Happy Birthday, REACTOR!

That's right, tens of readers, THE REACTOR is one year old, today. On July 29, 2009, I began reacting to things, and I'm still goin strong (and could go admittedly stronger).
So here's some stats (via Google Analytics) to round out Year One:

Total Visits: 3052
That's less than most minor blogs get in one day. Sad.

Average Time on Site: 1 minute, 1 second
Yup, internet short attention span FTW.

Mac or PC?

I wrote this as an application to be a facebook beta tester. 
The age-old question, indeed. And I'm going be weird when I say: both.
(Disclaimer: I have used both extensively)
The ads are vicious, the fanboys even more so. Macs are easier to use, no, PCs are, but Macs don't get viruses, etc. etc. etc.
It really all depends on what YOU need to use a computer for. Your "philosophy of use," if you will.

Sheepish Grin

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I joined Twitter. Seems like just yesterday/last August that I called it stupid. Ah well.
It turns out it'll probably be pretty useful in promoting my blog and getting info from various news outlets and cool people.
Just chalk it up to a guy named Leo Laporte. He's a tech guru who's on top of the latest trends and all that business. He likes to call it "hand-holding on the information superhighway." And he's super dorky, like me. Anyways, he's talked about Twitter being a sort of finger on the pulse of the web, filtering the staggering terabytes of data that pop up on the internet every second. And since I am a journalist interested in such things, I figured I should probably know the vital signs as much as the next person.
I'll mostly be retweeting (posting something someone else has already posted) and promoting blog posts and my photos on it, but that's okay. That's pretty much what it's for, and what it's evolved into.

Shuffleboard 11

1. "The Departure of Boromir" by Howard Shore from The Fellowship of the Ring
Howard Shore. The man is an enigma to me. He came out of nowhere (for me, at least), wrote hours of outstanding music for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and hasn't written anything close since.
Nevertheless, his music for the epic movies is indeed epic in it's own right.
This track is from the "Complete Recordings" album, which adds even more outstanding music to an already outstanding score. It plays during the fight against the Uruk-Hai near the end of the first movie, playing over Frodo's separation from the Fellowship, and Boromir's heroic last stand to try to save Merry and Pippin.
Shore's sad pieces are heart-rending. Mournful strings, absolutely gorgeous french horn parts, eerie choral parts, and bittersweet oboes make for an earthy-feeling lament that is second-to-none.
Listen to some of it here.