This past weekend was a blur of video games. Well, game, really; I had a pretty long marathon going through Uncharted 2, the new Playstation 3 game modeled after the likes of summer blockbusters, particularly those of Indiana Jone-sean vibe. The last time a game warranted a marathon gaming session from me was upon the release Metal Gear Solid 4, another story-driven masterpiece.
I should do one or two more before I get too old and mature to spend my free hours appreciating virtual worlds and plotlines.
It’s been an Apple-tastic year of hardware for me, as I added a good amount of Job-sean computing power:
- Starting work at LOLapps, I asked for a behemoth of a laptop, the 17″ Macbook Pro. It turns out web development work is well-suited for the mac.
- I wanted a home media server; the Mac Mini made sense given its sexy form factor and reasonable price.
- The iPhone 3GS was a natural upgrade from the OG iPhone.
- And I just got another Macbook Pro for personal use.
Am I just another inductee into the Apple cult?
I decided I wanted another laptop. When Sui’s elbow jabbed me in the stomach for the umpteenth time while she shrank in the home office chair as I reached around to type in a chat IM window aside her email screen, I figured having two machines around would be helpful, and it’d quiet down my constantly-whirring, energy-sucking beast of a PC periodically.
And after spending some time with Macbooks in the office, well – why not. Macs worked well for development (say, when I’m working from home), I’m growing used to the OSX programs and interface, and the Macbook Pro really has exceptional build quality.
And all I needed was:
And I get this crappy iPhone camera pic:
Now all I need is one of my wealthier friends to donate a productivity-busting 30″ screen.
It was, Cal Day, Berkeley, the semester before I would officially start my college tenure. Upon a stroll down infamous Telegraph Avenue was when I saw him: my first interesting – well, “interesting” is probably too strong of a word, more like “atypical” – bum.
As with many things Berkeley, bumming has really been risen to a supposed art form. The dude was tranquil, uncaring of his potential clientele save for his simple, honest sign: “Need money for weed”.
In my ongoing rant against idiots in general, let’s spend a little time to talk about…idiot gamers.
If you haven’t heard, we at LOLapps have started experimenting with gaming, specifically social games on Facebook. I’ve made the lateral move into our gaming division, and of course with that comes plenty of complex front-end graphical and UI responsibilities.
It’s a measuredly harder task than building a blog or simple one-time apps on Facebook. Implementing rich, engaging, user-friendly interfaces is hard work.
My daily trek from home to office and back tend to be fairly educational. Between the likes of Buzz Out Loud, gdgt, and TWiT for tech with American Public Media and The Economist for news, I listen to a whole collection of podcasts, though with a fair amount of coverage overlap.
Occasionally, a host will acknowledge the presence of an echo chamber – that is, a number of media outlets express the same viewpoint without much critical thought, sometimes repeating the PR selling points without rebuttal. More often, though, journalists sound like company fanboys, especially some tech podcasts; they give really positive (sometimes, also negative) testimonials of features or products from the “cool” companies, convince themselves that something useful to them may very well be useless to the listening public, and repeatedly route conversations back to the same hot topics.
We geeks are a loyal and long-winded bunch.