JonahWeiland.com

My sister Liz sent out an e-mail to her friends and family to update everyone en masse to their situation. See, my sister Liz, bro-in-law Randy and niece and nephew Lindsay and Miles live in Simi Valley, CA, one of the many cities that’s been ravaged by the fires you’ve been reading and seeing so much about.

To help you place Simi Valley, it’s about 45 minutes, without traffic, north-east from Downtown Los Angeles. From my home in North Hollywood, it’s a 30 minute drive up the 170, switching to the 5 freeway and then a drive down the 118 to Simi. I just brought up Yahoo! Maps and plotted a course to their house from mine and found it’s a 25 miles drive from here to there.

They live in the east end of Simi Valley, precisely the area that the fire is threatening. The fire’s come precariously close to their house and she shared some pictures of the area with everyone. All these photos were taken Sunday. Some are taken from around Simi Valley, some are views from their house. Pretty chilling stuff. Considering from the news you’re generally getting views from the air or news vans screaming through the charred remains of burnt communities, this gives you a bit of a different perspective. These pictures are taken by a home owner who’s just wondering, is mine next? Good news is the fire seems to have moved away from her house, but it’s not over yet.

View from the streets of Simi Valley.	Night shot.
That’s the front of my sister’s house with the fire raging on the hill behind their house.	Down the street from Liz’s house.
Another view from the front of my sister’s house with the fire in the background.	Night shot of people evacuating.

Went to the 7th Annual Halloween Masquerade Ball in Los Angeles Saturday night. Got loads of pictures from the event in the gallery.

What did I dress up as? It was tough coming up with an idea, but once I had one (after three hours of just driving around to different stores hoping to come up with an idea) it came together pretty fast. I decided to go as a Nasa Test Pilot. I found a flight suit cheap at a local thrift shop as well as the aviator glasses, then went to the Supply Seargeant Army Surprlus store in Burbank. Picked up the combat boots there as well as the three patches you see in the picutres (two nasa logos and a U.S. flag). It all came together. Next year I’ll enhance it with a few new patches (probably an Air Force patch and a shuttle mission badge), an F-16 Fighter Helmet (about $50 at the surplus store) and possibly some various straps and what not used by pilots to keep them buckled in nice and good.

Now it’s time to figure out what to do on Friday night.

Weird. I woke up this morning and looked out my window and everything was a farily dark yellow. Everything had a brownish tone. Turns out there’s a massive fire down in Rancho Cucomonga, that’s about an hour south of where I live in North Hollywood, and the smoke has been wafting north. Apparently in Hollywood it’s even much more yellow based on what a friend is telling me and radio news reports.

It’s kind of cool. The constant SoCal blue skies get boring. I can’t even remember when it rained last. Oh, and it’s October 24th and most people are still wearing shorts. It’s been hitting 90 degrees outside.

SoCal has ridiculously good weather.

So, I was bored and made some wallpaper from one of the pictures I took at Knotts Scary Farm. I messed with the colors a bit, darkeing the blacks and making the colors pop. I thought it turned out nice enough that I’d share. Enjoy!

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Well, it seems Windows users as a whole love the iTunes. I wrote earlier today about my adoption of the software. Well, the Windows version of iTunes has helped sell over 1 million singles through Apple’s Music Store in less than five days according to Forbes. It took seven days for Mac users to hit the 1 million mark.

FUCK the RIAA and their bull shit lawsuits that don’t even put a bandage on the problem. Consider this, the RIAA sues users who share more than 1000 files. That’s 200 people sued so far, and another 200 people have been warned. If each of those people shared on average 1500 songs, that’s 600,000 files if you were to believe each one of those shared files was a unique song, which they aren’t. 600,000 files. Big fucking deal when you consider there are still another 50 - 100 Million or so music files being shared on Kazaa this instant and more people sharing every day (sure, some have stopped, but others now feel empowered and share numbers that won’t show up on the RIAA’s radar). Currently Kazaa says there are over 705 Million files being shared. If just one-tenth of those files are music files (you can share more than just music files on Kazaa) then the RIAA’s battle with file sharers is clearly not working.

Wow, that was a tangetial rant now wasn’t it?

Just posted images from Friday night’s expedition to Knott’s Scary Farm to the gallery. Check them out to learn why you should fear corn, enjoy the psychedelic photos from the various black light mazes and other good times stuff. Some of the black-light room photos turned out excellent.

In attendance were Kimmy, Jacob, Shane, Penny, Dave, Tracy, Emiliano and myself. And we constantly kept loosing each other inside the park.

I’ve been an iPod owner for about a year now. I’ve got one of the “old style” moving wheel iPod’s and take it with me everywhere. It saved my ass big time during my trip to England earlier this year. An 11 hour flight without it would have made me just slightly suicidal.

I’m a PC user, so I have the iPod for Windows. Originally the iPod for Windows users was shipped with software called MusicMatch, which you use to move files from your computer to your iPod and to manage your collection of music. Well, MusicMatch sucked. It has from day one. Bulky and clumsy, I used it only as a utility to move files onto my iPod. The management tool sucked. But I dealt with it.

Last week Apple released their excellent iTunes software for the PC. From what I recall they originally said they wouldn’t be developing iTunes for the PC as Apple wasn’t in the business of developing PC software, understandably. But, it appears they realized how badly Windows users wanted better software. I’m sure sales of their iPod for the Windows platform also pointed out how they were missing out on potential sales for their much talked about music store where you can buy popular music for $.99 cents a song.

As soon as I heard I downloaded the software and installed it. It’s ten times better than the ass-smegma that is MusicMatch. Far better user interface and it makes managing your collection of music much easier. The ability to change the ID3 tags of your MP3 files is so much easier here than with either WinAmp, my previous MP3 player of choice, and MusicMatch. Creating playlists is also much easier. The program rocks.

My next test was to try out their Music Store and buy some tunes. I keyed in on the song “Knowledge of Self” by BT. I registered and within seconds I had the song, but that was where I experienced my first bump. I couldn’t get it onto my iPod! DAMMIT! PIECE OF SHIT PIECE OF CRAP FUCK THING! Okay, not that big a deal. I soon realized that the file format was AAC, not MP3, and the firmware installed on my iPod didn’t support AAC. I checked the Apple Web site and found there was an update available that would enable AAC support. I downloaded the update, ran it and voila, my iPod now played the music I just paid $.99 cents for.

The iPod has become a major part of my daily life. I have a six-disc CD changer in my car I rarely, if ever, use. I take my iPod with me when I’m going out, plug it into the cassette adapter for my stereo and get to choose from the almost 700 songs I currently have in my iPod. I’m not limited to the 74 minutes per CD and can add new songs daily with ease. The iPod has become the soundtrack to my life. Now with iTunes, it’s that much more of a pleasure to use.

If you’re a Windows user with an iPod, go download the software. It’s a must.