Stephen Fry: Actor, Writer, Apple Enthusiast

Mr. Stephen Fry, actor, writer, friend of Douglas Adams, and Apple Enthusiast, has written a non-review review of the new Apple iPad for Time magazine.

In short, he fancies it quite a bit. That is not at all shocking.
What is, however, is the amount of space he dedicates to the memory of Douglas Adams.

Early in the article, he recounts the joy in owning his first Mac (in fact, the second Mac sold in the UK. The first sold? Why, to Douglas Adams, of course), and how that user experience changed his relationship with computers. It made computers fun again, their use akin to playing with a shiny new toy.

He says about as much for the iPad – in many more words, perfectly and artistically ordered, of course. As an aside, I must admit a certain level of admiration for Fry’s writing style. Truth be told, the four page article can be boiled down to a preference for Apple products because they are fun to use, and that fun makes it easier to focus on the task at hand, rather than dwell on the fact that one is, in fact working.

It is his closing paragraph, however, that caught my attention the most- and solidified my own feelings on the nebulous device I’ve never laid hands on:

[For] me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist’s rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands. One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker’s Guide that humankind has yet devised.

Indeed, this is what I’ve wanted to hear since day one. Yes, I’ve compared the iPad to the PADD, but at the back of my mind I’ve also thought of it as The Guide, as in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Not the book, but the plot device from which the books name derives.

The same can be said for both my iPhone, and my iPod Touch. And, of course, the iPod Video before that, or my Macbook, or my iMac. All of them designed to be inviting and warm, to exude a sense of calmness at the user, and – in general – be functional without requiring one to think too much about what it is one is trying to do.

I’ve promised myself that I’m not going to buy one of these things until I’ve had a chance to use it, to evaluate it, so make sure it’s what I think it is – and it can do what I need/want it to do.

But, I’m fairly certain that once those niggling doubts are satisfied, it shall become as ubiquitous as my towel: Always at my side, should I need it in a pinch to fulfill one of it’s many uses.

Eventually, I decided to give the second one in the series (Zelda II – The Adventure of Link) another go. It is one of two Zelda related titles that I have played, but not actually completed. I figured I should probably rectify this, and maybe get the Zelda bug out of my system at the same time.

In what I occasionally refer to as my “den”, I have pretty much all of the classic (NES era onwards) consoles, and along with them some of my favorite games. Among those treasures is my copy of Zelda II. And, to make NES gaming easier, I happen to have both the front loader NES (big, boxy VCR looking thing) and the sleeker top-loader NES (with the dog-bone controller). Personally, I do prefer the front-load, but the top-load is better for when you actually want to play without having to fight the console first.

Yet, when it came time to actually start playing the game, I didn’t move to the den, nor did I turn to any of the classic systems: I fired up an emulator on my Mac, plugged in a USB controller, and started playing.

I’m not even really sure why I did this – I’m normally very opposed to emulation. I thought I preferred the feel of the old controller in my hand, and the slight fuzziness caused by the CRT. Yet, there I was, attempting to play (poorly, I might add) Zelda II and kind of enjoying it.

Does this mean that, maybe, it’s time to pack away the old systems and just keep going with the emulation and roms? Are they, really, superior to how I’ve been playing before? Should I just move the big ass CRT out, and plop a computer in, and just run everything off of that from now on?

And, if I do – what games should I play? Should I limit myself to only those that I’ve bought, only those that I own… Or has that statute of limitations played out, and it’s now time to just grab anything I want, and play it? The original creators aren’t making any money off these games anymore anyway, so what harm would it be to pirate them? Who would have to know? I mean, other than the four or five people who read this blog, of course.

As of right now, I’m not sure… I’m, honestly, torn. On the one hand, I really do enjoy owning and playing with the older systems, but on the other I don’t use them often enough to justify having them out all the time – and when I do play, I’d rather play right now, not “as soon as I can get the NES to stop blinking” or even “If the Dreamcast decides to load Slave Zero this time”.

Either way, I’ll probably just keep walking that fine line – hoarding the older stuff like pirate gold, and playing it on a fancy computer because I’m lazy.

It isn’t anything revolutionary, it really is just a cleaning up and refinement of everything Leopard – things are a bit more unified, and things work in a more sensible way. Unlike Windows 7, this will not change how you use your OS – it’ll just make using your OS a bit better, a bit faster, a bit easier.

Between the two, all I can say is it’s good to be a computer geek right now.

Too bad Linux is still shitty. :p

The Middleman - Complete Series

The Closed Caption Conundrum

or

Middleman Middlereview Middlemaddness

My copy of the Middleman DVD box set from Shout! Factor finally arrived yesterday, and after much anticipation (and drooling over the intricate packaging) Nadia and I watched the first episode (“The Pilot Episode Sanction”), and it was greatly enjoyed… By me. She also liked it, but not quite as much as I did. Not because she didn’t enjoy it, or think it funny or a great show (she compared it, favorably, to Firefly, which is bot a major plus and some major nerd cred right there), but because of the language barrier.

