The White Stripes. Saw them at the Moore last night. Wow. Jack has amazing stage presence. And is just a fun guitarist. This band is headed up. For those of you who live near Detroit, make sure you catch them for a hometown show, I bet that would be fun. Their recordings are so sparse, they sound very similar live.

I was about 24 years older than the mean age of the crowd and I am pretty sure the only person with a blackberry in the crowd, blogging my notes about the concert.

I obviously missed the red hair dye memo. Good thing I have that earring – I am pretty sure you couldn’t get in without at least one piercing.

The opening act was a raw trio from grand rapids. All I can say is they were earnest. The second act was the well bred boys, acceptable pop/rock.

But blown away by the White Stripes. Great American flag backdrop. Jack all in red, Meg in red and white. Played nearly all the songs from their latest cd and a few new pieces. Not much from the older catalog. Meg sang on one song. Jack had some brutal guitar efforts.

Words for us all from the White Stripes:

“Well you’re in your little room/ And you’re working on something good/ But if it’s really good/ You’re gonna need a bigger room/ And when you’re in the bigger room/ You might not know what to do/ You might have to think of/ How you got started/ Sitting in your little room.” – “Little Room”

Latest Interesting Software. Secure my registry with RegRun 3 Security Suite Features. Single word macros with ActiveWords. Ebay assistance from HammerTap.

HD Failure Monitoring. This tool will monitor your hard drives and warn you of potential failures via e-mail or “instant” messages. – “The program uses Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) built into all newer hard disks, and can predict problems with your hard drive(s).”

Halloween. (*&(#@!*$&(&$. There is always one more thing you need at Home Depot. In this case an assortment of machine screws and nuts.

Guitar Links. I love some of these – Godin Guitars. Sheet music and tabs at Sheet Music Direct - 100% Digital Sheet Music, Musicnotes.com, TabCrawler.Com, Guitar Tab at Guitar Tricks.

Gear at marsmusic.com: The Musicmaker’s Destination. And some toys at Edirol Corporation North America

Software to Try. Snapstream – PVR on my PC. Might be worth checking out – Snapstream Media: Record TV, Watch Anytime, Anywhere.

FEVER NIGHTMARE GENERATOR – bizarro drawing tool. For creating small Flash text manipulations – Mix-FX

Seattle Wireless. Grassroots community effort to build out cheap wireless access. Tips, People, News. Seattle Wireless

School Year Drawing to a Close. Liz taking the SAT IIs today – Math IIc, Chem, Writing. Tough way to spend a saturday. Annie graduation weekend – congrats! John has his Latin and Math finals on Monday – I tested him by asking him “What is MCMLXI times XIV?”

He told me I was a dork.

PC State of the Art. Your PC pretty much sucks if you don’t have a window kit, internal neon lighting, and a water cooling system.

Jack Valenti in 1982. Courtesy of the EFF.

I’m Better Than You. Try this toy out – with say “Ohio State grad” and “Michigan grad”

Blog/Mail Integration. I like the ideas Jon Davis is working on. What I really want is a blog frontend plugged right into Outlook or Outlook Express. I spend 80% of my day in these tools, they have UI constructs for editting, filing, posting, etc. Why do I need a new tool to do these things? Similarly I want RSS news aggregation built into these so I can review new headlines the same way I review new mail.

Wildseed. Latest press on them in the NY Times. Phones are looking good, I am heading over tomorrow to get a skins update.

Short Attention Span Radio. Tune to 95.7 here in the seattle market. the home of quick 96. sub-10 second snippets of songs, one after another, with a numerical tag announced for each. The most bizarre radio experience I have ever had.

Update: went off the air as fast as it came on. Replaced by KJR FM. a) I am sure this was all driven by economics I don’t have visibility into. b) Man does this tell me that the way we allocate spectrum is nuts – here is a piece of valuable spectrum that is being wasted away just because it is in the middle of the long-established FM band.

Amazon catalogs Wow this is a great new feature. I searched for motor and found C and H Sales. Totally cool ? ac and dc motors with any arbitrary rpm and gearing.