Linkstew

"So because someone was unfair to you in the past, you're saying we should be unfair to someone else, even though we can change it?" I asked an acquaintance I was having an argument with.

"Yes." he said with certainty that showed he had already made up his mind and which clearly told me that the conversation was over.

Man, that's the kind of narrow-minded, self-centered attitude that causes wars.

And just to be clear here, it's not his actual position that I took fault with. It was his reason for his position which was so very wrong.

Today, Baseball owners voted to get rid of two teams, though nothing was said about which teams would go beyond speculation that Montreal, Florida, and Minnesota were likely candidates to get axed.

In response to this announcement, AP Sports Writer Jim Litke wrote this piece suggesting what should be done to make major league baseball properly profitable and exciting. I'd have a difficult time recognizing this proposal as baseball, but I think in the long run, it'd work out. Ah well, it's not like it'll ever happen, and fans probably wouldn't go for it. Anyway.

Yeah, this makes three sports posts in a row, I know. When I'm procrastinating, I read sports news. So sue me.

First up, check out this wacky third party gamecube controller. The idea certainly is novel, but I'm not sure how I'd like it in practice. While I was watching TV tonight, I sat there with my hands on each side of my laptop, trying to imagine what it would be like to play a game while holding my arms at those angles, and it just doesn't seem comfortable. We'll see.

Second, Planet GameCube published an essay describing what memory architecture means for a game console. It was a fairly good read, I thought.

Almost three years ago, I got a CD called "We Might Be Giants, Too" -- it was a tribute to They Might Be Giants, and contained around 30 tracks created out of love of two guys named John (That's less gay than it sounds). And time has passed, and it's now time for We Might Be Giants, Too, 2... Time for another outpouring of love for two guys named John (and three guys named Dan).

But! Before you can have this labor of love in your hands, the people behind WMBGT2 need your help! So if you're a fan of They Might Be Giants, go here, listen to the (admittedly low quality) recordings of the possibilities, and vote for what you think is worthy of being on a tribute album to the twin quasars of rock.

I'm not going to say much about the songs, because I don't want to taint your impressions. What I will say, though, is that I rather like the acoustic covers, especially of Mrs. Train and Turn Around, and the marching band playing Istanbul is really neat (but I was a band geek in high school, so I'm biased). They're almost all very well done, and only about two which would make me wretch if they made the final cut.

I think "We Might Also Be Giants" would have been a better name, though.

Today at work, we got a TiBook and some new iBooks for me to play with. Well, they weren't actually for me to play with, but my (former) boss and I sure did spend all day doing just that. Of course, my (former) boss has his own TiBook, and we've already played with that at length, so it was mainly the iBooks we were interested in, and we spent a lot of our time trying to figure out the best ways to keep the OS X environment on all four machines similar. I'll write a little more about that once we get the details down, because it's definitely something that will be useful to someone out there. For now, I'm going to confine the subject to my impressions of the new iBook.

The first thing I noticed when I came in today was "Look at all that white!" The new iBook is very white, as it's encased in a shiny white plastic, and while it's very pretty when it's brand new, it attracts finger prints like a detective, and a couple of our iBooks already have scratches on the edges. But, while it scratches pretty easily, it's very sturdy, and the screens have very little give if you try to tweak them, unlike my PowerBook G3 and the TiBook.

Speaking of the screen, it's very beautiful. I was looking at those screens all day, and I didn't notice difference between the 1024x768 resolution on the 12.1 inch screen compared to the 1024x768 resolution on my 14 inch PowerBook G3. The iBook was perfectly usable, and I can't complain at all about the screen size. Additionally, when I sat my PowerBook G3 next to one of the new iBooks, my screen looked incredibly dark, even at maximum brightness. The white on the iBook is white, while the white on my PowerBook is more of a grey...

Also of note is that the single battery is held in with a lock screw, and if you turn that screw, the battery will just fall out. It isn't secured in any way other than the lock, so let's hope that that screw stays tight. Of course, this iBook, like the TiBook and iBook before it, only supports one battery, leaving the user at the whim of his battery life. And, unfortunately, the battery life on these iBook's seems... sub-par. It seems even worse than the battery life on the TiBook which, with it's power hungry G4 processor, is rather counter-intuitive. This is especially unfortunate for me, because I've been spoiled with the dual batteries in my PowerBook G3. To upgrade the RAM, you have to first remove the AirPort card, which sucked for us, since we ordered our RAM separate from the iBook's and the AirPort cards, so we had to go through all the AirPort cards to install the extra RAM. This is, of course, better than the TiBook, which requires a much more complicated install involving the bottom of the computer instead of the keyboard, but it was annoying.

