I’m not angry…really…

We’ve all seen them.  Whether in the office, on campus, or even at home.  They’re those little notes someone writes when they’re frustrated but trying their best to not come off as a total jerk.  The result?  Generally a sarcastic little quip that might just hurt your feelings a bit.  Yes, the great passive aggressive note – employed by some, feared by all.  If you’ve ever seen one as a third party they can come off as pretty funny.

That’s what a blog called Passive Aggressive Notes is all about.  People send in notes that either they have personally written or they’ve come across and they’re posted to the blog.  It’s a great idea for a blog and I find myself going back to check on it a lot.  The site may not be work safe as many of the authors of these notes clearly got wrapped up in the heat of the moment and let some profanity fly, but it’s nothing too severe.  Give the site a look, or hey, submit your own note so I (as well as many others) can get a laugh out of it down the road.  My favorite one (so far) is the one that’s shown above…turns out some people thought a food drive container was actually a garbage can.  Pretty unfortunate.

I heard about this site from listening to the TWIT podcast Net@Nite so you might have already seen it.  If you have, leave a comment and tell me which one’s your favorite!  I’ve only had a chance to check out the first couple pages of notes so there’s a good chance that I haven’t seen some of the better ones.

In other news I’ve hit a week of class during which a couple of my professors have decided to schedule tests so I’ve been busy hitting the books.  After this week there’s only one week of class and a week of finals until the Christmas break though!  Man, has this semester flown by or what?

Now Playing:
System of a Down – Metro
Thief: Deadly Shadows, Team Fortress 2

Asus breaks the code

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about Asus’ ultra-small laptop called the Eee PC.  Eee stands for Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play.  I think it should have a fourth E which would stand for Easy to lose because the thing is tiny but that’s beside the point.  It’s not exactly a powerhouse of a machine but the Eee PC is a great business portable that lets you do some basic things like word processing, internet browsing, and make Skype calls.  This is all done from a homebrew of the Xandros linux distribution, but drivers for Windows XP are included (so you can install XP on it).  The best part about it is that it’s only $400, which shows that these UMPC’s are finally getting into a reasonable price range.  I think paying $2,000 for a limited-function machine that you’ll use sparingly isn’t a great investment, but if the prices continue to drop these things could catch on quick.  The Eee PC has a 7" display, a 900mhz processor, 512 megabytes of ram and a 4 gigabyte flash drive.  These specs seem pretty miniscule but remember this is not a machine you’re going to be doing any serious gaming or development with.  If you want to learn more check the un-boxing video below, I thought it was pretty interesting.

So now that you know all about the Eee PC I must tell you Asus has gotten into trouble because of it.  I said above that the Eee PC runs a distribution of linux similar to Xandros, and if you’re familiar with linux and how it’s developed you know that it’s all open source.  Because of this, developers adhere to a license called the General Public License (GPL) which basically states that the source code for your project must be distributed freely.  Asus must have forgotten about this bit because, though they claim to offer the project’s source code on their website, people are having trouble using it to modify the Eee PC’s operating system.  This has caused some turmoil in the community as everyone’s assuming that the code offered is not really the whole project.   You can bet that Asus will either explain how to circumvent their laptop’s software or just release the full bit of source code fairly soon.

Now Playing:
MC Chris – Check the Ring, Yo
Call of Duty 4, Thief: Deadly Shadows

Giving Thanks

Alright so it’s Thursday and a post is due…the only problem is today happens to be Thanksgiving.  For that reason I just wanted to say that I hope you’re all having a good one.  I like Thanksgiving because it’s the last holiday before the Christmas blitz where you get to chill with family for no other reason than to enjoy their company and appreciate what you’ve got.  Of course right after Thanksgiving the holiday season is in full swing, but to me on Thanksgiving you can avoid all of that.  Food, family, and friends.  Hard to top that.

So stop reading this and go eat some turkey!  Also, if you’re going to brave the crowds tomorrow on Black Friday I hope you get some incredible deals.  That’s never been something I was too into but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect those who are.  I think I’m more of a Cyber Monday kind of guy.  =)

Now Playing:
Jay-Z – Blue Magic
Call of Duty 4, Thief: Deadly Shadows

Live turns five

On the 15th Xbox Live reached its five year anniversary. I can still remember putting on the black headset for the first time and going online to play a Moto GP demo that came with the subscription. I had been a PC gamer for a while so the prospect of playing against people over the internet wasn’t exactly revolutionary, but I hadn’t really done the whole voice communication thing which has since changed console gaming a lot. The real point to all of this is that in celebration of the day Microsoft announced that they’ll start releasing original Xbox titles on the Live Marketplace for download. This is something that both the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation 3 have had since the beginning, both with their respective back catalogs, so when I heard about it I was pretty pumped to get a chance to play some of those games I missed back then.

