I mean, regardless of the remarkable sexism of it all, Roadrunner is dropping a remarkably talented and hotly anticipated singer from their lineup over this?
Amanda Palmer's Belly
What the hell is Roadrunner thinking?
So, for about a year and a half now, I’ve been playing an online nation simulation game called CyberNations. I’ve been meaning to mention it for a while now. It’s a Persistent Browser Based Game (PBBG) that I was introduced to by Snikt and Co., and I’ve been lassoed into being the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the UberCon Alliance for about a year now (hopefully someone else will actually run against me in the election come December/January). If anyone is interested in trying out a nation simulation game (usually takes up maybe 5 minutes a day, tops — it’s only when you start getting political and into the metagame that it really starts to suck up your time), I’d definitely recommend checking it out.
If you do start a nation, ping me in game, and I’ll see about helping get you set up and running. The UberCon Alliance is a pretty peaceful place, we do what we can to keep our heads down and other alliances friendly with us, so we’ve thankfully not had a skirmish with another alliance in my tenure as MoFA, and we aim to keep it that way.
While I’m not really a fan of the changes to the default gmail skin, I’m really liking the “New Blue” theme of Google’s just released Gmail themes:
NDAs for the real world: FriendDA.
Key element to it:
I possess a bright idea that I am choosing to disclose to you, The Advisor, with the mutual understanding that you are my friend and that you will not screw me.
As I’m sure many are aware, Apple updated their laptop line today. There are some interesting technological advances going on, but (and their stock fluctuations today can attest) there seems to be a large backlash against several changes they made to their lineup — some justifiable, some spurious. Let’s look at the spurious complaints first:
- “There’s no DVI port!” — and were you making the same complaint when DVI started to supersede VGA? Let’s be objective about this: DisplayPort is a VESA-certified industry standard meant specifically to address the needs of the computing market, in the same way that HDMI is meant to address the consumer electronics market. There are adapters already in existence to convert from DisplayPort to DVI (or even VGA) and back again. I know it’s hard when new standards come out, but you need to recognize that they’re coming out because what we have is no longer suitable for moving forward. HDMI is a marked improvement over Component. Well, DisplayPort is a marked improvement over DVI.
- “There’s no button on the trackpad!” — anyone who has been paying attention could see this coming — look at the iPhone and iPod Touch and tell me you couldn’t foresee virtualized buttons coming. There are some complaints that they hate “tap-to-click,” and I can certainly concede that, but from looking at hands-on reports of the new setup, the system is designed in such a way that your muscle memory to hit the button with your thumb will still work in exactly the same fashion. The current button on the trackpads drops a millimeter, maybe two — you are in effect already “tapping” the button. The short of it is that by going to a virtualized solution, it becomes easier to adapt the trackpad to specific needs and solutions. I’m certain I can’t be the only who sees this.
There are definitely some very real gripes to be had, however:
- “The black keyboard and black bezel are ugly.” — yes, I’m counting this as a real gripe. While from the exterior, the new laptops are sexy, when you open them up, the result a step backward; it is reminiscent of several offerings by Sony, Acer, even HP. Some are heralding it as a return to the Powerbook Titanium design philosophy, but I don’t really see that as a good thing. Why go back, when they clearly had so many options to move forward? Their external keyboards use a white on silver color scheme that would be markedly less jarring, let alone going with a silver-silver like they did with prior MacBook Pros. I consider this a valid complaint because part of what gets people to buy a Mac instead of a PC isn’t just the OS, it’s the hardware. The more it looks like everyone else’s offerings, the less reason there is to purchase the (more expensive) Mac option. Black on silver does not look good, I’m sorry. If they were going to go with the black bezel and black keyboard, in my opinion they should have gone with a black body. Either anodized or powder-coated black aluminum would still qualify for their EPEAT Gold rating, and yet would overall be more aesthetically unified.
- “No firewire in the MacBooks!” — completely agreed. I don’t know what the hell Apple was thinking. Adding a FireWire 800 port would not have been difficult, even in the smaller enclosure, and yet by doing so, there would be a wealth of devices that would become available, including daisy chained hard drives and their own Target Disk Mode. Yes, that’s right, they’ve removed a technology that makes it easier to buy more of their products (by easing the process of migration). I understand the desire to further delineate between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, but this is a grievous oversight.
- “The dual graphics cards are neat, but can only use one or the other!” — I’m on the fence as to whether this is a valid or invalid complaint. My suspicion is that when 10.6 rolls out and OpenCL and Grand Central becomes more of a reality, we’ll start seeing the ability to prioritize processes and send some to one card, and others to another. If not Apple, then a third party developer. Given that nVidia has gone on record saying they’re supporting OpenCL, I think this is a reasonable prognostication. In the meantime, however, it’s just a “shiny-shiny” to give the marketers something to chew on. I really don’t care about the difference between a 4 hour and a 5 hour battery life — more often than not, if I’m in one place for that long, I’m able to plug in somewhere. So why not save the space in the laptop and just do the high end graphics card? (Of course, I consider this yet another reason to believe that there WILL be communication across the two cards in the future.)