The CD Eject key on the Keyboard is usually pretty responsive. Unfortunately, one of the iBook's stopped recognizing it's CD drive at one point, but that was nothing a restart didn't fix. The CD trays on the iBooks also feel much sturdier than the previous generations of floppy laptop CD trays, but I think I still prefer the slot loading TiBook (Of course, my real preference is for a drive bay, like my PowerBook G3 has, so I can have two batteries and 10 hours of battery life, but... Tradeoffs and all.)

And finally, there's the feature of the new iBook which makes up for all of the flaws: Apple finally replaced the second option on the right half of the keyboard with a second command key instead. Apple laptop keyboards haven't had a second command key for longer than I can remember, so I figured they had a reason and "suggesting" a second command key instead would fall on deaf ears. But apparently I should have voiced my opinion sooner, because they've finally addressed the one complaint I have about my laptop... Now, I wonder if I can get a keyboard upgrade for my Pismo?

(for those unsure of what I'm talking about: due to the space limitations of a laptop, and the desire to include arrow keys on the keyboard, Apple was unable to mirror all of the keys from the left half of the keyboard on the right half without making the keys unusably small, so they got rid of the extra command and control keys, and only had an option key and an "enter" key on the right half of the keyboard next to the space bar. Now it's a command and enter instead. The enter key is for the emulated numeric keypad, and is questionable in and of itself, but I'm not going to get into that.)

This article, entitled A Game Critic's Nightmare, left me doing a lot of thinking, both about myself about a writer and a reader of reviews. First I thought about what fools the writers of those letters were, and then I started wondering what I looked for when I read a review.

First of all, as far as the venomous comments go, I thought two of them were moderately intelligent, while the rest made my head hurt. The first intelligent comment was the first one listed, and which Ben also said wasn't that bad. It was constructive criticism, and had some reasonably good, and most importantly, supported opinions. The second intelligent comment was the one that started "I don't actually have a review of my own," on the second page. Not only does it make an interesting point about potentially turning the tables, it also knows the importance of the experience of writing a review.

The first question I have is, why did all these fools send their comments to a reviewer who probably would have thrown them away if not for the feature that was done with them. What kind of response did they expect to get by sending it to the reviewer? Considering that it's possible to make a weblog in about 10 minutes, there's no excuse for these people to not voice their opinions somewhere like Amazon or epinions. It's easy, and your opinion will be heard. Of course, writing your opinion clearly with well supported arguments is also a good idea, but it couldn't be that hard to do, could it? Unless you've written a review yourself, you really shouldn't bitch about what someone else says in their review.

So what do I look for when I read a review? Well, the first thing I usually look at is some vague number, usually on a scale of 1 to 4 or 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. When I read a review, I'll usually have an idea of what I expect the reviewed article to get, whether I've experienced the reviewed item in question or not. If the score the reviewer gave was significantly different from what I expected, I'll read the review to find out why the reviewer scored it as he did. I'll also read the review if it's something that I was considering buying to make sure that it's worth my money. I've never emailed a reviewer telling them they were wrong. Even if I disagreed with their score, I understand that it was their opinion and that a score is a difficult way to quantify something that they may have mixed opinions about. If I disagreed with the opinions of the reviewer, I'll usually go read some more reviews to try to figure out if it was the reviewer or the item in question.

Today on Little Yellow Different Ernie wrote about getting fired. While it sucks to be fired at all, it seems like being fired on a Monday would be the worst day of all. Monday is already a pretty annoying day -- afterall, they interupt the weekend. But being fired on a Monday seems like it would add insult to injury. Instead, I'd like to be fired on a Friday. There'd be a sense of freedom, and everything that happened that weekend would seem so much better than your week had been.

It's a pity my job working with the Internet without working for a dot-com will come to an end when I graduate. Once it does, I'll be thrust into a cruel world where everyone seems to be getting fired.

This post doesn't actually include a link, other than a hypothetical one, to all those people who choose to share things about their life in this sort of medium. First, there are two paragraphs, and then some discussion. Be warned that the paragraphs are designed to function as independent blocks and don't have anything to do with each other. Actually, you should imagine each of the following two paragraphs as though they were entries all by themselves.

I was browsing along today, and I came across this journal that this person has kept on the web for years. I've known him for a long time, but I never realized how messed up his life is. I can't believe how pathetic it is that he is sharing so many intimate details with anyone who comes along... Why does he think anyone cares? Gah, he should get a life, and get over his pain and suffering. It's ridiculous is what it is!

