So I bought a new 12" Powerbook about a week ago. My old powerbook had totally died due to a video chipset issue. Aside from the video, the machine works fine, so I may have to do something funky with it. Back to the new Powerbook, I thought that I would feel like the 12" would be too small, but I didn’t want to spend the money for the 17" and buying another somewhat outdated 15" seemed silly. I was wrong though, I don’t feel like it is too small screen wise for my use of it. The fact that it is so small makes it easier to carry around, and I’m really enjoying it.
Today is my Mom’s birthday too, Happy Birthday Mom. I could write pages here about everything that you have done for me, the support you’ve given me when I’ve needed it , and the impact that you’ve had on me as a person.
I went to Nathan’s 30th birthday party last night. Lots of folks there that I hadn’t seen in a while, and a bunch of Atlanta blog types that I wish I got to see more often. It’s funny that you can live less than a mile from someone and still only see them once or twice a year. I’m going to have to resolve to have some get togethers so that I can remedy the situation, and maybe that will force me to accelerate the work that needs to be done on my house.
FeedDemon is an as yet unreleased Windows desktop RSS reader/organizer from Nick Bradbury. (Homesite, Topstyle)
Gizmodo reviews the Martian Netdrive
I find it very interesting that, in one of Apple’s spots for the iTunes Music Store, Bono mentions a Clash song. Robert then realizes that there are a couple of classic Clash albums he wouldn’t mind having again, and logs into the store when he gets back to net land. Aghast, he discovers that, whole almost all of the Clash’s albums are listed, exactly none of them are available in their entirety for purchase. For my money, all lot of the context that makes these works as great as they are is in listening to the record/CD/music as a whole work.
I hate to admit it on a couple of different levels, but I have to agree with Sunil. What did it for me wasn’t the Today Show or MTV, but the Heineken ad with a woman dressed as Trinity playing cocktail waitress. I’m still planning on seeing the movie opening day, but with a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
Good for EA for recognizing the strategic importance of owning the online real estate for gaming and not conceding it to the MSFT Xbox machine. On the other hand, this makes the decision about which console to buy for online gaming that much more difficult.
Figured I’d post this before it gets overexposed… Ok…you have to watch this..
I have gone into turbo-Matrix fan mode the last few days, reading articles and taking my copy of The Art of the Matrix out and re-reading parts of it. I have also picked up copies of Taking the Red Pill and The Matrix and Philosophy, both of which look very promising.
Another troubling observation about the new iTunes and the music store, but one that I had already made. I was also surprised that this particular limitation existed in there. The other thing I am concerned about now is the timeliness with which they will be putting up their new releases. I expect to be able to buy them on the Tuesday that they are released on, not to have to wait any extra time. It looked as if the new Jack Johnson was scheduled to be available a week prior to its release elsewhere, but that hasn’t actually happened, which is dissapointing. I think it would point out how popular this method of release could be.
So what have you bought from the iTunes Music Store so far? I’ve bought five songs and one full album.
This knowledge base article denotes the differences between iPod software 2.0, which comes with the new iPods that start to appear in consumers hands tomorrow, and iPod software 1.3, which is the update they just released for the first and second generation iPods so that they could play the new AAC file format that the iTunes music store employs. This information, to me, is disturbing, and not just because I own a second generation iPod that is less than six months old. I would hope that Apple is not so short sighted that the new iPods are can’t use the same code for a simple alarm clock. It pisses me off because the 20Gb iPod wasn’t a small purchase for me, and I would expect them to continue to update the OS and firmware within a reasonable set of parameters. I can only surmise that this is another case of Apple being greedy because they did the absolute minimum for existing iPod owners. That refrain, for me at least, is getting more and more tiresome as time goes on. I’m at the crossroads, and I need to buy a new machine in the next couple of months, and I have to say that this stuff will factor into my decision.
Damn, iTunes 4 is the jam. We’re listening to each other’s music over the LAN here, I’m checking out what’s on the online store, although they seem to be overloaded and about every other request is actually getting through. Leave it to Apple to find a way to do this right.
Oh, I found a way to get my laptop working again. Oddly, it works fine without a CD in the slot loading drive. Good thing I have an external CD-R.
So it’s official. I will be without a Mac OS machine for the foreseeable future. I don’t see much point in replacing the motherboard on the two year old TiBook when it will cost nearly as much as replacing the machine altogether. I have a Sony Windows XP laptop that I will have to make due with in the interim, and I hope to be able to afford a new Mac in the next few weeks at some point. It’s really a shame that they soldered the video chipset onto the mobo like they did, it makes something that should be a couple of hundred dollar part, at the most, a critical point of failure for the entire machine. The only saving grace is that I have been using the Windows laptop for work extensively the last few months, and that I lost no data from the TiBook, which is essentially an external firewire drive now. I think that I will be purchasing a 17 inch Powerbook when I do replace it. Despite it’s largish size, I think it is a much better fit for me than the 12 inch, I use my laptop primarily as a desktop replacement, rarely on my lap, or on planes. I’m not really travelling for work at all. There is a part of me that got burned with the first generation TiBook, its crappy slot loading drive, low video memory, and lack of an internal cd burner, that wants me to wait for the second generation 17 inch before making a purchase. The difficulty with that is that there is really no way to tell when that will be released. I don’t want to wait for MacWorld this summer, or even until WWDC, for another Powerbook. If you have the scoop on this, I’d love to hear about it.
I finally got around to reading JJG’s The Elements of User Experience last night. It makes for a quick read, and I think I polished it off in about an hour or so. I’m not sure why I put off reading it for as long as I did now, it made for great mental fuel for some things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in terms of project planning and what should drive each part of the development and design process. I think that I already conduct projects where I have the ability to dictate process in a very similar manner to the one he suggests in the book, but it was interesting to see the way in which he presented the material, and to see what distinctions he drew in defining his process and the various components of it. I believe that most Web professionals I have worked with over the last couple of years know that there is a right way to do these things, and have a decent idea of what that right way might be, but I find that most resign themselves to not being able to actually conduct business in that manner because of clients and other factors. I’m not one to resign myself in this way, and it bothers me that people just give up on doing things the right way because it has either always been done another, less effective, way or because they are too tired to fight for the right way. It just seems so obvious to me that approaching these things in a methodological manner yields better results, and my anecdotal experience mirrors this.
Arrrghhh. My TiBook just decided that it doesn’t feel like doing the video thing anymore. That is to say something is wrong with its video chipset, it makes nice psychedelic patterns on the screen, but refuses to actually work. Well sometimes it works for about two minutes after I reboot the machine, but then it decides to go flaky again. The machine is two years old now, and out of warranty, I know should have bought Applecare. Well, I didn’t. So now what? The video chipset on the first generation TiBooks is soldered onto the mobo.
You can listen to the soundtrack to Matrix Reloaded online.
I’ve become a big fan of Jack Johnson over the last year or so. His new CD is due for release May 6th. Even better, he’s selling the CD as MP3’s starting April 28th. It warms my heart that the independent labels are testing these waters, and actually giving the buyer some benefits in the process. It’s got to be scary for them to be doing it.
So I’ve been tracking the press reaction to Hayley and to Mr. Personality in general. Not that I am a big fan of shows like this one, far from it, but it’s somewhat interesting to see how the makers of the show frame the personality of the main character, knowing a little of her personality myself. There’s been a mix of reactions, most of them not terribly insightful. Of course the most interesting ones are the negative ones. For instance, it seems our friend over at Slate would like to see more Monica and less Hayley, which is weird because I find Hayley to be anything but “forgettable” and “fatuous,” but I’d had enough of bland old Monica years ago. Had to stick that SAT word in there to up your literary cred, didn’t you? I found it interesting that on the show they had her sit down with the contestants and astrologers because she seemed to be very interested in that particular thing the night we all hung out. We all went around and revealed what sign we were, and talked about what signs were compatible with each other. I wonder if that was previously scripted into the show or if they built that from her interests. Ratings were pretty strong. I think the best overview of the first episode is this one from Zap2It.
New Hulk Trailer looks great. I guess I should have expected no less from Ang Lee. It seems like some folks, who might be less familiar with The Hulk comics, and more familiar with The Hulk television series, are having a hard time understanding that this movie is more accurate to the original comics, from the looks of things, than their Lou Ferrigno version. I find this amusing, when people say it looks fake and that the Hulk is not strong enough to say, for instance, throw a tank. It’s difficult to disagree with these folks without sounding like a complete comic nerd. When I say, for instance, that The Hulk is the strongest character in the Marvel universe, I usually get nothing but snickers. I guess I will have to come to grips that there is a comic nerd within me.
Weird stuff happening here in Atlanta. You know that show, Mr. Personality? Well it turns out that the woman asking the questions is someone that my group of friends and I have met and hung out with a couple of times. Mark and Adam already went to great lengths to describe the situation, so I’ll link to them and leave it at that. I actually have a bunch of pictures of Hayley hanging out with my guys too, but I can’t post them from here.