Isle Of...

The brilliant new discoveries that I highlight in Isle Of..., I'm sure you know by now, are rarely new to anyone but me. Laughing Cow cheese, for instance, has been delighting palates for ages. This time around I'm featuring something that's no exception:



Isle Of Last.fm. But more specifically, I've recently become addicted to reading the artist biographies on Last.fm.

It's not like I've been a cave-dweller for the years that Last.fm's been chilling on the internet, being awesome. I downloaded the scrobbling software awhile ago, but since I rarely listen to music on my computer (preferring instead to listen to songs on my iPod, which I've always manually updated), I wasn't able to really use it. Recently though, I decided to bite the bullet and begin automatically syncing my iPod. Despite having virtually identical music libraries on the iPod and my computer hard drive, I felt a brief moment of terror as my cursor hovered over the "Sync" button that I knew would erase every last bit of data from the device. Relying so much on technology that's well beyond my control has always been a little scary. But the point is this: I now automatically sync and thus can scrobble properly. Hooray!

As a play-count nerd, this kind of service is very appealing to me. So I've begun listening to more and more music on my computer, and every song that plays brings up a band bio on the Last.fm software. And I just can't stop reading. There's so much I don't know about the bands that I listen to! For instance, how connected they all are-- I'm finding that many of my favorites have toured together, for one thing. One of the members of the Fruit Bats is now a member of the Shins. It's a small indie world, after all.

Of course, there is the slight issue that the bios are wikis, able to be edited by anyone with a Last.fm login and password. I could write slanderous things about Conor Oberst's proclivities for sock-puppet porn (citation needed) if I so desired (I don't... or do I?). But hey, it's worked for Wikipedia all these years. If obsessive internet addicts can't be trusted to tell the truth, who can?

I don't think I know enough that's not purely anecdotal about any bands to edit their bios for real. Sometimes I do go through and edit them for grammar, punctuation and AP style, though. You know how I roll.

One more thing: Now that I've got the scrobbling thing down, my musical habits are visible to the world at large. Just as one need only unalphabetize a book or DVD from my collections to really get me steaming, I feel like I good way to exact revenge on me would be to mess with my Last.fm. Slip my iPod out of my purse when I'm not looking and play all the embarrassing songs so that when I get around to scrobbling, the whole world knows just how many Ashlee Simpson tracks I've accumulated over the years. Just in case, I'll pre-preemptively come clean: it's 17.

Isle Of...

I haven't been kidnapped, loyal readers, I've just moved. I live in a cute house near downtown Decatur now, and the trade-off is that for the time being our internet is primitive and complicated-- meaning, not wireless-- and I've resorted to skulking in local parking lots, stealing wi-fi from unsuspecting businesses. Expect a return to my regular quantity-over-quality blogging post haste.

For now, here's the latest edition of Isle Of:

Isle Of...



The Laughing Cow Creamy Swiss Cheese. Oh my God. My love affair with this cheese began on my flight to Italy in September. Delta's in-flight semi-sustenance included a little tiny package of this stuff with a little tiny packet of crackers. Spreadable cheese, I thought to myself in wonder. What sort of newfangled dairy product will they think of next?

Then I spread a bit on a cracker and entered dairy heaven. This stuff is like frosting; it's just that good. And I ate it like frosting, too, dipping my pinkie finger into the container and making sure every bit of gooey cheesy goodness made it from the crevices of the foil to my eager taste buds. The cow is laughing because he knows his cheese totally dominates.

Isle Of...

The November 2008 issue of Esquire, one of my very favorite magazines (it's not just a boys' club, you see), was subtitled "The Endorsement Issue." In addition to picking a candidate in all 482 races for office in the Nov. 4 election-- a feat in itself-- the magazine's writers and editors wrote short endorsements of such gems as "The Desert," "Expensive Toothpaste" and "Boston Creme Pie," in little blue boxes sprinkled throughout the margins of features and articles.

"Ask yourself, What do I endorse? Not just which political candidates or positions or parties, but what things in your life-- people or practices or works of the imagination-- do you think should be valued and are worthy of your endorsement?" writes Esquire EIC David Granger in his Editor's Letter.

I endorse more things than I oppose, although you'd never know it. We're more apt to complain than to praise. As such, I introduce to you, dear readers, a new feature in which I tell you precisely what I love (or isle of-- but you got that all along, yes?) right this very minute. And I promise that henceforth they'll have shorter introductions.

Isle Of... Poladroid

Poladroid is a free application for Macs (with a Windows version forthcoming) that sits atop your desktop and, in an aesthetically and sonically pleasing manner, converts your ordinary photographs into classic Polaroid images. The application itself takes up very little desktop real estate-- it's just an image of a Polaroid-style camera. Drag and drop your photos onto it, and with a close approximation of the iconic Polaroid sound, it literally spits out a new image-- a brownish-gray square. That's one of the coolest parts. True to Polaroid form, these photos have to "develop." Just sit back and watch the real image fade into clarity. Even more realistic, the final product isn't as clear and crisp as your everyday digital camera pics. Like Polaroids, they have a kind of muted, faded quality to them. Even the cream-colored edges of the pictures are realistic-- look closely and you can see they appear textured.


The application isn't perfect for every image, as you don't have the ability to choose your crop. Vertical photos where the subject isn't concentrated to the center of the frame end up something like this:


Still. It's pretty badass. Even if you are limited to ten photo conversions per launch of the application (modeled on the fact that Polaroid film was ten exposures per cartridge). But maybe, much like the Nintendo Wii asking you, "Why not take a break?" Poladroid is gently urging its users to eschew technology for awhile. After all, isn't a desire for Polaroid-style snapshots really a return to the low-tech? Maybe Poladroid thinks you should go outside for awhile, get some exercise, maybe even practice your real-life photography skills. It will still be there when you get back, waiting to convert ten new photos into pieces of instant nostalgia.