The first wave of confirmed titles (to be released December 4th with the Fall dashboard update) include Halo, Psychonauts, Crimson Skies, and Fable. All really great games that were among the best that the original Xbox had to offer. The only problem is that I don’t have much incentive to grab any of these games since I have already played and in some cases still own them. Still I might give it a shot just to see how the whole system works. I’m shocked that Psychonauts made it into their first run of titles, it was a huge surprise when I played it a few years ago but it never got the acclaim it deserved. Just to have a chance to play a brilliant game like that again will be pretty awesome, and I  hope they bring more games like it. I’ll be kind of bummed if what they give us are all the blockbusters that everyone played. Let’s see some Shenmue. Maybe some Silent Hill 2. Go easy on the Splinter Cell and Madden games.

The only downside of this whole deal is the price. Each game, as of now, will be priced at 1200 MS points, which translates to $15. You might think to yourself "hey, that’s not bad, $15 for a slightly legacy game" but most of these games can be bought from EB or GameStop for as little as a couple dollars. The price isn’t terrible I suppose but it could be better. They’re obviously playing to the urgency of the situation, same with their downloadable movies. If you want to play something but don’t feel like hunting for it you can get it relatively quickly from Live for a premium. So, yeah, the price leaves something to be desired but it isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. The other negative is the size of the downloads. Everyone is assuming that the average size of an Xbox 1 game was somewhere around 5 gigs. On the 20 gig hard drive that came with my 360 (of which I have about 4 gigs of free space) this could be a problem. To really get the most out of the Xbox Originals I’ll probably have to get one of the proprietary, ridiculously over-priced hard drives Microsoft offers for the 360. I think the largest size they offer is a 120 GB drive for $179. Almost $200 for a drive you can get for half the price without the quirky 360 shell on it. I really wish Microsoft kill the proprietary hardware like Sony has with the PS3.

Still, all things considered, this is a good thing and I can’t really be mad at Microsoft because I’m an early adopter. When December 4th comes around chances are I’ll be queuing up some Psychonauts to give it a spin. If the games run better than the ones Microsoft made backwards compatible I’ll be impressed. I’m just hoping they execute and make this a feature worth touting down the road when they’ve released a quality list of games.

Now Playing:
MC Chris – FTW
Call of Duty 4, Puzzle Quest

New media

I was struggling when trying to come up with a topic for today’s post other than the obvious, but I thought that would be kind redundant.  Yes, we all know Google is awesome, I don’t think you need to be reminded every couple days.  Instead I’m going to talk about something a little more personal – the content on the internet that I imbibe in every week.  I’ve talked about the subject in previous posts but only in passing, and since my repertoire of content has expanded significantly since then I’ve decided it was a good time to revisit the topic.  So here goes.

There are two primary sources for most of the media I view – TWiT and Revision 3.  That’s a given.  As far as TWiT goes I listen to several podcasts every week.  The week generally starts out with This Week In Tech on Monday, wherein Leo Laporte gets a group of tech luminaries together to discuss the weekly news in the tech industry.  A few of the most common guests (who also happen to be my favorite, when they’re on) include Patrick Norton, Wil Harris, and of course John C. Dvorak.  I think that’s because I’m a traditionalist, and in Leo, Patrick, and Dvorak’s case they’re some of the founding panelists of TWiT who have been doing it since the beginning.  Wil Harris hasn’t been around quite that long but he’s on frequently enough that I’ve become used to hearing his cheeky English accent.  Around the middle of the week Macbreak Weekly comes out wherein Leo once again gets a group of luminaries around, in this case Mac luminaries, to talk about…the Mac.  Yeesh.  Seems to be a pattern.