I’m still very interested in getting a new MacBook Pro, as my current machine is starting to get long in the tooth and showing its age. Once I have a job that I can justify the expense, I imagine I’ll be getting one of the new machines, but if you’re in the generation immediately prior, I’d be hard pressed to encourage an upgrade. Honestly, a part of me (as lustful for a new machine as I am) wants to wait and see if they start offering a gun-metal-black iteration in 6 months.
It’s coming up on November, which means it’s that time again… National Novel Writing Month! A ragtag marathon of writers trying to get 50,000 words written down inside of 30 days. I’ve participated a few times in the past, but never completed it, a fact I plan to change this year!
Of course, first I need to think of what the hell I plan to write about.
In the meantime, let me share some NaNoWriMo love for you all:
Our PDX Network has a great article up currently encouraging folks to particpate. Likewise, the lovely CamiKaos has an excellent piece about getting back in the writing saddle again after completing NaNoWriMo last year. So, come one come all, let us ride our keyboards and notebooks into the sunset next month!
Thursday night, Jessica and I packed our bags and wandered up to Seattle. It’d been a while since we’d taken a trip, and we had a great excuse to go: Neil Gaiman was going to be doing a reading for his new book, The Graveyard Book up there, but wasn’t going to be visiting Portland at all for this tour. So we made a trip of it, and stayed with my friend Anna for two nights, which was good.
Friday was spent being tourists in Seattle — we ate at Julia’s on Wallingford, swung by the Apple Store and the University Bookstore (the folks hosting the reading, so as to pick up the vouchers for the reading), and then went and checked out the Anachrotechnofetishism exhibit at 826 National chapter, the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. Definitely a nifty little store with lots of stuff to play with and geek out over. Despite wanting my very own raygun, I went with a more practical option this time around and picked up a t-shirt. I am incredibly jealous that programs like this exist and wish they’d been around (and nearby!) when I was growing up.
After dropping off Anna (and playing with Gabe, who is Anna’s rockin’ jack russel/chihuahua puppy), we hung out with Jessica’s friend Ira for a little bit, and then wandered over to the reading.
I’ve got to say, Neil is a hell of a charming guy. He read chapter four of The Graveyard Book to the audience (around 850 people all told), shifting his voice appropriately for different characters in all the right ways and spots to make it a really engaging reading — it’s like the entire audience was 5 again, and he was reading to us before bed. Afterward, we had a brief intermission to get up and stretch, and then he showed us footage from the upcoming Coraline movie (comes out this February), though he did make us promise not to put any video of the footage up til at least after the tour is over next week, as a favor to him (did I mention that he’s a hell of a charming guy?). It’s looking fantastic, and the folks at Laika should be damned proud of the project.
After the preview footage, there was a Q&A session with Neil that ran for about 45 minutes to an hour, so the reading in total took about 2.5 hours. One of the questions actually was about the “new” format compared to the old autograph lines… the short answer is that the old system involved maybe thirty minutes to an hour reading AND Q&A, followed by 3-6 hours of standing in line to shuffle past Neil and get a signature. It is a bit more impersonal, perhaps, to not get that individual face to face time, but in the end it makes for a happier overall experience to do it in this new format. Neil’s also got a great excuse, since his finger is broken and this way he could do all the signing at his own pace. Definitely well worth the time and effort to head up to Seattle for. (As an aside, it’s sort of telling that when I looked around the audience of folks who would ostensibly be “my kind of people”, I didn’t recognize a single person, despite having lived in Seattle for three years, whereas I’ve been in Portland for 6 months and already often randomly run into people all over the place. Portland FTW!)
After the talk, we grabbed Anna and headed over to 13 Coins, which is a local chain of 5 star 24 hour restaurants… huge, tall leather bound booths, and one of the best filet mignon’s I’ve had — it just sort of dissolved upon hitting my tongue. SO good.
Got up this morning, whereupon Anna made us breakfast, we played with Gabe a bit more, and then we took off for parts south — it would have been nice to make it a longer trip, but Jessica is volunteering for Fright Town, and had to get back for that. Definitely a nice trip, and for those of you in Seattle that I didn’t get to see, hopefully I’ll make it back up sometime soon!
Skipped the after-party to wander home (I don’t drink, and today was long enough as it stands, otherwise would have joined the crew at the Green Dragon). Hoping to collect my thoughts on the day while they’re still fresh.
The short of it: it was a REALLY fantastic event, and I’m very glad I went (it would have been worth coming down from Seattle for were I still in Seattle, let me put it that way). As can be gathered from my previous post, there was a virtual wealth of information regarding blogging, and thats not even getting into the deluge of tweets on Twitter regarding it — at several points in the day, we were anywhere from the number one to the number three item in Twitter Trends, even beating out the political stuff the day after the debates. And the attendance was just 150 people(ish), so that should be saying something on just how much everyone was tweeting. I about doubled my Twitter Follows/Followers.