Which brings me to the point of this posting: Why is it so damn hard to get Closed Captioning working while playing back a DVD? Shout!, for whatever reason, decided it would be better to have the captions on this set as Closed Captions, instead of subtitles. I’m not sure why this is – subtitles are simple to use from a consumer standpoint, and universally supported from a player standpoint. But CC? Not so much.

The PS3 will not pass CC through HDMI – in fact, a quick bit of google-fu shows that this is a pretty standard, known problem. So, my $400 media monster won’t allow my girlfriend to know everything that’s said on this show.

You Microsoft fanboys can just shut the hell up now too – it also will not pass the CC information through. Or, if it does, it does so in a very odd, unintuitive way – which is basically the same thing. So that’s another $300 well spent.

Thankfully, my Mac mini, which I use for a media center anyway – not only has DVD playback baked into the OS (why any modern OS wouldn’t have this feature I’ll never understand), but it does fully support CC. Which is why we’ll be watching Middleman on a computer via DVD…

The box set is great – the package is great, with lots of neat touches, the picture quality is freat, the sound quality is wonderful… But the fact that so much work had to be done just to get the damn CC working (Total time spent dicking around: half an hour… on over a $1000 worth of equipment) makes Shout!’s choice of captioning a fail in my eyes.

I would still reccomend this set to anyone who likes fun, unless they were deaf. In which case, it’s just too much of a hassle.

Seriously, Shout! – Get your act together soon.

Kind of like Crackdown, or Saints Row 2, I suppose. A sort of “One more mission, okay, one more mission, really, I mean it this time, just one more… You know what? I’ll just play another hour or – it’s what time?! Well, one more mission won’t hurt” logic starts running through my head. I can kill hours doing almost nothing in the game, and enjoy it all.

Yesterday was Apples developer conference; nothing major came out of it. Cheaper laptops, cheaper (sort of) iPhones, updated OS’s for both… Nothing revolutionary, nothing really worthy of causing me to head to the Apple Store this weekend to spend money.

One nice thing, though, was the price structure for the next OS X upgrade: $30. That’s right, $30 to upgrade the OS. $40 if you want to do it on five machines, and $130 if you don’t want an “upgrade” version, although what the difference is I’m not sure. Compare that, if you will, to Microsofts price structure. Vista upgrades start at $90 per machine, and the full OS is $250. So, yeah, you might pay a bit more upfront for the Mac, but it evens out over the life of the machine.

At this point, come September, I should have the money stuffed away to pick up – with cash – a new 13″ MacBook Pro the “family” pack of Snow Leopard to update my current Macs. I’m going to offer Nadia my current Mac, and if she doesn’t want it I’ll figure something else out.

Last night, I found myself controlling my Mac mini (which acts as a media hub in the living room), with my iPhone using two different apps, and wondering how soon this kind of thing might become “normal”. Not controlling a computer with your phone over your home network, but controlling your computer using a smaller, portable, touch screen interface.

Think about it, won’t you? Love it or hate it, the iPhone (and, to some extent, all other) touch-screen interface is infinitely adaptable for the task at hand. You want text input, a keyboard pops up; you need mouse movement, the keyboard goes away and the whole screen acts as a track pad; you need other, per-app input – the screen displays app specific icons ready for your choosing. You wanna play a game? The phones motion-sensor works almost Wii style, so you can get some general control down with little effort.

In the long run, I think this kind of touch interface will be, if not the direct future, a much better future than touching the screen you intend to watch. Have you ever had someone touch your monitor? Notice how bad the smudges get, the finger prints, the grease and dirt and stuff? Do you really want that on your 42″ HD display?

No, you don’t. You want a nice, clean, clear display – that’s why you went with a big HD display in the first place. But there is something natural, something intuitive, and something fun about touching and dragging, tilting and tapping something to make something go…

So, maybe the future is computer + big display + smaller mobile touch display…

At least, I hope it is.
Maybe then I’ll be better able to justify my desire to own an iPod Touch to use almost entirely with my media hub.

library.dunny0.net is up and available for browsing. Created using Delicious Library for the Mac, this is the majority of my DVD collection, and a few of my games.

My hope is that, with this being available now on my iPhone, I’ll be better able to avoid buying any duplicates – something I haven’t, yet, had happen. Normally I error on the side of caution, and if I think that I might own a particular movie, I won’t pick it up until I get home and check. Several times I’ve been wrong, and have missed out on owning a few of the harder to find discs because of this.

The games thing I’m doing just because I can, and the gadgets bit I may pull… or may keep for insurance purposes. Not totally sure on that front yet.

