Somehow, Amazon has scored a deal with all of the major record labels to sell DRM-free music on their online store. Apple, to date, only has a DRM-free arrangement through EMI. Hopefully this will change any day now. But I went online to download a new album last week, and for the first time since becoming a die hard iTunes user, I checked Amazon’s website to compare price and quality. I was surprised that the same restricted album from iTunes for $9.99 was available for less through Amazon. Plus Amazon’s files were variable 256kps DRM-free tracks! I was very impressed with the low price, and quality of the songs I purchased.

I know Apple is scrambling to provide DRM-free, high-quality tracks for all of the songs available through iTunes. The record lables are obviously dragging their feet. However, Amazon seems to have struck a good note with the industry, and are currently leading the pack in this arena. Until iTunes is able to match Amazon’s volume of unrestricted tracks, I’m going to continue buying tracks from Amazon.com.

I have been wanting to write a post about Camino, the Mac browser from Mozilla, for some time. The problem is, I still am still not sure what I think of it. I have been using it on my Mac since version 1.2, and the latest as of today is 1.5.5. I never used it much at first, but in the past couple of weeks, I decided to get serious, and set it as my default browser.

First, it is way faster than Firefox. Camino is a pure native Cocoa app for the Mac OS X. It loads pages quickly and effortlessly, and the program loads faster than Firefox as well. Camino also has a cool, built-in feature to block most web advertising. That said, the browser doesn’t have all of the features of Firefox (or Safari 3). For instance, the program’s options are pretty sparse, you can’t rearrange tabs, and there is no support for browser themes or extensions.

I have come to think of Camino as a fast trade-off. I like using it, but I can’t live without my favorite Firefox extensions. I have tried to find a way to incorporate adding new bookmarks into Del.icio.us from Camino, but it must be near-impossible, because I have not had any luck.

One thing I am used to in Firefox is opening new tabs for my bookmarks by middle-clicking them. This doesn’t for bookmarks in Camino, but does work for links within a webpage. The solution is to hold down the CMD key while clicking bookmarks. Another issue is apparent in my Netflix queue. In Firefox, I can click and drag titles around to rearrange their order. In Camino, this ability is absent. That alone makes me wonder what other cool AJAX-style goodies I could be missing while visiting other sites.

Frustrated at Camino’s limitations, I ran back to Firefox. It was only then that I realized how much faster Camino was. When I switched back, Firefox felt noticeably slow and clunky. And there’s the rub.

Both Camino 2 and Firefox 3 are in the making. While Camino will never support Firefox extensions by nature, perhaps new versions of both browsers will be able to settle the battle for my favorite. Until then, I’ll just have to use both. Camino is so fast, it is worth using regularly.

I recently read about Docker, a cool program for the Mac that modifies the Dock using hidden system settings. It is pretty cool. With it, you can customize the Dock in many ways. I am running Leopard, and was trying to find a way to revert to the exact 2-D Dock that I had in Tiger. Unfortunately, you can’t make the entire Dock look like Tiger’s 2-D Dock. A 2-D option is available, but it doesn’t look the same. But it if you prefer the black arrows in Tiger’s Dock that showed which programs were running, you can bring them back. I do like the fact that I can color the 3-D Leopard Dock any way I want. I set the background to solid black and it looks very nice with the icon reflections.

Docker does much more than just change the appearance of the Dock. Options are also included to modify behaviors and add new Stacks. Docker is free, but donations are welcome.

I got home from Austin yesterday afternoon at 4pm. The trip was an absolute blast! An outstanding time was had by all. The drive all the way to Texas went well. In fact, it was looking like we would arrive so early, we made a stopover in Dallas to tour Dealey Plaza. Dallas was brightly lit downtown when we rolled in around 5am. Luckily, were ahead of the morning rush hour. The Plaza itself was not what I expected it to be. It was quite a bit smaller than I’d seen in pictures, and looked very uneventful.

We finally arrived in Austin around 10am Friday, and immediately checked into our hotel at the Hampton Inn Downtown. It was very nice. That evening, Chris and Sara’s rehearsal dinner was a lot of fun, and the food was great. Several of us went out on the town to the popular 6th Street after dinner. We went to an Irish pub where we toasted Guinness. It was a blast!

On Saturday, me and Kevin did a walking tour of downtown Austin in the drizzling rain. We visited the capital building, which I found to be very extravagant for a state capital. Saturday night was Chris’s wedding. Me and Kevin had the hardest time directing our cab driver to the wedding location at the Barr Mansion. We called friends and family trying to get someone to find the directions online. Frustrated and late, we arrived in time for the wedding. It was a very nice ceremony — short and very sweet. The bride and groom are genuinely happy. The wedding reception was a ball! The location was very charming and could not have been better.

