5 posts tagged “recommendations”

No, not meant to be deep or psychological. I'm talking television. You know, Damages the great new show on FX

starring Glenn Close, Rose Byrne and Ted Danson? If you like must see TV, this qualifies This show had me hooked from the teasers, and it's been riveting, compelling, mind bending TV from the opening minutes to the closing minutes through two episodes so far. My gut feeling is this show is going to be my second favorite show after Heroes (or maybe on par) if the next few episodes can maintain the intensity and pace.

I'm so glad to see non-premium cable networks, like FX courting big screen stars and bringing them to the small screen with productions that seem on par with The Soprano's, Sex in The City and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Glenn Close was stellar in her one year role on The Shield with Michael Chickless, now she's got her own show to headline, and it's high caliber. No doubt the reason Damages has the has the feel of "the real deal" as the first two episodes were written by the Kessler's and Zelman of Soprano's fame.

 
The story opens with a bloody Ellen (Rose Byrne) running through the streets of Manhattan and then sent to an interrogation room, but we have no idea why. The story unfolds dramatically from there, giving us glimpses of the world of high powered, amoral, win at any cost, take no prisoner's Patty Hewes one Gotham’s top legal eagles and the equally repulsive people in a case she is prosecuting for damages, currently that would be one Arthur Frobisher and his minions, played by Ted Danson. As the story unfolds in flashback, Patty is on a quest to destroy Frobisher, a World Comm type exec who lead his workers and stockholders to ruin, while he continued to line his pockets and portfolio. That's where aspiring attorney Ellen comes in. Wanted by several law firms, through a series of twisted events, she ends up with a prestigious position working for Patty Hewes. This all becomes master manipulation, unbeknownst to Ellen, as Patty needs her in her employ to get to her soon to be sister in law who has information that could make the case for Patty and damage Frobisher permanently.  All the manipulation and back ally meetings only leads up to the chilling discovery of murdered animals and people, with no answers, as a bloody and shocked Ellen sits and waits for counsel in that police interrogation room.
 

This is one clever ride. It appears it will be Dickensonian in the fact that intricate and different story lines will be used and woven in and out over time lending drama, suspense and mystery and will with any luck finish in a grand macabre tapestry. This is on my must see (or definitely MUST DVR) list from here on out. I would love to hear from anyone else who has caught the show so far and if your feelings concur with or oppose mine. Anyway, it’s nice to see non-premium cable channels put out work that at this point seems to rival those found on pay cable, but also could do just as well on the big screen attracting stars from that venue as well. Well done FX. I’m hooked - finally a dark Gotham tale I can get into!

Another Damages Review - "Hide Your Bunnies"!

I love watches and have a nice collection well made, attractive watches, but none of them cost me more than $200 (even if they retailed for more and I got them on sale), although I would pay more than double that if I found a really special time piece, but that's about max for my budget. Today I made the "mistake" of asking my neighbor about the watch she wears daily. I have admired it for months, as it's in line with my

taste and similar to some pieces I own and I thought I might consider getting one like it. I went shopping with her and her husband's cousin the other day at Neiman Marcus, Saks, J. Crew, Max Studio, Crate & Barrel and her cousin had the same watch on, so I decided to "go for it" and ask about it.

Anyway, I should have known better. First, I should have known what it was and recognized it, second I should have realized that it couldn't have been an ordinary watch if she was wearing it. It happened to be a $19,000 Cartier Tankissimee 18K White Gold Watch (no diamonds), which is one of the most expensive watches they make. (She was very humble about it, as she is generally is when people ooh and ah about her multi karat Tiffany wedding ring and band and wedding pictures on her mantle with her in her custom made Vera Wang wedding dress, yada, yada. She certainly has fabulous taste, not everyone with money does, and she's a lovely person to go along with the package.) So much for me buying one. Oh well, c'est la vie. Mind you, I pretty much qualify as the "trailer trash" of my 'hood (and I'm fine with that) as I don't sport any of these kinds of pricey goods, I have no rich daddy, no "sugar daddy", no pedigree or people of "high social standing" in my background, I don't send my children to $10,000/child summer camp and I don't drive a status car. Even if I had the means to do so, I think I could find a lot better, more philanthropic things to do with that kind of jing. That's not a judgment on her or anyone else where I live, it's just how I am.

On the flip side, it can be fun to indulge in the latest trends or upscale inspired pieces at times, especially if "the price is right" so to that end, I am recommending Eve's Addiction, which has been featured on TV and other places for it's well made, designer and Hollywood inspired sterling silver replica jewelry at a fraction of the price tag. If you like replica's of the trendy jewelry adorning A-list stars, this sight is for you. If you like replica's of high end jewelry pieces inspired by Tiffany and others, again, this sight is for you. I have my eye on a couple of things, I let you know how I like them when I get them. Happy Shopping!

I love to soup things up. My computer, my cell phone, my iPod, my coffee. I like to get every bit of milage out of one device that I can, and I like a little bling too. I am personally not a huge fan of the iTunes software for iPod, but do open it from time to time to when I create smart playlists. All my thousands of music files, many which I use daily on my internet radio broadcast Generation 80s Retro Radio, are well tagged making it easy to sort and filter to create those

smart lists in many creative ways. Even though I am a huge freeware fan, I have found Aspect One's Dr. Tag the best program I have used, bar none, paid or free by far, to tag and clean up massive amounts of files, much of it is easily and flawlessly automated and then I volume normalize my tracks with an easy to use freeware utility called MP3 Gain appling a contstant gain of 92db so everything is auto leveled and no one song is louder than another without any quality loss. I find the built in leveling that the iPod employs is not reliable and I prefer to apply the changes to the files on my hard drive for many reasons.

