I was expecting to post another entry the day after St. Paddy's, but once again other things took priority. I've been busily writing crits for the crit group, catching up on my reading, job-hunting, and various other things.

In my previous entry I meant to talk more about what I've been up to with our broadband connection but that one was already long enough! So here I go... After we saw Secret Window we popped into Best Buy and bought a Linksys router (a wired one) on sale. I would've bought some long network cables there too, but they really price-gouge on those, so I ended up ordering some online through NewEgg (I've ordered most of our computer parts from them).

After the cables arrived, I hooked up the laptop and our X-Box to the network. I loaded SETI@Home onto it and it has been crunching signal data in parallel with the desktop PC ever since :) A comment on a previous journal entry from Stace Johnson prompted me to seek out the United Devices Cancer Research Project and download the UD Agent app. This carries out computational chemistry on your computer using spare CPU cycles in much the same way as SETI@Home, although it does seem to be more processor intensive than the latter. I now have both crunching numbers on our desktop PC (our laptop is really too slow to run both on). Now it almost seems wasteful that we'd often have the computer on without having something like this running in the background!

The X-Box was really easy to get setup too - there was a 2 month trial card in the X-Box mag I get, so I used that to create a new account once I'd connected to the X-Box Live service via the router. I logged on and tried out Return to Castle Wolfenstein in multiplayer mode, and apart from getting soundly thrashed, I noticed it was a vastly smoother experience than when I used to play games like Quake online via dial-up. I'm not sure if I'll renew the account after the trial expires, or not. We don't really play the X-Box enough to justify it and we've only got two games that are Live-enabled (the other one is Midtown Madness 3). The downloadable content is a plus, but a lot of that stuff is on the demo DVDs that come with the mag anyway.

Speaking of games, I've been absolutely awe-struck by the huge video downloads for the forthcoming Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 for the PC. I have fond memories of playing the original games, and these sequels look set to surpass them and just about every other game out on the market today! The level design, character animation, and level of graphical realism are outstanding (practically photo-realistic), and the physics engine in Half-Life 2 is the most realistic I've ever seen. The downside is that both games will require pretty beefy computer systems. Thankfully I've got that base covered - when I was building our new system I specifically bought components with these two games in mind :D

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I've been playing around with the Rhapsody music service quite a bit over the past week and taking full advantage of the 2 month trial that came with our broadband signup. I was wondering how iTunes compared, so I downloaded it and gave it a try.

I don't think the iTunes interface is quite as good as Rhapsody's, although the selection of music is about the same. iTunes is almost exclusively a song download service and doesn't have the streaming radio services of Rhapsody (ignoring the half-hearted efforts on iTunes), nor does it allow you to listen to more than a 30 second clip when sampling music. The advantages of iTunes are that you only pay for what you download, and you can download actual files to your computer. On Rhapsody you pay 10 bucks a month for the service, and you're limited to burning tracks to CD (although you can listen to music through the service as much as you want).

I tend to think of Rhapsody as being the better solution for someone who has broadband and spends a lot of time on their PC and isn't satisfied with exploring music through 30-second clips. I prefer Rhapsody for those reasons, as well as the fact that I've never really gotten into downloading music. I like how I can try out entire albums and actually see the cover art, along with popularity of certain tracks and info about bands. The streaming radio stations are also a cool feature and often contain music from groups that are absent from all online services thus far (Led Zeppelin and Metallica among others). I'll primarily be using Rhapsody to guide my CD purchases - being able to audition entire albums means the days of buying an album on the strength of one song (and then being disappointed by the rest) are over!

None of the online music services are perfect and they still have a ways to go in completing their catalogues, but improvements are on the way. As an example, Rhapsody is adding anywhere from 1,000 to 4,500 new albums every week, so it's only a matter of time before those gaps in the catalogue are filled. It'll be interesting to see how the various online services fare in the years ahead - there's a lot of competition and sooner or later I can see some consolidation happening. It's about time the music industry caught up with technology and catered to the needs of consumers!

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Since my last entry, we watched Best in Show on DVD, which is a dog show mockumentary from Christopher Guest (who played rocker Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap) and Eugene Levy (the father in American Pie). Funnily enough when we took the DVD out of the case, we found it to be unplayable thanks to what looked like bite-marks that went right through the DVD! We took it back to Blockbuster and luckily they had another copy we could exchange.

The movie introduces the contestants and their quirky owners, beginning with interviews of the dog-owners and leading through to pre-show preparation and the competition itself. All the actors play it straight, with the comedy coming from the antics of the dog owners and their strange personalities. While I didn't think it was as funny as Spinal Tap, it still had its moments and managed to keep things interesting.

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I've been rather slack in the writing department lately, but I've got to get moving this week - I've got a story due for critique by the group this Friday! I do have a couple of ideas. Hopefully I can pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and get at least one story written by then. I know it's possible, since it usually takes no more than a week for me to get a story written. The problem is that there are normally long stretches between stories, which is something I have to remedy.

I like the advice given by Jay Lake (who is clearly a guy who practices what he preaches), and others, to write a story a week, every week. This topic came up in the group and it was interesting to see what thoughts everyone had. I think half the struggle would be in keeping motivation high enough to make it to the point where writing a story a week becomes a habit rather than just an occasional pastime. It's certainly a habit I'd like to get into :)

2004 Stats:

Stories written:	1
Total submissions:	5
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	4
Waiting for response:	3
Books read:	5
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	7

What I'm Reading:
More Tomorrow and Other Stories by Michael Marshall Smith
The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman
Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 2003