Andy Laub

I did this before. Here it goes again:

As January hit Wisconsin, we were running down the middle of the street trying not to fall on our asses. Now that I think about it, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the year.

February took us to Chicago with some friends who used to live there, and we did all kinds of good stuff.

In March I bought a camera and took some pictures.

April was not so great, but in retrospect it was actually not so bad either.

I read a lot of books in May.

In June I loved the iPhone 4. And I still do.

I relaunched this site in July. (Side note: wow, that was only July?)

I rode my first ever half-century in August, which dovetailed nicely with my first ever 500 miles run in July.

On the subject of running, I ran a 10K race (off road!) in September. So much fun!

I accidentally another play in October. Is that bad?

In November, Conan came back and I made a pie. Both were delicious.

December. Miami.

The top ten things I’ve seen in the last 72 hours:

1. Miami Beach, daytime
2. Miami Beach, nighttime
3. Exotic cars being driven ever so casually
4. Exotic cars for rent, should you only need that Rolls Royce for a day
5. A submarine (from the air)
6. Cruise ships (from the highway)
7. The Atlantic Ocean (from the beach)
8. Free in-air WiFi
9. The Miami Opera House, because it’s so cool-looking
10. The Miami International Airport, because it’s so huge*

*I didn’t fly into or out of MIA, but it’s worth mentioning that I was on the phone for about ten minutes at one point and we were driving past the airport the entire time.

When the iPad landed there was no disputing its novelty, but at the same time I wrote it off as “…a larger version of a device I already didn’t have a use for.”

Harsh, I know, but true. I could never really wrap my head around the iPod touch (a device made completely redundant by my iPhone), but as I’ve spent more time playing with iPads and seeing the new apps that are being made available, I’m starting to “get it”. It’s the size.

An iPad is an ideal away-from-desk computer. There are some instances where I’d like to relax and watch a video that lives on my desktop, or read an article while watching TV, or reference a game as I’m playing, where all I basically need is a screen. For now the iPhone is an adequate solution, but the extra screen space would be a welcome addition.

The thing is, I’m also finding myself more and more in need of a computer I can take with me to meetings, some of which are not local and thus require more flexibility from such a machine. It’s this away-from-home situation where a “normal” notebook computer still shines; I know that in a pinch I can browser-test in Windows, edit a file in Creative Suite, or do something as basic as charge my phone. Preparation is the keyword.

In a perfect world I’d own both of these devices in addition to my iPhone and Mac Pro which would leave me consistently covered for all scenarios. And while that day may eventually come (and probably sooner rather than later), for now the away-from-home computer has taken priority and that’s why I ordered an 11″ Macbook Air.

I realized after posting that I left a major sore point out of my diatribe regarding Red Faction. It’s true that I found the game to be somewhat difficult (even compared to the similar Saints Row) for reasons mentioned, but honestly that wouldn’t have been such an issue if the game had a better system in place for checkpoints and mission restarts.

When I fail a mission/objective in a game, my first thought is okay, how much progress did I lose? In some instances I am pleasantly surprised, but Red Faction is not one of those instances. I can recall exactly two times where failing a mission allowed me to restart from a checkpoint instead of at the beginning. In all other cases, the game doesn’t even quickly revert to the beginning of the mission, but to your pre-mission status. I suppose it does this to let you (re-)prepare adequately for the mission (assuming you weren’t the previous time), but I don’t think that option is important enough to justify this as the default behavior.

I wrote about this a looooong time ago, but a big gripe I had about Gran Turismo 3 was that when you failed a licensing objective (admittedly a small part of the game), you were unable to immediately retry. I disagree with this (and apparently so did the GT time because they fixed it in Gran Turismo 4), and will continue to assert that the default option after mission failure is to immediately restart from the last checkpoint (or the beginning, assuming no points have been checked). Games difficult enough to require multiple efforts to complete an objective (ie. all of them) that don’t follow this rule are generally stupid and wrong.

Minor secondary forgotten gripe: the load times are pretty painful.

As if it’s not abundantly clear, I’m apparently back in the proverbial video game saddle, as they now consume a good portion of my free time. My Fallout 3 mania has pretty much run its course and has given way to a couple of other distractions, in no particular order:

• Fallout: New Vegas
• Red Faction: Guerilla
• Rock Band 3

I’m not going to talk about Rock Band right now, except to say that when played as a game it’s on the unfun, grinding side of the spectrum, whereas when played as a diversion (that is: with people) it remains one of the best things ever. And while I’m sure I’ll eventually have a lot more to say about New Vegas, I’m only about an hour into it so that’s best left on the back burner for now.

So let’s talk about Red Faction. It’s one of those weird games that kind of clawed its way to the edge of my radar and just hung there, refusing to leave until I gave it the attention it felt was deserved (see also: Indigo Prophecy). My initial take after playing the demo was “Saints Row on Mars” given that the developer and scope of the game are the same, just with a different setting and protagonist. To be fair, I prefer the controls of Red Faction to those of its ghetto brother in that it uses the triggers for driving instead of one of the face buttons.

The premise of Red Faction is certainly intriguing: you’re a demolitions expert (I guess?) on Mars, helping a group of rebels overthrow the corrupt and abusive government. So far it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before on a million other planets, but this game’s novelty comes from its completely destructible scenery. Smashing some buildings around with your hammer is pretty neat. Also blowing them up.

But after that, the game becomes a chore. A minority of the missions are enjoyable, but for the most part I often found myself asking “why me?” I’m some random guy who just came to Mars to keep a low pro with my bro bro my head down and live with my brother. Then my brother gets killed up and suddenly I’m the savior for this entire guerrilla movement that I wasn’t even aware of until five minutes ago. I have no special qualities but the Red Faction is sending me, alone (generally), on missions that nobody in their right mind would expect one person to be able to accomplish.

