Awesome: My kids don’t know what ‘radio’ is — I love ya, Cam.

I just realized I’m posting this while jamming to a song (Save Myself) from Chinese Whispers. A band I’ve never heard on the radio, and whose music I bought (yeah, I still do that) on the Internet. Telling. (Of course, the next song in my 5-star playlist was REM. *shrug*)

Cool. Google has released the API for Contacts! I’ve actually been waiting for a decent programmatic way to interace with Contacts; I don’t use it as my primary contact list, but there is certainly a decent amount of info there, and it’ll make for a easy online backup of my data. Looking forward to playing with this. +1, Google! (I actually wanted 30boxes to step up here, but their contact data API still isn’t up to snuff.)

Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons creator, dies
— Wow…now I feel OLD. I still have my second set of D&D books (
a copy of the Basic Set blue book, albeit sans cover). D&D, AD&D, and the fast-growing RPG genre that resulted from it’s success was a HUGE part of my growing-up years, and I have continued to pen-and-paper RPG off and on to this day (some friends and I just started some gaming based on the competing Palladium system.)

By the time the AD&D 2nd edition rules were released, I’d moved on to play other systems, but D&D and first edition AD&D will always hold a special place in my heart. Farewell, Gary.

So I saw the announcement about Nine Inch Nail’s new album Ghosts sweep across the Twittersphere this morning. Checked it out…how can I NOT buy it straight from Trent Reznor himself for five bucks?? As 320kbps MP3s, no less (or FLAC for that matter, if I want to be completely audiophile nutty). Trent is true to his word…he said last year that he was looking forward to taking back his music and having a direct relationship with his fans. Outstanding!

Of course, NiN learned about the slashdot effect today. I didn’t bother immediately downloading the songs, and by the time I got home tonight, the servers were crushed; the site is temporarily down while the web monkeys slap on some more go-juice (maybe wiring into Amazon Web Services or something). But never fear; Trent’s already got my fiver, and I have my download link for later. Heck, I’ll just get it off of Bittorrent if I get antsy…it’s not like I haven’t already paid. I hope NiN makes a zillion bucks off this, and Trent sticks his thumb in the eye of every music exec that lets him get close enough to do it. Vive la Internet! Long live the tubes. Hopefully this will put another nail in the classic music industry coffin.