pres.umptuo.us

The official release of the Apple iPhone has been confirmed for June 29th. Apple has put out three TV ads that will be running to help promote the new phone.

I have to admit, even these TV ads are making me want one. Despite the fact that I have a cellphone that must be three years old and doesn’t have a camera (yes, it’s that old), I’m still very happy with the phone because it does everything I need it to do. But the interface of the iPhone looks so intuitive and fun to use, plus my iPod is dead and I could certainly go for a new one. There’s a 99% chance I won’t be getting this iPhone on launch, but I could definitely see myself with a pared-down version in the future.

This is where things get tricky though, because as much as I want Apple to succeed with the iPhone, I remain rather skeptical about just how well it will do. I don’t doubt any of its functionality or pure awesomeness, but rather the fact that it seems like it’s aimed at the treo/sidekick market, especially with its $500 starting price.

I don’t know many people who are willing to abandon their contracts and hop onto a two-year contract with AT&T all for a shiny new phone. Don’t start calling me an iPhone hater though, just an iPhone skeptic. Besides, my investment is riding on consumers defying my logic and snatching those bad boys up.

My views on consumerism and the value of money have changed so much that I didn’t even bother blogging when the Apple iPhone was released. Things like gadgets and cars that I used to drool over no longer matter to me as much as they used to. Granted I’ve still had many discussions with friends about the iPhone and its impact on the cell phone industry, but it’s not a product I’m going to be owning myself for at least a couple of years.

My point is that a lot of my interests are no longer all that blogworthy, and the rising popularity of community link sites such as Digg and Reddit have rendered a lot of my quickies redundant. So let’s see what’s been going on in my interesting life.

My roommate bought a munchkin cat and he’s both cute and annoying at the same time. Annoying cause he loves biting feet and apparently when I fight with the cat it looks like a big kid trying to discipline another kid. It’s not my fault that he likes drinking my herb tea and getting his head stuck in my chair and unrolling the toilet paper.

I’ve been on track with my reading resolution. So far this year I’ve read:

• Gould’s Book of Fish
• Being Dead
• Life of Pi
• The Things They Carried

I’m currently reading “Fortress of Solitude,” although it’s a heftier book, so we’ll see if I can stay on track and still finish two books this month. No one asked for reviews, but I’ll give ‘em anyway. Gould’s Book of Fish: eh. Being Dead: eh. Life of Pi: Alright. The Things They Carried: Highly recommended.

300 comes out in theaters this Friday. It’s the first movie I’ve been really interested in for a long while. I’ve got tickets for the Friday Imax viewing, and it’ll be all the better for the sweet CG renders. I’ll be disappointed if I don’t come out of the theater shouting “SPARTA!”

After sampling Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3, neither of them can stack up against Company of Heroes in the RTS realm. Granted I’ve heard multiplayer is a vastly different experience for both games, but from the single-player demos I tried, they didn’t even come close. Both games had essentially the same strategy of building up a giant force and then sending them out to crush the other side. CoH has the constant back-and-forth of holding key territory and choosing the right upgrade at the right time. I’d like to hear what the really good CoH players think of Supreme Commander and C&C3.

My health benefits kicked in as soon as I started my new (old) job, and a regular check-up for me was in order. I can’t say I was too surprised to hear my cholesterol is a little high, although a bit scary for sure. I’ve been on a “lazy” diet ever since, consisting mostly of Subway and Souplantation and lots of fruit every day. I still indulge myself every once in a while, but always in moderation. I go back to the doctor’s in about a week to see how my month-long diet has been helping.

I started watching Battlestar Galactica. The first season was a bit slow but still interesting, but then they ended it on an amazing cliffhanger. The first episodes of season 2 were just amazing with the story development and several main characters in peril, and of course season 2 ended with another great cliffhanger. Now I need to download season 3 and try to catch up with the regular network airings.

Dwight: Do you ever watch Battlestar Galactica?
Guy: No.
Dwight: No? Then you are an idiot.