I’ve had this feeling before and it’s usually found in sandbox games – even the mighty Grand Theft Auto series is guilty of it to some extent. But it stands to reason that you probably wouldn’t send some random new guy out on what you’re telling me are incredibly crucial missions for your cause without any backup whatsoever. That… makes no sense, and that’s what made the game such a drag to play through.

There are some side missions that involve you capturing or defending a checkpoint from/against the bad guys, with a little gauge on the top right that shows you how many people are left on either side. Those were fun, and felt truer to the spirit of the game than anything else, core missions included. Unfortunately, that little slice of enjoyment wasn’t able to compensate for other annoyances:

• Your max ammo count through the entire game is pathetically low. I can carry a rocket launcher around but a few extra clips for the assault rifle is too much to ask for?
• Buildings don’t always collapse when they should. That three-legged structure will surely fall after I destroy two of the legs, right? Right? Couple this with the fact that one of your main goals is to destroy certain buildings, often under heavy fire, and you have a recipe for disaster.
• The enemy solders are obscenely well-armored, further exacerbating the ammo issue.
• The guy giving you missions is the same guy from Crackdown, where he was equally annoying to listen to.

But even despite these nagging issues, I slogged through the game. I don’t know why I do that to myself; I’m sure my blood pressure goes through the roof in situations like this but I feel that because I have it I should finish it for my own sanity (see also: Dead Space). Now that I’m done, I just have two words.

I didn’t mention it in my last post, but I am pretty comfortable putting the Fallout franchise on the same level as Mass Effect in terms of how well-developed the universe is. It’s a pretty good indication of my appreciation for the franchise if I’ll spend hours on their respective wiki’s just, well, absorbing, even after the game has ended.

Fallout is particularly interesting because the future as envisioned there (2277 in this case) requires a significant departure from our current universe beginning in the 1950’s, while ME (set in the late 2100’s) is an imagination of where we as a society could go from where we currently are.

Because of the sheer amount of stuff offered by both universes, the series’ are both ripe for downloadable content. And while usually the DLC I acquire is done so with the intent to do things (additional missions in Borderlands, or wanting to drive more, newer cars in Forza), the DLC in these games was appealing because it offered a chance to see more of the universe, even just a small slice; and that’s what this post is really about. Without trying to sound too dismissive, the Mass Effect team likely has a much easier time with DLC, since they can add a new planet, or a new location to an existing planet, and not have to worry about it fitting to deeply into the context of the current game.

Fallout, on the other hand, has a somewhat less range to work with (you are in the DC area, on foot, with a finite number of different “factions” to deal with) and yet it manages to skirt those limits on more than one occasion. This creativity is welcome, but also makes for an inconsistent experience across the five different expansions. That doesn’t mean they’re not fun; they are, just to varying degrees:

1. Operation: Anchorage was the first piece of DLC for Fallout 3, and basically takes you out of both DC and 2277 by putting you in a simulator where you repel the Chinese invasion of Alaska in 2066. It’s kind of a cheat, but still quite enjoyable. Interestingly, it felt like Call of Duty as imagined by Fallout – that’s not to say it wasn’t fun, but it removed a lot of the attributes of combat that I had been used to up to this point (weapon degradation, scrounging for ammo and weapons, super mutants). Still interesting, but very sterile.
2. The Pitt, then, is practically the opposite in every way. Where Anchorage is bright and clean and always daylight, Pittsburgh has been cast into a reddish darkness, illuminated only by the flames from surrounding smokestacks. Upon arrival you’re stripped of all your possessions and must work your way out of slavery. Of all the DLC, the pacing on The Pitt felt the weirdest to me, though I’m willing to accept some of the blame for that because I spent a lot of time in the steelyard collecting ingots.
3. Broken Steel is easily the best of the bunch. Most notably, it allows you to continue playing after you complete the core story, something not formerly allowed. It also boosts the level cap from a measly 20 to a majestic 30 (sorry, nerd-talk), and adds some additional enemies for you to worry about (and I mean that sincerely – they’re badasses). As if that’s not enough, it is the only expansion to lengthen the core story and get a taste of life after the initial game’s climax. This is far and away the one I’d most recommend, but the general consensus is that features it adds should’ve been there in the first place.
4. I was most skeptical of Point Lookout, which takes you to a swampy wasteland along the coast of Maryland. For the most part things played out pretty normally (considering the context), but I will give it credit for introducing one of my favorite side missions of the whole game — one in which you follow the trail of a Chinese spy stationed there before the bombs fell. Point Lookout (the place) is also the largest and most diverse area to be featured in any of the DLC.

That said, I’d still recommend that anyone looking to play the game look for a deal on the Game of the Year edition, which includes all five add-ons (the fifth, Mothership Zeta, sounds intriguing but I haven’t yet played it), but if you are just looking to add to your existing copy, don’t rush to the Xbox Live Marketplace (or the Playstation Store) just yet – Op: Anchorage and The Pitt are available on a physical disc, as are Broken Steel and Point Lookout.

This is notable for one reason: physical games are available used, which means you may be able to get the four mentioned above for significantly less than you’d have to pay to download them. Had that not been the case I probably would’ve skipped the first two altogether, even though they were interesting. I’ll likely pass on Mothership Zeta for now, opting instead to prepare for the imminent arrival of New Vegas in my mailbox.

This is a post about Fallout 3. It is a highly-acclaimed video game that came out almost exactly two years ago for a multitude of platforms, and one that I purchased on its release date.

It’s also a video game that, somewhat indicative of the time, I picked up only briefly and then almost immediately gave up on. Oh sure, I made it through the prologue and into (out to?) the wasteland, but from there the game became so overwhelming in so many ways that I just didn’t feel like dealing with it.

