Ratsofrass

Hello Mr Jobs.

I see you’ve been busy in your new role as heaven’s technology innovator. I really thought you’d take it easy for a bit, but no, you’re right back in it, stirring things up as you always did in the mortal world. But I have to ask: what did I do to deserve today?

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Google Streetview for Calgary got released today. I ended up blowing away more time at work looking at this that I should have, but oh well, it’s not every day that Streetview gets released for your city, and being a big Streetview junky, I was going to have to look up a few hundred things first before I could sate myself and get back to work.

In the process I noticed a few things. Quite a few things. Some of which I’ve investigated further this evening and am now posting on.

For starters, I’m pretty sure that Streetview plots its’ images automatically by matching the GPS co-ordinates of the road map with the CPS co-ordinates of the car at the time the picture is taken. This should work quite well, until there is a problem with the road map being off. Road maps are off in a lot of places in Calgary due to changes, and I have found that the current Google map seems to be skewed a bit in general.
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def: meta Something of a higher or second-order kind - AskOxford.com

Or, this is a review about review sites. Specifically, photography equipment review sites.

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I got a Wacom tablet this spring to help stave off carpel tunnel on my mousing wrist. I was expecting to use it only for drawing site maps, where the continual mousing all day drawing was becoming a strain. I have yet to draw much with it but I find that I’m using it more for day to day software, including the database software we use that has the crappiest interface I have seen on business software for sale. I SHOULD be able to do anything I want with a keyboard, but I am forced to use the mouse, for all those missing keyboard shortcuts. Once I start using the mouse, I tend to finish what I’m doing using the mouse. As of late, I’ve gotten very good at quickly heading the right hand over to the mouse, clicky-draggy on the one or two items I need to get with the mouse, then go back to the keyboard.
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‘Ya know, having to buy computer stuff for work means you end up buying a lot more stuff for yourself. But based on the previous 2 days happenings, I think I have a pretty good excuse. Besides, $150/TB of external HDD goodness seems like a good deal, but what do I know? I don’t follow this stuff regularly.
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The title sums it up for you non-computer types. For the rest of you, long, nerdy, techy rant follows.
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Alright, you might be thinking ‘wtf is he smoking?’ or ‘wtf is Duke Nukem?’, if you’re young enough. That second part is scary. It has been well over TEN YEARS since the original Duke Nukem 3D was released. It was a heady time for first person shooters - Duke 3D and Quake were released in 1996 and they totally blew away DOOM, which could be argued to have popularized the genera in the first place.

Duke Nukem was much favored by me over Quake. Sure, Quake had a more realistic 3D engine, but Duke had *personality*. The sound track rocked. There was humor. Quake had several sequels released - what happened to the Duke?

I spent several years waiting - having played Quake, then Quake II and still finding them lacking in the fun that was Duke. Eventually, I gave up on a sequel to Duke Nukem 3D, having come to the conclusion that due to perpetual changes in the game, the Duke was relegated to being perpetual vaporware.

The today I was reading the Wikipedia article - what got me interested is that there is video of Jace Hall playing through a level - plus the 3D Realms website has been slowly starting to update with greater frequency and more detail on the game, which leads me to believe they might actually be serious about releasing this puppy some time soon when it’s done.

Oh, and screenshots have been appearing:

a sure sign that *something* has been coded to produce said screen shot. Oh, and from the FAQ sec.1.13 for DNF, they state that they do not plan to release any new game shots until right before the game is released. Hmmm. First screen images released in Sept ‘08. Considering how long development has been, I’ll take any release in ‘09!

Alright, I admit, this is a bit of a long shot for a prediction, but If I’m right, I’ll look like an ef’n genius.

And so it begins:

We will let you know by email after each item in your order ships. If you ordered multiple items, you may receive separate shipments with no additional shipping charges.

I had just ordered a Mac mini to be the first component in what will ultimately be my new multimedia entertainment system, plus a wireless Apple mouse and keyboard. I ordered the keyboard mouse despite some misgivings about the quality of the keyboard versus the price, but the old school techie in me still thinks that you can’t have an IBM keyboard touch a Mac device (the Mac would be dirtied). I *know* better, but sometimes emotions will cloud the judgment of even the most die-hard spec-comparing-component-configuring- geek. Who am I kidding - geeks are just as ruled by emotion as anyone else. I wanted a “pure” Apple system, and by Jobs, I was going to have one!