Then over the weekend things get complicating.  If it’s out on time then Windows Weekly is usually a listen for me, but they seem kind of inconsistent with that particular show.  Then if Net@Nite comes out (also a little unpredictable) I try and listen to it as well.  Finally, and I’m surprised I’m even admitting to this, but I find myself listening to Jumping Monkeys with Leo and Megan Morrone.  It’s a parenting podcast but the conversation generally gets pretty funny so if nothing else the comedic value is a good reason to tune in.  I think I started listening to it because Megan was on TechTV back in the day so when I saw she was doing something new I had to check it out, and since then it has stuck.  That’s it for the TWiT network.  There is, however, one other audio podcast I usually listen to every week – Webcomics Weekly.  I already mentioned that in my Webcomics post though so I won’t go into great detail.  It’s another funny show that keeps me listening week in and week out.

I try to watch a few Revision 3 shows as well.  All of their content is available in video form so it adds another element to the equation I think.  The shows I watch most fervently are Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show, and Tekzilla.  Diggnation covers the weekly top news on Digg.com, The Totally Rad Show covers the latest in movies, games, TV and comics, and finally Tekzilla is a general home electronics show.  The newest of the bunch is Tekzilla hosted by Patrick Norton and Jessica Corbin, and if you ever watched The Screen Savers when it was on you’ll probably feel at home watching Tekzilla.  It’s the same basic formula.  My favorite, however, is The Totally Rad show because it has three awesome hosts with a great dynamic, plus they’re not afraid to straight geek it up on some subjects that aren’t covered in any other Rev3 shows.

Other than that there’s a lot of quick content I like to check out.  I define quick content as anything that can be watched or listened to in around 10 minutes, and some of the stuff this includes is Mahalo Daily, WebbAlert, and ChannelFlip.  ChannelFlip is a lot like Revision 3 but the shows tend to be shorter which isn’t a bad thing at all.  If you check any of the links in this post out you’ll find out that most of the people involved in these projects are from TechTV/ and or are affiliated with more than one of what I’ve mentioned.  For example, I discussed Wil Harris’ participation in the This Week in Tech podcast but he also runs ChannelFlip.  I’m glad to see the whole group from back then minus a few are able to collaborate so much these days.  Now they all just need to band into one network and the re-birth of TechTV will be complete. =P

After re-reading this post it seems like a total link farm and I apologize for that.  Still, this is all great content that is, for me, replacing what I would normally be watching on TV.  The only problem is that there’s just so much of it and I’m starting to run out of time to keep up with it all.  I suppose that’s not the worst problem to have.  This is just barely scratching the surface too by the way – when you look at services like Joost, Hulu, and even some of the TV networks’ online media players it’s obvious that more and more programming will be available on the internet in the future.  So stay tuned.

Now Playing:
Porcupine Tree – The Rest Will Flow
Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero 3

The GooPhone

Google finally announced last Monday their plans for the Google Phone.  That is to say what we thought would be the Google phone.  I’ve been anticipating this for a while since, being a geek, I’m always planning my next gadget purchase.  As far as phones go I’m excited for the next revision of the iPhone as well as the OpenMoko.  Either that or some other type of smart phone.  Anyways, the Google Phone was definitely on my radar.  So now I’m kind of bummed since the Google Phone, as of now, isn’t really a phone at all – it’s just an operating system that can be run on a phone.  Details are still sketchy about the final product since it’s at least two years off, but we know that it will be based around the Android OS that I had heard about prior to the official announcement.

Android is really just a mobile phone platform that Google will give to current cellphone companies to base their hardware around.  The question about this is whether or not these companies, after getting the Android OS from Google, will just lock down the presumably open source software anyways.  A couple of the companies Google is working with are T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm and Motorola.  Obviously missing from this list are companies like Nokia who have their own phone software that they’re trying to push.  Plus Apple.  Big surprise there.  I’m looking forward to seeing what these firms do with the SDK that Google released.

Since the release of any Google-powered phone is still a ways off it’s hard to imagine what one will be like, but most people who have written about this subject (and people who are just familiar with how Google works) agree that there will probably be some sort of localized ad-placement.  If the phones are offered at a highly discounted price with, for instance, no monthly fees, you might be subject to some ad placement from the phone.  For example, if you were walking down the street your phone might ping you and say "Hey, would you like to see where the closest restaurant is?" You could (hopefully) respond yes or no, and if yes they would feed you a little ad for the restaurant and perhaps give you a coupon or something of that nature.  I really hope they don’t force this on the user, it would make the phone a bother to use if you absolutely had to subject yourself to the ad whether you wanted to see it or not.  I’ll be interested to see though, whether people might be willing to ditch their phone bill for a cheap or free phone and be okay with dealing with ads.  A lot of us use Gmail and we’re subjected to advertisements constantly and yet almost no one complains about it.  Same thing about Google’s search engine.  If the hardware to back up the software is decent it might be something to look into, but that’s all on the phone companies now.

