David's Blog

Its almost like a disease, you move into a town or city, and you immediately loose the “tourist” mentality. All those cool little things the metropolis has to offer tend to take the back burner to the mundane tasks of day-to-day life.

This is why I love visitors. With great spontaneity I suggested to my father, who’s in town for the weekend, that we stop in at The Crimson Moon, a local eatery and music venue. Ill admit I havent seen a show myself, although I’ve always ‘wanted’ to go.

It may have just been a coincidence but the talent booked for tonight was great! I actually expected to hear bluegrass or a tired folk performer strum out a long forgotten melody. Instead I heard some very upbeat and persuasive modern folk music performed by Rebecca Loabe, Her inspired writing was brought to life by a very talented voice and natural charisma.

Rebecca Loebe’s performance was complemented by the male vocal duo The Brilliant Inventions, who’s acoustic harmonizing, tenacious lyrics, and impromptu songs made a memorable night.

Thank you musicians for your hard work.

I dont watch television, Movies, yes, but not television.

This causes an occasional social constraint for me, but for the most part it doesn’t affect me.

I do see, on the other hand, the effects of television on other people. In short, television, makes real life boring.

Lets look at it from a writers perspective; You have a plot, and at some time through out the story the plot reaches a climax. Then descends to a point of closure.

Television seems to be categorized by a rapid series of climatic events, each one being more sudden, daring, and violent then the last. This stream of high octane events never seem to come to an end, only a hiatus, where we watch a commercial or wait until next week.

So what is so wrong with watching people have copious amounts of sex, spend irrationally, or partake in gratuitous violence?

Nothing really, but this constant stream of exciting events seems to eventually work its way into the subconscious of the viewers. and they start asking, wheres my money, sex, violence?

I hope no one actually sits around wanting violence, but, lets face it you cant compete with television.

In my life, I find excitement in the change of the weather, a smile from the beautiful girl across the room, or the variations of tea I drink. The laughter of friends.

Violence and drama are found in my poor plant, I think I gave it to much water and its dyeing. (sorry plant, hope you get better)

More importantly I expect nothing of these events other than what they are.

Life is, look around, appreciate. Thanks.

After work today I stopped in at BurgerKing and grabbed a couple of veggie burgers from the drive through to eat at home.

Lets not forget I am a vegetarian.

As I took the first burger out my roommates started to haggle me. “Dave, your eating meat!?” “Ew, thats disgusting!” “Your supposed to be a Vegetarian!”

I was tired, hungry, and cold, yet I still maintained composure and explained to them that BK made a veggie burger… They didn’t believe me, and started snapping pictures of me with their phones while I ate. How humiliating, How rude.

Bad roommates.

A helicopter landed on the rooftop of a local building in Dahlonega yesterday. The governor of Georgia had arrived to hand deliver a check to NGCSU. $2.5M, as a grant to increase North Georgia’s broadband initiative.

The development of this infrastructure is one of the most important projects in North Georgia, especially for a guy like me who spends a good portion of his time soaking up random (and often useless) information on the internet. Ill admit Im geeking about pining my LA server in less than one second!

Lets look at where we are in the tech universe.

Broadband:

Right now you have a choice for broadband in Dahlonega, the restricted and expensive DSL, or the more expensive, and sometimes intermittent Satellite companies. I am looking forward to seeing that change, hopefully even seeing a startup ISP in the area.

Wireless

The ATT tower that gives Dahlonega, and most of North Georgia its cellular service runs on the very antiquated GSM technology. When are they planning to update it? Dont hold your breath. Hopefully they’ll just skip over 3G to the next generation of wireless.

Verizon, on the other hand boasts 3G in Dahlonega, but I dont know anyone using their service, so I can only imagine it isn’t that great.

Wrapping it up Im very excited to see the new highway come into town.

Miro is a very handy video player. It handles most codex (avi, Mp4, ext) can play your music, and even functions as a Podcast RSS reader.

So what, you say, iTunes does all that.

Well, Miro does have a bigger codex library, and like iTunes, is also free. What really makes Miro stand out is the imbedded torrent downloader which works effortlessly.

When you download a .Torrent file from your browser, Miro automatically picks up the file and adds it to its imbedded downloader. This, of course has only worked twice for me, both files were movies. (I have not seen this function work for music torrents)

So whats the downside?

As a torrent client, Miro lacks. I cant see my upload speeds while initially downloading a torrent, there is a bandwidth speedlimit setting buy it is not easily turned on or off (I really like the turtle button on Transmission)

Miro does not play .wmf (for those you’ll need VLC)

With Miro there may be to many chefs in this soup, and none of its capabilities are GREAT, but they are all on one app.

Overview:
The biggest push for this app is its torrent downloading capability, this is also its downfall, You can have a much better downloader, and a player with more codex, and customization. Still, If your an avid torrent, movie watcher, music lover, and Podcast subscriber, You may love this three in one app.