Nobody reads this blog, but if someone did they'd probably think I was too damn angry. But it ain't always true, I swear. Here's some hilarious stuff I wish I had written myself. These are just random reviews I came across for various stuff at Amazon. Honestly, my jaw hurts from laughing so much. Thanks to these fine people, wherever they are. Enjoy!
Reviews Written by
Keith Whitener (Handsome Ville, USA__Population: Me)
Thank you Snapple!, June 29, 2004
A year ago, I collected 890 Snapple caps and I sent them in to get this table. It's a great table and I have lots of fun playing it. However, the abacus keeps falling off so I have to use wood glue, the tube the connects the goal to the ball deposit area had to be duck taped, I frequently have to adjust the rubber stoppers to keep it level, and one of the players has been decapitated. Albeit the latter, it's still an excellent table and it provides me with a great deal of entertainment. I would be willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of a busload of strangers to ensure the longevity of my table.
What's Eating Gilbert Grape DVD ~ Johnny Depp
Waste of time, August 7, 2004
This is a boring, worthless movie. It's about a guy living with an obese mom, retarded brother, and two sisters. Sad things happen that I don't care about.
There's no reason to watch this movie. It has no exciting parts that you can talk about later or funny lines. Oh no, poor people and a fat woman! Oh, this will make me appreciate life more and be a better person. No, no it won't.
This movie is not at all stimulating or entertaining. Don't watch it. Run away! Save yourself. Watch out, it's almost got you! I'll hold it off; you get out of here. Close the door and don't let it in. I'll try to stop it.
Reviews Written by
Matthew S. Woodworth RSS Feed (Apex, NC United States)
Sony MDR-R10 Home Style Headphones
Buy these right away, December 10, 2003
All my life I'm been unattractive to women. I've tried everything in an effort to get the chicks. However, dressing like Harry Potter, buying a wicked Ford Focus, getting a job as a computer programmer, and learning to play the harp all failed to deliver on their promise of converting me into a babe magnet.
Nothing worked until I bought these headphones. Now the lovely ladies are swarming to me. They are worth every penny.
David Hasselhoff Looking for Freedom
David Hasselhoff is my personal God. David Hasselhoff's legend has no bounds. He has replaces Howard Stern as the King of All media. I wasn't expecting too much when I picked up the album on Amazon. To be honest, I only bought it because I loved the pants he's wearing on the album cover and I thought I could hang the jewel case on my bedroom wall.
If you want to hook up with some booty this album is required background music. DH is da man!!! I've never been so fly with the ladies as I am now that I have Hasselhoff's latest masterpiece flowing from the speakers of my Chevy Cavalier station wagon.
In short, if you like great music and you want to be attractive to the opposite sex you must buy this album.
JR from Long Beach, CA 3
I was so excited when this came out in theatres. I was all like, a new Cronenberg film? I am there compadre! About half way through the film, I learned a little bit about myself. I thought, "wait a minute self, I hate David Cronenberg." This movie is the rare blend of abhorrent and repelent. Also, the whole thing is a pretty flimsy metaphor for anal sex, and if that's your thing, then you should, ya know, get a porn.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Smoke Free Wisconsin
Fuck these assholes and their fascist radio ads I heard this morning. (A bad way to wake up lemme tell ya)
http://www.smokefreewi.org
Hey, at least they're honest. Oh but doesn't "policy change" just sound soooo nice? Ahh, "policy change"...gee it almost sounds voluntary. Yes, let's jack up taxes for people who don't make the same choices WE make. That will fix everything! Oh and we care about the CHILDREN! It's always about the children! Quick, consult the stock photo library for shots of smiling children! Ahh yes, everyone has a RIGHT to tobacco-free air. What's that? You DO want to smoke on your own property? WELL FUCK YOU SLIM, WE'RE DO-GOODERS AND OUR RIGHTS ARE BETTER THAN YOURS! We are ridding the world of evil as we see it! Hooray!
If 2\3rds of Wisconsinsites truly support raising taxes on the Other Guy (which might be bullshit, these polls are always worded in such a bleeding heart manner no matter what it is. But it still "feels" right) then 2/3rds of Wisconsinites had better prepare for the day when big brother puts the squeeze on THEIR particular "vice". Americans are the biggest fucking hypocrites imaginable. For all our misty-eyed flag waving histrionics it's quite clear that most people don't give a shit about freedom. It's all just for show. MY freedom is correct, YOURS is wrong so here let's get the neighborhood bully to shake you down for your lunch money. That'll teach you.
