Hey, everyone!

So yesterday I told you all about how me, Jasmine, Genie, Abu, Carpet, and Iago are all vacationing in Liamuiga for our spring getaway. I had Genie take some pictures, and I thought you'd all enjoy this one.



That's Nevis, one of the neighboring islands to the south. Genie said he took this at a restaurant called the Beach House. I can't wait. I'm sure Jasmine will love it.

Speaking of which, Jasmine gets back tomorrow. It's been kind of weird not having carpet around. Abu loves to play Carpet at chess (Abu always looses, though).

In my last post, I mentioned Rockbox. I realized that most people probably don't know what Rockbox is, so here's a go.

Apple, Inc. makes this awesome little device called the iPod. When it came out way back when in '01, it changed the way people regarded their music. No longer did you have one or two CDs and a bulky CD Player with you when you travelled, no, you had 1,000 songs in your pocket. Then 10,000. Then 100,000. Now look how people treat their music. It's their prize possession. I personally have spent months collecting rare and exotic Disney Parks music.

But here's the caveat: do you actually OWN your music? Turns out, that's a little debatable. See, with the iPod came this mystical store called the iTunes Music Store. You could download untold gigabytes of music there. But it came at a cost. The price? Digital Rights Management (DRM). See, DRM is this little tag of code stuck on your music, that keeps YOU out. Sure, you can play it and put it on iPods and burn CDs, but what else can you do? Not much. Ever try using some music you purchased in iTunes in, say, GarageBand, iMovie, or your Zune mp3 player? Doesn't quite work out.

Think people liked this? Nope, not at all. Of course, Apple being the all-powerful entity that it is, would get really mad when people like Jon Johansen worked out how to beat the DRM encryption. So what to do?

I'm a pacifist. While Abu and Iago can be a little pushy at times, I don't personally believe in force or violence. So here's what I do. I get my music DRM-free, from places like the Amazon mp3 Store, FreePlayMusic, Jamendo, and SXSW. I manage it all with DoubleTwist, and I put them on my hacked iPod, running (finally, here we go) Rockbox software. Check it out.

So there's my soapbox moment. Maybe it's just the streetrat in me, but I'm with all those brilliant hackers out there who fervently believe that if you can't hack it, it's not yours.

- Aladdin