• My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots. I love my three year-old ghetto Nokia.

  Tuesday March 6, 2007

• Horseshoes and Hand Grenades: Joel Johnson Returns…to Spank Us All for Supporting Crap. He is dead on about gadgets. I realized that I completely skip over my gadget feeds these days.

  Thursday February 15, 2007

• HP Cameras Slimming Feature. Thank god they came out with this feature. Those fatties they used in their demo were way chub.

  Tuesday September 19, 2006

Me and seven of my friends got jaywalking tickets in Old Town Pasadena, at that weird intersection right in front of Buca de Beppo where there’s that big sign saying “Do not cross here.” Instead of paying a bail fee of $114, they should give us the option of attending walking school, with the curriculum consisting of “Walk only where the government allows you to walk.”

My friends made me dance like a fool and get my ass spanked at Hooters for my birthday. Then they all gave me a DS Lite and I was kinda sad cause friends are awesome and they shouldn’t have. I still haven’t seen any photos or videos from the night, so I imagine they’re editing them together to make a “greatest hits” compilation which will probably make its debut in Youtube.

I’m finally getting around to finishing the Firefly DVD Set. Such great TV, and yet watching the show only causes great anger at Fox for canceling it. Bastards.

No super wide-screen video iPod like I was hoping. The new Nanos look just like the old minis now with their aluminum casing and look rather blah compared to the first gen Nanos. New shuffle design is pretty sweet though. For anyone who’s interested, Apple’s selling refurbished first-gen 2GB Nanos for $99.

The Nintendo Wii has a release date of November 19 and a price of $249. I want.

With the announcement of Apple’s “Showtime” event on September 12th, followed with the release of the 24″ iMac and upgraded Mac Mini last week, rumors flying about what sort of announcement could be so big to warrant the iMac being dropped so unceremoniously. Consider this the “what the hell is Apple announcing on Tuesday” thread.

My guess:

• Upgraded iPod nanos with increased size and metal enclosure
• iTunes movie store with movies at (hopefully) $5 a pop
• Some media center thingy for playing your iTunes purchases
• New video iPod

Let’s not forget Nintendo’s Wii presentation on the 14th, which will hopefully announce the price of the Wii and release date. Hooray for gadget week.

• Alarm clock that won’t give up. If this guy makes millions off my idea while I’m still writing CSS, I’m gonna cry.

  Tuesday May 30, 2006

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to sell my (very lightly) used PowerBook and trade up to the new MacBook.

At first I thought it might be to my advantage to keep a slow machine, because then it might force me to use it for only writing (which it hasn’t). But at a cost of only $300-400, I could upgrade to a new machine that is far better than my current one.

So the auction is listed on eBay and ends this Sunday, and I’m just here shamelessly trying to promote the auction. If anyone’s interested in just outright buying it, I’m open to offers.

I’m also selling this wonderful Cryptex I won through the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google. It’s actually a nice piece and of much higher quality than I expected, but not something I imagine myself wanting in the future, so I figure I might as well sell it now while the market’s high. Again, if anyone’s interested just drop me a line.

And thus ends my shameless promotion. Next time I’ll be posting my Amazon wishlist on here and promising topless photos for anyone who buys me something on my list =P

• MacBook. I can’t believe they’re asking $200 more for the black.

  Tuesday May 16, 2006

• Back to the Future Delorean Flux Capacitor. Better make sure you got the 1.21 gigawatts to power it.

  Friday May 5, 2006

• Incredible Machine. Yoinked from Ken, these Rube Goldberg contraptions are amazing. The one that starts with the five marbles is my favorite.

  Sunday April 9, 2006

• LED Shirts. Now when I go out I can program it to scroll my phone number. That way the ladies who are too nervous to approach me won’t have to. You know who you are ;-)

  Monday April 3, 2006

During college (and I guess now as well) I had the occasional problem of turning off my alarm clock and going right back to sleep. Of course I tried the method of putting my alarm further away from me so I’d have to get up to turn it off, and it would work for a while, but soon enough I’d just saunter right back and go back to sleep.

