Storm door handle and lock replacement

I did a small amount of housework this weekend. The most significant project was replacing a door handle and installing a lockset on our storm door, which actually turned out to be a pain in the ass. I had to work hard to get the spindle (which connects the thumb button on the outside to the latch on the inside) to the right length; had to enlarge a couple of existing holes on the the door to adjust for the size of the replacement handle, which is somewhat smaller than the existing hardware; and had to do endless test fittings to get all the pieces lined up and working smoothly. But it worked in the end. I need to do some work on the door on the three season porch next, but I think it will work out a little better now that I know what I’m in for.

Score: Tim 0, PowerBook power adapters: 4

I apologize for the unexpected blog slowdown, but my power adapter for my laptop stopped working yesterday. For those following along at home, this is the fourth replacement power adapter (across two different PowerBooks) I’ve had to buy; see prior stories here (2001) and here (2003). Fortunately, it is the first on this particular laptop, so it looks like Apple’s design is improving somewhat.

Still, a power cord should not be designed to allow this sort of catastrophic failure:

I think it looks like they reinforced this connection in the new cord, so maybe I will have better luck with this one.

Speaking of download services: War Child Music

I’ve said a few times before that to be successful, new download sites would have to stop stocking the same old titles at the same price and find ways to differentiate their offerings, or risk becoming mere commodity retailers. This appears to be the approach that War Child Music is taking, and how.

The newly opened, fully functional store charges more than other download services (99p a track, which is roughly $1.75 in US currency today), and their offerings are extremely limited (starting with 25 tracks, they’ll only add five or six new tracks a month) but their stuff is exclusive, there are extensive liner notes online, and for £3.50 a month (about $6.21 today) you get buffet-style downloads. And the best part is all the proceeds go to charities to help children who have been affected by war.

Now that’s differentiation and positioning.

The music’s pretty good too—an exclusive Radiohead live remix, a Tom Waits track from his new album, Keane covering “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” the 1995 Help relief album, and some other goodies. Plus they offer the tracks in both Windows Media and AAC, proving that you can please both the Microsoft camp and the iPod users.

Criticisms? Site navigation is poor, with new windows opening at random and little cross linking. Plus the tags seem to be missing from the AAC files—which is where you’re grateful for those extensive online liner notes. But I expect these wrinkles will be worked out in time.

Too Many Chefs

I don’t know how I missed this, but Hooblogger Todd Price, from A Frolic of My Own, is also a contributor to the great group blog Too Many Chefs, which features the natural tagline “Spoiling the Broth Since February 2004.” Todd spilled the beans with his post about cooking an elephant, which showed up in the Hooblogs Kinja page today. Good stuff. Maybe someday I’ll start writing enough food related posts that I’ll be worthy of appearing in that company.

QTN™: Rapscallion Premier

This particular quick tasting note is a new one on me. Coming from the Concord Brewery in Lowell, MA, the Rapscallion Premier sounds like it should be a golden Belgian-style strong ale along the lines of Duvel or its imitators (Delerium Tremens, Lucifer, etc.). Instead the color is a gorgeous reddish-blonde, the nose is complex with fruit fragrances (apricot predominates), the up front impression is crisp and vibrant, the body is part-malt, part bitter (maybe a little too bitter) and the finish is lingering. If any note is discordant it’s the hops. I don’t know what they’re using but I would guess Cascade, or else they just have a very heavy hand with the hops, and the bitterness comes close to overwhelming the rest of it. But in the end it kind of balances out in the finish and the overall impression is very strong. I think I’ll have to make a visit.

Free music links

I highly recommend Salon’s Wednesday Morning Download column, which is essentially an MP3 blog in weekly column form. This week Thomas Bartlett is pointing to new songs from John Cale, Mono, Rilo Kiley, Sainte Chapelle, the Mendoza Line, and Sam Amidon.

