A Nitrous Crouton

Inane construction supply company banner ‘truism’ of the week: “Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers”.

What the hell does that mean? And why does it sound so dirty?

I’ve been feeling excessively crappy. This strain of cold has been lingering, sapping energy but not causing any major symptoms. I am weary of having no energy, being easily irritable and feeling in short, extremely blah. I haven’t wanted to write blogs, I haven’t even wanted to read blogs!

However, I did wade into one of the inevitable clueless internet discussions regarding the New Horizons space probe and its 25kg of Pu238. People freaking out over a nuclear bogeyman drives me stark raving bonkers. They’ll rant and rave about people ignoring science on issues like global warming, roundly decry attempts to mix Intelligent Design in with science, but when it comes to nuclear fission, approximate something resembling a judge at the Salem witch trials. Except somehow the Salem witch judge knew more about physics. You would think people weighing in with an opinion would at least have the ability to describe the differences between alpha, beta and gamma radiation, wouldn’t you? And we aren’t even getting to the whole understanding of risk factors.

At least some people still know their statistics.

A while back there was a real-time strategy game based around Lord of the Rings titled Battle for Middle-Earth. There will soon be a sequel. I think the franchise should be taken in different directions, why not Negotiated Settlement for Middle-Earth? Instead of the Fellowship we could have the Arbitration Team. The Foreign Relations Subcommittee Hearing of Rivendell.

My personal quote of the day: “That’s it, I’m writing a post digital age New Testament with rent-a-cops need/greed rolling on Jesus iPod Shuffle.”

I’m hardly in the Microsoft is evil camp, but this is truly an amusing piece of work: Re-introducing the Real Windows Vista. Tee hee hee.

As the dust settles from MacWorld I discover that someone at Apple was tuned into my secret little wishes and desires. Apple is letting people who got the Developer Transition Kit (that would be me) trade them in for one of the new Intel iMacs at no charge. And unlike the DTKs, the iMacs can be kept permanently. Wicked cool.

One of the consequences of business in the state of California, is once you reach a certain size, you must have all employees engage in mandatory workplace sensitivity/sexual harassment training. Like almost everything in this day and age, it can now be satisfied via an online web-based program.

Thus I was required to waste two hours of my life occasionally clicking ‘Next’, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ or ‘D’ while listening to poorly recorded audio clips and even more entertainingly inane video shorts. The most amusing thing to me was that at the beginning of of the course, there was a disclaimer regarding some of the potentially offensive or upsetting things, not condoning, done for the purposes of education, blah blah, yadda yadda.

This became more amusing when the most dire thing represented in the course was, far from say Caligula, Dolemite or Men Behaving Badly, but rather a couple of white guys who look like DeVry drop-outs calling their asian co-worker ‘Buddahead’ at the lunch table.

I predict as a result of this training, the workplace will become filled with ‘Buddahead’ references across all gender, ethnic and religious lines. And ‘borderline behavior’ will increase by approximately 350% in the week following the training.

I guess in such a charged climate, leaving the assess chaps at home for a couple weeks might be wise.

Every day on my commute I pass by a construction supply wholesaler which persists in putting inexplicable tidbits of 'wisdom' on a marquee attached to the building. "The Holidays Are What We Make Of Them" was pretty special, but it has now been replaced.

The inane truism of the week 'Good Intentions Die…Unless They Are Executed'.

It goes without saying that I would very much like a MacBook Pro. Oh yes, I would. Interesting to me is that the new iMacs allow for a secondary monitor running at up to 1920x1200 via a mini-DVI port. That makes them pretty dang suitable for a development workstation. Even though it was a budget line-item I'm a bit sorry I 'rented' the Developer Transition Kit. No real 3D card, no sexy integrated iSight or bluetooth or airport. Sniff.

I still haven't accomplished my personal threatened transition to OS X. However, thanks to an iPod Shuffle and an unused iBook G4, I seem to have addicted my mother.