On the quibbles side of things, I’d say it’d be nice if it was broken into two shorter days rather than one PACKED day. More chance to socialize and network between peers, and it would also give the opportunity to provide a bit more tracking options for sessions (as it was, there were a few that ran opposite each other that a lot of people wanted to go to both of). That said, the price was unbeatable, the presenters and topics were interesting, and the location was excellent. Overall, if you’re going to have issues, having too many neat things packed into the time is a pretty nice problem to have.
A few mental notes to myself:
- I promised to look into more effective ways to migrate or batch edit categories in MediaWiki (the wiki software the Codex uses)
- The WordPress Codex needs more volunteers to help write tutorials and document features, especially with 2.7 right around the corner! This is something that is worth at least a portion of my time, even if it’s just taking a few hours a week to fix typos and grammar.
- Unrelated to Wordpress, worth looking into the Information School at Berkeley, as their graduate program sounds like potentially a good fit. Thanks for the tip about goes to the lovely @snelson, one of the numerous awesome people I got to meet today.
I feel like the event made me excited about being a blogger again, which is a great feeling. I’m excited to put some of what I learned about into practice to make my blogs better and more effective. Some of these include the plugins that got listed, and implementing OpenID support and finding other ways to foster communication on the blog. I’m excited to update to 2.7, and plan to pull a nightly for local testing to make sure my theme development doesn’t break. I’d like to finish my new theme and get it implemented on the site, and maybe (shock of shocks!) share it with the community in case someone else likes what I did! Which, I think, is the biggest takeaway from this event: it’s not about the tool you’re using, it’s about the community that uses it.
8:33am: We’re all set up in the main conference room at CubeSpace, bagels and coffee in hand… slide on the project points out that if you want to search on twitter or flickr or anywhere, the hashtag to look for is #wordcampdx.
8:38am: Giveaways of random things, like a free copy of Blogging Tips
8:40am: “Compost Compost Compost!” (Eva explaining CubeSpace)
8:42am: Automatic sent us a bunch of buttons and stickers and tattoos (temporary tattoos). Tattoo contest for creative use (PG-13 please!) over the day.
8:43am: Random silly little Wordpress video done to “When You Wish Upon a Star” — cheesy but cute. It’s sort of a list of bloggers and developers and such who’ve managed to be successful using wordpress.
8:48am: Random interviews with various Wordpress users.
8:53am: Lorelle just came in dressed as a Fairy Blogmother. “Has no one’s lives have been changed by Wordpress here? What the hell am I doing here?”
Read the rest of this entry »
Apologies for the lack of posts lately — no real excuses for the radio silence, but there it is: a hair under 3 weeks since my last entry. Here’s a quick sum up of the past few weeks:
- Bernie put out a call for citizen co-signers for a petition against the current Wall Street bailout. Signed that, and encourage EVERYONE to contact their Senators and Congressmen ASAP, as this is something on the floor NOW.
- Been introducing Jessica to Dr. Who, in all its glory. Currently in season 2 of the new series, and discussing with several friends picking up the old series and doing a Who night going through the whole damn thing.
- Picked up a 1TB hard drive (LaCie Quadra) and an eSATA card for my laptop, which is making me happy — I was effectively out of room on both my laptop (120gb) and my extra drive (250gb), and this way I’m nicely backed up once more and have a bit more space.
- Purchased a new domain: wanderlu.st. As the name might suggest, it’s going to be a travel related blog, with essays and writing and photography about various trips and locations (and even some local stuff from various places I’ve lived that I think are neat). It’s not really live yet, as I’m waiting until after WordCamp to properly set up the site. Looking forward to it, though!
- WordCamp is this weekend, looking forward to it. Sounds like we’re going to get to preview WordPress 2.7, and the event has been filled to capacity (around 150 people). Woo!
- Have the wanderlust, BAD. The air is finally starting to cool and turn autumnal, and as usual, it is sparking both the creative impulse and the desire to go explore.
- Planning to head up to Seattle on October 3rd to attend Neil Gaiman’s reading from his new book (The Graveyard Book). Should be a fun trip!
- Yes, I’m still looking for work. Had a phone interview with Apple last week regarding a Mac Genius position, which (while effectively a retail position) would provide full benefits and decent pay and help lock me down to an actual living situation again (how novel!). Despite having passed the phone interview, I’m not holding my breath, and continue to look and apply elsewhere, like Omni’s listing for a Software Test Pilot, which is WAY too up my alley to not try for (and for a company I like, to boot!).
So, err, yeah, I think that about catches ya’ll up. I’m still debating whether or not to split personal and professional blogs again for Critical Games (still have the nadreck subdomain after all, so why not use it?). As is suggested by me going out and getting a new domain and hosting service for wanderlu.st, I’m more and more leaning to making the materials more granular, instead of converged. (“All things have their place.”)