Last week’s column, a roundup of freely downloadable protest songs, was kind of a gimme by comparison, especially since I seem to recall Salon offering a collection of protest song downloads as a premium benefit a year ago. Occasionally Bartlett slips, as when talking about Sonic Youth’s freely downloadable “Youth Against Fascism” as a protest song aimed at W (the song, from the group’s Dirty album, was really aiming against Bush I and maybe even Reagan), but the column is still worth reading.

Photo sharing goes mainstream

I’ve written about PhotoPeer, a peer-to-peer photo sharing app, before, but this is a whole new ballgame: AOL’s next version of their instant messenger client will include picture-sharing features. That’s an interesting way to approach the main challenge that I saw with a pure peer-to-peer approach, which is how to build a compelling network of participants that’s larger than your immediate friends and family. The AIM approach avoids that problem by piggybacking photo sharing as a feature on top of an existing social network.

Two small pieces of my childhood

Daily Press: Longtime business prepares to sell out. Wellworth Cleaners was pretty much the only dry cleaner around when I grew up, and I don’t think we had any wire hangers at all that didn’t have their advertising on them. Now, after 62 years of operation, they’re being sold off for defaulting on their bankruptcy agreements.

I also saw but didn’t bookmark a piece on the death of the last living founder of Pierce’s Pitt Bar-B-Que, Dot Pierce, a while back; unfortunately I can’t find the link. Fortunately Pierce’s is still open for business and now even sells its sauce (though sadly not its barbecue) on line—though through a slow-as-molasses storefront.

CD ripping morality flowchart

London News Review: Should I rip this? A mostly well thought out flowchart indicating the legal and moral questions that go through most consumers’ minds when contemplating getting music by means other than purchasing it. When it says “Should I rip this,” I assume the unspoken corollary is “from a CD other than one I own,” and that “should I download this from a peer-to-peer service” could really be answered with the same flowchart. (Via BoingBoing.)

Commodity downloads, round 2

As I believe I was saying… take a look at the Register’s article on the newest entrant into the music downloads space: Woolworth’s. Yep, department stores are now getting into the music downloads business. And needless to say, with a Windows-only offering that has not been integrated with their other download service, they’re doing a typically mediocre job with it.

Ah well. With commodity service offerings, someone has to be the low end player, I suppose.

Princeton vs. Virginia in the a cappella sweepstakes of love

BoiFromTroy: Princeton Tiger Tones vs. Virginia Hullabahoos. The Boi points out the odd presence of men’s a cappella groups (generally not the same as glee clubs, btw) as entertainment at RNC functions, and rates two participating groups on musical selection, outfits, crowd interaction, and, erm, gayness. Heh. Somewhere some Hullabahoo alums are rolling in their graves. But it’s all good, and it’s good to see a Virginia group get props, even on such nontraditional evaluation criteria.

(Fact-check confidential to Ted B., who comments that the alumni pics show the B’Hoos in “nice frocks”: those are bathrobes, Ted, and come from the fact that fourth-year residents in the original Jeffersonian Lawn rooms have to go outside to go to the bathroom or take a shower. This means on any given morning, you can see the world’s future leaders parading down the sidewalks and steps of a 180-year-old World Heritage landmark in bathrobes with bad bedhead.)

Other stuff

A few odds and ends that have cluttered my desktop for too long:

Labor Day

This is my month to stop taking things for granted, starting with today’s holiday. Labor Day, if it means anything to most Americans, probably means the last cookout, back-to-school shopping, and time to watch out for drunk drivers. It’s all too easy to forget that the holiday, which originated as an annual march by the Knights of Labor, reflects both workers’ efforts to secure saner working conditions from management and the government’s attempts to appease them while avoiding an official celebration of May Day. The benefits secured by the workers include the establishment of the eight-hour work day and 40 hour work week, overtime pay, and the ability to organize to improve working conditions—which sound awfully nostalgic to this tech worker who’s never seen any of them.. See also the Department of Labor’s official page on the holiday.

Incidentally, out of my 250 news feeds, I only found 26 mentions of “Labor Day”, including: