My Window To The World…

Up first is “Bill Gates Must Die” by John Vanderslice. (Click the song title to be taken to John’s Free MP3s Download page.)

Being an Apple Macintosh fan, and someone who has a good laugh at all the people still ignorant enough to be using (and even defending!) Micro$oft’s Windows, the title does of course make me chuckle.

But: the song is very catchy and quite cool.

Give it a listen.

BTW: John Vanderslice is also on MySpace. Add him!

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Technorati Tags: John Vanderslice, Bill Gates, Bill Gates Must Die

If you have been using it, you will understand. If you are into music but haven’t been using it, then you should join in on the Last.FM fun asap.

The good old record shops – where you know the salesman and know that you can trust his taste – are unfortunately almost extinct. In the country where I grew up, a once great shop had to eventually start selling crap just to survive – now 95 % of its inventory belongs to said category. In the place where I now live, your CD needs will only be satisfied if you are into the worst of the worst Top 40 and “Hip Hop” stuff. To not even mention the mighty vinyl…

Vinyl… good ol’ vinyl… I do miss the days of making proper compilation tapes (cassette tapes, that is) for mates and for girlfriends. There was something magic to it. You had to actually sit down and fully concentrate on the task at hand – or start all over if you made a mistake. Well, you had to start all over if you are a perfectionist like yours truly… I remember impressing girls with many a compilation I had put together for them. Cassette tape players are out of fashion, and it has become more and more difficult to impress them. Ha ha…

Nowadays, you put together a playlist in your iTunes. Since you’re already at it and it will most likely be listened to on a computer anyways, you might as well make use of the 700 MB on the CD-R, so you put eight, nine, or even ten hours (depending on your encoding rate) of music onto the CD. While arranging the playlist, you keep checking your MySpace, reply to some emails, accept an invitation for a chat with a friend – to finally rip the CD in the background while indulging in more online madness.

What does that have to do with Last.FM? I will go into that in my next post. I will outline for you how Last.FM works and how you can use it to your advantage.

Stay tuned. Subscribe to the RSS Feed to not miss the follow-up(s).

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Technorati Tags: Last.FM, Record Shops, Vinyl, Compilation Tapes, Online Radio, Personal Radio, Personalized Radio, Personalized Radio Station, Online Music, MySpace

I came across this one a while ago. Really like it:

When you’re dropped in a pile of shit, so to speak, you have to decide – either add to the pile, or use it as a fertiliser.

Technorati Tags: Food For Thought

More and more I see how life and also dealing with people has an awful lot to do with perceptions.

Just recently my girlfriend said how happy she was that after all the years we have been together, I still open the door for her and let her hop into the taxi before me. I shamefully had to admit that I do this for selfish reasons: I cannot stand sitting behind the driver.

She is happy. I am happy. Both of us for rather different reasons.

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Technorati Tags: Food For Thought

Another one-liner.

Hope it will inspire you to do a bit of thinking:

If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you always got.

Cannot remember where I first heard this one, but it’s never left my memory.

We – at least the majority of us – were born with one mouth, but two ears. And I think there is a reason for that.

I do believe that listening is more important than speaking.

Way too many people just babble on and on, oftentimes just for the sake of making some noise.

You even get some f***ing bible bashers who stand on a streetcorner and insult your intelligence with screaming their beliefs at all and sundry. I will post more about them in another entry. For now, I just recommend you listen to Frank Zappa’s “Heavenly Bank Account” (which can be found on his “You Are What You Is” album).

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Your Google Adsense code should be here, but you forgot to edit the plugins/adsense.php file and replace the code there with your own.

Technorati Tags: Philosophy, Food For Thought

I have been into computers for a long time. My whole working life has pretty much been dominated by Apple Computers and the Macintosh Operating System (I started out on system 6).

Since I went freelance and became my own boss, life without my laptop seems like an impossibility.

On one level, however, taking my laptop everywhere I go, is a strange thing.

Whether I am in Zurich (Switzerland), Bangkok or Chiang Mai or Ubon Rachathani or Koh Samui or Koh Samed (Thailand), or Penang or Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), or Vienna (Austria): I pretty much visit exactly the same websites, and listen to the same music on my beloved Sennheiser HD25 headphones.

While it is cool that I am able to do this, it is also weird… I travel half-way around the world, and am still confronted with tons of familiar stuff. When I sit in a cafe, listen to music, then take the headphones off, it is like stepping out of a dreamscape.

After saying that… today I recommend you check out Placebo. Fantastic band. Their latest album, “Meds”, is a must-have.

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Your Google Adsense code should be here, but you forgot to edit the plugins/adsense.php file and replace the code there with your own.

Technorati Tags: iPod, iBook, Laptop, Computer, Travels, Food For Thought

When reading books or surfing the world wide web, I often come across words and or sentences that inspire me to reflect on them for a while.

This one I wrote down not too long ago:

Life is not about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.

Or shall we believe good ol’ Canadian avantgarde-punk band NoMeansNo: Forget your life. It’s nothing.

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Your Google Adsense code should be here, but you forgot to edit the plugins/adsense.php file and replace the code there with your own.

Technorati Tags: Philosophy, Food For Thought, NoMeansNo, Lifehacks

I am a bit of an internet addict. (There, I’ve admitted it.) Sometimes I do get the impression that my laptop is my window to the world.

Spend way too much time on websites like Steve Pavlina, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog),, Lifehacker, and of course MySpace.

Believe it or not, I still have enough time to play and listen to music (1), read books (2), check out podcasts (3), and tons of other stuff (4).

Been planning to dedicate a blog to every single one of my interests, since I sometimes am big-headed enough to believe that I do have ideas/thoughts/knowledge that are/is worth sharing with the world. Decided to put it all onto one blog for the time being, and see where it’ll go.

1) “Music was my first love, and it will be my last”, as one famous song goes.

2) A life without books? No way. A couple of years ago, on a journey by train, I noticed that all the people reading the newspaper had a serious, unhappy-ish look on their faces, while those reading books often smiled or even laughed out loud. Kind of speaks for itself. (I pretty much gave up reading newspapers – it is all useless propaganda.)

3) There are some great podcasts out there: Swiss Radio DRS1 and DRS2 have some interesting interview podcasts, albeit in German only. Even though the music he plays is not really my cup of tea, I enjoy Michael Butler’s The Rock’n'Roll GeekShow – also a podcast.

4) Food, women, Hello Kitty, the moon, clouds, the beauty of nature, Arsenal FC, Apple computers, Macintosh OS X, etc. etc. etc.

© Patrice Schneider. No reproduction without prior written consent.

Your Google Adsense code should be here, but you forgot to edit the plugins/adsense.php file and replace the code there with your own.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Babble