Penny Arcade interviews Blizzard about World of Warcraft. The game has been successful at an astounding clip, and I think you have to try it to really understand why. It’s like no other game that I have ever played in terms of depth, richness, and sheer size. Despite all the press that the problems are gigantic, I have really not run into too many issues on the server I play on. (Bloodhoof) It’s only a matter of time before the issues of scale are solved, and those issues seem to be caused by the fact that they have sold the game at more than twice the upper threshold they expected. All I know is that I have really enjoyed it so far, and that the features they are planning on adding are exciting.
I should have mentioned it yesterday, iLife 2005 doesn’t come pre-installed on the Mac Mini, they, instead included the commercial install disk, I’m guessing because it wasn’t Gold Master when the Mac Mini software disk went Gold Master. Deconstructing Mini takes a look at the Mac Mini on the inside. MacWorld also has a dedicated Mac Mini mini-portal. I posted a Flickr Picture of the line at the Atlanta Apple Store before opening on Saturday. Although not specifically Mac Mini related, Derrick Story has a tips piece on upgrading to iPhoto 2005. It uses a different library and thumbnail format, and so upgrading can take a while if you have a lot of images. I did it last night though, and it only took 8 minutes to do all 7800 pictures in my library on my Mac Mini. I like the UI tweaking that was done on the new version of iPhoto, although it was a little confusing at first to re-orient myself to reorganized menus. Smash is torrenting the PDF version of the Mac Mini technical documentation.
Macintouch also has a pretty in-depth page running on nothing but Mac Mini review and news content.
Our Atlanta Falcons didn’t fare so well against a well coached Philadelphia squad today. Hats off to Philly, and their fans, who have waited long enough for this moment. The game wasn’t filled with huge plays, the Eagles out performed the Falcons on almost every level. The Falcons defense played a great game, but the offense seemed out of kilter throughout the game. If nothing else, this game was an excellent demonstration of the type of quarterback that Michael Vick could become with good maturation in Donovan McNabb. He played a fantastic game, ran when he had to, passed well, and made good decisions. Mr. Vick was harried by the Eagles defense throughout the game, and never really got it going. For next year, I would like to see more wide receiver talent here in Atlanta, as I think that would make a big difference. Right now, the Pats are dominating the Steelers, so the dream of an all Pennsylvania Super Bowl is unlikely.
This post is the first from my new Mac mini. I went to the Apple Store yesterday morning, and picked one up, the 1.42 GHz version. I was very busy with other things yesterday, but set it up in my home office this morning. Everything was pretty seamless, with the set-up wizard copying my documents, settings, and applications over from my Powerbook, which has been my only Mac OS X machine for quite a while. (My last desktop machine from Apple was a Blue and White tower.) The Mini has a nice footprint on my desk, and has all the horsepower I need to do the various things I will do on it. I have it hooked up to an Apple 20" Cinema Display, a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, and the Microsoft Intellimouse that is by far my favorite mouse of them all. All of these items were already on my desk, and I used to hook them up to the Powerbook every night, now I will leave them hooked to the Mini.
Since purchasing the new camera in December, I had been planning on buying another machine to house the many photos I was taking with it and to use as my Photoshop workstation. On my trip to Maui alone, I took over 2700 pictures. It was clear to me after that trip, and the holidays, that another machine with a big firewire drive hooked up to it would make the most sense for attempting to manage things.
I was actually the first person in line at the Atlanta Apple Store. By the time the store opened at 9 a.m., there were about 40 of us in line. Unfortunately, the Apple Store was not selling the iPod Shuffle and Mac mini on a first come, first served basis, and I know that this was a huge dissapointment for some of the people in line. They had no iPod Shuffles to sell to folks who were there, as all of them were allocated to people who signed up for a waiting list, which no one had told yours truly about when I stopped by the previous weekend. The folks at the Apple Store were very helpful though, and went out of their way to make sure that I got the RAM upgrade I wanted. The Lenox store here in Atlanta was more busy than I had ever seen it. If you want an Airport Extreme or Bluetooth enabled Mac Mini, you will have to order it through the online Apple Store, as those upgrades are not available at the retail locations. Personally, I think that is a big oversight considering how most people plan on using their Mini's.
The Mac Mini is impressively small and well designed. The footprint is slightly larger than a standard CD case, and it's as tall as a stack of five CD's. The ports in the back are laid out well, although I wonder why they bothered to include the modem in the device at all. As far as performance goes, all I have are my anecdotal observations, but it seems slightly faster than my 1.25 GHz Aluminum Powerbook. The transfer of my 57 Gb of data from my Powerbook using target disk mode took less than an hour. Overall, I'm quite happy with the purchase.