Better hope you can keep a firm grip on that stick folks, cause once it gets loose you might be on the wrong end of it.
http://www.smokefreewi.org
Hey, at least they're honest. Oh but doesn't "policy change" just sound soooo nice? Ahh, "policy change"...gee it almost sounds voluntary. Yes, let's jack up taxes for people who don't make the same choices WE make. That will fix everything! Oh and we care about the CHILDREN! It's always about the children! Quick, consult the stock photo library for shots of smiling children! Ahh yes, everyone has a RIGHT to tobacco-free air. What's that? You DO want to smoke on your own property? WELL FUCK YOU SLIM, WE'RE DO-GOODERS AND OUR RIGHTS ARE BETTER THAN YOURS! We are ridding the world of evil as we see it! Hooray!
If 2\3rds of Wisconsinsites truly support raising taxes on the Other Guy (which might be bullshit, these polls are always worded in such a bleeding heart manner no matter what it is. But it still "feels" right) then 2/3rds of Wisconsinites had better prepare for the day when big brother puts the squeeze on THEIR particular "vice". Americans are the biggest fucking hypocrites imaginable. For all our misty-eyed flag waving histrionics it's quite clear that most people don't give a shit about freedom. It's all just for show. MY freedom is correct, YOURS is wrong so here let's get the neighborhood bully to shake you down for your lunch money. That'll teach you.
Better hope you can keep a firm grip on that stick folks, cause once it gets loose you might be on the wrong end of it.
Work On A Local File MY ASS!
The advice bandied about in the publishing biz that one should always save a COPY of a network server document to your local hard drive, work on the file and save it, then copy it back to the file server is FUCKING BULLSHIT! That is 100% unacceptable. Then why have a fucking network where a group of people share files in the first place? It makes no goddamn sense. Yeah, let's have multiple copies all over the damn place! What's the most recent version? Who the hell knows? Uh...I think Bill worked on it last... What a mess.
If your software is corrupting documents by saving over the network then that's a BUG that needs to be CORRECTED. Telling people to play it safe with this copying back and forth bullshit is a total cop-out. Quark, Abode, Apple, Microsoft...you need to get your shit together. Asking us to not work with the central file server makes no fucking sense. FIX the fucking software so it works! This is an unacceptable, showstopper bug if documents are getting corrupted by basic network workflow.
If your software is corrupting documents by saving over the network then that's a BUG that needs to be CORRECTED. Telling people to play it safe with this copying back and forth bullshit is a total cop-out. Quark, Abode, Apple, Microsoft...you need to get your shit together. Asking us to not work with the central file server makes no fucking sense. FIX the fucking software so it works! This is an unacceptable, showstopper bug if documents are getting corrupted by basic network workflow.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Total Destruction
It's true, the sad fact is that my personal sense of well being is hinged directly upon the integrity of computer data. This morning I learned that I had accidentally moved my Documents folder into a temporary folder and then deleted that. I found the folder in the trash and immediately moved the contents back. Unfortunately the only surviving folders are M through Z. A through L are gone. Most missed is my Mozilla e-mail folder. File recovery apps seem to recover a bunch of useless generic files. Fine for images or text files, but not fine for a Mozilla e-mail directory full of cryptic insider files no non-programmer could make sense of. The directory structure appears to be lost. It's kinda like smashing your favorite glass art sculpture to pieces and then some guy saying, "Hey it's all cool, I will find all the pieces for you and put them in one box!" Yeah, great.
The moral of the story is; Back up your data right now. You don't have to wait around for a mechanical drive failure, you could stupidly delete a whole folder with one mistracking optical mouse movement! It ruins your whole fucking day lemme tell ya.
The moral of the story is; Back up your data right now. You don't have to wait around for a mechanical drive failure, you could stupidly delete a whole folder with one mistracking optical mouse movement! It ruins your whole fucking day lemme tell ya.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Everyone Should Drive A Race Car
Americans are always crowing about safety in automobiles. You: a soft, squishy bag of guts and sinews regularly plop yourself into a very hard and unforgiving metal cocoon filled with explosive fuel and race down the road at speeds far exceeding even the fastest Olympic runner. Nature did not design us for going from 65mpg to 0 in an instant. Bad things tend to happen in such cases. And yet, most of us don't hit anything and make it home alive at the end of the day. Still, thousands of us don't and this is very sad. There's nothing fun about a car accident. It can really ruin your day. But really, if the American dream of quasi-immortality and safety obsession really put its money where its mouth is, I propose the following.