A year later, or somewhere thereabouts, I tried it again, made some incremental progress, then likely got distracted by something else and continued to write it off as “not for me”. Despite certain insistences that is in fact very good, and I should give it another chance, I couldn’t commit.

But New Vegas pushed me over the edge. Maybe. You see, after what basically amounted to a one-night stand with Splinter Cell, I was looking for a game I could settle down with for awhile and really get to know. All the hype about New Vegas rekindled my interest in the Fallout franchise, and I vowed that I would give Fallout 3 an honest-to-God second chance.

And this time, it just clicked. Much like my picked-up-and-put-down experience with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, I opted to start over from scratch and basically just not be such a pansy when it came to fighting this time. I also took advice from the internet and chose my skills a little more carefully, as I didn’t realize how critical certain abilities are when I started the game before.

I had also previously described Fallout 3 as “Borderlands, but much more lonely and dismal.” While that holds true somewhat, there is still a sense of humor woven into the game that keeps it enjoyable versus depressing. And while the loneliness is somewhat overwhelming at first, after awhile I wouldn’t want it any other way. Put another way: there are opportunities throughout the game to acquire a follower, but I’ve avoided them. Mostly this is because I don’t want to be responsible for their deaths (which are, logically, permanent), but also I’m kind of a badass so I don’t need their help.

Once the balance of terror vs. curiosity shifted in my favor, the game became a lot more fun and interesting. I didn’t worry about stumbling into the “wrong” place, because such things are encouraged and rarely lethal if you’re prepared. There’s still an ever-present threat of not having enough ammo (merchants only have finite amounts) and the degradation of weapons and equipment (which are repairable but not without some hassle), but it doesn’t feel like tacked-on difficulty; instead it really does fit with the overall theme: if you don’t succeed, this could very well be the fall of humankind and the decay of everything associated with it.

Whoa.

Miscellany

• V.A.T.S. (the combat assistant) takes some getting used to, but it is tremendously useful when you figure it out.
• Maps and fast travel are lifesavers.
• I am using the Fallout Wiki probably way more than I should.
• The Broken Steel add-on is crucial.
• Dead Rising, on the other hand, was not better the second time.

For most of summer I was in a video game lull. This isn’t exactly atypical; time not spent in front of the computer generally ends up being spent outside or doing basically nothing. The exception was Forza 3, which I finally finished; but even that had become more of a task that I gave myself versus something I did for recreation.

As fall approached I felt like I wanted to play something, but I wasn’t sure what. I wasn’t quite ready to jump into a game that I knew would eat up weeks of my time (nor did such a game even exist that I wanted to play). Usually when this happens I find myself delving into the back burner for “games I kinda sorta was intrigued by or enjoyed tolerated the demo of”, and that’s how I ended up renting Splinter Cell: Conviction.

I had played the Conviction demo when it first hit Xbox Live and found it rather… fun. At the time I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to force myself through a game that required any sort of stealth, and I also didn’t feel like committing another control scheme to memory. On the other hand, the graphics and presentation seemed top notch, and the story… well, I haven’t played any of the other games in the Splinter Cell franchise so I couldn’t really follow anything with the limited objectives provided by the demo.

It took me an hour or two of playing the full title to re-engage my light-stealth-third-person-shooter mindset, but after doing so and getting a handle on the controls, I began to enjoy the game immensely. It sounds like this newest iteration is a departure of sorts from the traditional Splinter Cell manifesto; being detected is no longer the game-ending circumstance that it would’ve been in previous episodes. Instead the game feels somewhat like a modern-day Assassin’s Creed — stealth is certainly the best way to accomplish the task at hand, but it’s generally not the only way.

Honestly I can’t really say much about the story; it’s interesting enough but I assume it would’ve been more meaningful if I had a relationship with the characters that would’ve been achieved via the earlier games. Suffice it to say that it gets the job done and doesn’t leave me much room for complaint. And really that can be applied to Splinter Cell: Conviction as a whole. It got the job done (admirably, I might add) when I just needed something to occupy me for a couple of days.

I haven’t spent a ton of time talking about iOS apps here, but it should come as no surprise that like most iPhone/iPod/iPad users, the downloaded apps on my device of choice far outnumber those that were there originally. While I didn’t share same the OMG NATIVE APPS mentality that many did, I also didn’t become an iPhone user until after the App Store was an established foundation of the platform.

Suffice it to say, the App Store is an important facet of iOS as evidenced by the enthusiasm for it exhibited by both consumers and competitors. Those who make the excuse that apps are unnecessary when you have the web are doing just that: making an excuse. So it was no surprise when the iPad launched with the App Store already implemented, but it did bring into focus the gap between iOS and OS X.

With today’s announcement of the Mac App Store, that gap… is still there, but it’s also different. I noticed that Apple is positioning the different fragments of iLife and iWork as Mac Apps (which refer strictly to those available on the Mac App Store for the purpose of this post). Given that they’re treated similarly on the iOS App Store, that makes sense. What I’m curious about is how this new delivery system will affect the current crop of applications. There are a few in my dock that seem like natural candidates for such a thing; Adium X, Flickr Uploadr and Transmit come to mind, to name a few. However, given that we can simply download them from their respective websites, I have to wonder what added advantage the Mac App Store could offer.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good idea; even as a tech nerd, the idea of having what are basically “1-click installs” for all of these Mac Apps is appealing to me, and the familiarity bred by the iOS App Store means users will likely feel right at home doing the same on their OS X machine. Plus it’s one more way to get applications on your hot-sauce MacBook Air or Mac mini server. And the developer has the advantage of added exposure and being able to push updates through a more automated system.

