ironSoap

• I love stuff like this. Recursive!
• So I’ve been trading games on Goozex quite a bit. One bad thing is that it’s often easier to request that people send you games without their original case and/or packaging. But I like having a case for my games. Fortunately I found this site which in turn directed me to this page on Nintendo’s website where you can get blank, empty DS cases for less than a buck apiece.
• I also discovered, on that note, that your neighborhood GameStop/EB Games does not sell the translucent green DVD cases that XBox 360 games come in. But if you ask nicely they have a huge supply of them on hand and will probably give you a few of them for free. Slightly less scrupulous employees may need to be greased for a couple of bucks.
• Hey, lookit some babies eating lemons.
• There is something woefully disingenuous about a machine that tells me I smell nice.
• Nothing can forgive me for the fact that I inexplicably love the Go Meat! commercials.
• Fun with bad translations (note: the ads on that site are a bit dubious).
• What? No. I mean… I can’t… Buh. Grp. Fi-ie-ie-ie-awt. Ow, my head.

Hope your day is as surreal as mine.

I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after several days of fearfully rapid reading, concerned for the inevitability that the fate of the beloved characters would somehow be revealed to me ahead of time. Mercifully, I made it through without issue and now wish to discuss. But in the interest of those who have not yet finished and don’t want even a chance of spoiling the end, I’ll use the under-used (on ironSoap, at least) jump to prevent inadvertent plot leaks because I don’t want to be held back from the conversation.

(more…)

It’s been an exceptionally trying several months. I’ll spare you the long version; if curiosity overwhelms you I can be coaxed to reveal the Cliff’s Notes version via email. But as is often the case, more mundane matters have remained active in my frontal lobes and these are the kinds of pointless and uninteresting things that fabricate the cornerstones of our virtual communication.

It occurs to me that I owe you an apology.

• I’ve come across a glut of “geek shame” lately, manifest in faux book covers for the upcoming Harry Potter book, eye-rolling disdain from video gamers when confronted with the reality of some new downloadable games based on German-style classics like Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne, that sort of thing. What always strikes me as ironic about all of this is that we have people who are posting on Internet forums whose primary topics are video games, Linux operating systems, iPod hacking, HDTV specifications and the like. Judging others or fearing being judged at this stage in the game? Really? You don’t think it’s a little late in the game for that particular concern to be crossing your mind, forum-monkey?
• The Mac mini that functions as our primary household computer is starting to really annoy me. I can’t quite figure out what the issue is but it runs at a glacial pace with frequent beach-ball pauses. It’s especially apparent when trying to deal with iTunes which happens to be one of the primary apps the machine was intended to run. In terms of clock speed the mini far outpaces my aging iBook but I’ve gone to great lengths to upgrade the RAM in the iBook as high as it will allow and it doesn’t have nearly the same level of problems, even running multiple memory-hungry apps simultaneously. I know people are going to start to wonder about me after my last iPhone rant and now this, but it frustrates me that Apple’s base configurations for new computers are comically lacking in RAM. I mean, a new 1.66 GHz mini with 512 MB of RAM? What are we, neanderthals? And it costs like $250 to upgrade to a reasonable (but still not what I’d call “upgrade level”) amount of 2GB. Comparable Dell machines come standard with 1GB and allow upgrades to 2GB for $100. Listen, I get the whole “Macs cost more” meme, I really do, but this is RAM we’re talking about here. You can find 256MB sticks lying discarded on most sidewalks, so I really don’t think getting a normal amount of it should cost half as much as my system… especially when minis really aren’t supposed to be upgraded by the consumer.
• I happened to catch an episode of the World Series of Pop Culture yesterday and one of the categories involved the bad-movie awards show The Razzies. The very next category involved the film The Breakfast Club. The announcer, after having the contestants do really well with both remarked, “It seems you know your bad movies and your good ones.” Call me a heretic, but can someone explain to me the appeal of The Breakfast Club? Or John Hughes movies in general? Look, I missed out on those during the 80s when they were I guess influencing everyone else from my generation but I’ve since been subjected to nearly all of them and I just don’t get it. They aren’t that funny, they don’t really touch some chord that strikes at the inner workings of high school life (at least not any high school I ever saw) and they all feature really whiney characters that I want to slap rather than root for. Did I just have to be there at the time or what?
• Which reminds me: The Goonies is a terrible movie. Sorry folks, it just is, and I think it’s time we acknowledged that fact. Listen, it’s cool: I used to think that Flight of the Navigator was totally radical but I came to my senses eventually. I’m not even saying you can’t still watch it and think about how good you used to believe it was, but stop trying to convince people that there was some cinematic magic going on there. I guarantee you that at some point in the future some kid is going to post on the Internet v4.5 a dissertation on how incredible and influential The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D was back in the halcyon days of 2005. I swear to you, that’s exactly how you sound right now.
• It’s been like National Bad Service Month for Nik and I lately. Yesterday’s gems included a pair of Target employees who couldn’t answer the yes or no question of, “Do you guys have an Arts & Crafts section?” The reason? They were out (which I can only assume means off their shift or on a break) and, instead of answering, choose instead to take the time to explain that we needed to ask someone from Home and Garden. Also at a sandwich shop I tried to order a Diet Pepsi and had the girl who was manning the register grunt and gesture as she tried to decipher my incredibly complex order because, apparently, she had never before heard or heard of the English language. At one point she mentioned something about bananas. I drank what she gave me but I was very wary of it, fearing some sort of tropical fruit-related cola incident.

