most popular day was December 5 when my flickr stream had 803 views. There are 58,107 views for “all time” — not sure if that means “back to November 26 when granular-by-day collection began” or some other time in the past. This is my most “interesting” photo. Hard to argue with that one.

Today the top search terms from images.search.yahoo.com that led hapless users to my photos are:

1. downtown portland maine
2. humanism
3. bob esponja
4. eating pears
5. harvard stadium
6. gattaca
7. car exploding
8. somerville
9. campanas
10. jeremy smith
11. harvard school
12. linoleum art
13. buffalo jerky
14. models window store
15. madison graduation
16. word processor
17. xlendi boat
18. fishing boats
19. ppk
20. exiles malta
21. wisconsin house
22. marin civic center
23. google maps satellite
24. fish and chips truck
25. helicopter mansion

Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields fame created and recorded a song in two days at an NPR studio, and the song-crafting process is beautifully captured on film.

I found it interesting to watch how as the song developed its shape the tools that Merritt and the sound engineer use become more and more complex. Paper sketches are followed by the piano, then multiple analog instruments, to synthesizer, and finally to mixing and visualizing equipment.

The finished song is gorgeous.