To be more specific, we watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Garden State, and I thought both were very good in their own ways. Sky Captain had the very classic 40’s feel and a really neat look to it, and it didn’t have any slow parts as some action movies do.
Garden State had the same low-key vibe that I picked up from Lost in Translation, except that things actually happened in Garden State and it wasn’t just two hours of nothing. I am more impressed with Zach Braff now than ever, because this was a really good, interesting movie.
Back in the day before weblogs were really known as such and were just built by people who didn’t know how to use images, I read one by some person named drew. It started out pretty average, with him just recapping things that happened during the day. At some point though, I think he snapped and just started making things up instead of typing what really happened and his site suddently became a whole lot funnier. I can’t really explain it, but it was good. Unfortunately those entries are no longer online, which is too bad.
I went grocery shopping yesterday, looked down in my shopping basket, and lo and behold it was full of chick food. I should clarify that chick food in this case is not so much food for chickens as it is Special K and yogurt. I was a little self conscious of my purchases until I noticed the guy in front of me had yogurt and Grape Nuts. Then I didn’t feel so bad.
OK – I did something else??? Oh yeah, filed my taxes. Good for me.
When Abe ordered his iMac, he got the Bluetooth package with it and also ordered this mouse from MacMice. A perk of this situation was that I was able to use the Apple Wireless Mouse that came with his computer. While I’ve dug the wireless concept for sometime, I never moved on anything because I wasn’t sure what I thought of Apple’s offerings in that area. The keyboard wasn’t much of an issue – I’ve really been a fan of their latest Pro Keyboards (the ones that started shipping with the G5) so a wireless version wouldn’t be a huge departure.
Mice, however, are a different story. For some reason, I’ve always had issues picking out mice. Only recently did I start using the IBM optical mouse I bought last year, because until then I’d been using my old Microsoft Intellimouse. But the problem was, while I liked Apple’s keyboard, I wasn’t a fan of their one-button mice. I am traditionally inclined toward two-button scroll mice.
So it was strange to be back to a one-button mouse. Apparently, though, I must not mind it because when Abe said he was ditching the MacMice mouse (that just sounds dumb), my response was to whine like a bitch. So then I went and bought my own. I can’t really blame Abe, though. MacMice states that it’s not uncommon for people to have “cursor movement” issues. This is apparently caused by your environment because it could never be an issue with their engineering. Here’s the thing – the “environments” where The Mouse falters are the same ones that the Apples (and the IBM, even the $10 Intellimice) were absolutely unaffected in.
And they don’t rattle. Well, the Microsoft mice rattled, but we always wrote it off to cheapness.
Yep, so I mentioned on the fly yesterday that Abe is now a Mac user. Here are some lovely pictures.
We are back from Green Bay, and Les Mis was good yet again. There were some sound issues, however and the cause of these ended up being a dysfunctional computer, which resulted in quite a few missed cues in the first act. I wanted to say that it wouldn’t have happened on a Mac, but I was afraid he’d say that they were using a Mac. Plus that’s kind of an annoying thing to say. I’ll be the first to admit that Macs have their problems, but they more than compensate for them.
According to this article, Microsoft is introducing a new downloadable Office component whose sole purpose is apparently to check your @hotmail or @msn accounts. They’ve decided this lovely feature, which is currently free for anyone who has Outlook Express or Entourage, is worth the bargain price of $59.95.
While I agree that it is indeed convenient to check your web-mail from an email client rather than online, I disagree that it is worth that amount of money. I am having a hard time even imagining people using MSN and Hotmail as their primary accounts, considering the sheer amount of spam they receive. If there are people like this (how sorry I am!), email me, and I’ll give you a gmail account. That’s how bad I feel for you.
So otherwise, things are pretty standard. I’ve come to realize that there are two fundamental problems with iTunes. The first is that it is too goddamn easy to spend money. The second is that you can see, at any given time, how many songs are in your purchased music playlist. That means I get a nice little shock every time I look at it.
Also, Ted has a blog now, so that is something to see.
I would have to say that this year, MacWorld was infinitely more interesting to me than was NAIAS, but I’m not sure why. I suppose the excitement started with the dropped price of the cinema displays the week before. By the way, I bought one of those.
On to the keynote. In an effort to remind us of how boring last year’s was, Steve Jobs I guess felt he needed to spend another hour talking about iApps. These are great programs because they require a minimum amount of thought to use. They are great because I don’t have to think about them. For an hour. Before hearing the good stuff.
But it finally came. Apple’s hardware theme this year seemed to be that smaller is better. I like both the new additions to the Mac and iPod line. I wan’t both a Mac mini and an iPod shuffle, even though I have no practical use for either one. I’ve been following a couple threads on them and there are a lot of people who like them and a few who don’t seem to get it.