I found this amazing journal today. I've known so-and-so for a long time, but I never knew how much so-and-so has gone through, and reading through his questioning of his life really made me feel sympathy for him. I've never had to go through an ordeal anything near that magnitude, and he is very brave to share his experiences with us, for us to learn from and admire.

Now, I don't know, maybe it's just me, or maybe it's just the way that I wrote those, but seeing those two paragraphs right next to each other, why does the biting mean paragraph seem so much more likely to be truthful than the praising nice comment? Am I just that cynical, or do other people see the same contrast between these as I do?

By the way, I'm not overly happy with how the paragraphs turned out, but they were both completely contrived and lacked any intentionality at all. There was nothing in the real world that they were actually referring to, which is why they were a little squishy feeling. It's also very hard to take two exact opposite views that are both a little different from my own in the span of five minutes.

I was just out eating in the DC, and as I was standing in line, I noticed a couple who not only had each eyebrow pierced with a small bar, but they both had the same style. "Gee, that's attractive", I thought to myself.

So I finally saw a Visor. My initial impression is simply this: "Damn that thing's huge!"

Compared to my Palm V, even in the Hard-case, the Visor is a very big device. When I pull my Palm V from it's protective sheath, the Visor dwarfs the V. The Visor is at least twice as thick as the Palm V, and a good half an inch taller. While the Visor is also heavier than the Palm V, at least it's light for it's size.

I don't doubt that it's an effective tool, but I think I've been really spoiled by the size of the Palm V. After using the Palm V for a month or so now, I think I'd go nuts if I went back to a Palm III... I suspect that I would still manage with a Visor, but the size was... impressive.

So, before Final Fantasy VII came out, I'd actually never even heard of the Playstation. And then when it did come out, and I heard a little more about it, I thought it didn't sound too bad... But then I was significantly turned off to the Playstation for two reasons, and have stayed mostly negative towards the Playstation ever since.

My first... issue with the Playstation is the shape of the controller. For me, it's totally horrible. It's not curvy enough, and my hands always hurt after just short while of holding one, which really irritates me. Compared to the Super Nintendo controllers I was used to, the Playstation controller just seemed dumb. Additionally, the naming scheme of the buttons is stupid. The names are multi-syllable, which makes it hard to relate key combinations, and to top it off, I can never remember which button is which, so I always have to look at the controller to figure it out. So in general, I don't like the Playstation controller. Then the N64 came out, with a far superior controller, in my opinion, and I felt even more negative about the Playstation controller. And unfortunately, as that's the only way you interact with the system, that means it's a pretty serious turn off.

The second... issue is the whole Memory Card issue. So, because Playstation games came on CD's, no saved game data could be stored on them. Additionally, there was no local storage on the device, which meant that you had to purchase a separate Memory Card to save games on. This just seemed totally wrong and bad and evil to me, and still rather does. If you wanted to buy a Playstation just to play, for example, Final Fantasy VIII, you would also have to get a memory card to save your games.

But the more that I've been thinking about the memory card thing, the more I realize that it might not be so bad. The first obvious advantage is that it, for one, gives you unlimited storage to save games, unlike FFIII, for instance, where you only got three spaces to save three separate games. So at a price, it's possible to save as many games as you like. Second, it's nice to be able to separate the data from the game medium, allowing for some interesting possibilities with games, though I don't know if anything has really implemented such ideas. While I've never played Pokemon, something like Pokemon would REALLY benefit from memory cards, allowing exchange of data between players easily. So Memory cards aren't entirely evil, just a terrible annoyance. Oh well. I'll manage, I guess.

So I'm getting sore from typing all this, and I'm sure I've almost bored you to tears, so I'll stop for now. I was going to go on and comment on the Dreamcast and my impressions of it, and my thoughts on the Playstation 2, and the Dolphin, and so on, but I won't, because I'm running out of steam. However, I'm sure I'll get back to those topics eventually. I'm sure you're looking forward to it.

So last night I saw Election at Wheeler, and then after that we rented 12 Monkeys.

Election was a good movie, with many nifty themes, and I enjoyed it. It's just that it was... Disturbing. Right now, however, I'm not sure if it was disturbing because it was an accurate portrayal of society or because it was such a fantastical portrayal of society... Yeah, it's that difficult to tell. I'd recommend y'all see it. Especially if you get to see it for three bucks, like I did. And Janitors, much like Penguins, should be feared.

12 Monkeys, on the other hand, is still one of my favorite movies. It's absolutely great. And deep down, believe it or not, it's actually just a love story. A very tragic love story, mind you, but a love story all the same. This thing makes Romeo and Juliet look like a childrens story. So if you haven't seen 12 Monkeys, do it now.