Just got caught up reading a very lengthy (and contentious) comment thread over at Making Light regarding Amazon vs. Macmillan and eBooks in general, and it got me thinking. One of the commenters puts forth the idea that eBooks are the ultimate future of reading, and that those silly old things made out of paper will disappear into history shortly enough once eReaders make it big.
I see a couple of problems with this. First off, the 250 unread books currently looming on my bookshelves beg to differ. They sure aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Same with the millions of books in new and used book stores and libraries. The commenter theorizes that non-electronic books are going to become collector’s items for folks (like me) who just can’t let go of physical books and want to live in the past.
The problem with this, though, is that the argument is completely backwards. eReaders are the luxury item. The people who are most interested in eReaders are people who read a LOT because they see the attraction of carrying around 100s of books in their pockets and also because they think they can justify the sticker price. I definitely know that if I took the plunge and dropped several hundred dollars on an eReader any time soon that I’d feel the need to buy all my new books on that platform to justify the cost. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not sure why I didn’t post about this before, considering I spent almost the entire weekend working on the website, but some friends of mine that go way back – Eddy, Nick, and Daniel, to be exact – recently starting working on putting into motion an idea that had been percolating for years.
There has always been talk in our circle of friends about making movies, but one idea in particular stuck around for a long time. The premise was simple: make an ongoing series of short films/episodes about a bunch of characters from a video game (Counter-Strike) who are placed in a Real World-style house and see what happens.
The premise is possible because of a phenomenon called machinima, which means using the graphics/animation from video games to render animated short films. The most popular and well-known example of this phenomenon is a show called Red vs. Blue.
In any case, Smooth Few Films, as they are collectively known, actually got to the point where they could produce a trailer and then a full-fledged episode of the show. Check it out:
Trailer (kind of illicit because of the music… shhh! Hopefully they’ll have time to redo it at some point…):
There is already a lively forum on the site, and plenty of random people from all over the world have left feedback. It’s pretty exciting to see my friends succeeding like this, although this is still only the initial level. They are planning on doing a new episode every 2-3 weeks, and I think this show’s popularity will only grow with more episodes and an ever-growing forum community.
Today was an exciting day. I’ll let ThinkSecret do the talking:
At a town-hall meeting with employees Thursday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that all full-time Apple employees will receive a free 8GB iPhone, while part-time employees who have been with the company for more than a year will also receive a free iPhone.
So, thanks to the kindness of Steve’s heart, this time next month (we have to wait until the huge customer demand is satisfied) I’ll have my sweaty palms on one of these:
Then I’ll just have to pick a plan and start being one of the cool kids. It’ll be great.
I got my computer back today! The folks at the Apple Store replaced the hard drive, and everything appears to be working just fine.
It also looks like I managed to rescue pretty much everything important from the drive, and I’ve just finished copying the contents of my iPod back onto my system.
Once everything is back in place, I’ve resolved to be a good computer user and start backing everything up regularly. Apparently .Mac comes with a backup program… who knew? Good thing us Apple employees get .Mac for free…
In celebration, please enjoy this LCD Soundsystem music video:
It all started Saturday… itunes started acting up, and then none of the disk utilities I’ve got could repair the mysterious hard drive problems that seemed to be causing the issue.
I backed up as much as i could, erased the drive, re-installed OS X, and it’s still misbehaving… I actually just erased it again and it still didn’t fix it!
All I know is that I’m reallllllllly glad I bought Applecare. Tomorrow night I’ll get to put it to good use when I make a pilgrimage to the Apple Store…
Update: It’s official. My hard drive is hosed, and I need a replacement. The repair is going to take a week… Sighhhhhh…. Lots of Wii browsing for me, I suppose…
(This post brought to you thanks to the only working computer in my possession: my Wii. I’m getting better at Wii typing, that’s for sure!)