Everyone should drive a race car. Only the race car would have a smaller engines that only went as fast as regular cars. Most of the pro sport auto racing crashes you see are just spectacular explosions of parts at high speeds, but then the damn driver JUMPS out of the car and he's relatively unhurt. There's none of this sissyboycrap; "Oh gee I'm hurt! Oh no, my legs are trapped under the engine block...boo hoo! Oh poor me, my intestines are stretched on a road sign for a quarter mile...waaah!" Those guys usually make it out well enough to go beyond fundamental mortal concerns like "Wow, I'm still alive" straight into "Oh shit I lost the race!" The car saved their ass. Oh sure, maybe a tire flew into the stands and took out a couple two 'tree people, but hey that's collateral damage. The price you pay for watching a dangerous race.
Now just take that designed-to-dissipate-energy car body and drive it at a fraction of the speed and Joe Sixpack would almost be immortal behind the wheel. Am I crackers? If people stopped caring about their hair and clothing it would seem to make all sorts of sense to put on the full face helmet and leathers for the morning commute and strap into the roll cage with a 5-point harness. People are always crowing about safety but won't go all the way. Oh sure, that would mean cars would cost millions of dollars, but the way I figure with everyone driving one and without having to worry so much about all the fine tuning of an actual race car the prices would be reduced. Not to mention the lucrative sponsorship money you'll get. But there will be sacrifices; when you exit your car in the parking lot at work people will run up to you and immediately slap a baseball cap on your head. A small price to pay methinks.
I think many folks will be pleased as punch if they could go beyond simply collecting the highly attractive and tasteful Nascar merchandise and actually commute to work in a real Nascar race car. I suppose the low speeds will make it not as cool, but remember we're all about safety here. This plan is for dramatically reducing traffic fatalities, not fulfilling the desire for racing action!
Now all we have to do is pass some legislation on this and get it going. It's a good idea and good ideas should be made into law. Anyone who doesn't drive a racecar is better off in jail. Hey, I didn't make the rules I just obey them. OBEY!
Everyone should drive a race car. Only the race car would have a smaller engines that only went as fast as regular cars. Most of the pro sport auto racing crashes you see are just spectacular explosions of parts at high speeds, but then the damn driver JUMPS out of the car and he's relatively unhurt. There's none of this sissyboycrap; "Oh gee I'm hurt! Oh no, my legs are trapped under the engine block...boo hoo! Oh poor me, my intestines are stretched on a road sign for a quarter mile...waaah!" Those guys usually make it out well enough to go beyond fundamental mortal concerns like "Wow, I'm still alive" straight into "Oh shit I lost the race!" The car saved their ass. Oh sure, maybe a tire flew into the stands and took out a couple two 'tree people, but hey that's collateral damage. The price you pay for watching a dangerous race.
Now just take that designed-to-dissipate-energy car body and drive it at a fraction of the speed and Joe Sixpack would almost be immortal behind the wheel. Am I crackers? If people stopped caring about their hair and clothing it would seem to make all sorts of sense to put on the full face helmet and leathers for the morning commute and strap into the roll cage with a 5-point harness. People are always crowing about safety but won't go all the way. Oh sure, that would mean cars would cost millions of dollars, but the way I figure with everyone driving one and without having to worry so much about all the fine tuning of an actual race car the prices would be reduced. Not to mention the lucrative sponsorship money you'll get. But there will be sacrifices; when you exit your car in the parking lot at work people will run up to you and immediately slap a baseball cap on your head. A small price to pay methinks.
I think many folks will be pleased as punch if they could go beyond simply collecting the highly attractive and tasteful Nascar merchandise and actually commute to work in a real Nascar race car. I suppose the low speeds will make it not as cool, but remember we're all about safety here. This plan is for dramatically reducing traffic fatalities, not fulfilling the desire for racing action!
Now all we have to do is pass some legislation on this and get it going. It's a good idea and good ideas should be made into law. Anyone who doesn't drive a racecar is better off in jail. Hey, I didn't make the rules I just obey them. OBEY!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Defining Half-Ass: The OS X 10.4.9 Eject Key Delay
So are you telling me you people accidentally actually hit the Eject key a lot? Hmph. I guess I must be super skilled cause this delay is a real bummer.
The real problem is obvious: the slimmed-down Mac keyboard. They want to be artsy and designy and so they had to make these cute little compact keyboards with the eject key right next to the sound volume keys which you probably hit more often. Not so smart. But hey, they're better than the old iMac keyboards which were a fucking joke.
The delay added with the 10.4.9 update is retarded. That is a half-ass solution if ever there was one. Gee, I keep hitting the wrong key! Oh I know, we'll just make that key not work...just yet. Oh, did you REALLY want to eject the disc? Well then, you better MEAN it and keep holding it down! Hang on now, wait for it...wait for it. EJECT! *whew*
Now here's a radical concept; put the eject key on the DRIVE. You know, where I am going to pick up the CD? I know, it's too crazy. The world is not ready for such things. Better that we have clumsy, crammed up keyboards and just delay the response time for all the mistakes you're bound to make.