But speaking of updates, don’t iOS Apps have to be submitted for review with every update? While that just may be part of the package on iOS, it’s very different from current OS X environment where they’re free to push updates whenever they finish them. Considering that apps are still distributable the old-fashioned way and the developer is well-known (Panic, for example), they may opt out of the Mac App Store environment completely. And is there some set of unique guidelines for Mac Apps versus “normal” applications?

Furthermore, and this is something that’s been weighing on my mind since the advent of the iPad, it’s obvious to me that Apple wants to somewhat unify the iOS and OS X experiences. I’m not saying they want to start forcing multitouch on OS X users (at least, not yet), but it is logical for them to integrate similar visual cues and behaviors on both sides (just as they do with their hardware). But I think having such similar buying experiences across two (three, if you treat the iPad as its own) platforms may confuse the issue – especially since you can buy apps for any of the three on your Mac.

I initially started typing this paragraph with the intent of naming some of the apps on my phone that I wouldn’t necessarily need on my Mac, but they’re actually mostly inherently useful in some way. That, then, begs the question – why can’t I use the theoretical copy of Pages that I bought on my imaginary iPad on my Mac too? From a technical standpoint I understand that they’re two different environments with different specs and requirements, but I don’t expect that to be as clear to the typical consumer. I guess we just need to think of the Mac as a PS3, for example, while the iOS devices are PSP’s. We may see the same titles on both but we’ll need to understand that they don’t work across the two devices (unlike the iPad’s “backwards compatibility” of sorts).

Don’t get me wrong; I do look forward to seeing how the Mac App Store changes the OS X experience. I am just not 100% sold – yet. Now that new MacBook Air, on the other hand…

At any given time over the last fifteen years I’ve held wildly varying opinions of Volkswagen, from thinking they could do no wrong with the introduction of the A4 Golf and B5 Passat in 1998-1999 to thinking that wrong is all they could do with the successors of those cars (although in fairness they actually were better). Now I’m somewhere in between. On good days I think of cars like the new GTI and… well, that’s really it.

The worst of the modern VW lineup is easily the Beetle. It was an alright car when it came out but always suffered from being packaged incredibly poorly; you could get essentially the same car in a VW Golf or GTI but with the interior space arranged in such a way that it’s actually useful (unless you really needed that extra 8 inches of headroom above the front seat).

But such are the demands of retro design, and the success of the New Beetle meant more old-new cars couldn’t be far behind. Most notable is the resurgence of the entire MINI brand, followed later by Fiat’s (soon-to-be-US-bound) 500. However, the thing about the MINI and 500 is that their original shapes weren’t that different from that of a modern two-door hatchback, meaning that unlike the Beetle the packaging remains inherently practical. A Cooper still has a moderately useful back seat (in terms of headroom) and cargo area, two things that can’t be said for the Volkswagen.

Which is why VW still has to offer overlapping small cars in Europe, where things like that are actually important. While the US lineup bottoms out at the Golf (size: medium), VW Europe continues to move down the scale with the Polo (size: small) and then the Fox (size: extra small). On top of that, both are thousands of pounds (yes, pounds) cheaper than the Beetle, and are infinitely more useful.

But instead of throwing us a bone and federalizing the Polo (a car that’s eminently practical but also enjoyable to drive) for the US, VW has determined that YES, they do need to build a New New Beetle because the old New Beetle was just so good. Sadly, the new car will be just as stupid, and I will be just as bitter.

Today fall was in the air. Students (and teachers) are headed back to school, the weather this morning was – dare I say – crisp, and of course, Apple kicked off September right with their annual iPod event.

Since the advent of the iPhone these announcements haven’t meant a whole lot to me – it’s been my primary iPod since the day I got it and it’s the only device I have with me most of the time. However, running has given me a newfound appreciation for a smaller breed of iPod, a lightweight, pared-down option that I simply never had a need for in the past. Currently I’m running with a third-generation “fat” nano. Size and weight-wise I have no complaints, but I will admit to the clickwheel being somewhat finicky at times, the fact that it (like most other iPods) requires the additional receiver for Nike+ functionality, and the issue of storage when I’m lacking pockets (solution: armband).

Which is why the new iPod nano is amazing. As is usually the case, commenters on sites like such as Engadget are quick to point out the device’s shortcomings; namely that it no longer plays video or takes photos. The common sentiment is that kids like it for that sort of thing, which shows that these people are missing the point: this isn’t for kids.

There was a time when an iPod nano was the de facto teenager accessory, but as iOS has gained more attention and the devices are quickly becoming ever more competent and affordable, the iPod touch is the logical heir to that throne: the popular iPod. While the old iPods had “games” and “apps”, the touch actually makes good on that promise. And granted, the price difference is somewhat significant, but the difference in capabilities between the iPod touch and even the old, video-enabled nanos was even more pronounced. Many may even find (or have found) that the extra money is better spent there than towards a DS or PSP. And now that the touch has a (HD!) camera, the nano couldn’t/can’t compete.

Which is fine, actually, because the old lineup didn’t make sense in that regard. Apple is finally making it clear with broad strokes that if you need or want to do anything other than listen to music, get an iPod touch. Easy decision. And for those of us who only want music, and would like it in the smallest possible package (with a screen, please), this new nano is a godsend. While I’m wary of the touchscreen, I’m ready to believe it can’t be worse than the crazy scroll wheel on my current iPod, and happy to acknowledge that all my other concerns have been addressed beautifully.

And duh, Apple wants the popular iPod to be an iOS device.

Edit: as it turns out, the Nike+ receiver is not built-in, which is enough of an issue for me to downgrade this to “not sure if want” status.

I think it started with a MacBook Pro. Or rather, the observation that a 15″ MacBook is capable of the same (1680 x 1050) resolution as the 20″ monitors in front of me. Slowly but surely this spiraled into feelings of monitor inadequacy and I started to consider an upgrade. That was a mistake.