I pretty much have taken to using Winamp for playlists at times as well as Ephpod (a wonderful program when I used my iPod mini, unfortunately doesn't currently support newer iPod video, so I've had to scrub this one for now) or Yamipod (Yet Another iPod Manager). There are a lot of other iPod managers, but I really think these two are the best of the bunch. What do you think?

Want to change the fonts, graphics or text link names on your iPod? Then you need the free, opensource program called iPod Wizard. Follow this link to get the full scoop and the latest stable download. iPod Wizard even allows volume uncapping of certain models. iPodulator Pro is another nifty must have if you like to play games (full catalogue of text based games free), write or read notes and text docs, edit and delete easily with no text limitation or read web pages along with their subsequent embedded links or RSS on your gizmo. Now you can catch up on your web based reading in the doctors office, on the train or by the pool. Basically, like the site states, "iPodulator Pro 2 puts any website or RSS feed you name on your iPod in a text-only version. And it gets better. iPodulator Pro 2 can copy most of the links on webpages to your iPod, so when your reading a page on your iPod you have all the links there, ready for clicking".

If you are into e-books, iPod Library is a nice little open source tool for importing books in multiple formats, remembering your place in the book and easily managing or deleting them. I just downloaded Soundcrank  tonight to try out on my iPod. It functions something like Last.fm's scrobbling function (I'm a Scrobbler) and supposedly enables you to discover new music, easily find and tweak album art and lyrics and share lists of what you've been listening to among friends. Of course, this is a Beta release, so if you are leary of Beta testing or Beta releases, tinker at your own risk. I'll follow up my impressions on Soundcrank in comments in the next few days.

If you need some worthy free video conversion tools the one I recommend is the very popular, tried and true Vidora iPod Video Converter freestanding program, or even better, if you have Yahoo! Widget engine installed on your computer, formerly Konfabulator, you can use the Yahoo "Widgitized" converter, where you can simply drag and drop your videos onto the cool looking iPod widget and they will seamlessly convert without any adoo. I mostly use Nero 7 since I own it, but if you just need a good free program, this is your go to app. Handbrake is the equivalent for Mac users. Now if you are in love with YouTube, boy, do I have a treat for you! You have to run and snag Ares Tube which will allow you to enter in the YouTube page URL in AT and it will automatically download the file, convert it, and then import it directly into iTunes, waiting for you to update your iPod. How cool is that?

Lastly, if you want to make your iPod into a mini PDA, it's worth the $15 for iGadget (formerly PodPlus) as you can download local movie times, weather, driving directions, rss, transfer files all types of files between iPod and computer, sync your iPod with Outlook plus a whole host of other things with a nice GUI and a nominal price tag.

What are you using to soup up your Pod and how do you like to create your playlists? Have any tips? Feel free to share, even if it's via email and I can post your comments manually if you are not a fellow Voxer. Rock on...

My style has changed over the years. I used to be a pack rat. I still like my stuff, but I'm aggressive about weeding out now, and if I keep something, it's in functional storage. While my overall style still could be classified as somewhat eclectic, I've become an ever increasing fan of clean, minimalist design. IKEA type style. Swedish country home. Danish design. Modern masters. Form, function. strong lines, little bling and no clutter, easy maintenance. I still love Crate and Barrel or Martha Stewart furniture, but pared down.  Soothing color palettes. What does this have to do with gtd, the internet, or better emailing and rss subscription reading? In as much as I like clean, soothing, minimalist functionality in my "real" surroundings, so I too gravitate toward that in the online world as well, leading me to today's recommended Firefox add ons.

I absolutely LOVE the updated Gmail Super Clean Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. It's gorgeous and highly functional. Along with that Greasemonkey extension, I have included several others that integrate with Gmail (and other services) and Google Reader "like butta". These extensions only work with the Firefox browser (I assume you are using Firefox if you are reading this) with the Greasemonkey extension installed, except for Greased Lightbox which also works with Opera. If you don't have Greasemonkey yet, the link is included below.

• Greasemonkey for Firefox - allows for 3rd party scripts to be installed for increased browser functionality and site mods.
  
• Gmail Super Clean - Clean, minimalist script that makes Gmail so much nicer to look at, plus interface tweaks.
  
• text area backup - stop losing your typed text when your browser crashes, auto backs up your work, no more frustration!
  
• Gmail + reader integrator - adds a "feeds" tab on the left of Gmail that allow you to access all of your feeds without having to open up a new tab.
• Greased Lightbox - enhances browsing on websites that link to images such as Google Image Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, and deviantART by opening up an overlay to view the full sized image.
• Secure-em-All - Secure the Connection on: Excite, Yahoo, Gmail, Microsoft Passport. (Add any site to the Included pages list for it to be automatically switch to secure mode as well).

• Clipmarks - In an increasing crowded realm of social bookmarking and blogging tools, seems like a standout.
  
• CoolIris - Amazingly helpful tool which allows you to preview websites without opening a new window, tab or leaving your current page. Works for media content sites like YouTube and Flickr as well. I can't imagine the web without it. Makes surfing a dream!
  
• Coolringer - Takes the best clips of your favorite music automatically and sets it as a ringtone on your cell for free with a few clicks. Aren't you cool?
• Answers 2.2 - available through Firefox Extensions site. Highlight a word or text and get instant spelling, definitions, look up and/or searching with a variety of services.
• JOOST - Don't forget to get on line now (there's a waiting list) to become a beta tester for this hot new social  online peer-to-peer TV service. Not only will you be able to watch live TV on your computer from around the world, with just a codec,  you will also be able to chat with your friends live while you watch. See this screen shot. Can't wait, hope I get in on the Beta testing. Will be watching my email box and will let everyone know if I do.