Neat-o.

I was at a Passport Canada office today, waiting for essentially two hours for my two minutes of attention. (Seriously, it took that long to get from C360 to C364… and all I really did was fill out my address and sign a slip…)

Anyways. That’s not the point of this post.

When I used to work for my local municipality, one of the regulations was that the radio equipment could only be set on certain approved stations. This made sense, because hundreds of patrons (many of them families and young kids) certainly would have objected to hip hop music riddled with vulgar and offensive lyrics.

I thought Passport Canada, a federal government agency, would have similar rules. And I think they do follow them. It’s just that radios are sometimes lax with how family-friendly their songs are.

Good Life by OneRepublic is one of my favourite songs. Compared with some things I experimented with a few years ago, it’s actually not so far a departure from my old classical preferences. Except, of course, the part about the B.S. that don’t work now.

I enjoy this song. A lot. Really. And this is hardly profanity.

But does it really belong in a public waiting room where hundreds of English-speaking patrons come and go?

Major take-aways (Mandarin speakers skip my notes):

• This boy comes from the Mongolian plains.
• The boy’s dream is, translated literally, to invent a (figurative?) ink of which drops can turn the ground into vast plains of greenery.
• When asked what he’s singing, he responded that the title of the song is (and I paraphrase), Mother in My Dreams. (the song has a distinct ethnic feel)
• “Then, where is your mom?”
  “Mom is in heaven.” (audience gasps)
  “And your dad?”
  “Dad also died, in a car accident.” (more gasps)
  

• In the middle of the performance, one of the people on stage reflects, “this song… we don’t need to know the words, because you should feel what he’s singing.”
• He’s a little off-tune when asked to sing a cappella but soon finds his key. In an emotional moment, this is understandable.

Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

Originally I said: Sorry, Rebecca. You’re too young to be making up this kind of BS. Hire a better publicity agency next time — and don’t try justifying the stupidity of the lyrics.

EDIT: Apparently this is satire. The fact that so many of us were so ready to believe in Rebecca Black’s stupidity says something.

Although I’ve seen Parisian Love before, some of the newer search stories are just as moving.

“High School” – a girl works to fit in

“Father and Daughter” – a hardworking father makes time to be a good dad to his little girl

“Graduation” – a mother from Vietnam moves to America to provide the best for her son

“Brother and Sister” – siblings grow up together

I hope these short clips bring smiles to your face as they did for me.

The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

With Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins among many, these inspiring videos communicate the value of science.

Beautiful.

Technology

Windows has entered a new era

The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.

Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:

Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.

Portable media players have completely changed

A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).

Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous

These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.

In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).

Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.

Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade.

Illegal file sharing has emerged

I don’t personally think of torrenting itself as a major problem, and it’s difficult to sympathize with big companies when the RIAA is being stupid. At the same time, it’s pretty easy to see how having hundreds of movies, TV shows and music albums distributed through torrents can take away from earnings for content producers. (Some dispute this and argue that those who pirate movies and TV shows are those who will purchase related memorabilia or boxed sets.)

In any case, it is virtually undisputed that new technologies have made distribution of such content much easier. In the previous decade, pretty much everyone was on dial-up Internet and only the students at universities with blazing connections were able to do it (think about the controversial Napster).

YouTube happened

YouTube and hundreds of other video sites have revolutionized the way we watch video. What used to be distributed on tapes and discs has moved onto the Internet in a way that allows ordinary folks—not videophiles or geeks—to share their multimedia with the world.

YouTube is also the icon of the so-called Web 2.0, which is oriented on user-generated content. (Flickr deserves an honourable mention for high quality pictures, just like Vimeo for high class videos.) It has made it possible for teens with crazy personalities and high-pitched edited voices, artists who post music videos, and crazy dancers who travel the world to reach out to a vast audience. Above all, it’s a legitimate new form of entertainment.

Following the success of online video, major content producers began to license music for online distribution (think Pandora or Last.fm, not to mention Internet radio) as well as movies and TV shows (think Hulu).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcLMH8pwusw

Open source projects have become worthy challengers

More than a decade ago, in 1996, the Apache HTTP server became the most popular web server in use; today it has surpassed 100 million web sites served.

Mozilla Firefox, having risen out of the ashes of the Netscape browser, although not the most widely used browser in the world (it’s 2nd), is apparently used by 32% of the market analyzed by StatCounter.

While I still use Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org is also a notable alternative to the proprietary and dominant office suite, especially on non-Windows operating systems.

And then there are the programs used by geeks, like the Eclipse IDE or Aptana Studio, that are depended upon. (For all of you multimedia geeks, there are open source programs that do the job much better than their closed source counterparts; think about Handbrake, VLC…)

Businesses can now also depend on open source projects like Sugar CRM that build their revenue model around support and premium features.