You probably already know where this is going, but suffice it to say that I can be somewhat — finicky — when it comes to buying things. With that in mind, I set off on a journey to see what I could see.

Parameters

I pretty quickly remembered that one of the must-haves in a new display is LED backlighting, because it’s awesome. While this helped narrow the search considerably, it wasn’t without its share of problems. It can be rather difficult to sift through pages of displays (regardless of website) to find those that are LED-backlit, as the technology isn’t significant enough to warrant different categorization from other LCD’s. Annoying, but understandable.

Getting past this obstacle, I was able to find some potential candidates at reasonable prices. I knew when starting the search that I’d likely have to make some sacrifices, namely in terms of aesthetics. I was pretty interested in the Samsung PX2370 (no link, but it’s black, rectangular, and really shallow), but true to Samsung everybody-but-Apple form the base looks like dogshit and for some godforsaken reason it’s not even VESA compliant.

More Parameters

But I digress. Let’s forget about specific monitors for a minute and talk about where the industry as a whole is headed: 16:9. It only makes sense, considering that’s where televisions have been for years and it’s a lot easier for computers to adjust to this standard. And as a result, we’re seeing cheaper panels which is why the Samsung mentioned above is have-able for around $300.

HOWEVER. The result is that it’s nigh-impossible to find an LED-backlit monitor with a pixel height of more than 1080 (“full-HD”) – a measly 30 pixels higher than what I have now. And with that in mind, it’s hard for me to justify spending any money to upgrade. Additional width is useful, always. But additional height is just as important, and that’s just not there yet – even larger 16:9 monitors are topping out at full HD. 1080P is great (I’d even go so far as to call it overkill) for a 27″ television, but a sick joke for a computer monitor of the same size. Where’s the pixel density?

These two search parameters have made my options extremely limited, and somewhat surprisingly, the front-runner is the outgoing 24″ Apple LED Display. While the new 27″ matches the 16:9 ratio and WQHD resolution of the 2009 iMacs, the late 24″ is the last of Apple’s 16:10 desktop displays. Price, especially now, is not as bad as I initially thought after comparing it with rivals that lack LED and niceties like the built-in iSight(s) (not to mention the aesthetic points).

Conclusion

If I had to buy new monitors right this second, I’d probably cry a little bit and then give my money to Apple. But fortunately I don’t have to buy anything right now, so I probably won’t. It’s a tougher decision to make when a few hundred dollars turns into nearly three times that much, and fortunately my current Apples are working just fine.

Addendum

After further research, some additional (and expensive) voodoo is required to mate a DVI Mac Pro with one of the Mini DisplayPort-only Apple displays. The search continues.

My iPhone 4 arrived two weeks ago while, fittingly, I was in the middle of what would be my final phone call from my iPhone 3G. I was caught somewhat off guard, as I hadn’t been following FedEx as closely as I sometimes do and it was arriving nearly a week before schedule. I managed to make it through the rest of the call without any sort of drooling or heaving breathing so I feel like I handled the whole situation pretty well.

The unboxing process was nice enough but I wasn’t nearly as excited about this iPhone as I had been about the 3G, mainly because I didn’t expect this transition to be nearly as drastic. I was both right and wrong about this, in a good way, so let’s break it down:

Design

This – THIS – is what an iPhone should look like. I liked the original aluminum iPhone, and very much disliked the glossy plastic 3G and 3GS so this new design is a very welcome change.

Unsurprisingly, it feels great to hold – Apple has few peers in this area. In recent history their influence over competitors’ designs is somewhat obvious, but photos can’t portray just how big the difference in build quality is. At the risk of stepping into fanboy territory, it’s often the difference between buying a gadget and a functional work of art.

Interestingly, I did run up against what is mostly a psychological problem when setting the phone down. In a situation where I’m about to put the phone on a desk or other flat surface, I’d tend to hold it with my thumb on the left, four fingers on the right, and the screen facing up. The curved back of the iPhone 3G meant that the back of the phone would make contact before my fingers, so I could then release. The flat back of the iPhone 4 results in the opposite, meaning I either have to reposition my fingers or “drop” it slightly. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an issue as it doesn’t result in any harm to the phone; it’s just an oddity.

Experience

I found the initial startup to be a little underwhelming, actually. I think there was a lot of buildup for the Retina display and at first I didn’t notice a tremendous improvement. It is definitely nicer – a little whiter and a lot sharper, but it’s something that requires a slightly closer look for me to really appreciate. Where the difference is most pronounced for me is the app icons, as some of them are still formatted only for the old resolution and are quite grainy as a result.

What I wasn’t expecting was for the increase in performance to be so noticeable. Everything is significantly faster than on my old phone, but for me the two most useful instances of this are:

1. The camera. It still takes a couple seconds to launch, but shutter actuation is much, much faster. It could still benefit from a bigger lens, but so could every camera ever made.
2. Wifi. Locking the iPhone 3G would result in a loss of wifi (understandable), but it would take its sweet time reconnecting when unlocked. Not so with the iPhone 4, which retains a wifi connection even while locked (presumably for short periods of time) or reconnects almost instantly when unlocked.

The wifi in particular is an example of what Apple does well: continually refining things that were already okay until they’re great. The 3G’s wifi performance was a little annoying at times, but it wasn’t a situation where identical behavior from the iPhone 4 would’ve prevented a purchase. The newfound responsiveness has been particularly useful when using Touchpad, the remote app for our Windows Media PC.

Gripes

I may be a fanboy, but I’m not so rabid as to admit that Apple’s devices don’t have their flaws. In this case, though, I think the nits I have to pick are mainly software-based except for two, both of which are self-explanatory:

1. More storage is always better.
2. The camera could be better still.

Even iOS 4 is pretty solid, in that it would take me a fair amount of time to remember and compile any of the complaints I would’ve had. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is with Apple’s implementation of Facetime. I certainly understand their reasoning for putting it front and center within the in-call menu, but they did so at the expense of the hold button. This resulted in a panic when I tried to put a call on hold the first time, and the end result was not pretty.