Sure enough, as the order acknowledgment warned, my keyboard and mouse showed up this last week, a good week before my Mac mini (base model, with 1GB RAM upgrade for you scccg’s out there).

Now, you have to understand where this next part comes from. I’ve always liked Apple computers. The first computer I ever used was a black Apple ][. When I was young I wanted an Apple ][, //, //e, //c; I was really close to buying one until my Dad offered to pay for 1/2 a computer because he needed one to help run his business. You can guess what we ended up with. When I grew up and had to use computers for a living, I always wanted to buy an Apple computer, but could never justify the extra cost of a Mac, especially for something that wasn’t mainstream for the kind of computing I was doing - games, spreadsheets, and databases. Now, finally, I have both a reason and enough spare income to justify this little extravagance - I mean, it’s going to be mostly to watch bitto- I mean legally downloaded videos and streaming stuff off of the ‘net upstairs away from my “work” computer.

So, I’m just a little bit like a kid opening a Christmas present, my first Apple component of my very own. First the box it came in was *light*. We are talking so light I was wondering if Apple just shipped me an empty box to fuck with my mind. I open the box. Inside are two iWhite smaller boxes, that also feel like empty boxes that Apple shipped to me to fuck with my mind. I start with what would be the mouse. Lo - a mouse is inside! Part of the reason it’s so light is that it comes with Lithium AA’s - should last a long time, and feel like they’d float away compared to regular AA’s. The mouse iWhite, with that understated design that just looks like something organic. It feels pretty good to click, the whole mouse actually pivots forward when you click, so I have no idea how it picks up left vs. right click. I’ll need to use it to actually see how good it is.

There actually was a keyboard in the box that looked like it might hold a keyboard. I wasn’t sure at the time because the box was so darn small, and you guessed it, so is the keyboard. It was one of those times where shopping online just doesn’t prepare you for what you are getting. Yes, I saw a picture of it from the top and poo-pooed the chicklet looking keyboard, saw the side profile and went, oh it’s kind of thin, but I didn’t actually look at the dimensions. My first reaction was ‘holy crap - it’s small!!!” Oh, and if you didn’t guess, it’s light too. It’s a solid little sucker, being made of actual anodized aluminum frame, and iWhite chicklet keys. I’m not expecting to actually have to type more that www.blahblahblah.com on this thing, so I wasn’t too worried about the feel, but it’s actually pretty good, not the full travel of a real keyboard, but pretty good feed back, an actually a bit clicky versus mushy. Also none of this binding you get with some cheap keyboards if you don’t hit the keys right on the center. Oh, when I say it’s small, the keys are not small, it just doesn’t take up any more space that it has to for a query set of keys and a set of function keys on the top plus the option / modifier keys on the bottom. I opened up the battery component and was again impressed with the solidness of the components. Apple started with a solid piece of round steel bolt for the battery cover, then machined out the grooves and the tensioned ball bearings that keep the cover in place. I showed the thing to my Dad, and even he said, “oh yah, dat is very nice”. So if an old German thinks it’s solid, it’s *solid* let me tell you. It’s very pretty too, the shiny anodized aluminum with the white keys looks very stylish. But I’m a sucker for solid simple design too.

So after having played with this thing for about ten minutes, I got to the next stage: lets fire this wireless puppy up and connect it to the iMac… Drat. I want to play with this thing - it’s not just a tool that sometimes gets in the way of getting stuff done - this actually might be *fun* to use, something I haven’t really felt for some time with computers now.

I can feel my Mac weenie growing already.

Okay, it is a rare day that a new tech toy comes out and I go “I want one, now”. It is a rare thing because most of these things do not satisfy my criteria of:
-It must do something I want to do, or it does something I want to do, easier than what I currently have do something.
-It must not cost an arm and a leg.

So, something that I want to do is watch videos I have downloaded from the internet on my TV. I don’t mind watching some streamed stuff on my PC, but my TV viewing area is designed for watching TV, unlike my computer area. Now I have an easier solution:
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If you are of a certain age and have any love of computer games, “Atari” is not a company or a maker of video games, but a former way of life. I never owned an Atari system, but so many people I knew did that I might as well have. Many fond memories. Here is a great collection of ads that will take you back to a time when as kids we could only dream of a day that home systems would even approach anything in the arcade, but at least we had Atari.

(Some of these ads are hilarious — #19 yuppies taken by the hand of god - rotfl!)
The Best Worst Atari Commercials