Geek

I stumbled across this video on YouTube this morning and I think it’s pretty cool. This is the first time I have heard this song as well and it has made it into my music collection.

This is a simple music video made using a Mac.

I am dictating this blog entry to my phone. Look ma no hands!

This will prove to be quite helpful while driving.

I can even update facebook like this.

However this blog entry must be boring.

So after much discussion with Earl, I have decided to get rid of my iPhone and get myself a Motorola Droid on Verizon’s network. There are a couple of reasons for this change in heart, especially since I just declared a couple of weeks ago that I was going to keep my iPhone until it died on it’s own.

The two prominent reason for the switch include the lack of 3G coverage from AT&T for 55 of the 60 miles of my commute, including the twin cities I work in. Another reason is that I can get a pretty good discount with Verizon through work, whereas I can’t with AT&T. I think it’s rather sad that AT&T can’t provide 3G coverage for large swathes of upstate New York whereas Verizon does.

I’m also not happy with Apple’s announcement that they will not support multitasking on the iPhone 3G but they will with the iPhone 3GS. I’m not going to ride out another two years of crappy service from AT&T just to upgrade my phone. I understand that I will have a new two year contract with Verizon but I think the service will be much happier.

Another thing that bothers me is that AT&T won’t let me tether my computer to my iPhone so I can use that data connection on the road. This is just made worse by the lack of decent service to begin with.

My MacBook Pro is starting to show signs of it’s age lately as well. I’m a little disappointed with this since it’s only 20 or so months old. I’m not an abusive user by any stretch of the imagination and for the premium price paid, the Mac should outlive me.

I think I’m going to pass on the next sip from the Kool Aid cup. It’s a good thing that I don’t feel defined by my cool toys.

So yesterday we went to DisneyQuest, Disney’s mega arcade type place at Downtown Disney. DisneyQuest has five floors of all types of games, including elaborate virtual reality challenges, tabletop games such as air hockey, games you dance to the beat with and more importantly, there are classic arcade games scattered throughout the facility. I wandered about looking for a particular logo to catch my eye. As I reached the fourth floor, what I was looking for was finally found…

… my heart leapt with excitement as I stumbled across a bank of classic Atari games, including one of my favorites, CENTIPEDE!

It’s been a really long time since I played Centipede and I needed a few warm-up games to get my game on, but after a few run throughs I was back on my game as if it was 1982.

As I was spinning the trackball like the Atari Ace that I used to be, a few youngsters gathered ’round to see what the middle aged guy was doing to this arcade machine. I believe I was cheering out loud and probably a little more demonstrative than I realized. One kid remarked, “you’re really good at this game!” That made me feel good.

So I spent a good hour or so playing Centipede. I would glance around from time to time and noticed that the classic arcade games were being played by folks around my age.

I guess that’s what Disney had in mind the whole time.

DisneyQuest is pretty cool. We also became somewhat addicted to a game called “Flamin’ Finger”, which involved tracing a maze on a touchscreen with your finger before the timer ran out. It wasn’t as easy as it looked but a lot of fun.

By the way, I just installed the Atari 2600 version of Centipede on my computer. When we get home I might have to go hunting for an old Atari 2600 for the house.

I’ll be the coolest kid on the block once again.

As I strive to acclimate to my new schedule, I will keep this short and sweet tonight. But as I said to Earl over dinner when he asked me how my first day at the new job went: “I’m set for life.”

I know I can rise to the challenge.

As a person that lives his life relatively out loud via this blog and various social networking sites, one would think that I don’t really give two flips about my privacy. Those that know me in person probably know that what I share here is a good snapshot of how I am in real life, but not the complete picture of what exactly I’m about. Heck, I can probably count the number of people that _really_ get me on two hands. But nevertheless, I joined the whole social networking craze early on with this blog thingee here back in 2001 and I’ve been plugging along since.

Now I like the idea of social networking online; Earl and I have made many friends via the internet and cherish a few people that we have met here. The internet allows us the ability to see that we are not alone in how we feel on any given subject and that’s a great thing. I think it’s great when technology is used in this way, albeit as long as it’s in a cautious manner.

Yesterday the rapidly growing behemoth called Google announced a new product: Google Buzz. This is another attempt from Google to join into the social networking frenzy gripping the online world right. It’s like a combination of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare integrated into their popular e-mail service, Gmail.

Now before I get a little ranty, I’m going to say a few preceding statements before the message. First of all, I know all too well that Google derives it’s income from ad revenue. Honestly, I hate that as I hate ads, no matter how coy they try to be. And while Google’s mission is to “not be evil”, they groom the data that they gather and tailor ads to specifically fit you. So they might not know the contents of my Gmail but they see particular phrases or keywords and select advertising to share with me based on this; for example if I receive an e-mail telling me how great Pepsi Throwback is, they might show me an ad telling me how great Coke Classic is.

Now Gmail offers some amazing spam protection and it’s web interface is clean enough and devoid of hiccups and burps enough to make it quite attractive, despite this scanning of key phrases to generate ad revenue. In fact, I have enjoyed Gmail’s service so much that I have funneled the dozen or so e-mail accounts I have into Gmail so I can have everything in an easily accessible place.

With the announcement of Google Buzz, this Facebook/Twitter/FourSquare wannabe, my social networking is now integrated into my e-mail. When Google Buzz was activated on my account yesterday afternoon, imagine my surprise when it suggested that I share my social networking status updates with folks that I have e-mailed back and forth about job opportunities with in the past. Yes, Google felt it would be great to include the folks that have my resume on my status updates, which contain such colorful nuggets as:

“When a bunch of iPad users get together, do their clock cycles synch?”

Lovely. Naturally, Google Buzz demands that I have a photo on my profile and it selected one of me. It’s not exactly a headshot but it’s one that I would consider kind of hot.

At least they have a respectable sense of good visuals.

Here’s the thing. My e-mail is sacred. I have had e-mail since 1984 and I’m not about to start sharing the contents of e-mail with an entire distribution list. Hell, that’s one thing that Earl learned very early on in our relationship that I tend to get hysterical about. My e-mail is *mine*. I don’t want it sliced, diced, spun or mutilated and I sure as hell don’t want it included in my social networking ventures.

So I turned off the Buzz as soon as I realised what it wanted to do.

Then I started getting paranoid. If Google was so hip on sharing my existence in this manner, where else would be information be turning up? So today I started filtering my e-mail elsewhere, dropped my Google Reader subscriptions (I do my blog reading in Safari again), dropped my contact list synchronization with Google and Gmail and now I’m looking for a respectable replacement for Google Calendar.

Tomorrow I order my new tinfoil hat.

One of my most memorable scenes of any movie I’ve ever watched is the “Diva” performance from “The Fifth Element”. What begins as a beautiful aria moves into an interesting mid 1990s sounding techno track where the vocalist is used purely as a beautiful instrument. I think it is absolutely amazing when a voice is used solely as an instrument without the distraction of verbalisation.¹

Vocalist Inva Mula sang the track for the movie and according to the liner notes from the soundtrack, her voice was NOT digitally altered to achieve the sound that we hear. (There are portions where she is alternated with a wind instrument or synthesizer sounding like a wind instrument). I have always found this track to be enchanting in a strange way and have found few modern vocalisations that challenge it.

I found this video of a vocalist singing her interpretation on the track. She is simply amazing because she appears to be singing it raw, showcasing her incredible vocal range.

¹ I am also a huge fan of “Distorted” from Cirque du Soleil’s “La Nouba”. This is another song where the voice is used purely as an instrument, and it is an amazing piece to listen to.