There’s been some coverage of this already, with the “official” response from Apple being that hold is just a glorified mute button. I get that, and now that I realize there even is a mute button I find myself a bit less peeved by the whole thing. The obvious question becomes: why did the two exist in the first place?

Also, I guess they’re having antenna problems or something? I wouldn’t really know as I haven’t experienced any.

And finally, still no 3G around here. Just go suck a dick, AT&T – you guys are terrible. On that note, though, I am now on the new DataPlus plan so I don’t feel like I’m being totally robbed every month. I guess that’s an advantage.

JQuery. I’m pretty sure that’s where this all started. A few months ago I redid my work site in effort to add a little more, well, pop. In doing so I had a little discussion with JQuery and we decided that it would be fun to hang out some more. Since then it’s been finding its way into more and more of my projects, as it’s proven to be remarkably useful.

As I become more familiar with it, it’s easier for me to see what it’s capable of (hint: everything), and as a result I started thinking about a redesign of this blog in an effort to completely and utterly abuse integrate some of those capabilities. As work progressed, I realized there were some other bullet points I’ve been wanting to hit as well. Here’s the laundry list:

JQuery

Like I said. In this case I’m using it mainly for the archive dropdown and the endless scrolling on listing pages. I played with some concepts that involved more horizontal scrolling, but decided to ultimately go a different direction.

Grids

I’ve been basing the various iterations of this blog off of grids for a long time, but this is the first time in awhile where said grid hasn’t been dictated by Flickr. In this case I decided to try a 960 grid system and ended up using a 16 column grid here, with each column equaling 50px with a 10px gutter. I used this CSS generator to develop the initial CSS.

I’m debating whether I’d use this technique if I were to do it all again as I had a couple of hangups with the process:

• I didn’t love the naming conventions for the various classes; I ended up replacing all the underscores with dashes because that’s what I’ve become accustomed to using in my CSS.
• The system falters somewhat if you’re floating multiple blocks inside of a larger block (for example, three .grid-3‘s in a .grid-9. You need to add .omega (to remove the right margin) to the last block in the line, which doesn’t bode particularly well for dynamically-generated content.
• It seems like an excessive amount of markup in general. Then again, I suppose that comes with the territory in a system that’s attempting to be somewhat universal.

Dynamic Stylesheets

I’ve been wanting to experiment with adding constants to my CSS files for some time now. One way of doing this is with LESS, a Ruby gem (also available as a WordPress plugin, thankfully). LESS basically allows you to define constants and nest classes within your stylesheets, which is a tremendously useful concept.

But in short, I hated it. I attribute part of this to the fact that I had already been messing with PHP as a way to dynamicize my CSS, but the LESS system ended up being a little too clunky for me to find useful:

• LESS does math, and that’s great. Except when it tries to divide my shorthand font declarations, and as a result the entire CSS becomes null and void.
• It seems that commas are no less of a hurdle, as I found LESS to stumble when I was trying to define the same set of properties for two different elements.
• As I mentioned, any issue with syntax will cause the entire stylesheet to be totally dysfunctional with no indication of what the problem is.

I ended including the CSS in PHP form, which has functioned in a much more predictable manner.

Color Editing

This is the third version of mine to feature theme-editable colors. In this case, though, I ended up going a slightly different route. I had been using a variation of the functions.php file from the old default Kubrick theme, which writes custom CSS in the header of the HTML to define the chosen color. Instead of that, I decided to make use of my newly-created PHP CSS and pass that new color to the CSS via a URL variable. Much cleaner.

In addition, I decided to make light and dark stylesheets from the get-go, which I can also switch from the admin.

Mobile Friendly(ish)

I’ve been watching with interest the recent developments in “responsive web design”. As such I decided to define an alternate version of the site for mobile devices and viewports smaller than the width of the normal site. It’s an early effort, but I’m pleased with it for now and like the rest of these points, it’s experience that I can carry forward to future projects.

And More Less

From a content standpoint, I really wanted to simplify my own presentation of myself. I decided to eliminate the “about” page for the first time in basically ever, opting instead to let my various (side) projects and social networks do the talking.

From a contact standpoint, you may notice that the comment form is no more. Existing comments have been preserved, but the ability to comment has been disabled (for now, at least). Same goes for the contact form, for similar reasons: anybody who wants to discuss an article or get in touch is someone I likely already talk to on a regular basis (or someone I would talk to). I get the whole public discourse thing, believe me, but that happens so rarely here that I felt it was no longer worth the inclusion.

So that’s it! Let me know what you think OH WAIT YOU CAN’T.

I’m generally pretty consistent in my sleeping habits, becoming somewhat functional around 8 AM and calling it a day by around midnight. This is a slightly updated, delayed version of what used to be; a side effect of a new work situation and sharing a house with a teacher on summer break.

Sometimes there are bonus days, where I’m awake (and by that I mean actually ready to be finished sleeping versus being reminded by the cat that “hey it’s been nearly twelve hours since I’ve had food and I thought maybe you’d forgotten to feed us even though never once has that ever happened.”) well before usual, and I find that’s a great time to accomplish things. There are always things to accomplish when the internet is involved.

This is awesome when it happens in the morning. On the other hand there are times when I wake up during what I would consider to be “the middle of the goddamn night” for no conceivable reason, where it’s simply too early not to try to go back to sleep because anything else borders on dysfunction. Then you get blog posts like this.

When my life as an employee was coming to an end it gave me some time to think about exactly what led to my overall frustration and that would contrast with my new life as a business.

