There are a few different meanings for my chosen name. There’s the pretty standard “also known as” which I suspect everyone knows. There’s also the “Alpha Kappa Alpha“, the United States’ first sorority for African-American women. Then there’s others I found out via anime, such as it’s meaning in Japanese as Red (赤), or Aka-chan (赤ちゃん) which means baby.
However there were additional meanings in Japanese I was unaware of. One of these meanings is equator, which kinda sounds boring. The next I found out was Communist, Aka means Communist in Japanese. I’m not sure if this is a slang term for it or because the Communist flag was red, but I found it quite hilarious regardless.
None of these meanings are the birth of my name though, it’s just been an evolution over time.
-Aka
For a long long time I’ve had this idea for iTunes. In fact, I emailed the idea to them quite some time ago with no response, which frustrated me. And really this idea could be used for any music management application, I just choose iTunes because that’s what I use.
So here’s the idea, WavPack. Though I don’t care if that’s what they use, it’s just the concept of WavPack I want in iTunes. Lets go back a bit though and get to the reason why I think this is a good idea. All of the music in my iTunes database is lossless, or at least a very sizable portion of it. I prefer this format because it gives me flexibility and storage space on the PC is dirt cheap now. However a problem arises when I try to sync with my iPod. I’m limited to a certain amount of music which is far less than the entirety of my collection. One might argue this is for the better, but I think there’s a solution that could be used, WavPack.
WavPack is unique in that it’s both lossless and lossy. When you encode a track with WavPack it creates two files, and when these two files are combined you get a lossless encode of your music. However, if only the smaller of the two files is played, you get a high quality lossy copy. This would allow you to sync only the lossy copy with your iPod or other music device while leaving the full lossless copy at home. This would allow me to get a great deal more music on my iPod, or fit more videos on it.
Alternatively, this would allow me to buy a smaller iPod such as an iTouch and fill it with a similar amount of music as my Classic. I like this option too, as I think the iTouches are pretty slick little devices compared to my iPod Classic.
Perhaps someone will introduce such a feature in their application (Amarok I’m looking at you!) along with the ability to play WavPack on an iPod (Can Rockbox? Even if it does, it doesn’t work with my Classic). Until then I guess I’ll continue suffering.
-Aka
Another oldy here. Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer whose works center around industry and how they change the landscape. Showing us the beautiful side of industrial pollution and construction.
Read More »Admittedly this is an old TED talk, it’s from February 2006, but wasn’t posted until June of the same year. It’s a talk by Sir Ken Robinson about creativity and schools and how schools are killing it. I’ve watched this talk many times and it’s definitely among my favourite TED talks. It’s not a topic I would have necissarily found interesting, it’s not about technology or science or space. It’s sort of a bland boring sounding topic, but I’ve found that some of those types of topics end up having the best presented talk on TED and end up being remarkable and extremely engaging.
-Aka
Finally having the time to follow up on this news I listened to Steven Page’s interview on CBC Radio1′s Q podcast (Feb 27, 2009). It was a lengthy interview at 12 minutes long and can be found after the Jimmy Fallon interview approximately 18 minutes in. Listening to Page explain his side, or his view of the split up alleviated the tension I thought was between the band, which lightened my mood considerably.
This being the first post I figured it would be a good idea to review the first figure I purchased, TAKI Corps rendition of Horo from Spice and Wolf.
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