How can you NOT want to see this?

Computer Desk - Click for Big

Obviously, there’s a lot of Doctor Who going on here, what with the two voice-changing helmets, talking Dalek toy and the TARDIS USB hub. And, of course, there’s the required Star Trek items – I think there’s actually something Trek related in almost every room of the apartment, and that’s beginning to scare me.

The mini Gamera and Ghidorah figures were imported from Japan, along with matching Dreamcast memory cards. Remember those things? They had built in LCDs, so you could play little mini-games when not near the home console? Well, the two that game with these had little Gamera/Ghidorah virtual pet games. They were neat, but I think someone erased both of mine. Someone who wasn’t me.

You may also notice I have a lot of Mac stuff. For the record, that’s the same laptop from the living room; I don’t own two Macbooks. Yet.

The camera get’s almost no use – I had planned on doing some sort of video blog, but once I saw how awesome some of them are, and how horrible the rest are, I lost all interest. Maybe I’ll focus (heh) on documentaries instead.

Next to the Desk - Click for Big

First, The Shirt: It’s a neat little number from Threadless, with a kick ass backstory and some awesome art. As with most Threadless shirts, it was a limited run… and, being a gaming shirt centered around a gaming icon, it sold out fast. I was only able to get an XXL, but I liked the design so much I didn’t care. I think it looks pretty spiffy hanging on my wall.

Yes, I have a TOS uniform shirt. No, I don’t wear it… And, yes, I also have the phaser and communicator to go with it. Got them all at the Star Trek Experience. Eventually, I hope to get a tricorder to go with them.

Table - Click for Big

The mother lode of Doctor Who stuff – a TARDIS from the 80′s, the new series TARDIS playset (which I’ll probably have to replace once the 11th Doctor takes over, seeing as how they’ll be redesigning the interior sets…), a 9th and 10th Doctor and Rose. Not pictured is the Capt. Jack Nadia got for me to mark nine months of being together…

Yes, the Apple Newton still works. It works very well, actually – in fact, if it weren’t so damn bulky (I mean, really! It’s HUGE!) I might consider using it on a day-to-day basis at work… Mostly as a gag.

There you have it – My computer nook. The part of the apartment with the highest concentration of geekness. With luck I’ll get the rest of the pad sorted out this weekend, so I may have some shots of the Game Graveyard, where all my older systems reside.

Follow me below the jump for happy fun image, and a breakdown!

The Livingroom

As you can see, the living room is filled with pricey electronic toys. There are also some stuffed toys, and – now – a picture to go along with them!

Some notes:

• The Kobayashi Maru is supposed to be an un-winnable situation – the whole point is to see how you deal with pressure and impending doom.
• The Picture of Nadia and me was taken at Minus 5 Ice Lounge
• The autograph is not to me – I picked the book up second hand. It’s in great shape though.
• Yes, that is an HD-DVD drive on top of the 360. I thought it would be a good idea.
  I was wrong.
• The Mario Bros arcade machine used to belong to my parents neighbors. They were just going to throw it away one day, and I quickly claimed it, fixed it up, and put it to good use.
• The mouse is for the Mac Mini. I’ve been considering replacing it with the Logitech DiNovo Mini. Any thoughts?
• The Hitch-hikers plushies are from the movie – One of the few good bits of additional material in that film.

There you are – a peek into my living room.
Hope you enjoyed it!

Next week – My computer desk!

Dunny0 - XBox Avatar

The Avatar on the left is me… As you can see, it’s a slightly more sophisticated version of the Mii. As of right now there are a few (three) games that will allow you to play as this little bugger. Creating one isn’t too difficult, and once done you can spend some time playing dress up too. Right now the clothing options are a bit sparse, but I’d expect that to change quickly as game devs jump on the bandwagon and offer branded shirts for your little guy to wear.

Netflix streaming is another neat toy added to the XBox’s repository of stuff it can do – and one that I expect to get a lot of use from. The interface is very Mac like, which is a plus, but you are unable to browse for content on it, which is a minus. You still must build your queue on your PC, and then the XBox will see it and allow you to play the movies – kind of cumbersome, really, but not too horrible I suppose. Works great for people who plan out their movie nights, but for those who just want to sit down, find a movie and watch it… Extra work. But, all considered, it’s a darn good service.

Finally, there’s the new UI – which I’m not really liking. It’s been re-done into some mash-up of Apples’ FrontRow and the PS3′s XMB. The whole thing is pretty, but messy. Some options, like friends list management, are not available from the normal menu, you gotta dig into the “other”, secondary set of menus to do that…

So far I’m not a huge fan – the old system worked just fine, this new one just seems like a hasty way to make aging hardware seem hip and current. I’m sure, over time, I’ll get used to it, but I still would rather they had allowed people to decide between using it and not using it.