Now, to look into how to disable this crappola...
Ahh now I see...it's the laptop keyboards that are extra-touchy with the eject key. Well, I'm glad for ya'll, but this is still half ass. How about a nice PREFERENCE for this delay in the Keyboard system preference? Wouldn't that be nice? A choice instead of a mandate? Yes, people can make mistakes but I'd rather have INSTANT RESPONSE rather than this age old "Are You Sure?" horseshit! YES I am sure. I am ALWAYS sure even when I'm not, okay? You, idiot computer, do what I say at all times and do it NOW. Instantly! Not in a few milliseconds, not tomorrow, NOW.
The real problem is obvious: the slimmed-down Mac keyboard. They want to be artsy and designy and so they had to make these cute little compact keyboards with the eject key right next to the sound volume keys which you probably hit more often. Not so smart. But hey, they're better than the old iMac keyboards which were a fucking joke.
The delay added with the 10.4.9 update is retarded. That is a half-ass solution if ever there was one. Gee, I keep hitting the wrong key! Oh I know, we'll just make that key not work...just yet. Oh, did you REALLY want to eject the disc? Well then, you better MEAN it and keep holding it down! Hang on now, wait for it...wait for it. EJECT! *whew*
Now here's a radical concept; put the eject key on the DRIVE. You know, where I am going to pick up the CD? I know, it's too crazy. The world is not ready for such things. Better that we have clumsy, crammed up keyboards and just delay the response time for all the mistakes you're bound to make.
Now, to look into how to disable this crappola...
Ahh now I see...it's the laptop keyboards that are extra-touchy with the eject key. Well, I'm glad for ya'll, but this is still half ass. How about a nice PREFERENCE for this delay in the Keyboard system preference? Wouldn't that be nice? A choice instead of a mandate? Yes, people can make mistakes but I'd rather have INSTANT RESPONSE rather than this age old "Are You Sure?" horseshit! YES I am sure. I am ALWAYS sure even when I'm not, okay? You, idiot computer, do what I say at all times and do it NOW. Instantly! Not in a few milliseconds, not tomorrow, NOW.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Buckling to FDA pressure
I discovered why my favorite drug, Triaminicin was pulled off the market some years back. As usual, it's because of FDA heavies' threats. Oh I'm sorry, did I say threat, oh I meant to say "suggestion". Well you see, some women MAY have had strokes because of this drug, but the other billion people didn't BUT FUCK YOU EVERYONE ELSE WHO TOOK IT SUCCESSFULLY, FUCK YOUR RIGHTS! There's RISK involved! WE CANNOT HAVE RISK IN THIS SOCIETY! Everything must be SAFE! Humans can be made IMMORTAL with enough government regulation don't you know?!
Here, check out this link which doesn't work cause you're not a member of Medscape. What the heck, I dunno - it works when you click it from google, but not from here. You're on your own I guess. You'll figure it out I'm sure.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/406803
Poor sweet Triaminicin, I will miss you dearly. I still have one lone box with about four pills left. But now, by the wagging of the FDA's fists I am no longer free to buy a drug that works when I have a cold or allergy attack. Holy, sainted bureaucrats and their cronies will be making my decisions from now on. Just surrender your life to the State folks, they know better than you. They've never met you, they live thousands of miles away, but they are your fucking guardian angels. Don't fuck with them, they'll put the hurt on you. If you want to know what's good for your health it's deferring every judgement to the FDA gods, by shuffling their papers they will ensure you live a long and happy life.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Unexpected Software RAID Success
Last night I did something seemingly stupid and dangerous with my Mac but it ended up working flawlessly. I recently added two new 750GB Seagate Barracuda drives to my PowerMac G4 (these drives are quiet!) and mirrored them. These were used for a gigantic video editing project which consumes the gigabytes like a fish drinks water. These giant drives replaced a pair of smaller drives which I had striped in a RAID pair using Apple's Disk Utility. I had copied over the files from the striped set onto other single drives, however I realized I missed something along the way. One folder was short about a dozen files. And not junk, but stuff I wanted to keep! Doh! I had not done anything to the old RAID set however I had no idea if it was possible to remove the drives from the computer, reinstall them at a later time and have the OS still recognize them as a RAID array in days of yore.
