Punishment is not Entertainment
Crysis is a waste of hard drive space.
That is all.
Archive for December, 2007
Why Yes, It’s A Great Relationship
It’s been about five months since the launch of the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ and it’s still humming along in the media. Apple has a “series of commercials”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads where everyday people explain how they use their iPhones. Here’s a list of how I’ve used mine:
# Looked up driving directions to unfamiliar places
# Received the latest traffic reports (with the help of “Twitter”:http://www.twitter.com/)
# Proved myself right or wrong in movie trivia
# Conducted “on the fly” research and purchased a digital camera
# Showed a store representative exactly what type of boots I was looking for
# Received suggested book titles for my reading tastes (with the help of “LibraryThing”:http://www.librarything.com/) while at the bookshop
# Looked up movie times and sent an email with the schedule to a friend
The possibilities of what else I could do is limited by only my imagination. I could use the iPhone for quick visual reminders by snapping photos. I could adhere to a more paperless office routine by using Notes and forwarding them to my work email. I could make better use of lists at “Listingly”:http://www.listingly.com for personal and work to-do’s. I can not only look up movie showtimes, but could purchase tickets too!
Now, many of the things I can do on the iPhone, I could do on another cell phone. However, I’ve never used other smartphones as much as I have made use of the iPhone. It was fun stuff on the day I got it and it remains fun stuff to this day, although I’ve been using less of the Youtube and iPod features than when the iPhone was shiny new.
Addiction
I don’t know what’s the lesser of two evils, MMORPG addiction or Net addiction. I remember the days (actually, nights) that I’d spend hours chatting in IRC, posting on message boards and diddling with some scripting and usually all three at the same time. At least chatting in IRC got me out of the house from time to time as most of the people I used to chat with would hang out together. I remember on quiet nights, I’d fire up a singleplayer game and spend a couple hours on it. But now, for a few years what has gotten my attention is the genre of video games called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.
MMO’s can be scary things. Their main goal is to keep the player ensnared in them. To become a thrall whose main objective is to continue their monthly subscription. I’ve complained about the game mechanics of Final Fantasy XI and how everything you do in that game is a time sink. But in reality, the game in its entirety IS a time sink. Just like every other MMO out there. World of Warcraft is one of few MMORPG games that are friendly and accessible to the casual player; one who only plays for an hour or two a day. Yet that game is also a time sink and seeks to keep you drawn into it to continue paying $15 a month.
Now, I’m not saying playing MMORPG’s is a complete waste of time. I’ve had wonderful memories playing with friends in both Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft. Most of such games require social interaction and you meet and befriend people similiarly to meeting people in a chat room. Except you can do stuff with them while chatting. However, all these people and all these adventures, do they really add up to something worthwhile? I think it depends on how you appreciate it. A large part of me wouldn’t give up the time I spent in Final Fantasy XI. Meeting new friends and playing with them. Hanging out in game and chatting. I wouldn’t give up the time I met like-minded people in World of Warcraft where we’re fantasy writers and weave our characters in storylines. I wouldn’t give up the fun I had.
Was it worth spending all that time in video games instead of continuing to chat with people in IRC (and even meeting/hanging out with them), to maintain a presence in a few online message boards, to continue to involve myself in other peoples’ lives through their blogs? Putting it in that perspective, now I’m not so sure. Yet, if there’s anything I’ve come to learn in life, it’s that nothing is more worthless than wallowing in the past. Reflect on it, learn from past choices, but don’t keep sitting in the dark crying the woes of the here and gone. Realize what’s going on and *do something about it*.
Thinner is Better?
“Rumors abound”:http://www.macrumors.com/2007/12/10/apple-ultra-portable-macbook-rumor-roundup/ about an ultra-portable Macbook coming up. As someone who once had an ultra-portable laptop and a recent convert to Macs, this info is very delicious. But my Macbook Pro isn’t old enough to replace. It works cherry and for something to show me love, I can’t rightly just toss it aside for the next latest and greatest.
Well, not that it hasn’t happened before. But anyway! What makes an Apple ultra-portable so seductive? Besides the, mostly guaranteed, snazzy design and the cool OS X operating system? LED backlit display for one. “Solid State Drive”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drive for another. Vibrant imagery after a near instantaneous boot up. Mmm! Part of the rumors mention there wouldn’t be an internal optical drive, but I doubt that’d be a deal breaker as long as it came with an external drive. The ultra-portable I had was a Sony Vaio, it had an internal DVD drive and an SVGA display. Pretty crisp display and when not doing heavy video (couldn’t play much games on it with the shoddy graphics card), the laptop would run for about 4 hours straight on battery. My current Macbook lasts around 3.5 hours when not doing anything strenuous. I wonder how long the potential upcoming Macbook would last?
So exciting! (although I probably wouldn’t get one when it comes out. Maybe.)
The Future is Now
One of the Sci-Fi “what-if’s” I’ve read had power and internet connections on airplanes. Well, Virgin Atlantic is already offerring power and USB connections and now JetBlue is testing out limited email and instant messaging capabilities. It’s only a matter of time before full internet access is made available. It’s an exciting, albeit also scary, thing for fiction to be made real.
Richard Calder’s Cythera visualized PDA‘s with full color video and music playback in 1998. And only a year before in Idoru (or here for LibraryThing Fans) is there mention of native power and internet access on airplanes (to what I mentioned above).
In Pat Cadigan’s Synners, there’s even the proliferation of television channels and their shows that the word “porn” took on a slightly different meaning. For example, Food Porn is the term for the overload of food shows and channels.
What’s next? Will we have full 3D holographic communication devices? Pleasure bots? Slices of silicon and circuitry that operate as a personal computer terminal, newspaper and diagnostics tool that recharges off of our body heat while attached to us?