If you care, I apologize for the dearth of posts over the last couple of months. It started when I went to Hawaii, which was a great experience in every possible way, and carried through the holidays into the New Year. For whatever reason, I just haven’t been feeling like spending a lot of time in front of the computer. In the New Year, I have been concentrating on getting some things in order, and watching football, and playing some World of Warcraft. Posting will resume now. Lots to catch up on, new camera that I have been spending a lot of time using, somewhat of a revised outlook on life, and a lot of optimism about my future as a person. Corners have been turned here in Atlanta, some of which are long overdue.
The Atlanta Falcons handed the St. Louis Rams an ass whooping last night. All I can say is that, in the years I have lived here in Atlanta, I have never, ever, seen so many people so enthusiastic about the Falcons. Last night, we had to go to a second sports bar to find a table, and we were lucky to even get a table at the second bar. The Falcons franchise, and Arthur Blank, the owner, deserve a ton of credit. Blank has made the right decisions at the right time over the last couple of years, and didn’t make rash decisions when originally purchasing the team. His patience is now paying off. For a town that is really a football town, we have at least a couple of years of this level of success to look froward to. Go Falcons!!
I don't normally do these things, but I liked this one.
Here are the instructions:
Open up the music player on your computer.
Set it to play your entire music collection.
Hit the "shuffle" command.
Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.
Here's my list:
Love In War - Andre 3000 (Speakerboxx)
Dangerous Type - The Cars (Greatest Hits)
Everybody's Fool - Evanescence (Fallen)
Pastoral - Faithless (No Roots)
Things Could Be Better - Ernie and the Top Notes (Peanut Butter Wolf's Jukebox 45's)
Bateau Irve - Charlie Hunter Quintet (Right Now Move)
Battle of the Species - Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra (Turntables on the Hudson)
The Nipple-Gong - Macha (See It Another Way)
Diamonds on the Inside - Ben Harper (Diamonds on the Inside)
The Last Dance - Frank Sinatra
(Those are out of a grand total of 5270 songs in my library.)
As we approach the end of the year, I thought it would be fun to share the top 20 keywords that brought visitors to my site from search engines in 2004. Without further explanation, here they are:
Apple is running a one day sale at their retail stores and online. All the iPods are marked down, as is the Airport Express, the new iMacs, .Mac, and a bunch of other stuff. I was going to go get a copy of World of Warcraft anyway… Update: I went up and the Apple Store was crazy crazy busy. In fact, the mall, no surprise, was about as crazy as it gets. I don’t understand the mentality that says today is the day to do your Christmas shopping. I guess the sales are good, but retail is more expensive than online anyway, so if you are looking for the best price, wouldn’t it make sense to stay away from the mall anyway? Picked up my copy of World of Warcraft. It was the last one at the game store, much to the disappointment of two people behind me in line. It also takes up a whopping 4 gb of hard drive space, so I have some drive cleaning to do before I can even install it. I wish that laptop drives were keeping pace with desktop ones.
This never gets old for me, maybe because I was there, and took the pictures. Maybe because I know the person involved well. Perhaps I should move it over to Flickr. IFellInAHole
It’s been a relatively fruitful year for music in my opinion. I’m going to talk about these cd’s/mp3’s/records/albums in no partcular order, so please don’t assign value to the order they are written in. I will be doing a top ten of the year in the next week or two.
Elliott Smith's From a Basement on the Hill, the record he was working on at the time of his apparent suicide, is more of the same sweet melancholy the Elliot Smith fanbase has come to expect and adore. It's one of those albums that I can go back and listen to on a regular basis. He wrote great songs, and this album is no exception.
Neko Case is about to explode. Of course I don't mean literally, but I have this feeling about her that I've had about other artists in the past who have gone from independent adulation to widespread popularity. No woman in music today has a more moving, powerful voice than she does, and I honestly don't say that lightly at all. My iTunes playcount on her newest effort, The Tigers Have Spoken, seems to average out to about twice a day since I purchased the album, which is an almost unheard of pace for me. I think, for those of you who aren't the biggest roots, torch and twang, or country fans in the world, you will find that this album is the most accessible in her current catalog. (New Pornographers excluded there.) The mix of studio work and live songs on this record seem to flow seamlessly, as do the mixture of covers and originals. Interestingly, this record is from the same label as the Elliot Smith one above, leading me to think that Anti, a sub-label of Epitaph, the Bad Religon label, has at least one person with very good taste manning the helm. Regardless, I am looking forward to Neko's forthcoming full length.
Last weekend, I went to see Helmet on their most recent tour. Well, it's not Helment so much anymore than it is Page Hamilton and a bunch of guys from other acts. Helmet was good, but that's not the point. A band from Oakland named Totimoshi opened up. They initially got my attention because the bassist, Meg Castellanos, is very attractve in a "I rock out and don't take bs from anyone" kind of way. (That's just a characterization, I did not actually get a chance to talk to her.) I know that's a shallow thing, but that's how the story goes. Anyway, they were phenomenal, great stage presence, great musicianship, and solid songs. I bought their most recent CD, Monoli, at the show, and ripped it the next day. They draw from a wide variety of sounds. The bands that belong in that list, in my opinion, include Nirvana, The Melvins, The Pixies, and Neurosis, in no particular order. They promised me they would be coming back to Atlanta to play again in the near future, and I am holding them to that promise.