And why isn't Apple selling the keynote video on iTMS? It's not like I've been able to get the stream to work all day long…

Last week was a milestone week coupled with a headcold that my immune system was mostly fighting off…but taking down a significant chunk of my energy to do so. And then I got to the weekend and collapsed. Took a sick day today to try and get back up to 100%. Then I get to deal with what will probably be the most challenging upcoming milestone of the project.

And I'll probably have to do some actual coding. Bah.

Tomorrow is the always eagerly awaited Steve Jobs keynote time. I don't foresee any shiny new Apple toys for me this year, but I will undoubtedly drool just the same. It will be interesting to see the further evolution of the iPod. At the moment, I don't anticipate much on the hardware side, and I'd be surprised to see much beyond capacity increases on the Nano in the next six months, but you never know. I've been impressed with Apple's ruthless commitment to cannibalizing their own products with new ones. They definitely haven't made the same mistake as say, Palm. It's easy to become complacent when you're a dominant market leader, but Apple seems focused on making sure that doesn't happen.

I'm going to start reading George R.R. Martin soon. This should be interesting.

Hello 2006.

I was not sorry to see 2005 pass into history. Without too much reflection I think I can safely say that it was the most difficult year of my life. The good news is that I’m not carrying over any of the heaviest things to resolve into 2006. I may need to remind myself this at several junctures.

A large percentage of the population of Southern California (and presumably elsewhere’s) goes to Disneyland on Christmas day. It was an experience. It was also not my idea, I hadn’t visited the Great Mouse once in the eight years I’ve lived in Southern California, but it was a successful trip. It had been a long time since I had been surrounded by a constant crush of seemingly countless people for hours upon hours at a time, however. The redesigned Space Mountain was a surprisingly fun ride, I just wish it hadn’t been a 60 minute wait!

I think I can safely wear the fiscally prudent geek badge. This weekend I swung by Target for a reading lamp and noticed they had several Xbox 360s in stock (the good bundle, not the core system). I refrained from blowing $500 for the shiny sexy plastic box that would sit on the floor and collect dust. It was doing its darnedest to sing that siren song though.

I shant be listing my professional goals for 2006 at this juncture. The first half of my year can be summed up by the involving task of shipping another iteration in a certain successful racing game franchise. I don’t yet know what opportunities I may have in the latter half of the year.

In the personal sphere I shall stick up some goals. I’m not calling them resolutions. You can call them whatever the heck you want.

1. Learn LISP. I feel guilty for not knowing LISP and I haven’t really stretched my programming noggin in a long long time.
2. Get mathematically literate again. Everything has rotted out of my head and I feel like a total dunce.
3. Start exercising regularly again. I’m increasingly coasting on genetics instead of youth and genetics.
4. Finish one of my silly sci-fi paperback novels-in-progress. Even if they suck and nobody wants to publish them. I still owe Andrew the hardboiled sci-fi detective book.
5. Learn to better kick some ass while I still live in SoCal. This comes after number 3.

I’m a bit jealous of a friend of mine that recently finished an intensive filmmaking school (geared for the digital era, death to film and linear editing systems). I did some video projects with friends in high school, which I think I can honestly say turned out surprisingly well for a bunch of kids with a VHS camcorder, a couple VCRs and custom written software (by me, on an Apple IIGS, in assembly language) for credits and titles; sans genlock, no Video Overlay Card for me. I’ve also tinkered with Premiere in years past creating silly snippets for friends. I’ve even managed to do some videogame voice work. But that has been the extent of my dabbling, even though I live in LA, casting everything aside to pursue acting, writing, production work in television or movies just isn’t going to happen. It isn’t what I’d want to do as a career either, it would just be..fun. And I’d be damn good at it. Shame the closest thing I have to a demo reel is something I threw together in a couple hours using a USB gaming headset for an elaborate in-joke related to a free online web game.