I'm happy

It's interesting how you learn things about yourself simply by your own actions.

...

Okay, that sounds incredibly obvious and utterly cliché. I'll just cut to the story.

I crossed paths with an old friend this morning, one I haven't talked to in months. We didn't have time for an extended conversation, just a brief exchange as we passed. She asked me how I was doing; I responded "Still alive!" with a smile. She said "Good!" and the conversation was over. As I walked away, I realized that my response expressed a somewhat pessimistic outlook on life; it suggested that one would expect there to be a question as to whether I was surviving school.

That's not my outlook on life; I'm quite an optimistic person. My response came from a habit I've developed: when I ask someone how they're doing, they usually say "Fine." That's a boring response, so I often follow up with "Surviving?" or "Still alive?" That usually brings out a little more information about how life is going, etc., and makes the conversation more intersting. Since most people are, in fact, still alive, they give me a response about how they're doing better than what I had asked, and the conversation is a positive one.

But when I responsed "Still alive," I wasn't expressing my inner optimism. I wish I had responded "I'm happy," not because of any particular effect that it would have had on the other party, but because I want to be the kind of person that is actually happy.

Okay, enough of the sappy self-analysis. Happy January 8th, everybody!

Dear iTunes haters

Dear iTunes haters,

I understand if you don't like the software. That's fine. But just so you know, as of today there are 8 million DRM-free songs on iTunes, and by the end of the first quarter, they'll all be DRM-free. Straight from apple.com/itunes/whatsnew/:

High-quality, DRM-free music.
iTunes Plus is the new standard on iTunes.
Now, you can choose from millions of iTunes Plus songs from all four major music labels and thousands of independents. With iTunes Plus, you get high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding. All free of burn limits and digital rights management (DRM). So iTunes Plus music will play on iPod, Apple TV, all Mac and Windows computers, and many other digital music players. It’s also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don’t have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30¢ per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60¢ and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)

So. No more complaining. And in case you're wondering about that funny "AAC" encoding, here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at many bit rates. AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 & MPEG-4 specifications

And here's a list from Wikipedia of common portable media players that support AAC:

• Apple iPod/iPhone
• Creative Zen Portable
• Microsoft Zune
• SanDisk Sansa
• Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) with firmware 2.0 or greater
• Sony Walkman
• SonyEricsson Walkman Phones-W series, e.g. W890i
• Nintendo DSi (To be released in America mid-2009)
• Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player

So. No more complaining, you hear? I want none of it.

Just so you know, I have no problem with people buying music from other legal sources, such as Amazon.com. There are plenty of reasons to do so. But DRM-free-ness is no longer one of them. I find the iTunes store to be very conveninent, and I'll continue using it myself. You're free to do as you will.