The future is now.
Ahh!
Did I ever mention that I love the Hammer? The Hammer is a mass collection of requested tasks that all have a priority 1 setting and all have either the same due date or consecutive due dates. What makes it fun is that these requests are from different departments so they have no idea what the other is requesting.
The Hammer also always happens on a Friday.
Quote Of The Month
_”It’s not like I have no content; I’ve got lots. It’s the initiative to write about them that’s the problem.”_
Renaissance – Visual Pleasure
I recently purchased “Blade Runner (The Final Cut)”:http://bladerunnerthemovie.warnerbros.com/ as the older version I had seems to have disappeared. Along with that, I also got “Renaissance”:http://video.movies.go.com/renaissance/ and I must say that I’m glad I bought it. Everything in the movie was very well done, from the storyline to the animation.
Renaissance is set in Paris in the year 2054. The story revolves around the kidnapping of a gifted researcher by the name of Ilona Tasuiev where the main protagonist, Barthelemy Karas, is an officer of the police taskforce Section K. He is very good at his job and thus is assigned to find Ilona who is an employee of Avalon, a huge company specializing in beauty products. In his quest to find Ilona he meets her sister, Bislane, as well as other figures that were prominent in Ilona’s life. Everyone seems to have a secret to hide. Will Karas find Ilona before it’s too late? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.
And watching it is a visual treat. While the movie is in a black and white style, the characters and environments are digital 3D models. The characters incorporate motion capturing and move realistically. Paris itself is a beauty. To support the population growth in 2054, new homes are built on top of older structures, with glass being a prominent building component for not only visual appeal in the movie but also in a realistic sense to allow sunlight to filter through to the older buildings. Also, Paris has expanded underground too. Obviously, space is a commodity, which is futher reinforced with architecture being built in every available space (like the 71 dance club being built under a bridge). All of this is in beautiful detail in spite of (or in light of?) the movie being in black and white.
Renaissance does well in following the Blade Runner style, while simultaneously making its own distinct mark in the Cyberpunk genre.
From the Pages of Cyberpunk to Your Mobile Phone
_+Note: Received clarification and what I took to be a translation software is actually just a phrase book.+_
Did you ever wish you could have a device like a pair of earclips that could be used for real-time translation? Well, that very device was used in “Idoru”:http://www.amazon.com/Idoru-William-Gibson/dp/0425158640, a book by “William Gibson”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/. While not exactly the same, a new technology in Japan is very near that idea. “NEC”:http://www.nec.com/ has created an “automatic speech translation program”:http://www.nec.co.jp/press/ja/0711/3002.html and “CScout Japan”:http://www.kilian-nakamura.com/blog-english/index.php/nec-automatic-speech-translation-demo/ saw a demo version on a mobile device. While the translation happens in real-time, it does take around 16 seconds for the process to complete.
It’ll only be a matter of time before the translation takes under five seconds and when that happens, who knows, it very well may be on earclips.
We Push Ice. It’s What We Do
In my latest reading binge, I picked up Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds. Set years into the future, mankind has begun to mine comets for ice. Instead of breaking chunks off and dismantling these comets, the miners rig up mass driver equipment to steer the comets back to Earth for processing, hence the term “pushing ice.”
One such mining vessel, called the Rockhopper, and its crew are conducting an operation on a comet when they receive a request to drop what they’re doing and follow the Jupiter moon Janus as it has inexplicably left its orbit and begun an acceleration out of the solar system. Well, the speed and direction of the not-moon is such that the Rockhopper has a very slim window of catching up with it, getting any data from it and returning to Earth. Are they able to do it? Will they discover why Janus has sped out of its orbit and will they find out to whom the not-moon is heading to?
Besides being a pretty involved space drama, the technology in the book is pretty nifty. There are items, like a page of paper, that operates as a computer terminal, diagnostics tool and control panel. It also recharges its batteries off the body heat of its owner. Part organic, they have a limited lifespan but still, they last for quite a while. Pushing Ice is a fun read, although I did have some problems with a couple of characters and their developments. The stress of their job and the possibility of never getting back home may be a strong influential source, I still think some of them changed their attitudes and personalities a little too easily. Still, it’s worth a read and I’ve begun to re-read it again as I’m almost done with Spook Country.
Spreading the Holiday Cheer
To those that don’t or have yet to play an MMORPG, like Final Fantasy XI or World of Warcraft, you’re missing out on some fun. While you can spend the holidays with friends and family in meatspace (and really, that’s the best way), you can also spend some time in game with friends and family and “spread the holiday cheer”:http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/12/celebrate-chris.html there.
In World of Warcraft, there are little devices that transforms your character into gnomes wearing festive green or red outfits. You can punk instance bosses for purty green or red santa hats, obtain special items that transforms your mount into a reindeer, craft holiday themed clothing and munch on food stuffs made by players or sold by in game computer characters.
Now why should that replace real life celebrations? It shouldn’t! It’s wonderful little extras that the developers put in for those that want to also party hearty in game. And come Christmas day you can check out certain cities and grab presents! I know I’ll be spending quality time with my family but I’ll also spare some time to visit friends in game and wish them happy holidays, which I couldn’t do normally as nearly all of them reside thousands of miles away (California, Washington, New Zealand!, etc).
Who do? You do? Vudu Part 1
After unboxing the “Vudu”:http://www.vudu.com/, I checked out the quick-start guide. The very first thing they tell you to do is slap the batteries into the remote. It melted in my hand (not literally melted, mind), which I’m guessing is due to its snazzy design. I’m hoping the experience of using Vudu is as elegant.