Now Playing:
Jedi Mind Tricks – Saviorself
Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero 3

That’s it, I’m shutting it down!

This is a special Friday edition post, one I didn’t plan on doing at all but I have something I have to share. A few minutes ago I was just sitting here listening to some tunes and browsing the web. I went ahead and checked out my Google Analytics to see what kind of traffic I’m pulling and…well…just have a look for yourself. The image’s thumbnail is to the left of the second paragraph and if you click on it you’ll see the full version.

This certainly can’t bode well! Thanks as always to the brave souls that visit this blog! As you can see from the handy little chart the numbers are definitely up and I have a feeling I know why. To get above even 12 hits is a shocker for me to be honest. See you on Tuesday. =)

Testing out Flock + Snitter

Alright this is a post that could probably appeal to a lot of the students out there.  We all spend way too much time on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, right?  Well now there’s a web browser built just for you, and it’s called Flock.  What Flock does is integrate almost any social network you can think of right into your web browser, allowing you to quickly respond to messages on Facebook, update your status on Twitter, or save a link to del.icio.us without having to open a new page.  It’s pretty useful if you find yourself spending a lot of time at a site like that.

Another pretty cool feature is that it allows you to post to your blog straight from the browser.  The blog editor isn’t exactly featured packed but it’s a nice touch and it makes inserting images and links a breeze.  It’s what I’m using to write this right now actually.  We’ll see if it sticks.  Anyways get your social on with Flock – it runs on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) so you’ll be able to try it no matter what.

On a somewhat related note I’m using a new Twitter client called Snitter.  It’s a handy little app written in Adobe Air and I like it quite a bit.  I used to use Twitteroo on my PC and Twitterrific on my Mac but now I can standardize and just use Snitter on both platforms.  If you’re a Twitter user and you’re looking for a new way to let the world know what you’re doing give Snitter a look, you may like what you see.  The only down part is having to install Adobe Air can be a bit of a pain sometimes and not very many people are into installing applications from a web browser (it tends to ring of security risk, doesn’t it?) but once you get over that hurdle you’ll have access to a wealth of applications written in Air.

Currently Listening To: Canibus – Mic-Nificent
Currently Playing: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Guitar Hero 3

What I’m hyped for:

I’ve been anticipating Call of Duty 4 since it was announced and I’m happy to report that it finally was released this week. Of the tidal wave of quality releases this holiday season CoD4 was one that I knew I absolutely couldn’t miss.  This was only reaffirmed after playing the multiplayer beta around a month ago, and even though the game (at that time) was rather limited I knew right off the bat that it would be a blockbuster.  If you haven’t read up about Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer component you now progress through ranks much like in Halo 3 and the Battlefield series.  As you go however, you unlock "perks," which are skills that you can use to make your soldier better.  One perk for example makes you more resistant to gunfire, and another increases you reload speed.  All of the perks are well-balanced and they add a completely different component to the multiplayer.  You unlock these perks not only by ranking up (imagine gaining a level in WoW) but also by completing challenges while playing.  One of the challenges I remember in the beta was to get 75 kills with a certain type of gun.  Once you get those you unlock a new add-on for the weapon, and from there you can customize your kit quite a bit.  So as you can see just from this quick run-through, CoD4 is not your everyday first person shooter from a multiplayer perspective.

From a single player point of view I’m just hoping for more of the same from the previous Call of Duty games.  I’ve been a huge fan of the series since the first game came out for PC in 2003.  I remember seeing ads on TV for the game and assumed it was just another Medal of Honor knock-off cashing in on the popularity of World War 2 games, but when I finally played the demo for it I was shocked at how good it was.  I immediately fell in love.  Since then there have been 2 follow up games, and all 3 up until CoD4 have all taken place during World War 2.  Now Infinity Ward, the creator of the franchise, has decided to bring Call of Duty into a modern era with their 4th game.  I’m sure that – no matter what – the game will be great since Infinity Ward is an excellent developer, but I hope they can maintain the intensity found in the previous titles.  If you haven’t played a Call of Duty game the main draw is throwing the player into a war and making them feel immersed.  They do this through life-like combat scenarios, excellent sound and level design, and great characters.  If they’re able to bring those elements into the fourth game I’ll be happy.  And if not, I already know that the Xbox Live play will be good…so there’s that.