News has moved onto the Web

My primary news source  now is the Web. Google News is one of my frequently visited sites, as it is a fantastic aggregator of headlines. I subscribe to e-mail summaries from the Toronto Star and breaking news alerts from the New York Times. ArsTechnica and TechCrunch are my sources for technology-related news, and occasionally Mashable and Neowin. Those pesky short links in the tweets of people I follow also make for engaging news articles.

Wikipedia happened

At the beginning of this decade, I was researching in books and print encyclopedias. The conventional wisdom today of “just Google it” didn’t work so well then. And certainly there wasn’t a Wikipedia for the wealth of human knowledge that it now contains.

Today, I can near-instantly read up on the history of Wal-Mart or read up on the Beslan school hostage crisis and its media coverage. If I truly need it, Wikipedia connects with Wikisource, the free library and Wikibooks where I can read Anna Karenina online (and I wouldn’t, because Constance Garnett’s translations are really lacking).

It’s truly amazing that the sum of all human knowledge can be collaboratively archived and updated through the likes of Wikipedia. Perhaps they need your support this holiday season!

What do you think? Did I miss out on something big that happened in this decade in the world of tech? Write a comment!

(I did, however, intentionally exclude social networking—i.e. Facebook—because I don’t think it’s been revolutionary in any major way. Sure, it has connected people in new ways, but it’s still relatively fresh and more time is needed to see where it goes. Similarly, I omitted touch because it hasn’t entirely caught on yet; tablet PCs were a dismal failure a few years ago and I haven’t yet seen their widespread success. Furthermore, I omitted cloud computing because it doesn’t directly affect a large number of people. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.)

Worldly Matters

I think September 11, 2001 marked the start of a new era of warfare and international affairs. The terrorist attacks, inasmuch as they have been abused to justify ill-advised battles, did shock the world.

I recommend you head over to the Big Picture where you’ll be dazzled by splendid photos of this decade, including commentaries on the World Trade Center attacks and war. And dozens of other things like natural disasters (remember Katrina, or the Sichuan earthquake?), the Beijing Olympics, and terrorist attacks in London.

2009 has been a fantastic year. I look forward to the future.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2010!

I experience stress on a daily basis, and perhaps much more so this month. As for my methods of dealing with stress, I enjoy music, knowledge, and technology.

Music

Classical and soundtrack music are especially enjoyable for me. I find that they contribute to a calmer emotional state, especially with beautiful orchestral pieces. (See what kind of music I like at Music to Hear.) Listening to the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach, for instance, Ennio Morricone film score, Planet Earth incidental music, or Hans Zimmer’s remarkable compositions, or Karajan’s amazing interpretations, probably bring my mood from stressed out at 8/10 to 3/10. This is one of the reasons that I listen to music while I’m doing work.

Take a look at a video of one of my favourite pieces, conducted by the composer Ennio Morricone at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2MycU_N634

Learning

TED videos are really inspiring to watch. Whether it’s Al Gore or someone talking about the importance of bread, I find TED to be an absolutely amazing source of inspiration.

Developing knowledge helps to take my mind off pressing matters, at least temporarily. And that’s one of the reasons that I like reading news, reading design blogs and so on.

Humour

FAIL Blog, NotAlwaysRight and FMyLife are all amazing sources of humour. Laughing is probably the easiest way to enjoy oneself for a while.

Today, I got a cross-country job promotion. I decided to plan my Going-Away-Forever party, and bought a pack of 100 invitations. After mailing them out to all my friends, I have 92 left. FML (source)

This keeps me amused, but is by no means as effective as music — after all, I can listen to music while working, and this humour stuff takes away from time I could be putting towards resolving causes of stress.

Et vous?

What do you do to keep your stress at an acceptable level? (You can select multiple answers. Choose any item if it has a soothing / stress-relieving effect for you.)

High definition trailers may be found on Apple’s Web site (requires QuickTime).

If anyone wants to offer any help or tutorials or documentation resources, I’d be very thankful.

Here’s a video about Java by Sun to promote its uses beyond merely desktop applications.

Stupid humour? I think not. (And yes, I do have a sense of humour.)

Click on the video image itself to go to YouTube, where you can rate the video or add to the 2513 text comments.

“Viatron” is a fictitious name used to refer to Viacom, which took actions against the producer for some of his earlier music videos. This was due to an error with their automatic copyright protection program, which removed his works (ie. totally original); however, the accusations have now been dropped.

This video actually has 1138 text comments at the time of posting, so you get an insight into the sort of reach that this person has.