For those of you who use iTunes, version 4.5 is now available. It has several new features and now you can download a free single from an “emerging artist” every week. It seems like this update is made up of a bunch of small things that ellict a “that’s kinda cool” response, instead of a few “WOW” features. For example it’s kinda cool that you can watch movie trailers straight from iTunes (and of course buy the soundtracks and audiobooks). It’s also kinda cool that you can watch music videos. I’m not really a music video fan but I watched a couple and it was sorta nice, but not something I would really miss if it wasn’t available.

One new feature that is pretty useful is the improved printing options. Now you can print a list of your songs, or a list of all the albums you have. You can also print cd covers with actual album art (or a mosiac of all the covers for a mixed cd). I don’t really ever burn discs, but if I did, I think this is a really cool feature. I’m thinking about making a mix cd just to test it out. :)

All of the audiophiles out there will probably be happy with the new Apple Lossless Encoder, which promises full CD quality audio in about half the size an uncompressed audio file would require. This would also probably be a good option to back up CDs onto your computer without a loss in quality.

If you go to the iTunes site you can read about all of the other features I didn’t cover like: Radio Charts, iMix, Wish List, and now your library has links back to the music store as well.

Ok, I gave in. If you want to see some of the songs I listen to you can view my very own iMix list (you need iTunes).

This is cool news for those of you with extra money. Google.com has officially filed for IPO. This means that at some point in the not-so-distant future you can own a little piece of Google. The registration form they filed with the SEC is available here. Some of my favorite quotes from their registration:

• “We would like you to invest for the long term, and to do so only at or below what you determine to be a fair price. We encourage investors not to invest in Google at IPO or for some time after, if they believe the price is not sustainable over the long term.”
• “We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.”
• “Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.”

Google seems like a very, very cool place to work, not to mention they have an awesome search engine. I’m sure this is going to be big news in the financial industry. I just wish I had some extra cash lying around. :)

Once again I am home safely with Dustin. The visit with my family was nice, but I am very, very happy to be back into the world of fast internet connections. To all of you out there that are still using dialup, you have my sympathy. I almost think the week I spent with my Dad with no internet was better than the pain of having internet that was too slow to use. Maybe I’m just not a patient enough person or maybe I’m just spoiled into thinking when I click on a page, it should load sometime this century.

Anyhow, enough ranting. The real reason I’m so happy to be back to broadband is that I can once again get up to date with the anime I missed. I am not really one of those strangely obsessed, scary, anime-is-my-life fans, but I do have a couple of shows that I like. Seeing as how I am still able to communicate with the outside world, I feel that it is my duty to enlighten you to some of the great anime showing in Japan right now.

While I don’t really have a favorite anime, there are three currently airing in Japan that I’ve been sucked into. There are, of course, many more than three actually showing but these are the ones that caught my eye. I could give you a summary of the plot, but I’ve decided I’m just too darn lazy to do it. So you can do what I do when I want to know about a new anime. Go to http://www.animenfo.com/ type the name in the handy dandy search box and voila! information. If that anime hasn’t been licensed in the U.S., it’ll even tell you some of the groups fansubbing it (more on that later). Finally, what you have all been waiting for–the list: Chrno Crusade, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Inuyasha. If any of you happened to watch Inuyasha on Cartoon Network, purge that horrible dub from your mind and download it in the original Japanese.

If you don’t speak Japanese, don’t worry. There are hundreds of groups out there that will get the anime from Japan and subtitle it so all of us English speakers can understand it. Most, if not all, do it for free. Very nice of them, huh? The following are my current three favorite fansub groups:

http://www.animeforever.org/ (Chrno Crusade, beginning of Fullmetal Alchemist)
http://www.anime-kraze.net/ (Chrno Crusade, Scrapped Princess, Last Exile, Inuyasha)
http://a.scarywater.net/sonchou/ (later episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist)

Alright, now that you know where to begin, you need to know how to actually get the anime. The easiest way is to use bittorrent. My favorite bittorent client is TorrentStorm (http://www.torrentstorm.com/). Just look around on the sites above until you find the releases section and click the bittorent links. Easy as pie. The other way, and generally faster way, especially for newer anime, is to download it from IRC. If you have no idea what IRC is, then you probably want to stick with bittorent, at least in the beginning. For those who know what it is, the three sites above all have channels on irc.rizon.net and most have really fast xdcc bots.

On a totally unrelated note, Dustin and I have been playing a new computer game called Sacred. Dustin has written up a little review and it’s well worth your time to go read it:

http://dmihalik.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=8a900bcc-b4c4-4677-a90a-221360c11569

Edit: Updated Animeforever’s links to point to the new site at Animeforever.org.

Well, I’m back at my parent’s house in Missouri for my grandpa’s birthday and Easter. The weather has been ok so far, but Tuesday the low is supposed to be 27. That’s about the coldest it ever got in Austin in the winter. I definitely packed the wrong type of clothes since it’s been 75 in Austin for over two weeks. I forgot it wasn’t summer here. Oh well.

The flight up here was uneventful but in Dallas they couldn’t move the jetway away from the plane so we were about 20 minutes delayed. Also, the American airlines terminal in Dallas sucks if you are flying on a small plane. You have to take a shuttle out into the middle of nowhere to get to the small plane terminal. At least I had been through it all before so I knew what to expect, and I knew that there was only one little coffee shop out there so I should get something before I got on the shuttle.

It only took me about four hours to get home instead of the 10 hours of driving it would require. Now, with the high gas prices, it’s almost cheaper to fly when you consider the time savings as well as the gas money. Plus I can sit back and sleep or read or listen to my iPod and not have to worry about crazy drivers running me off the road.