A few short things for you today. After last week’s waxing poetic about springtime we got a seven or so inches of the heaviest snow and ice mixture I’ve ever seen (or shoveled!). This puts off my getting onto the road bike for a week or so. Now I really want spring to get here. I hate big March snowstorms. They’re fine in December, January, or February but mid March? That steps on my tail.
I ordered a new bag for carrying art supplies and stuff. I’ve needed a new one for a while now but haven’t seen anything I really liked. This one is “designed by artists for artists” and has lots of pockets for little stuff, a padded center section for a laptop, and it can fit a 14×17 inch pad of paper. That last bit is the hard part. Most medium size attache/messenger type bags end at about sixteen inches long. The next size up is usually huge, cumbersome, and not made for the purpose of carrying about comfortably. I remember searching for a bag with my friend Ed many years ago. He wanted one that could hold 11×17 inch paper and you wouldn’t believe how many bags he looked at that were just a little short. The one I ordered might be a little tall but what the hell, I took a chance. I’ll let you know how it is.
I’m trying to decide whether to get an XBox 360 or a Wii. I want the XBox just to play live games (those are the games played over the internet with friends or strangers in different locations) with my friends who I used to play regular XBox live games with. They all got 360s now and I don’t. Of course when we all still had just regular Xbox we weren’t playing as much as we once did so there is no guarantee that my getting a 360 will recapture the glory days. The Wii hasn’t any good live games but has a really cool motion sensitive controller that is revolutionizing game play. Plus the Wii is cheaper. With no money to spare at the moment it’s really all academic. I’ll just continue with my regular old Xbox (and Sega Dreamcast!) because I don’t want to pay $50 and up for new games anyway. I like ten to twenty dollar clearance sale games.
Book TV rocks! Book TV is what C-Span 2 runs on weekends and other days when Congress is not in session. Book TV broadcasts lectures by non-fiction authors on whatever subject their book happens to be about. History, politics, biography, or whatever is covered. Usually the lectures are about forty five minutes long with a Q and A at the end. The authors know their subjects well and most can speak entertainingly about them. Those who speak in sound bites need not apply.
I just watched the latest James Bond movie “Casino Royale”. I generally liked it. The “on foot” chase scene at the beginning was spectacular. Impossible but spectacular. Most of the fighting was well done. Short, brutal, and scary. Unfortunately the movie lost focus around the million dollar card game and it was down hill from there. Not terribly down hill but not as interesting. Villains started moving in and out of the plot and I had a hard time keeping track of who was who. Even worse I didn’t care who was who. None of them were interesting. They were cardboard cut out evil characters. The “Bond in love” part came out of nowhere too. That part was the least convincing. But overall it is worth a look because a lot of it is well done. Just expect to be a little bored at the end.
Here’s to hoping it warms up and melts the snow this week.
That’s why I only buy official “Legion of Doom” products. Oh wait… am I supposed to avoid evil corporations?
Ugh. I’m not sure if you’re kidding or not, John, but Jared and I have had this discussion a few times: Don’t try to justify your technology choices through some alleged moral imperative or even blindly evangelize it (the company isn’t going to reward you for it anyway). Use it because it works best for you and does what you want from it. As someone who owns two Macs, two PCs, a Gamecube, an Xbox, a PS2, an iPod, a digital camera, 2 PDAs, and a Windows Smartphone…I can tell you that all these things have their advantages and disadvantages. No one thing is truly better than another. And you want to talk evil? Let’s see:
Apple’s been caught backdating stock options and having their iPods manufactured in sweatshop conditions.
Google knuckled under to the Chinese government and let their searches be filtered in that country (Ironic company slogan: Don’t be evil).
Yahoo gave up the ID of a Chinese blogger to the government and the guy was jailed for the crime of exercising free speech.
The RIAA has made it a regular practice to harass, sue and extort people for alleged piracy and rarely has any proof to back up such allegations.
Sony deliberately shorted production of PS3’s just to generate interest in order to mask the outrageous price of their products.
I can’t say too much about Nintendo, except that if you sign for an account on their site, they actually have a filter that checks your chosen password for profanity.
ALL of the guys are evil. When have you ever seen a major corporation that wasn’t?
1) March sucks. It’s the worst month for weather because you REALLY want winter to be over and it just never seems to end in March.
2) I, too, remember Ed’s Great Bag Search Of 1991. As I recall, he stuck with that damn bag for at least 5 years.
3) Go for the Wii!!! It will make the draft that much more fun and Microsoft is evil.
4) I hear chicks really dig Book TV. It’s a literal poon magnet.
5) I thought “Casino Royale” is the best Bond ever. Daniel Craig is excellent and the movie is tight and brutal. As origin stories go, I can’t think of too many better ones and I found the love story angle believable. The only negative I found was that the villain was kind of an annoying, weasly little shit.