When I went to New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, and asked people to give me suggestions, I got a ton from Scotty. One of them was "Check to see if the Morning 40 Federation is playing anywhere in town while you are there. I guarantee their shows." He is absolutely right. I brought a small group of fellow conference goers on Halloween to see them. They are difficult to describe musically, a party band with bawdy lyrics, a rocking blues band with attitude, a quirky band with odd song topics and lyrics, and perhaps the most fun band I have seen live in the last four years. I purchased their eponymous CD at the show, and am listening to it at this very moment. Their fun translates to the CD well, is mixed well, and is worth the purchase. Regardless of the CD, if you have a chance, go see them, I now am willing to guarantee their shows like Scotty.
Where have I been, you might ask. Not a bad question to ask, from my perspective. Right now, I am working on the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. I am in rainy cold Atlanta, not in Hawaii, working off the satellite feeds and the Internet to get information and get the information up onto the Web for the sports consumer. In the time since I last posted, I have been sick (still slightly), given Halo2 a good Bump style ass kicking, won a fantasy football game, and worked a bunch. Things that I should be doing, and am not, include reading and taking pictures.
Bump.net is over seven years old now. Thanks for reading. I'm very thankful that I have been able to continue a single project for this long. Of course, those thanks pale in comparison to how thankful I am for everything else in my life, especially my family. Have a great Turkey Day everyone.
Luxo points to a Sarah Vowell Interview. I had no idea that she was the voice of one of the characters, Violet, in the Incredibles, she is currently one of my favorite authors. Seems an incredibly odd combination to me, but it obviously works.
Policy Research: “Did Clinton ‘Gut’ the Military?” Interesting to see common perceptions, reinforced by years of political campaigning and media spin, combatted with black and white facts. I did similar research this summer, when hanging out with someone on a sporadic basis who said this same thing on a regular basis when I was with her. Truth of the matter, when looking at actual budget numbers, is that Democrats don’t necessarily spend less, or have less of a committment to defense spending, than Republicans. Having said that, this is not the issue I usually have with the Democrats, it’s fiscal responsibility. Oddly, they have turned the tables on that as well in recent years.
The True Story of Audion. Panic has decided to retire Audion, a great little music player, which had much similarity to a version of WinAMP for the Mac OS, for those of you unfamiliar with it. This article is a great behind the scenes look at independent software development in the Mac OS market. It is also an interesting look into this particular market segment, and the things that happened behind the scenes. Apple wanted to buy Audion at least twice, and AOL also tried at one point. Finally, this article reveals something that those of us using their software already knew, that the guys at Panic are truly great guys, and that they do what they do for all the right reasons. If you are a Mac user, they are offering Audion as a free download. I own a license, bought before the iTunes Music Store, and I haven’t had the app installed on my machine in a while.
So Atlanta’s favorite Yankee was named Yankees' bench coach today. Mel and the Don are back too. Now the question is, who will the Yankees purchase this offseason for them to coach? Unquestionably, the Boss has to be a wee bit angry that the Red Sox sold their soul to the Dark Side of spend too, with much success. We don’t want a guy who refers to a baseball team as his daddy, I know that for certain. Even if he hangs out under a mango tree sometimes.
The big news in the iPod market today? You can, get this, order the much anticipated iPod Socks from the Apple Store. Please people, get some kind of grip, any kind, and then move on. Seriously, please….get grip.
I should mention that I am way behind in posting, and that there are a bunch of things I wanted to get up here in relation to the Macromedia conference, but haven’t had time to export from my brain. As far as today’s news, aside from the good news about GMail POP access reported by Mr. Hammersley and the hilarious “Thumb Drive”, the ever delightful matt pond PA are playing at the Echo Lounge here in Atlanta tonight.
Friends of the Beltline are having a fundraising event next weekend with food and a live band. I’m planning on going, drop me a line if you want to tag along.
So, I arrived in New Orleans (nola) this afternoon. Everything so far has been a little bit off kilter. First, my room wasn’t ready and I had to wait in the Executive Lounge for an hour before they had my room ready. Instead of a non-smoking room, which is what I asked for, I got a smoking room with the ash trays removed. This place smells awful. There is an Everquest Convention going on in the hotel I am making my temporary home. As a result, there are some odd looking folks, even odder than your normal computer convention crew, wandering the halls. In addition, the hotel’s in-room Internet service is being rendered downright unusable. I can only surmise that the bandwidth is being sucked up with hundreds of Everquest sessions going on, but doing anything even slightly Broadbandish is brutally slow. The result will be that any picture posting may have to wait until either their convention ends, or I can get to a faster, less logjammed connection.