The conclusion I reached turned out to be relatively simple. Your working life is about projects, and the relative success of each affects your self-esteem and work ethic. In my case, those projects were websites, and my metric for success was “does this finished site make me happy?” While there are some I am distinctly proud of, they are decidedly the minority; beacons of light in an otherwise hazy ocean.

However, when you become a business, the business becomes your project, and what used to be projects become tasks to further the progress of that project. The previous metric of success for individual tasks is no longer the deciding factor in your happiness; instead, you’re happy when:

1. You have more work to do.
2. Your client is happy, because it begets #1.

For me, it’s as simple as that. When you can be proud of an individual project, that’s a bonus.

As a technophile, it’s should be pretty apparent that I deal with an awful lot of gadget-lust. I’ve been getting increasingly better at shrugging it off, but that temptation becomes exponential on launch dates of particular devices. There’s something in the air on days like today; tech blogs go crazy, Twitter explodes, and nerds around the world line up outside of stores for the privilege of… giving away their money.

But you might be surprised to find that I didn’t join the masses today (or two weeks ago) considering my rabid enthusiasm for the newest iPhone. I toyed with the idea of preordering, but when the date jumped from July 2 to July 14, I figured that I’d be able to pick one up locally before then.

Yet this morning I got out of bed, did some work, ate a banana, went for a run, and came back here to write this. What I didn’t do was drive as fast as I could to Walmart (the only local reseller whose stock isn’t allocated to preorders) the minute I woke up, desperately hoping to get my hands on a shiny new toy. Don’t think that it wasn’t a major possibility.

In the last few days, though, I’ve been trying to pin down just why I so desperately wanted this phone that I felt compelled to inconvenience myself to acquire it. I couldn’t answer that question, beyond what I can only describe as a really strange sort of peer pressure, where by “peer” I mean “nerds and blogs”.

The only other explanation I can offer for this specific instance is that it’s the first time I’ve actually been eligible for a new iPhone at the time of its launch. AT&T didn’t even exist here when the first iPhone hit, and I was in the middle of my contracts for the 3G and 3GS.

But look! This is me, taking a stand.

I ordered one from the Apple Store while I was writing this.

“Are you gonna get Red Dead Redemption?” they said. I said I didn’t know; I knew the game was a reboot of sorts for the franchise, but having never played the original (Red Dead Revolver) that didn’t mean too much to me. There was a lot of talk about how this new installment in the series would be taking a lot of cues from Grand Theft Auto 4 (the Best Game Ever™) to the point where the proper title was eventually replaced with Grand Theft Auto But With Horses for the sake of convenience.

And that was really my hangup; I wasn’t sure if I could love a GTA game sans the A. I enjoy those types of games because even after the game proper is long since finished, it’s fun for me to drive around the city and just play. I couldn’t picture doing that on a horse (or really any other means of transportation). Honestly, the earlier the game’s setting, the less interesting I find the driving experience. The Godfather or The Sabotuer are both good examples of games that are just not modern enough to make the driving element engaging to me.

So I didn’t buy Red Dead Redemption. My recent changes in both mindset (don’t buy every game) and cashflow (inconsistent) have prevented that, so far. However, when I got a “we miss you; free rental!” call from the local video store (yeah, we have those!), I knew what I had to do. Three days should be enough time to get to know a game, right?

I think it was somewhere around hour ten when the truth really hit me. This isn’t just Grand Theft Auto But With Horses; this is a real, bona fide Grand Theft Auto game that just happens to be set in a world before the automobile was ubiquitous. Everything else – the mission structure, the tone, the general story, the gameplay, the feeling – fits seamlessly into the GTA framework (I sincerely hope to come across at least one ancestor of a current GTA character), and when you start to think of this game as an endeavor on the same level with such a behemoth it becomes that much more impressive.

Suffice it to say, Red Dead Redemption is a very good game that I had a lot of fun with in my limited exposure to it. There are a few nitpicks, the biggest being that it’s difficult to tell friends from enemies which wreaks havoc on your reputation; the auto aim isn’t particularly picky about who it points your barrel at and then suddenly you’re WANTED and all hell breaks loose. I still can’t figure out the fast travel system, if there even is one. Something about setting up camp and then jumping from there to a previous settlement, which I never experienced.

In typical Rockstar fashion, though, the pros far outweigh the cons. Visuals and design are solid, and audio continues to be a strong point just as it has in the GTA series. With no radio the music instead is sparse and appropriately Western, mellow when appropriate but becoming more frantic during shootouts and other dramatic sequences. Voice acting is superb, especially in the case of main protagonist John Marston. He reminds me very much of Timothy Olyphant’s character in FX’s Justified.

Unsurprisingly, gameplay is nearly identical to Grand Theft Auto IV, with a few notable exceptions. The new(?) DeadEye system (which effectively lets you slow time to pick off a number of targets) is an absolute joy to use and may stand out as the defining mechanic of RDR combat versus GTA combat; I don’t foresee it working in the context of a more modern setting but it’s very appropriate here.

Most exciting though, is that we’re finally seeing a game from Rockstar with no health meters! RDR has gone the way of many modern shooters in that you still have a finite amount of health, but as your condition becomes more critical the screen turns red. If you can find cover, the reverse happens after a few moments. It makes for a much less stressful experience and unlike DeadEye, I hope this propagates to all future GTA games.

In short, Red Dead Redemption is both a great game by itself and, if you’d like, a worthy entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Three days was enough to get to scratch the surface but I definitely look forward to spending more time together in the future.