The main criticisms I’ve seen of the Mm are it’s lack of RAM, price, no audio in, low-end video card, etc etc. I can understand the issues, but they don’t seem valid because these people seem to be forgetting this is a sub-$500 Apple-made computer. The other thing these critics are missing is that this is a piece of hardware that’s aimed below them. If you are capable enough to write about a computer on a website your comfort level with computers is far above what this is aimed at. But it’s cool. It’ll do well. Macheads dig it already because it’s a new thing to have and doesn’t constitute a heavy investment as far as Macs go.
The iPod shuffle is the same. It’s not a replacement for the upper-end iPods, it’s a companion. People who want an iPod for not $300 will like it. People who have an iPod or 3 already will like it. I want one, and I don’t know why. It’s a toy, it’s cool, and that’s that.
I’m writing but nobody’s reading. Maybe that’s because v7 was on top-secret hiatus and this is being written on version 8.
Anyway, I couldn’t really wait much longer to write about the two major events of January. We’ll start with the North American International Auto Show. In all honesty I’d have to say some of the best and most in-depth, straightforward coverage of the event belonged to Autoblog, so check it out there. Otherwise, let’s break it down by geography.
America: Not a bad showing. GM was forgettable, but that could be because I didn’t look at it in the first place. Now that I think about it, they showed those Saturns which were ridiculously good. The inherent problem with me even considering a Saturn is that it’s a Saturn, and no matter how good they get, I still can’t see myself in one. Chrysler had that Jeep thing, and that was pretty cool. There was the Dodge Charger. Chrysler has possibly figured out the concept of brand-management? I mean, the Charger and 300C definitely share some blood but are different enough to be treated as their own separate entities. There was also the new Viper Coupe, which looks exactly like the old Viper GTS. Maybe they should’ve given it new taillights. Heck, it’s only an $80,000 car. Ford had the new Mustang ragtop which was overshadowed by the rehashed GR Shelby something which was in turn overshadowed by the ugliest car they could possibly think of. Great.
Europe: VW showed the new Jetta and Porsche showed the 911 Cabriolet and nobody was excited because we’ve seen both of them before (not that they’re bad cars). Audi had the Quattro “concept” in spite of there being nothing vaguely conceptual about it. BMW flaunted the M5 since it’s the only decent new car they have because its power overshadows its looks. Volkswagen also had the Ragster which I wanted to like but I just couldn’t get the roof proportions. It was said that the creased up body of the Ragster will find its way to the New Beetle line (can we just call it the Beetle now?) which is not at all a bad thing. I like the taillights. The Viper should have had those. M-B had the new M-Class and that was wholly uninspired (not a bad thing, I’m just saying) which apparently was to make up for the hot hot hot CLS55 AMG, a car for those who think the E55 is “boring.” Volvo is building a coupe. I hope it doesn’t resemble any of their prototypes, because those are horrible.
Asia: Honda showed the new Ridgeline which is almost tolerable outside but looks like a late-90’s Chevrolet pickup inside (this is NOT a good thing). I guess there was also an announcement of the new 06 Civic but there was no car to go with it. Suburu had the Tribeca which is interesting and a car that I look forward to seeing in real life. Mitsubishi had some ugly new cars. Toyota had a boring new car. Mazda had a Mazda Mazdaspeed Mazda6 which I’m sure was great once you stopped saying the name.
And here we are in the new year. You’ll notice little baby changes, in the fact that everything is now CSS. I figured now would be a better time than any to begin a transition. I don’t have an approximated end time for the switch, because there isn’t one. I have to really figure out what I want here, but we’ll see what happens. Nothing much has changed as far as navigation, but guess what – now it works on mobile phones.
So yeah, there it is. We saw some really good movies over the past week. Collateral was a really good movie, but I wasn’t really thrilled with the ending. Then we saw Changing Lanes and I, Robot, both of which I thought were really, really good. We also watched two really funny movies in Napoleon Dynomite and Anchorman, which, again, were really, really funny and good. The Manchurian Candidate was interesting and I liked it quite alot, as was Open Water. Last night we went to see Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Abe and I both thought it was a good adaptation of the books, but the two we were with weren’t so pleased because they were not familiar with the books.
Other than that and long periods of playing Burnout 3, which I got Abe for Christmas, it’s been a fairly uneventful break. I go back to work on Monday, and I’m not sure that I’m looking forward to it. It will be good be doing stuff again, but I was so happy with not doing stuff that it may prove to be kind of a difficult transition.
We also went to check out some new apartments a block away from ours. They are pretty cool, but not nearly as big as ours, and a couple hundred dollars a month more expensive. I also paid my final CellOne bill.
Here is the biggest news: we have another cat. His name is Bender, and he’s a year old. He has no tail, but we think he was born that way. Anyway, there’s the news.
