PlasticBoy

The album of the week is Destroyer’s Rubies by, you guessed it, Destroyer.

Summer BBQ Playlist: Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street. Screw dancing, let’s eat! Fire up that grill. It’s BBQ season. 1. Barbecue Blues - Barbecue Bob 2. Fire - Jimi Hendrix Experience 3. Barbecue Any Old Time - Brownie McGhee 4. Eat Steak - Reverend Horton Heat 5. Cheeseburger In Paradise - Jimmy Buffett 6. Hotdogs And Hamburgers - John Mellencamp 7. Buns O’plenty - Isaac Hayes 8. Hot Dog - The Archies 9. Bar-B-Q - ZZ Top 10. Cold Budweiser And A Sweet Tater - Joe Diffie 11. Texas Barbecue - Bela Fleck 12. Barbecue Bust - Blind Roosevelt Graves 13. T - Bone Steak - Jimmy Smith 14. Struttin’ With Some Barbecue - Louis Armstrong 15. Who Did You Give My Barbecue To? - Part 1 (80605) - Big Boy Teddy Edwards 16. Hot Dog Man - Lovin’ Sam Theard 17. Corn Licker & Barbecue - Part 2 - Fiddlin John Carson 18. Beans And Cornbread - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five 19. Sam-The Hot Dog Man - Lil Johnson 20. Burger Man - ZZ Top 21. Hot Dog (Watch Me Eat) - The Detroit Cobras 22. First Bratwurst Of Summer - Those Darn Accordions! 23. Goin’ On Down To The Bbq - Stan Ridgway And Drywall

Bring Your Child to Work Day: 1. Wake Up - Hilary Duff 2. Rollin’ (The Ballad Of Big & Rich) (Album Version) - Big & Rich 3. Axel F (Radio Mix) - Crazy Frog 4. North To Alaska - Johnny Horton 5. Yellow Submarine - Kidz Bop Kids 6. Things I’ll Never Say - Avril Lavigne 7. Natasha Dance - Chris De Burgh 8. Killer Klowns - The Dickies 9. Jesus Of Suburbia - Green Day 10. Beautiful Soul - Jesse Mccartney 11. Witch Doctor - Kidz Bop Kids 12. This Is Who We Are - Hawthorne Heights 13. Any Open Door - Travis Morrison 14. Tell Me When To Go [Featuring Keak Da Sneak] - E-40 15. Big Red Car - The Wiggles 16. Always Love - Nada Surf 17. Ms. New Booty (Edited Radio Shorter Version) (Radio Single) - Bubba Sparxxx 18. How Do You Like Me Now?! - Toby Keith 19. Sk8er Boi - Avril Lavigne 20. Hound Dog - Elvis Presley

Defective by Design have put together a petition to send to Bono to encourage him to oppose DRM.

Cory Doctorow is switching to Ubuntu! How many tech luminaries can Ubuntu rack up in the span of a few weeks? Tim Bray is switching, too. Next Walt Mossberg will post a glowing review and Scoble will replace his Vista Beta install with Dapper.

Sleater-Kinney are breaking up, so sad. I guess it’s good to go out at the top of your form, though.

Blech, the broadcast flag has made it through committee.

As things stand now, the Senate Commerce Committee has decided we need a broadcast flag, but is leaning heavily against net neutrality. That’s just plain inconsistent. In the argument against legislating the tenets of network neutrality into law, its opponents make the case that federal regulation is unnecessary because it applies government regulation to technology instead of letting the markets sort the whole matter out. That is the line of reasoning followed by Sen. Stevens and other legislators who are leery of mandating net neutrality. At the same time, the senators are fully backing the broadcast flag, which would apply strict government regulations to technology. There’s one common thread here: the interests of big business. With the broadcast flag, big business is for heavy regulation. In the case of net neutrality, it’s not. At least we know where our lawmakers’ true interests lie.

Backstage Bonnaroo: Your backstage pass to Bonnaroo: Rhapsody Radio interviews with your favorite ‘Roo artists. 1. Ben Folds Interview - Ben Folds 2. Ben Folds Shout Out - Ben Folds 3. One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds 4. Les Claypool Interview - Les Claypool 5. Les Claypool Shout Out - Les Claypool 6. One Better - Les Claypool 7. Avett Brothers Interview - Avett Brothers 8. Talk On Indolence - The Avett Brothers 9. Brothers Past Interview 1 - Brothers Past 10. Brothers Past Shout Out - Brothers Past 11. Forget You Know Me - Brothers Past 12. Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars Interview - Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars

Updated: I keep a more current list on the wiki.

Now that Mark Pilgrim has switched to Ubuntu he’s updated his essential software list. Here’s mine:

1. Ubuntu, Linux for human beings.
2. Vim + Markdown Vim Mode + bufexplorer + svncommand, for people who don’t like taking their fingers off of home row.
3. Nautilus File Manager. Put Nautilus in spatial, tree-view mode and create some connections to remote servers you access regularly and you won’t know how you lived without it.
4. Firefox + Adblock + Firebug + Greasemonkey + Gmail Smart-Delete Button + mplayerplug-in. I try to keep things simple.
5. Gmail. I still haven’t found any other web or desktop mail reader that has one-key archiving plus fast, indexed search, which is the killer Gmail combination.
6. Google Reader. I was using feeds.reddit.com but it recently lost the essential feature of hiding read items.
7. Backpack, I’m still keeping my life in here.
8. GAIM. GAIM has plugins? Who knew?
9. gThumb. Who needs camera software? I use a card reader and organize photos in good old-fashioned folders before uploading them to Flickr.
10. Rhythmbox, mostly just for downloading podcasts.
11. Rhapsody.com, all-you-can-eat, Linux-compatible, DRM-free (I think) music streaming.
12. Beagle, fast, indexed desktop search.
13. GNUCash. It’s old and ugly but rock-solid and I have years of data in it.
14. GNU Screen. Run console apps detached! Do everything in a single terminal window! Impress your friends and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies!
15. OpenSSH. Kind of goes without saying.
16. rsync + scripts based on Mike Rubel’s for backups.

The album of the week is Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope.

The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead Turns 20!: 20 years? Can you believe it? Take a minute to fall in love with this sparkling, jangle-pop classic once again. 1. The Queen Is Dead - Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty (Medley) - The Smiths 2. Frankly, Mr. Shankly - The Smiths 3. I Know It’s Over - The Smiths 4. Never Had No One Ever - The Smiths 5. Cemetry Gates - The Smiths 6. Bigmouth Strikes Again - The Smiths 7. The Boy With The Thorn In His Side - The Smiths 8. Vicar In A Tutu - The Smiths 9. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths 10. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others - The Smiths

Today’s the day! Call an RIAA executive and tell him what you think of DRM. Looking at the call reports page I at first thought there had only been a few calls, but then I noticed the “more” link and saw that there are already pages and pages of them.

The Humane Society is seeking a ban on foie gras production in New York state. They say foie gras violates a New York law against selling food from diseased animals.

The City of Boston has a podcast. I think it’s a little backward that Boston has a podcast before it has a blog, but kudos to the City for embracing new technology. I wonder if this is the first podcast produced by a city government.

There are a couple of phone calls you should make over the next few days. One is to tell your Senator that you oppose the Broadcast Flag, which would break your TiVo and make your MythTV illegal. The other is during a national call-in day on Friday to tell executives at the RIAA that DRM is a bad idea. Broadcasters and the RIAA spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress every year, the only way consumer interests will be represented is if we make ourselves heard.