I came up with the idea of combining an alarm clock with some sort of game, preferably something reflex-based, and you’d have to play the game to turn off the alarm, guaranteeing that you were awake. Just imagine having to play a game of Simon to shut off the irritating alarm. Foolproof! Nobody would still be sleepy after playing a few rounds of that.

So of course, this morning I find this lovely puzzle alarm clock in my inbox from DailyCandy (Yes, I subscribe to DailyCandy. Bite me.) Oh well. I still think my Simon idea has a leg up on this though, seeing as how the puzzle will always be the same while Simon can be a different game every time. Milton Bradley / Hasbro, we should talk.

Well I’ve been obsessing over the iPod nano all day, I might as well write something about it along with all the other Apple news today.

Continue reading “Nanonanonano…”

Oh Apple, why can’t you just make a regular mouse? The 360-degree scrollwheel I like (although the contact point seems a bit tiny), but what’s with all this touch sensitive stuff? People need feedback when they click. And the giant top of the mouse being one big button doesn’t and never did work.

The first thing people do when they get a Mac is throw away the mouse and buy themselves a better one. Give up on your unusable single-click mouse, Apple.

As my coworker says, next down the line is going to be an Apple keyboard missing the “P” and “R” keys, cause you just don’t need them. Want to type a “P”? Hold down option and press “L”.

I can’t recall ever being this indecisive. Picking a college was a snap. New car? Nothing a day of test driving didn’t solve. Job opportunities ended up being fairly straightforward. Choosing the right laptop though, this has become an ongoing project for nearly a month now.

For a while now I’ve been whining about how sitting at the same desk all the time to write has become rather uninspiring. I’m bound to my computer because I’m more of a typist than I am a writer — thoughts flow out a lot quicker on a keyboard for me, but I admit I have to use the notebook just cause it’ll rack my brain in a different manner. Getting a laptop seemed the obvious answer.

My Needs: A full-size keyboard so I don’t get frustrated with hitting the wrong keys; Decent battery life, at least 3 hours; Lightweight, probably 5 lbs. max; Compact size, anything under 13″ will do; Stylish (Let me indulge myself).

At first I was gunning right for the cheapest and best value - The Dell 700m. A gorgeous 12″ screen, 4.6 lbs, and with the right coupons it could be had for around $1000. But then I found out the keyboard wasn’t full-sized, and after playing with similar keyboards at Fry’s, I knew it was going to bug me at one point or another with all the typing I’d be doing. Add to the fact that the 700m gets lousy battery life on it’s standard battery, requiring an extended battery that sticks out the back of the laptop quite a bit.

Next I found out that Amazon had specials going on with the 12″ Powerbook, bringing the price to $1350 after a $150 mail-in rebate. With no tax and no shipping, $1350 sounded really good for an Apple Powerbook. It had all the features I was looking for, but $1350 was a bit more than I was hoping to spend.

After going through a fiasco involving a Powerbook available for $999 that I missed out on and a dream where the Amazon Powerbook was no longer available for $1350 (It still is until April 26), I vowed I would put the order in. And then I meet the Fujitsu S6231.

Amanda (who incidentally cracked her LCD screen the day after she introduced me to it) brought up the Fujitsu. 13″ LCD (A great compromise between the 12″ and 14″, if only more laptops used a 13″ LCD), full-size keys, and weighing slightly over 4 lbs. with the sweet option of taking out the cd-rom drive to drop the weight down to under 4 lbs. or popping in an extra battery to get a whopping 8 hour battery life out of the laptop. The lowest price I could find was at Newegg at $1299 + tax bringing it to around $1410.

I headed back to Fry’s, this time to check out the Fujitsu and the Powerbook. Both were excellent, but having a little Apple with OS X to play with greatly appealed to me over having another PC which offered nothing new. Powerbook set, I place my order in, and unfortunately they’re backordered and I won’t get it until the middle of May.

