Anyone Else Working This Xmas?

Yeah I thought so.

Happy Festivus, Citizens!

Festivus Countdown Begins

[photo courtesy Dave's Childhood Archives]

Holiday Treats / Overachievers Division

Beats fruitcake.

Book for the Undiscerning Bastard

If the widely accepted theory that the best way to judge a book is by its cover is true, then I think this would be surprisingly awesomer than some other proposed holiday reads.  And if fonts are your thing, this instant classic has pages and pages of them. 

Happy Winter Solstice

Celebrate the shortest day of the year with the above performance by a short rock god (keep eyes peeled about 3:30 in). Bonus for hipsters who can name the members of this curiously excellent all-star lineup.

(Northern Hemisphere Bastards Only)

Power Pop Super Group From Bizarro World

Tinted Windows - comprised of Taylor Hanson (Hanson), James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick) - seems to be generating some buzz on the internets lately. Their album debuts on April 21st, but in the meantime, we can enjoy this clever homage to seventies and eighties late-night music shows.

Hear the entire first single and read more here.

Baring Down for the Holidays

My son came armed with the Barenaked Ladies holiday album. It's a few years old and definitely has some filler, but it's a nice diversion after hours of watching that Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet.

Top Ten Reasons Firefox 3 Will Kick Balls

Firefox 3 is almost ready for prime time.

From Lifehacker:

10. Souped-up Add-ons manager

A big part of what makes Firefox so special to power users is its extensibility with extensions, add-ons, plug-ins and themes, and Firefox 3's Add-ons dialog got the attention it deserved. The Fox's Add-Ons menu is more robust and intuitive on at least two fronts. You can search and install extensions and themes right from the pop-up box, no browsing required. Also, a new plug-in manager lets you enable and disable third-party helpers like Flash, QuickTime, and anything else that makes content work (and causes you grief).

9. More intuitive interface overall

Mozilla tweaked and updated a whole lot of little things here and there throughout Firefox 3, which amounts to a big overall boost in usability. Most noticeably when you first switch, the Back button only appears on the address bar if there is a page to go back to, and when it does, it's bigger and easier to click. Users who want to make sites with small text more readable permanently are in luck; Firefox 3 can increase the size of images and text, or just the text, on hard-to-read sites. In addition, Firefox 3 applies favicons more consistently to bookmarks, you can click a site's favicon to get extended site identification information, you can resize the search box to hold more than two words, and the find-on-page search box automatically grabs the currently selected word, just to name a few new UI improvements.

In the long term, once webapps catch up, Firefox 3 will let you do really neat stuff in your browser, like register your favorite webapps to open certain file types, and access your online data even when you're not connected to the 'net. To get a taste, see how you can configure Firefox 3 to launch Gmail for mailto links.

8. Stronger phishing and malware protection

Firefox 3 has stronger filters and protection against malware, phishing sites, cookies, and other tools that compromise privacy and security. A malware warning shows up when you visit sites known to install malicious software, Firefox 3 doesn't show the content of knock-off sites (like PayPal "Update Your Account" phishing scams) by default, and Firefox 3 checks against Google's ever-growing blacklist of phishing sites. Now you can feel even better switching your less tech-aware relatives over to the open-source browser.

7. Improved download manager

Never wonder where a download came from, or went to, again. Gran Paradiso's download manager lets you search through recent files, resume big downloads after a crash or restart, and lets you keep an eye on your transfers in the status bar.

6. Native looks for every system

Your browser is a serious part of your computer time, so having it look like nothing else on your system can be seriously annoying. Firefox's designers made system integration a priority with this release, and it shows—even Windows XP's and Vista's button layouts have subtle differences in color and shading. There's differences at deeper levels, too, with Cover Flow-type styling in the add-ons manager for OS X, transparencies in key places in Vista and OS X, and other tweaks that make your browser feel like a natural extension of your system.

Read the remaining five reasons here.

Catchy Wednesday(?)

And Now The Curse of Marjorie. Anyone heard of Nurses? This is a great song, but they seem to have a minimal web footprint. Damn cool video, too. I'm too spoiled these days to buy a CD on the strength of a single song. (How the times have changed!!!!)

My Christmas Music Contribution

Vince Guaraldi, bitches! This holiday season, won't you Feed The Penniless?

Yuletide Rock and Roll, part 1

Ray Davies is an absolute treasure. I love how he can be hilarious in a song and also unexpectedly poignant.