About a year ago I got a 250 gig hard drive, and decided to use that as my main drive for music. Since then, my music collection has been growing. However, I’ve been running into a pattern that I’m not too fond of. I’m getting hooked on about 5% of my iTunes library: the 5% that is rated or commented and added to a playlist.

I have not been too happy with that, but the alternative, spending a lot of time classifying music and creating playlists, isn’t that attractive. The real problem with it is that you have to do it all the time. That is, a song that today I rate as a 3-star song, tomorrow might, and does, get old. Ideally, I would have to update the ratings, continuously.

Enter Moody.
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In one year Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, had a bestselling book, and won an Oscar.  What are other historical examples of a person having multiple notable recognitions or achievements within a single year?

Peter responds:

In the past week my son was born, my mother told me she was proud of me, my wife said she loved me, I got an unexpected raise at work and found $20. Al Gore can suck it.

Source:Marginal Revolution.

My real function is best described by an epithet that may, in future years, sum up 2006 with the same grim efficiency that terms like ‘Peace with Honor,’ ‘Iran-Contra,’ ‘Florida Recount,’ and ‘Shock and Awe’ now comprise and evoke other years. What your editor really is here is: the Decider.

Says David Foster Wallace, in the introduction to The Best American Essays 2007. (Which reminds me, I’ve got to resume reading Infinite Jest.)

Question: Does Sir Mick feel he deserves his knighthood? Andrew Platt, Warrington, UK

Mick Jagger answers: It’s not up to you to really worry about deserving it. It’s whether you get given it or not. ‘Dear Your Majesty, please accept my knighthood back because I really don’t deserve it’. I don’t think people really do that. But it’s very nice to have. (more here)

I was never a big Mick Jagger fan, but the man is sharp. Some even say he is a great profit maker.

This year, it’s a little bit different. First of all, my area of search has expanded and spread out. Toronto has some interesting new neighborhoods that are worthy of further exploration. Plus, I now have wheels, which lets me be a little bit off the subway grid (which is probably the smallest subway line in the planet).

And, I just discovered a site that gives you a score for your potential new address: Walk Score weighs your address against what’s nearby (groceries, stores, restaurants, parks, etc.) and gives you a score out of a 100. It’s a very good tool, especially to weed out places that sound good, but aren’t. Of course, Walk Score doesn’t account for the type of neighborhood. For example, a spot on Queen/Sherbourne I saw yesterday had a score of 85, though when I walked around the building I saw at least two people walking up the stairs that were stoned.

And, last but not least, I hate moving as much as everyone else, but, to its credit, it’s one of the ways to discover the city you live in and go to areas that are otherwise off your radar.

P.S. Apartment/neighborhood suggestions are welcome.

Trailer for Michel Gondry’s new movie. Some say it comes out at the end of 2007/start of 2008. Looks like a movie surprisingly worthy of Gondry’s style and Hollywood success.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein said that. All I know about him is that he was born 100 years ago (7/7/07). Note to self: look him up.

When I was 14, I played tennis everyday in a fairly run-down tennis club in Tirana, Albania’s biggest tennis club with 5 or 6 concrete courts. I was on and off Albania’s junior champion for a few years, and played in European tournaments for a few years. After reading Young’s difficult path, I am realizing it was a blessing that I wasn’t that good, especially compared to other European players. I did not have a chance to imagine having a career in tennis. Those kids that were better probably did, and they’re far from Daniel Young.

In the realm of professional sports, tennis is among the most expensive. It takes training, on and off the court, coaches, equipment (I used to tear shoes’ soles every other month) and in the “pro” circuit, a heavy budget to cover travel and tournament expenses. And even if you are good, the earnings in the early stages of the pro circuit are meager. Dan Young, once America’s future, is now playing tournaments worth about $7000. That’s barely enough to cover that one week’s expenses, if Young wins that tournament. Anything else, is negligible.

Which leads to one of the most interesting points of the article: compared to other sports, tennis is too expensive and too cheap in rewarding players. Only the top 100 do well (and among those, the top 10 are far from the rest). I.e. in basketball, a mediocre player makes above $1 million a year. In tennis, the equivalent is most certainly bankrupt.

The reason for this is, of course, the invisible hand of the market. Basketball teams are franchises, i.e. solid business enterprises. Tennis players aren’t.

On the other hand, though, there is something to say about star junior players: they rarely make it big. Most tennis superstars somehow skip that stage: they either don’t play in the junior league, or they do fairly poorly in it. But that’s another story.

Spotted this yard sale ad in the Danforth neighborhood of Toronto. Smart, simple advertising, in a field that is dominated by ugly scribbles and unreadable handwritten copy.

But, how does the logo compare to similar products in the Olympics/World Cup market? Pretty OK, I’d say. Germany 2006 was a boring thingie-logo: huge, too colorful and filled with meaningless little symbols. These examples from the other candidates for 2012 games aren’t very inspiring, and if anything, they all share massive similarities between each other: Paris, Sydney, Vancouver, New York, all share a colorfulness and pastel-like typography that has been in fashion probably since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. In this respect, the London logo is a breath of fresh air.

The excellent Chicago-based designers at Coudal Partners offer several reasons why they love the new logo.  I think that most of their observations are spot-on, though I do feel that the logo might be just a bit too radical for an event of such mass reach as the Olympics. But, on the other hand, that might serve a purpose: it might mark a new era in which the Games break away from the now-standard frame of mind of Olympics graphics. No more colorful circles, no more soft pastel fonts, no more brush strokes.