The story should end there. It doesn’t, though. Cause I’m indecisive. I took a trip to the Apple store yesterday with Tim and Nathan (after going to Santa Anita to check out the 700m at the closes Dell Retail Kiosk thingy) and scoped out the iBooks and Powerbooks.

I’m now at a standstill between buying the 12″ iBook, upgrading the ram to 768 and installing a bigger and faster hard drive, coming to an estimated total of $1150, a whole $200 less than the Powerbook. Potentially it could be faster than the stock 12″ Powerbook, but the general look, weight and size difference, and extra options of the Powerbook has me swayed.

There’s even more speculation now that the Apple laptops are all a bit outdated with the G4 chip when the G5 laptops should be hitting soon, so a purchase now would most likely be one of the last gen G4 laptops. Perhaps waiting for the G5 laptops would be best and just buying a junker laptop until then?

As you can tell, there’s a lot to ponder here as I’ve been heavily researching laptops for almost a month now.

Now some links for any other people looking into laptops:
NotebookReview.com. The forums are rather handy, although the administrators are all pretty biased towards the Fujitsus (for good reason).
MacNN. Again, check the forums out for any iBook or Powerbook information.
Notebook Forums. The reviews here are good as they’re all user reviewed.

And finally, for any other PC users interested in entering the Mac world, three great articles on switching:
Tao of Mac / How To Switch To The Mac.
AnandTech: A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User’s Perspective.
AnandTech - A Month with a Mac - Part II: The Mobile Experience.

Apple has announced the latest “revision” to their iPod line. Nothing really of note here other than some size upgrades and price drops. The iPod Mini now has a 6GB model, the gold color has been dropped, and apparently the existing colors have been “kicked-up”.The regular iPod stays the same, and the iPod Photo now has a 30GB and a 60GB model.

Not terribly exciting.

I’m just so tired these days that I don’t really feel like blogging too much. Work to 6, get home, eat dinner, and then try to get done…whatever it is I want to try to get done. Usually a lot of senseless computer stuff and watching TV, occasionally some reading which I need to improve on.

That last thing’s kinda bugging me. I really need to get to reading and writing more. I spent something like four hours the other day trying to debug some template I wrote for Photoshop’s Web Gallery feature. I almost wanted to just pick up the LCD in front of me and start bashing it.

Ah, how I had forgotten how much I hate programming. Who wants to change careers? *Raises hand*

On another note, I saw these Sumajin Smartwraps and just went, “OMG, I need to have them cause they’re so nifty!”, and they finally came in the mail today. Pretty nifty if I do say so, a lot smaller than expected and really squishy and fun.

Sony’s supposed ipod-killer, the Network Walkman NW-HD1, has been reviewed, and apparently it’s not quite the ipod-killer it was made out to be. On paper it looks great: Smaller in size and longer battery life. But according to the review, there’s one thing that’s really holding it back: Sony’s horrible interface for the player as well as the software, and Sony’s own music format, ATRAC3.

As further detailed in the review, Sony’s player does not play MP3s. And no, you aren’t allowed to question why. It’s the exact same reason why all of Sony’s digital cameras only use their magic memorystick technology: to lock you into their proprietary licensing.

This is the sole reason why I hate Sony and all of their fancy little gadgets so much. Everyone out there agrees on a universal technology to build off of, but Sony for one reason or another wants to go ahead and make their own, and then push it on their customers just to get more of their money. It’s a ridiculous notion that keeps holding them back from getting a good hold on the market. Look at the PS2: it uses DVD technology and as such has done a real good job. But the Minidisc format on the other hand has almost died out here in America, yet they keep pushing it.

This goes back to why I usually refuse to buy anything Sony, be it their headphones or their VAIO computers (which are really really cool looking, but the fact that they’re Sony drives me away). Apple gave up on this proprietary thing a long time ago and embraced the world; Sony should step up and do the same thing.