Currently Listening To: Jedi Mind Tricks – Uncommon Valor
Currently Playing: Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero 3

Leopard.

To continue and conclude my two-part series on recently debuted operating systems I’d like to talk a bit about the latest update to the Mac OS X platform – Leopard (version 10.5).  I’m a mac user (among other things) and so I was happy to see Apple finally get around to releasing Leopard.  If anyone has been following the development of OS X Leopard you’ll know that it’s kind of behind schedule…and I say ‘kind of’ to be nice.  I’m not dogging Apple here, but since Microsoft is always criticized for their delays I suppose Apple should get a finger pointed at them as well.  The obvious reason for the delay of Leopard is the iPhone, which was in development during the same time.  Whether that’s the truth or not it’s hard to say but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Anyways, on October 26th at 6:00PM Apple stores around the country allowed excited Apple users to get their hands on the new operating system.  I’ll cut to the chase – most people like it.  Even though Apple has been touting 300+ new features, there are really only a few that have most people excited, some of which I’ll cover in this post.  First off is Time Machine.  Time Machine is a dynamic backup application which creates an image of all of your files on an external hard drive so that, at any time, you can quickly find a document, picture, or music file that you might have deleted accidentally.  Say for instance I have a folder called Literature Homework.  I open this folder up because it contains a Word document I need to finish and hand in during class tomorrow, but oh no!  It’s not there.  I must have accidentally deleted it!  No worries though, if I have an external hard drive attached to my mac and have enabled Time Machine I can simply launch the Time Machine application and roll back to find the lost document, then restore it so I can continue my work.  It sounds pretty simple, and really it is, but it makes something that is a chore for most computer users easy.  We all should back up our files regularly but how many people do?  With Time Machine, Apple hopes to increase that number.

The next two features are linked in a way, because they’re both designed to help you clean up the clutter on you desktop.  The first is called Stacks.  What Stacks are is a folder in your dock that can display its contents with the click of a button in a neat popout menu.  Again it’s a simple concept but it has some great applications.  For instance, I hate the clutter on my desktop that results from downloading things.  Every few days it seems like I have to go through and clean up my desktop just because of the new applications or files that I’ve downloaded – this is where stacks come in handy.  In Leopard you can setup a "downloads" stack for example, which automatically catches all of your downloads.  Then, when you click on the stack you can find all of your downloads without having to search through a cluttered desktop.  They even make it so the most recently added files are closest to the icon so you don’t have to move your mouse much to get to it.  Another simple little thing that makes using Stacks much easier.  The second in this group are Spaces – a feature that lets you have multiple desktops (4 to be exact).  What this means is you can drop your Firefox browser on one space, put your email on another, and so on.  If you’ve used Linux you’re familiar with the idea since Spaces are almost identical to the multiple desktops you can find in most distros, but it’s a nice addition.  You can even designate which space an application launches in by default, so if you always want your Email to show up in the third Space you can do that.

Finally I’m going to talk a bit about the new interface.  The new desktop looks pretty – the dock has been given a facelift with new reflective surfaces and icon animations, and the toolbar is now transparent.  Plus there are some new wallpapers – I know, I know, wallpapers?  That’s not a feature!  You’re right, it’s not a great feature but it lends itself to the overall look and feel.  Besides, you have to remember that this is an operating system aimed at the "every man" of computing.  People who aren’t advanced users and may be interested in the new backgrounds.  With that said, I think it must be pointed out that Vista caught a lot of flak for being "lipstick on a pig," that is to say it’s just a visual upgrade on the same OS.  That wasn’t true for Vista and it isn’t true for OS X but I’m wondering if users will make as big of a fuss about it this time.  Seems like people just love to hate Microsoft.  We’ll see.  Now down to brass tacks – I don’t plan on buying Leopard anytime soon.  The one version of Leopard (as opposed to Vista’s multiple versions) costs $129.  That’s not a bad price but there just isn’t the list of features that makes me think I have to have it.  The new features are nice but they aren’t revolutionary.  The most likely scenario is that I’ll get it after most of the launch bugs have been fixed (yes, even with OS X it’s good to wait for a "service pack" =P) or it’ll be installed on the next mac I buy.  If I buy another mac.  Those Vaios are looking pretty good!

Currently Listening To: Kamelot – The Shadow of Uther
Currently Playing: Orange Box, Puzzle Quest