DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Firefox had been giving me the spinning beach ball of doom for weeks, every time I downloaded a file. Whether a 5k GIF or 50MB FLAC, the browser hung for 30-40 seconds before finally popping the Downloads window open.

You’d think it would take a pretty serious computing challenge to redline two 2GHz G5 CPUs, but no — just try downloading some album art from Google Images. Apparently there is some kind of CPU-cooking fractal math in the progress-bar code in the Downloads window. Or maybe Firefox is calling into the SETI@home project on the sly, scanning a few parsecs of some remote slice of the universe for intelligible radio signals before ultimately beginning the admittedly pedestrian task of saving a few hundred bytes of image data to my hard drive.

Thanks go to Karl Pietri for suggesting I click the “clean up” button in the Downloads window. Erasing the past year’s worth of download history cut the download startup time from 30+ seconds to a reasonable .05 seconds.

More info, and a screenshot, can be found here: Firefox Download Clean Up

Stuck in the car last night, temporarily weary of hearing Octavarium (which incidentially is so good I haven’t taken the tape out of the car’s stereo since I put it in there), I channel-surfed through the FM spectrum to the first show I could pick up that wasn’t completely inane, although not by much as it turns out: “Gray Area” with Chris Daniel and Brad Giese on Free FM.

They were reading through Lindsay Lohan’s condolences to the Altman family following the death of filmmaker Robert Altman. She made a fractured mess of English grammar; she’s in desperate need of an editor, if not 8-12 years of grade-school education. My favorite line is her powerful closer, issued in all caps: “BE ADEQUITE.”

But the funniest part of the broadcast came when one of the hosts commented on Lohan’s “sense of eloquency.” That was either bitingly sarcastic or an astonishingly bad time for barbarism. Either way, I laughed aloud.

And then I queued up Octavarium again.

Answering the call (note: requires login) for slogan suggestions for deadelephant.org, I humbly submit:

(Click here if it doesn’t make sense.)

Update 2006-10-13: This Foley Family Values bumper sticker design is now available as a downloadable PDF; click the image.

I sort of hate to kick the GOP while they’re down… but on the other hand, what a pack of assholes.

Check out deadelephant.org for a stack of great bumper stickers that say what you’ve been thinking for the past six years. Print them at home for $nada or buy the real thing for $cheap.

My good friend Andrew Thomas has released his first solo CD, Then… and Today: nine original compositions and one cover featuring 11 great musicians and me, too — I contributed drum tracks for seven of the songs, and hammer dulcimer for one.

The songs represent a variety of styles and influences, from pop-punk to fusion to smooth jazz. There are three vocal tunes, five instrumentals, and two bass solo pieces.

The bass playing is top-notch; Andrew elevates his bass(es) to the front of the mix, deftly pulling off cool grooves and catchy melodies. All the guest musicians turned in nuanced, passionate performances. And the production is completely professional; Evan Rodaniche’s mixes really shine.

Click through to the MP3s to hear the first four songs on the CD.

The sixth song, Not Fair, deserves special mention, not only because it features all three members of JAR. It was recorded and re-recorded by at least seven people in four studios over about five years’ time, but the result sounds like three guys in a room. I don’t know how we did that, but I love it.

(Related story: I wrote previously about tracking the dulcimer for Domino, now called This is How It Will End).