AllOfMP3.com [wikipedia] is a Moscow based MP3 online store that sells songs for about 1/10th of what other “normal” services (like iTunes) charges. Yes, that is one tenth… a factor of zero point one. So if you were to take 99 cents and multiply it by 0.1 you’d get about 9 cents. For one song. Not bad! Albums for about $1.50 USD or maybe $2.50 if it’s a double-CD compilation.

Unfortunately the RIAA (a terrorist organization of litigious sorts) and other recording industry cells are trying to crack down on them. Word on the street is that you need to download all you can by September… so start heating up those cable modems.

WordPress Theme – Thin Green Line :: I released version 1.1 of this WordPress theme today. I made many, many tweaks to the cascading style and added some smarter PHP to create the navigation menu. And speaking of this new theme of mine (you know the drill)… if you click here – BlogFlux – and say all sorts of great things… I’ll be your best friend.

Call of Duty :: I was reminded, as I pondered the failed German advance on Moscow, that had Hitler studied his history he might have taken pause at the long land march, what with Napoleon’s embarrassing retreat. And unfortunately for both these brilliant fools they didn’t have the Princess Bride movie to assuage their doomed plans.

You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this… never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
- Vizzini, The Princess Bride

While we’re on the topic, Edward Tufte has some wonderful books on the visual display of information. One of his most well-known pictorial representations of information is a drawing showing the geographic path Napoleon took towards Moscow, and his retreat, and the decreasing girth of the path represents the dwindling numbers of French troops.

A little of the smooth… :: I’m reminded that a similar style of jazz to smooth jazz is Latin jazz. Now not all Latin jazz is smooth, but much of it has a smooth feel to it and can be used as such. A great example is the phenomenal Latin guitarist Jesse Cook. This boy’s got album after album of some stunning smooth latin jazz… perfect for setting some ambiance.

As I was saying, my new 250 GB backup storage device is being used to house my games. I finally got around to installing and playing Call of Duty 2, an FPS set in WW2. The graphics are incredible! My system isn’t top-of-the-line for gaming machines sold today (I have an AMD64 2.8 GHz – 1 GB RAM – Radeon 9600 Pro), but this game’s graphics are fluid as gasoline. I’ll throw on here some of my own screenshots when I get into some fun areas. I just started and I’m a Russian soldier defending Moscow from the oncoming German assault. This has some special meaning for me as I was in Moscow about a year and a half ago and got to see the WW2 monument they have their marking the high-water mark of the German advance. This picture on the left is the best one I could find of it. The article I grabbed this pic from had the following excerpt:

Anti-tank Hedgehogs :: a memorial to Moscow defenders. Erected in 1966 on the 23rd km down the Leningrad highway. The authors are architects A. Mikhe, A. Agafonov, I. Yermishin, and engineer K. Mikhailov.

The hedgehog is what they called these caltrop-like devices you see three of. They were designed to slow advancing tracked vehicles (and they worked pretty well). Way cool stuff!