i-sako.com

I went to a Ringo meeting tonight for the first time ever and ended up winning an iPod nano in a drawing held afterward. Will I be going back there again? You bet I will!

And thanks to the presentation Kilian Muster gave at the meeting, I might even be able to figure out what I am supposed to do with this thing. 

By now, anyone who cares about these things has probably already read Steve Jobs’ ”Thoughts on Music,” an open letter that advocates the abolition of digital rights management (DRM) technologies as currently applied to downloadable music. Among other things, Jobs writes: “This is clearly the best alternative for consumers,” which is undoubtedly true. I’ve never met anyone who has actually liked DRM, but some people put up with it because they feel there is no other choice. I am very much not one of those people.

To me, DRM on music is unacceptable and I have long refused to buy an iPod (or any other type of music player) or download any music simply on principle. That’s how strongly I disagree with the fundamental concept of DRM. For a long time, I assumed that DRM was simply an inevitable trend in the music industry. I wasn’t happy about it, and I certainly wasn’t going to buy into it, but I thought that it would, unfortunately, take root regardless of my resistance to it. But now Steve Jobs seems to have shaken up the assumption that DRM is even necessary, much less inevitable, for which I think he deserves to be applauded.

Following the initial news about Jobs’ letter, there have been a number of additional ones indicating that DRM isn’t very popular with European music company executives, either. I think most people in the music business realize that restricting how music can be played back is not a good way to increase sales, and I am just one of presumably a large number of consumers demonstrating exactly that. I would buy an iPod and start fleshing out my music collection tomorrow if the music labels would drop DRM. And they should, but they won’t, which means I will continue to spend my money on other things until they wise up.

Has it really been almost six months since my last weblog entry? I’d better do something about that.

I’ve decided that one of the first steps in my rehabilitation as a blogger will be to get a MacBook so I can write even when I’m away from home. I’ve been wanting to get a Mac ever since the advent of OS X, but for various reasons just never got around to getting one. Now is the time to change that. I’ve already picked out the model and the specs, so the only thing left at this point is to shop around for the best price. By this time Wednesday I should be playing around with my very own Mac.

I was at my office during yesterday’s 5.7 earthquake in Chiba. It seemed like it went on for a really long time. It was powerful enough to knock over some books on my desk and completely shut down the elevator in our building, but other than that no damage was done. It was, however, the first time an earthquake has made me want to dive for cover.

Our son, on the other hand, reportedly slept through the whole thing without stirring. 

In my About page, I link to Zero Dean’s FAQ about his unusual name as a shameless way to dodge explaining my own. Zero noticed:

This was a time when a lot of people were naming their children unusual things. I could’ve easily been named “Sako”, or “Peace”, or “Rainbow”, or “Dweezil”, or “Moon Unit” or something… but instead, I got Zero.

Ah, yes, Moon Unit...I’m pretty sure I narrowly avoided getting that one myself.

Browsing around Zero’s site a bit more, I found something else we have in common: High-end Canon digital SLRs. Something tells me that if Zero and I ever met in person, we’d have plenty of things to talk about. We might even remember each other’s names afterward.