Top 10

1. Halos Heaven (dreaming of a great 2012 season)
2. Faust IV
3. Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Vols 1-4)
4. Kraftwerk, K4 Bremen Radio 1971
5. Can, Tago Mago (reissue)
6. BBC Sound Effects No. 26 – Sci-Fi Sound Effects
7. Space 1999
8. Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky
9. The Hobbit (can’t wait, can’t wait, can’t wait)
10. Der OTO

Bottom 3

1. Voter Suppression Efforts by Republican governors in 2011
2. Fox News
3. All Republicans (whether running for office or running from the law)

The first computer I ever used was an Apple II.  There was an Apple store in Riverside, California back in the early 1980s.  They might have sold computers, but they were too expensive for me.  I did take computer classes there, however.

My first real computer was an Apple clone (a Lazer, I think).  It was an old “green screen” thing, no hard drive, just floppies.  That was 1986.  From then to now, I’ve never stopped using Apple computers.  I held on even during the dark days of the 1990s, before Jobs came back to Apple in a blaze of glory (like Lenin or something) to reinvent the company and, really, reinvent the world.

I seem to remember just about everyone in the world made fun of Apple in the 90s.  And the change is usually attributed to the iPod and the subsequent iPhone, iTunes, and iPad.  But I think the real change came when Jobs returned to Apple in the 90s and developed the first “i-device,” the iMac, which was multi-colored, weirdly-shaped, and totally unlike every other computer (including the Apple I had).  It boasted an artist’s flair and it was dismissed as so much artistic crap.  But what the engineers and other PC people didn’t realize at the time was that people, by and large, didn’t like computers.  They were confusing and didn’t work right most of the time.  Jobs didn’t fix everything with that first computer–but he made a nice-looking computer, something that 14 year old girls wouldn’t mind having in their rooms.

From there, the world changed.  Jobs would announce a new device; it would be mocked, then become amazingly popular.  Soon, all his competitors would create their own copies.  For fifteen years, as computers have become more and more central to our lives, Apple products have led the way.  Today, it doesn’t matter what computer you own or what mobile phone or handheld whatever you have–they all resemble Apple products, right down to the round edges on the monitors.

Jobs was an artist in a computer world dominated by engineers.  Where engineers focus on the internal workings of a computer, Jobs focused on the user: how do people use computers?  How do they interact with them? How do they hold them?  Where engineers focus on productivity, Jobs focused on music, photos, and videos and finding ways for people to take these things with them everywhere they go.

You might have hated him, you might have mocked the cult of Apple (who hasn’t?), you might have made fun of the pretentiousness of Apple commercials (and they were and are pretentious, to be sure), but you can’t deny that the world we live in today is shaped by a design philosophy largely created by one man and his company.

A great person has died today, someone whose name will probably be around as long as computers are.  Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

Top 10

1. Grendel Drone Commander
2. Louie
3. Leyland Kirby’s Eager to tear apart the Stars
4. Into the Labyrinth
5. The return of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
6. Presonus Firestudio Pro
7. Carne asada
8. The Clock of the Long Now
9. Raxxess rack for my music equipment
10. A long weekend of sitting on my ass watching TV

Bottom 3

1. The horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE Doctor Who specials running on BBC America featuring US celebrities narrating and commenting on Doctor Who (a la I Love the 80s, etc…).  It’s blatantly obvious that these idiots couldn’t name a doctor other than Matt Smith.  I love Doctor Who, but those specials make me want to hate it.  Way to go, BBC America–you’re ruining the only hit you have.
2. The new Amy-narrated opening to this season of Doctor Who that foregrounds the show as about THIS doctor and these companions in the exact way those horrible specials do.  I wonder if they’re showing that opening in the UK.  Please FSM, tell me no!
3. Republicans (of course)

1.  The Great White Silence (unbelievable film of Scott’s Antarctic expedition, newly restored with a soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner)
2. OTO Biscuit (yummy!)
3. David Bowie (for being awesome)
4. Advisory Circle’s As the Crow Flies
5. A Dance with Dragons (great continuation of epic fantasy series)
6. Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
7. Boomkat (still best place to get great music)
8. The Guild (another season!)
9. The Shadow Line
10. Jon Stewart and Stewart Colbert (still best thing about the USA)

Bottom 1

Only one bottom this month–the debt limit debate, summarized perfectly in Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America:

To use the poetry of this brief scene, the tea party (and the other Republicans) are assholes.  Obama is acting too much like a pussy.  He needs to be more of a dick so those assholes don’t turn the whole country into shit.  Oh, and if he needs lessons, then he should ask his Sec. of State and her husband, don’t you think?  How’s that for a 50 word summary of the whole crisis?

Crunchy Mouse by mheumann

Top 10 (All Musical Edition)

1. Prince Jammy, Evolution of Dub Vol 6: Was Prince Jammy an Astronaut?
2. Biosphere, N-Plants
3. Augustus Pablo, El Rocker’s
4. Bon Iver
5. Autechre, EPs 1991-2002
6. Leyland Kirby, Sadly, the future is no longer what it was (2 CD edition that I recently got and love as much as original 3 CD edition)
7. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
8. Teenage Engineering’s OP-1
9. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972
10. Vashti Bunyan, Just Another Diamond Day

Bottom 3

A little late this month.  Oh well.  On we go…

Top 10

1. Parks & Recreation–Amazingly, the coolest show on TV go 100 times cooler this month when Aubrey Plaza’s character April came out as a huge Neutral Milk Hotel (and Jeff Magnum) fan in the season finale.  Nice one, show!
2. Pye Corner Audio, Black Mill Tapes Vo. 2
3. Vermona DRM1 mkIII–my new best friend
4. Barak Obama (see?  First three are pretty awesome to put Barak at #4 after taking out Bin Laden)
5. Moon Wiring Club, Somewhere a Fox is Getting Married
6. Mark McGuire, A Young Person’s Guide to Mark McGuire
7. George R.R. Martin’s Songs of Ice and Fire series–am on book 3
8. Doctor Who
9. Meeblip
10. Stewart Brand’s The Clock of the Long Now

Bottom 3

1. Fox News
2. Republicans
3. Eurovision voters (seriously, Azerbaijan?)

Top 10

1. Angels baseball is back!
2. Burial’s Street Halo EP
3. Rob Young’s Electric Eden
4. Meeblip
5. Firefox 4
6. iPhone 4 (finally got my upgrade)
7. Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day (how did I miss this one? Thanks, Rob Young!)
8. Ancient Methods’ First Method
9. Boomkat
10. Mutek 2012 (because I might be able to go to that one!)

Bottom 3

1. Republicans
2. Republicans
3. Republicans