Architeuthis

How cool is this news from National Geographic?

In Antarctica's Ross Sea, a fishing boat has caught what is likely the world's biggest known colossal squid (yes, that's the species' name), New Zealand officials announced today.

Heavier than even giant squid, colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) have eyes as wide as dinner plates and sharp hooks on some of their suckers. The new specimen weighs in at an estimated 990 pounds (450 kilograms).

I'm not a zoologist by any means but it's facinating to see the creatures with which we share the world. I always hate to hear that the creature was caught in nets and/or died, however these huge sea creatures are simply wonderous.

Another story from National Geographic about the Giant Squid is available here. This one was apparently alive while it was being filmed. A gallery of photos is available.

Wikipedia has a good article on Architeuthis the giant squid.

Besides all this, one of my favorite bands of all time, Tourniquet, has a song titled Architeuthis in which they reference the giant sea creature. So I must go listen to that song again, as if Tourniquet isn't already playing in the background (which they are).

Recorded and Canned

Recorded studio music can never live up to a live show. It is to controlled, to perfected, and planned out track by track. Live shows are organic, subject to the unexpected, and imperfect. Like fresh fruit, when you put it in the can it looses some of its essence, and becomes something different from its true form.

Music doesn't always have to be perfectly orchestrated and coordinated just because it is on a CD. The life is what sells. Don't focus on the perfect pre-recorded guitar loop for this track, and the drum loop for the next track, and the exact vocals with perfectly consistent inflection. That is boring, stale, and stagnant.

Play your music, record the album. Show that their can be life in the recording.

Windows Media Player Version Error

Yesterday I ran some of the security updates from Microsoft's update service. I also saw that there was a new version of Windows Media Player, so I decided, "hey, why not, i'll go ahead and install it while i'm here." What a waist of 45 minutes of my life.

The install seemed successful, so I started WMP. I was prompted through some wizard pages, make MWP the default player, etc, blah, blah, and then it finally tried to start the application. Immediately I received an error stating "wmplayer.exe has a version number of 10.0.0.3646 where 9.0.0.2980". I'm then offered the option to redownload/install the application; being on a broadband connection I say ok.

After download, installing, and going through the wizard once again, I'm presented with the same error. Not willing to try again, I googled and found the following good solution amongst a variety of more difficult solutions that may or may not have worked (i didn't want to try them).

Goto Start>> Run
Type "c:\windows\inf\unregmp2.exe /UpdateWMP"
Then simply restart WMP.

This was not my solution, so thanks goto Chris Lanier [MVP].