Man, I simply don’t understand it all. The fervor over the iPhone has culminated into a painful hum that assaults my eardrums and eyesockets no matter where I turn or go. Every website in existence, no matter its base subject matter, has some sort of coverage or commentary or sniveling longing regarding this device; I turn on the TV to escape and CNN has become the 24-hour iPhone network. I change the channel—somewhere safe, like Animal Planet perhaps. In between ubiquitous iPhone commercials they have Bindi Erwin’s precious (precocious? I always get those two confused) mug demonstrating how she’s taught an orangutan to use the simple gestures-based navigation to check her email (kiki@primate.org).

I shudder and retreat to bed, pulling the sheets high over my head despite the summer heat. Outside my window I hear a neighbor greet a passerby on the sidewalk: “Did you get your iPhone yet? Have you seen the visual voicemail?” They then squeal and giggle and I imagine they have drawn close together, slapping at each other’s hands and stamping their feet in spastic glee before smoothing their brylcreem’d hair and readjusting their power ties. Death does not spontaneously strike to relieve me.

The frustrating thing is that I’m usually right there with them: This is Apple after all, and my love for the company and their smooth industrial design contours is well known throughout the land. Make no mistake, among the generic media white noise directed at me only because I belong to the mercurial entity known as the public there has been a steady flux of pointed questions which all orbit the central query: “So. Are you getting an iPhone?” The assumption here is that my Apple devotion makes this a given and they direct their question to me in a wary, steeled manner that indicates they fully expect a sermon which elucidates point-by-point the wonders of an Apple-branded mobile phone.

They get a sermon, all right, and you are now subject to a digital representation of its finer points, so it’s not really what they expect. I guess I like to keep people guessing.

I, of course, realize the irony in adding to the din about this device with my own naysaying. But my status as a “hater” is not one I relish. Would that I simply drank the Kool-Aid like a typical Apple consumer, hands cupped over ears and nonsense pouring loudly from my vocal cords to mask the cries of those who would take my place. I find I’m even arguing with myself on occasion. “For all it’s shortcomings, it’s still revision number one,” I say, ignoring the startled looks from others in line at the bank who cannot discern whom I’m directing my comments toward. “Apple is known for underwhelming first gen devices. Maybe by this time next year you’ll sing a different song.” I find myself pleased that I’ve quickly moved to the front of the line, but dismayed that all windows seem suddenly devoid of tellers. Strange, that.

But even with Apple’s predictable track record, I still don’t find myself getting very excited by the prospect of a cell phone. I can see the appeal in a convergent device, that’s for sure. But consider the Cingular 8525 for a moment. WiFi, 2 megapixel camera, full qwerty keyboard, bluetooth, large and spacious screen: Check, check and check some more. So far we’re close in feature list to the iPhone. Then there’s the 3G, expandable micro SD slot and integrated flash for the camera which, you may note, are all things that the iPhone lacks. Sure, it doesn’t have the spiffy touchscreen (it does have a cool slide-out keyboard thing happening, though) and it lacks the hefty hard drive for all that music-playing joy.

But then again, it’s only $300 which means I could buy it, an 8GB iPod nano ($250) and a 1 GB micro SD card to store extra stuff like Windows Mobile apps (did I mention the iPhone has no third-party application support outside of browser-based ones?) and still save $35 compared to the iPhone. Since you can’t use your iPod songs as ringtones on the iPhone anyway, I’m not losing any features there and from what I understand I might actually be able to check my email on the 8525 without hucking it against the wall.

Yes, I know, the comparisons sound remarkably like the ones people make when Apple people (like myself, let’s not forget) start talking about OSX. Or the iPod. Apple fans love to wail about the user experience: “Interface is king!” We cry, trying to hide our cracking voices underneath a muffled cough. I certainly don’t want to undermine the arguments I myself have made in the past but in this case I just don’t see that Apple is doing what Apple does best. Touch screens? Really?

Really?

Is there something fundamentally broken about the precision of the well-used stylus? Is the vaunted iPod click wheel somehow already obsolete? Have we already grown weary of the arcane and ancient button with tactile feedback? Are these relics truly ready to be put out to pasture? Perhaps you don’t have to navigate the world with my stubby and greasy fingers, worn slick from years of nearly constant application of Kleenex to nose to stem the tide of my allergy-collecting nasal passages (yes, the collection has grown quite large, thank you for asking!) but primitive though I may be, I still like interacting even with abstractions like electronic interfaces via some tool. I hope the 8525 can withstand the abuse of being dragged, along with my knuckles, along the ground.

Naturally the iPhone does do something… uh, righter than the competition and that is provide a robust and long-lasting battery solution. Judging solely on the performance of my once-awesome and now hopelessly mundane RAZR, plugging a phone in once every two days sounds, when you say it out loud, like a pittance of a chore—it very nearly relinquishes its chore status when you put it that way. But I assure you that is only the case if it were possible to apply some degree of leeway to that requirement. When you use your cell phone as your primary (read: sole) means of voice communication, a dead phone is an affront to your ability to function in society. I don’t know why exactly this is so. But faced with the prospect of severance from humanity or eating lunch, I often find myself racing home with my stomach growling like that dog in Cujo, eyes flitting down to the blinking battery indicator on my phone, glowing an angry red (also like the eyes of the dog in Cujo) and marking the countdown to my dissolution as a modern person. There is no sustenance here save at the business end of a grounded, three-prong electrical outlet.

Is a nine-hour battery worth the media blitz that haunts my nightmares?

Is there any chance that I won’t, at some distant point in the future, own an iPhone and find myself filled with shame for the words I’ve written today?

No. And no.