Sucking less, on a budget

Trash Time

Here are some more shows that I'm watching, so you don't have to...

- Confessions of a Teen Idol: It's like Celebrity Rehab, but instead it's got Ray from 90210. 'Nuff said.
- Tool Academy: Women send their toolicious boyfriends for a major attitude adjustment. Hilarity ensues.
- Homeland Security USA: You think I'd watch Parking Wars and not this!?
- Real World Brooklyn (season 21): Swoon. Never gets old. Never.

Big Love starts at the end of the month. You should be watching that. Last season wasn't in HD on iTunes, I wonder why. I'd hate to have to pay for a month of HBO just for one show.

Let's see what Uncle Phil brings us tomorrow at MacWorld.

MacBook or MacBook Pro?

With my Powerbook G4 giving up the ghost a week or two ago, I'm left with my life in limbo on a backup drive (thank you Time Machine). So here I sit, watching vodcasts on my AppleTV with football recording in the background, pouring over reviews and spec sheets trying to answer the most important question of the hour: MacBook or MacBook Pro?

I'm typing this on my work MBP, the 1st gen Intel laptop, which in all is a nice machine save for the massive welts on my lap when I do anything non-trivial. I can hear the fan whirring now, despite doing nothing but editing text, and I know that if I wasn't wearing jeans, I'd be hurting. The case bottom must get well over 110 degrees if I look at it funny. Short of work trips, though, I don't use it much day-to-day because when I'm at home I have the desktops and my personal data was on the (nice and cool) G4.

The new MBP, however, is larger and heavier, which gives me pause. The older generation has all the ports (including FW400 and DVI), though I only use DVI for work, so the $30 cable extra may not be an issue for a personal machine. The lack of FW400 for backups is tough, but I've already backed up Jo's new MB to a FW drive over the network, so I can get around it. The other use I have for FW400 is my Firepod for recording, but that's hooked to the desktop MacPro; I probably wouldn't do much mobile recording.

From the reviews, it seems that the screen on the MBP is much nicer than the MB, with better black levels and a wider viewing angle (in addition to being larger). I've never done much work on a MB, so I can't tell if I'd be ok with the smaller screen. It just seems wrong not to get the larger screen, as all my other laptops have been that way (even back to my Pismo G3 at 14").

Performance-wise, it doesn't seem to make much sense to go with the lower-end MBP as it's almost exactly the same as the "higher"-end MB, except $700 more. That pushes me at least $1k over the MB for the performance boost. Will I need it? I like to tell myself that I'll sit on the couch and build Camino or Chromium or work on some other open source projects of my own, but I know that's crazy-talk. The world already has enough temperature converters (even on the iPhone!). I also don't play games, so I probably won't ever notice the dedicated video. Snow Leopard might change that, however, but engaging it takes a huge chunk out of battery life (and requires you to log-out!).

If I need it, I guess I always have the work MBP, which I'll be using when I travel and visit the office. Perhaps I'm not as much of a professional as I like to think.

Cursed

In the last month, I've had two laptops go bad (one hard drive, one logic board), I've misplaced (or lost) my Gran Turismo 5 Prologue game disc, and now my PS3's optical drive is dead and won't recognize any discs. I've also had to reboot my DirecTivo twice within the same timeframe, something that's almost never necessary.

I'm cursed. WTF?!

Mainstream

Camino got some pretty good mainstream press in ComputerWorld (even linked from Slashdot). Really the only bad thing they could come up with was...well...that we do no more and no less than we should as a browser. That, folks, is exactly what we set out to do, so I'm pretty happy.

Some trunk crashes aside, 2.0 is shaping up quite nicely with new features (tab dragging, tabspose, improved rendering, etc). Expect a beta soon. We're all very excited!

Things that have me giddy

I've been finding a bunch of cool things lately, and wanted to share.

I've been trying to get back into learning Japanese, but Kana flashcards for hiragana and katakana are quite cumbersome. To the rescue come several highly rated flashcard apps for the iPhone, but the one I finally settled on was Kana Flip because of its intelligent algorithms for tracking progress. I always have my phone around, and I feel much less self conscious about dragging it out to spend five minutes reinforcing the Kana than a handful of cards with alien writing on them. I'm still having lots of trouble with katakana. Why does it have to be so different form the corresponding hiragana!??! It's a conspiracy!

With japanesepod101.com now requiring a subscription for access to their old content (blech!), I went in search of other online resources and found something incredible: iKnow. It's a complete online learning tool for learning Kana, Kanji, and vocabulary that's very highly polished, intuitive, and fun to work with. The graphics are stunning in quality and the Flash app only takes 30% of my poor laptop's CPU! Programmers who care! Members can create their own content and lists of words (in any language, mind you) and share them for everyone's benefit. You can also create a custom podcast of your completed words. Best of all, it's free!

The new iPhone 2.2 features are cool, but I'm drooling about the new podcast features in the iTunes store. Not only can you now get podcasts directly from the store (finally!) but you can delete completed podcasts directly on the phone (just swipe) to free up space. You also have the choice to either download the podcast or stream it if you have network connectivity, saving you from having to take up precious space. This is really a game-changer when it comes to information snacking. I don't need to be tethered to get what I want, nor do I even need to go through the hassle of subscribing. I can just pick a few before I head out, save them to the phone, listen in the car or on the Metro, and then delete them as I listen to them. The barrier to accessing new content is now ridiculously low. Keen.

I'm also loving the voice search in the Google Mobile app for the iPhone (disclaimer: I have some code in there, so I'm a little biased, but not too much). The interface is really clean and just works. If it gets the recognition wrong, just pick from the suggestion list and it will learn for the future.

Jo says I need to write about how "fantastico" the Facebook app is. She's addicted. Is that a recognized disorder?

The beast-est.

Bond tonight, I'm trying not to get too excited. I wish I liked martinis.

Jo loves her new MacBook, an early gift when the drive on her old one died in a spectacularly audible fashion. The lack of FireWire is quite annoying, but at least I have other machines from which I can network-share my existing backup drive. She loves the speed, she loves the feel, but most of all, she's mesmerized by the gestures on the trackpad. Who knew?

We are also the proud owners of a new elliptical machine. This thing is a beast. I can't believe we got it down the stairs, and then that we were able to assemble it. It only squeaks a little and we only broke one plastic tab. Have I mentioned it's a beast? We're never moving. Ever.

Who knew?

I tried that Bud American Ale this week. Who knew it doesn't suck? I'd actually buy another 6pk.

What's with this weather? It's November. It shouldn't be 70. I'm sweating!