Today at WWDC, Steve Jobs introduced the eager public to iPhone 4, the latest and greatest addition to the iPhone family. A short list of awesome:

• 940×640 HIGH-REZ “Retina” IPS display
• Front and rear cameras with flash and HD video recording
• A4 processor (like such as the one found in the iPad!)
• FaceTime video chat over wi-fi
• All-new (albeit unsurprising) industrial metal and glass case design

So basically, it’s everything that we all knew was coming, yet the fact that it is official and will be here soon (and on my half-birthday!) is no less exciting. It’s a home run in just about every way; I’m especially excited about the new optics. My entire list of gripes can be summed up thusly:

• Storage tops out at 32GB.

Given that iPhones have a tendency to catch up with the prior year’s iPod touch in terms of storage I didn’t think it was too far-fetched to expect the iPhone 4 in 32 GB and 64 GB flavors; instead they’ll remain the same as the 3GS which means they still can’t accommodate my entire music library (which currently weighs in at nearly 47 GB for those curious). But it’s a small sacrifice; I’ll be the first to admit that at least half of my library should never be listened to again, ever.

But the phone is just the first third of an all-important trifecta. There was a fair amount of talk about iOS 4 (formerly iPhone OS 4) as well; the iPhone demoed was clearly running that software which leaves me to assume that the new phones will ship with it later this month. I’m curious as to how that will shake out regarding the iOS 4 update for the current crop of devices.

And finally, AT&T may have actually made a decision that works out in my favor for once. Last week they announced a restructuring of their data plans for all smartphones, eliminating the $30 unlimited plan and replacing it with two new variations:

1. The “DataPro” plan gives you 2 GB of data per month for $25, with each additional 1 GB costing $10
2. The “DataPlus” plan gives you 200 MB of data per month for $15, with each additional 200 MB costing $15

It was difficult to determine how good of a deal this ended up being without first consulting my own usage records; as it turns out it’s rare for me to even come close to 200 MB per month. As a result, I think I’ll be able to safely downgrade to the DataPlus plan and easily knock $15 off of my current bill (and as I’ve mentioned before, price per month is much more important to me than buy-in price). And on rare occasions where I exceed that bandwidth, I’m still only paying what I was before, which is a fine compromise.

All things considered, I’m pretty pleased with this most recent round of iPhone news.

One of my least favorite aspects of the process of makin’ websites is cross-browser testing. It’s not that I feel it’s unimportant; nor does it really cause me too much stress. But the mere fact that it is a thing that has to happen can be cause for frustration. Fortunately, it’s 2010 and for the most part we can be content to worry about which browsers support which bleeding edge features. Unfortunately, it’s 2010 and we still have to test in Internet Explorer 6.

I’ll be honest and say that of all the headaches I’ve dealt with over the past few years, IE6 has decreasingly been the cause of them. I think more people are starting to come around to the theory I posted on Twitter this morning:

IE6 users either A) know their browser sucks and expect a degraded experience (corporate) or B) don’t know/don’t care (grandparents).

Everybody knows this is true. Any self-respecting nerd wouldn’t be caught dead using IE6 – we’re talking about software that:

1. is nearly 10 years old.
2. was never that great to begin with.
3. stopped being supported 2 versions of Windows ago.

All of which begs the question: why are so many people still using it? The obvious answer is because they can. Massive corporations insist that their websites continue to be IE6-friendly, which means there’s no incentive for the user (or the user’s IT department) to upgrade. And since they don’t upgrade, then massive corporations insist that their websites continue to be IE6-friendly.

Which is totally insane; the burden then falls on the developers to build websites that somehow feature the latest technology and run in a browser that was built before most of that technology was invented? I mean, we can do it, but we don’t like doing it because it encourages bad habits.

As developers we can only explain all of this to the client in the name of enlightenment, but If anyone can pull the plug on IE6 it’s the enterprises. Google, bless them, is leading by example and we can only hope others take notice. We’ve got to get the IE6 users potty-trained onto better browsers instead of coddling them into adulthood while they’re still shitting their pants.

I may need to start visiting the library, because I’m running out of material around here.

1. The Testament, John Grisham
2. The Street Lawyer, John Grisham
3. The Summons, John Grisham
4. A Painted House, John Grisham
5. The Broker, John Grisham
6. Bleachers, John Grisham
7. When the Wind Blows, James Patterson
8. Eaters of the Dead, Michael Crichton
9. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

I’m just going to put this out there: April of 2010 will go down in history as one of the more tumultuous months I’ve basically ever had. A lot of things happened very differently than I would’ve liked and there were a number of times where I was contemplating what would’ve amounted to a total reset on my life, even up until this week.

Thankfully, I think my coping mechanism has finally caught up and kicked in, and I’m feeling substantially better than I have been for the past few weeks, and I’m able to look at April as a month of “silver linings” versus simply being bad.

The biggest news is that I’m now officially self-employed. {hire} became my full-time pursuit at the end of April, and has been going about as smoothly as you can expect a sudden transition to freelance work to go. I’m very excited about both existing and potential partnerships, and also for the freedom allowed by my new schedule. Suffice it to say, it’s both the most and least stressful job I’ve ever had.

As a result, my daily routine has changed dramatically, as have my priorities. The awesome weather has made running every morning a joy, as has the fact that I now have the time to run every morning (instead of afternoon or evening). I haven’t been on the bike nearly as much, mostly because my commute now consists of walking up the stairs, but I’m trying to fit a longer ride in here and there as a break (ha!) from running.

Maybe it’s because it’s summer, but I’m also not gaming much right now. The Saboteur and God of War II are both sitting, unfinished. The only console game I’ve really enjoyed lately is Borderlands, and that’s because it’s a social activity. Instead, I’ve been reading a lot more; something I hope continues even as I slowly run out of books around the house.

Finally, I’ve decided that it’s time to take a break from theatre. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities over the last few years, but more recently it’s been taking its toll on my mind, my self esteem, and my schedule. Now is a good time for a hiatus, especially considering the aforementioned career change.