real alternative; poetry

January 4, 2005 &bull technology

I came across this little app called Real Alternative that is, as the name implies, an alternative to the crappy Real player. I installed it on my laptop and watched this Moby interview with it — it worked really well. And I thought all the extra icons, advertisements, and nagging upgrade messages were required to watch Real video clips. Guess not.

One of the books I’m reading is Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins. There’s some pretty good poems in it; as a consequence, Collins is quickly becoming one of my favorite poets. I guess he’s considered to be pretty “plain-spoken,” writing about everyday things with everyday language. That’s my favorite kind of poetry. I’m definitely not big on flowery language, rhyming, or any of the other stuff that filled my high school English books. (It’s so unfortunate that better poetry isn’t taught in school — or at least it wasn’t taught where I went to school. Perhaps that’s why so many people hold poetry in such low esteem.)

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