waffle

I never liked Coldplay that much. I’ve never been a fan of semi-depressed-looking gloomy fellows and music to match (Travis, Manic Street Preachers, and so on). Which is a big part in why I was stunned when a particular iTunes ad got my attention this May. That song was Viva la Vida, the title track from the album “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends“.

In a way, Viva la Vida is my kind of music. It is a powerful song that’s got a solid beat and rhythm, sounds like real music and sends shivers down your spine. I’ve heard enough Coldplay to know that it is in many ways an un-Coldplay kind of song; yet it’s something that Coldplay would be the most likely candidate out of their genre to rush out to make. “Fix You” is perhaps the closest to this that they’ve come before and even that’s miles away. The sad thing was that nothing else on the album sounded like this; in fact, Violet Hill was more or less made the flagship single and got airplay, and it’s about as genuinely Coldplay as you can get. I don’t hate it, but I don’t care much at all for it. The whole album was in fact defined by the band themselves as more dark than their previous albums, and Viva la Vida started looking like a fluke.

Which is why Prospekt’s March was such a pleasant surprise. A “B-side EP” of Viva (the album), it contains some short tracks that are generally more Viva la Vida (the song) than the rest of the tracks on the album. Not as dark. Sounds like real music. (And yes, I’ll keep using this as an argument. If you want to find out what I mean, you could try listening.)

It turns out that if they keep heading in this direction, I might actually snag their next album. And I sure didn’t think so this time last year.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.

Today, I spent three hours drop-kicking the IIS end of an Exchange server into properly providing ActiveSync. Three hours.

Just to repeat, this is Microsoft’s email server running Microsoft’s email protocol on Microsoft’s web server under Microsoft’s operating system. And this certainly didn’t have anything to do with ActiveSync permissions on accounts, network connectivity issues, firewall, routing or NAT configuration or human error when entering the account connection settings on the phones. It’s just the plumbing.

If this was thought through, this would be a checkbox (or something similar). The fact that it’s not reminds us once again that even when Microsoft gets an opportunity to make the whole banana, it often turns out like this.

Microsoft: You’re a fucking joke. I hope you collapse on your own weight and start over.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.

I can perhaps swallow that putting the search field inline in the navigation bar in iPhone Safari 2.2 made it more clear that the magnifying glass that used to be there focused the search field for you; especially since even iLounge missed this in their now amusingly titled Instant Expert segment on the 2.2 software.

But what is weird with this setting is that it forces the reload button inside the URL field, which means that the stop button is now also in the URL field (since it replaces the reload button when loading), which means that if you’re editing, there’s a white cross in a grey circle in the right end of the URL field that means “empty the text field”, and when a page is loading, there’s a UI teal cross in the right end of the URL field that means “stop the page from loading”.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.

This panel used to have a link to “iTunes Plus”, the DRM-free music, because it used to be (and right now still is), special.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.