I flew home to Raleigh yesterday afternoon. It was a stark contrast to the drive all the way to Texas, which took about 20 hours. In the air, I was home in two hours, and I had a great flight. This weekend was so much fun. It was worth every penny, but spending such quality time with the family was priceless. Thanks to everyone who showed me a fun time.

• Austin Photos (Flickr)
• Austin Trip Log (PDF)
• Wedding Website

Today, I embark on a road trip to Austin, TX with my brother (and crew) to attend my cousin’s wedding. I’m very excited, as I have only heard great things about the city. We are driving around the clock to get there, and I’m hopping a flight home on Sunday. This will be a fun adventure, and will be great quality time spent with the family. Off we go!

I bought a new 4 GB iPod Nano yesterday! Hooray! It is so awesome. I’d previously been using a 512k iPod Shuffle. I had to have the Nano. It is so slick, and so beautifully designed. I love the extra storage for my music, and all the features that come with a full-blown iPod. The screen is bright, and extremely sharp. Flipping album covers with Cover Flow is gorgeous and fantastic. It’s music and volume controls are amazing. I love it! I’ll admit that it does weigh a little more than I expected it to. Perhaps I am used to the shuffle, which felt like a small pack of gum. The weight is no worry considering all the goodies that are packed in this little thing.

I have had some confusion of video support, though. I was able to transfer a music video that I’d downloaded via iTunes, and a single MP4 conversion from a DVD using Handbrake. Those played beautifully on the iPod screen. Other videos I’d made with Handbrake weren’t allowed in by the iPod. I don’t know why, since I thought I’d used the correct setting in Handbrake to do so. I’ll have to research that matter further someday. I plan to eventually try a movie rental from iTunes (a new feature), to see how it plays, though I don’t intend to make a habit of renting iTunes movies.

As everyone knows by now, last night the New York Giants beat the undefeated New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XLII. It was an absolutely incredible football game. So much was on the line. It turned out to be the best sporting event I’ve ever watched on television. I typically don’t watch any sports, except for a football game once a year or so, and the Super Bowl yearly. I don’t have a favorite team, though I’d certainly root for my home team (Panthers) if they were in the playoffs, or at the Super Bowl. I like to root for the underdog, and this year the underdog won in the biggest way possible. I screamed when Plaxico Burress caught the winning touchdown. Go Giants! That game will be forever remembered. Absolutely amazing.

I just discovered the website Popurls.com. I don’t know how I hadn’t heard of it before now. I stumbled across it on the web just this weekend. Popurls aims to provide “popular urls to the latest web buzz”. They succeed brilliantly. Every single site that I can possibly think of is represented on Popurls. Everything from Digg, Flickr, Delicious, ifilm, YouTube, MetaCafe, Slashdot, Wired, Clipmarks, to anything else you can imagine. The page at Popurls is beautifully designed. I’ve made this site my new home page. It is truly a one stop shop for popular things on the net. If you haven’t been there, go now!

Shortly after the start of the new year, some representatives from Beyond Fitness came to my work to sell gym memberships. Apparently, they were trying to cash in on peoples resolutions for the new year. They know once they get people to sign the dotted line, they’ll likely abandon those resolutions within the first month. The people they sent were practically body builders. That kind of image just puts a lot of gym-goers off. I feel that if they were out trying to recruit new members, the gym must not be much of a success. The discounted rate they were offering was a zero signing fee, and $25 per month. Regularly, $100 is due at signing, with a $39 monthly membership fee. Personally, I think even the discounted rate is still ridiculous. It comes out to be $300 per year.

I have been a member of two gyms in the past. Neither membership was worth the money I paid. I rarely went, and when I did, the cool equipment was often taken. Using free weights usually involved sitting next to a beefcake who is pumping ten times what I am trying to do. The same beefcakes were there most every day. And despite the fact that the gym was always crowded, the owners were always out trying to recruit new people to join. Banners were put up outside offering rates far below what I’d already agreed to pay. Gyms come and go. They most always eventually go under, or get bought by another company, who under the guise of a new name, still go out and try to rip people off.

I don’t plan to pay for a gym membership again. I think the whole business is a big racket. They count on people not coming very often, or giving up all together. If I ever get serious about working out, I’d rather spend money on a Bowflex machine that I can use at home.