I've been quite busy today. Not only am I collecting data at the synchrotron, but I took a participated in a national survey on the suicidal tendencies of graduate students (I'm not, by the way), and I wrote a review of an NSF proposal that was sent to me (that was a lot of work, actually). I gave the guy a good review, with a few noted exceptions, but I thought the proposal was very important and definitely something that should be funded. I know the guy who wrote the proposal (everybody knows everybody else in this "business") and he would do a good job of it. Anyways, I think I'm gonna take it easier for the rest of the day.

The x-ray beam is going to be shut down for an hour or so at 7, so it'll probably be a long night tonight.

I'm at the synchrotron again, but an exciting thing happened to me today.

I went into the city (New York City, that is) because I had a free day. I walked around 5th avenue in midtown, past some fancy stores, past the Sirius studios, past Trump Tower, past NBC studios, and past Rockefeller Center. Then I headed over to the Museum of Modern Art, which was fucking amazing! I definitely recommend it, especially if you like Picasso (I don't), because they have shitloads of it. There's some pretty weird stuff there too.

After MoMA, I started walking south again back towards Penn Station, but west of 5th Avenue so see something new. I passed on intersection with a bunch of italian restaurants, and then a few minutes later you will never guess who I ran into...

Michael Imperioli.

That's right, Christopher from the Sopranos. He was with a few other people, probably family members, and probably heading out to eat, so that's one reason I didn't say anything. The second was I couldn't recall the guy's name! There's also that split second reaction of "Oh shit, don't piss off the mafia guy!" So, even though I had my camera with me, I didn't get any proof that it was really him, but it so was.

I need to start thinking about my music listening habits again. You see, I've been stuck on this idea that the only music worth some monetary value is that recorded onto CDs (from a record company), and in a sense, that's sort of true. But a person can't listen to CDs everywhere. I'm basically limited to listening to them in my car, but I want to listen to music when I'm on the computer, when I'm in the lab doing sample prep, or when I'm on the TEM. (Recently, I was given a free promotional mp3 player, and I've found that the latter two activities are made tremendously more bearable when I can listen to music.) Plus, I now have a shitload of CDs that I don't really listen to, but I do when I'm in the mood for a particular CD.

So my value system used to be, only music on CDs, which have full recording fidelity, are worth anything, and any other form of music, like mp3s (which naturally have lost some of the true fidelity of the song, although you can barely tell) or burned CDs. Because of my CD glut at home, I've allowed myself to sell CDs that I no longer wish to listen to, but that has opened up a whole can of worms. Most of the CDs I've sold back are kitchy or impulse buys, which I probably wouldn't have purchased in the first place if I got to listen to them for a week. I've even sold back a couple CDs that are great, but have one or two completely unlistenable songs, so that it becomes an annoying hastle to listen to just the good ones. Imagine how much money a person could save by being able to preview an album for a week!

And like most people, I have a number of CDs that I absolutely love and listen to on a regular basis, and then a large number of CDs that I like and listen to occasionally. I'd rather not hold onto those CDs because they just take up space, but I do want to listen to them every now and then when I'm in the mood. And I paid good money for them, so why give them up?

I also have a number of mp3s that I've gathered over the years since I first found out about the mp3 format freshman year of college. It was the most awesome thing ever because the mp3 format encodes the music into a small file size, while the old wav format is uncompressed and makes a huge file. I used to listen to them all the time back in college, but now I do all my work on my laptop, and my PC just sits in the livingroom downloading BitTorrent files. I still download mp3s from time to time, but what good are they if I don't listen to them? They're worthless in my value system anyway, but I keep them around for convenience.

But now that I've gotten a "slap on the wrist" about downloading copyright content (I'm not going to talk about it here; ask me in person), downloading mp3s for free is not so convenient. Also, as I said before, having the ability to take mp3s with me on a portable mp3 player has made monotonous tasks much more bearable, so mp3s are beginning to have value for me. I also rely on mp3s alot for previewing albums or bands that I want to buy, to see if I like their music.

I've always hated the pay-per-song idea for mp3s (like iTunes). That's not that different from buying a CD in my eyes, because you can't preview the whole song, and if you end up not liking it afterwards, you can't sell it back. I would like the ability to download all the mp3s I want, whenever I want, and I'll promise that I'll delete them after a while. Because why would I keep mp3s around to fill up my hard drive if they are so convenient? And if I really like the music, I'll buy the CD anyway. These types of services are available (i.e. Napster, which used to be Roxio), but they cost a monthly subscription fee, and they each have their own limitations. Right now I'm using Ruckus, which is free to all ASU students, and I love the freedom to download a song or album whenever I want it or to preview it, but I can't burn songs to a CD or transfer them to my mp3 player. You have to pay to be able to do that, and I don't know if I'm willing to do that yet. But I've already discovered that some CDs I've been wanting to buy but haven't been sure about, I probably wouldn't listen to all that often, so now I won't buy them. I've also found another CD that I like alot and want to buy, so it works both ways.

So here's what I'm thinking so far:
(1) I want the ability to download unlimited mp3s and transfer to an mp3 player
(2) I want the ability to burn favorite mp3 songs to a CD (maybe willing to pay per song for this)
(3) If there is an album I listen to alot as mp3s, I will most likely also purchase the CD

Of course all this depends on my music listening habits, and my priorities may always change. I'm still working all this out in my head.

I haven't blogged in a while. Sorry. I've been focussing on many other things besides blogging right now. There's this little guy in the back of my head that keeps reminding me that graduation will sneak up before I know it. So I've either been very diligent with dissertation writing and research or completely procrastinating against it. Blogging doesn't really fit into either of those categories for me.

Although I've had a bit of experience with Unix and Linux in the past, and even installed Red Hat 9 on an old computer once, I'm pretty much a complete newbie when it comes to Linux. I just installed Ubuntu linux on my computer at home because it's the first distribution I've heard about that is "supposed" to be geared towards desktop computers (rather than servers). As a reference not only for me but for others as well, I thought I would begin a blog about it.

bradubuntu linux

Awesome News!

My paper has just been officially accepted to American Mineralogist! More details later once I get them.