I'm not sure I should even bother to mention this, because I think the link will only be valid for another few hours, but there was a very cool "at home" (actually "in home studio") interview with my pal David Knopfler on BBC - South Today (click the "South Today 1830" link to see the show in Real Audio).

Great news via the Aspyr newsletter:

Big news for Aspyr Studios in November - we can finally announce that Sims 2 is in full development for Mac OS X! We have one of the largest programming teams we've ever assembled for a single project working on bringing Sims 2 to the Mac, and we're planning to make it our most Mac friendly game ever. Not only are we optimizing the game for OS X, we're also looking into integration with some of the Mac's built-in technologies like iTunes and .Mac. In addition, we're working directly with Apple to have Sims 2 take advantage of extra features in Mac OS X Tiger, for those users that upgrade to the latest OS in 2005 (the game won't require Tiger, but some extra Mac features may be Tiger-only).

Here's a great article (actually a transcript of a speech) about cell phone ringtones from the perspective of someone in the audio business (Peter Drescher, a sound designer for Danger): Could Ringtones BE More Annoying?!

The ringtone thing is one of those things that I don't really understand. I find personalized rings stupid and completely annoying, too, yet I've purchased several of them myself. I don't have enough nerve to actually use them, though -- my cell phone is set to the "Continental" ring which is, I believe, the sound that telephones make in Europe. Maybe. It's different, but not too different.

My cell phone also contains ringtones of "Lucy & Linus," "The Pink Panther," "The Addams Family Theme," "Jingle Bells," and several others that I'm too embarrassed to actually play in public. No, that's not true -- it's not really embarrassment. It's just that other people's rings are so annoying that I can't subject anyone else to my own. They're still cool, though.

Link from Ceej.

I woke up this morning and thought, "this is my last day of being forty-three. I'll never be forty-three again." But I bet I don't feel forty-four tomorrow. I bet I still feel twelve.

Neil Gaiman

But the line that made me laugh was:

And yes, there will be a signing afterwards.

because I read it as, "And yes, there will be singing afterwards." Because, you know, it was his birthday.

I will stay up all night election night and update the site in real time. I am NOT promising to stay up until we know who the president is. I would definitely like to go to bed sometime during the month of November.

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004.

In southern Mexico, for example in the city of Puebla, it is good luck to be the one who bites into the plastic toy skeleton hidden by the baker in each rounded loaf. Friends and family members give one another gifts consisting of sugar skeletons or other items with a death motif, and the gift is more prized if the skull or skeleton is embossed with one's own name.

Day of the Dead