Then I did something really really dumb, I shut down my machine and removed the mirrored 750GB drives (a total lie actually, the capacity is 698GB...bastards) without backing them up! Well, I had no place to back them up. Not enough free space on the other two single hard disks! So here I was potentially sacrificing the entire video project if this didn't work. Fucking moronic, I thought.
I then reinstalled the small striped RAID (I was at least smart enough to mark the position of the drives before removing them the first time) and to my surprise they mounted once again upon reboot, just like before! Sweet! I copied off the missing files to one of the single disks. Then I removed the striped RAID disks, reinstalled the 698GB mirrored pair and that too reappeared without a hitch upon reboot! Fucking amazing! The only price paid was judicious amounts of lost sleep, but we can blame some part of that on stupid ass Daylight Saving Time. Maybe the government should pass a law saying there's now 48 hours in a day instead of 24. Heck, that way we'd all have more time after work to do stuff. It's Magic™!
So the moral of the story is yes, you can remove software RAID'ed disks from a Mac, stick them back in and have them act as they did before. Perhaps I truly believed this was entirely possible in the back of my mind, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. But it did feel like an incredibly risky and foolish thing to do when I was contemplating it. I figured the relationship these two disks had to one another was forgotten once they were extracted from their host machine. Ahh, but it was not so, thankfully!
Clearly the world is now a better place having those dozen or so drum solo AIFF files restored. Ahhh...This is something humans will have to deal with more and more as time goes on. This bizarre attachment we have to something as abstract as magnetic blurbs on platters. How sad to have one's personal sense of well-being hinged upon the integrity of computer data. What can I say, that's the world we live in. *sigh*
Then I did something really really dumb, I shut down my machine and removed the mirrored 750GB drives (a total lie actually, the capacity is 698GB...bastards) without backing them up! Well, I had no place to back them up. Not enough free space on the other two single hard disks! So here I was potentially sacrificing the entire video project if this didn't work. Fucking moronic, I thought.
I then reinstalled the small striped RAID (I was at least smart enough to mark the position of the drives before removing them the first time) and to my surprise they mounted once again upon reboot, just like before! Sweet! I copied off the missing files to one of the single disks. Then I removed the striped RAID disks, reinstalled the 698GB mirrored pair and that too reappeared without a hitch upon reboot! Fucking amazing! The only price paid was judicious amounts of lost sleep, but we can blame some part of that on stupid ass Daylight Saving Time. Maybe the government should pass a law saying there's now 48 hours in a day instead of 24. Heck, that way we'd all have more time after work to do stuff. It's Magic™!
So the moral of the story is yes, you can remove software RAID'ed disks from a Mac, stick them back in and have them act as they did before. Perhaps I truly believed this was entirely possible in the back of my mind, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. But it did feel like an incredibly risky and foolish thing to do when I was contemplating it. I figured the relationship these two disks had to one another was forgotten once they were extracted from their host machine. Ahh, but it was not so, thankfully!
Clearly the world is now a better place having those dozen or so drum solo AIFF files restored. Ahhh...This is something humans will have to deal with more and more as time goes on. This bizarre attachment we have to something as abstract as magnetic blurbs on platters. How sad to have one's personal sense of well-being hinged upon the integrity of computer data. What can I say, that's the world we live in. *sigh*
Monday, March 12, 2007
Environmental Holocaust Solution
As you all know, any day now the world will collapse into utter chaos. Melting glaciers, floods, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, giant clouds of black pollution melting people's faces off, famine, disease outbreaks and just general unpleasantness. It will certainly happen in our lifetime, much as it will certainly happen in every generation before us. Oh yes my friends, we are all fucking doomed and it's our fault. Wretched humans destroyed the planet! There's no hope! We're all gonna die! It's the End Times don't you know? Oh yes indeed, Jesus is coming back and will judge the living and the dead. I swear, it will happen in our lifetimes. No, seriously if you read the bible it says so. It's us man, it's our generation. Everyone else was wrong. Ooh cripes, I can feel the apocalypse drawing near! Look out!
Or is it? Do we have to accept global holocaust which is coming Any Day Now? I think not! The solution is simple. The problem is overpopulation. The earth is just too loaded up with pesky humans and a finite amount of natural resources. The quality of life for everyone will increase if there are less people and more resources, right? Of course. So the solution is that half of the human population must be eliminated. Now hold on, I know what you're thinking, this is utter madness! Murder is wrong! Well yes, of course it is. But my plan is entirely voluntary. What you must do is find another person; preferably a stranger, or even someone you know if you prefer. Every human must pair up with another human. Race, sex or religion is not important. Once you have found your teammate you will then flip a coin to determine which one of you will commit suicide. The loser of the toss must kill him or herself within one year. The winner will get a special t-shirt to wear indicating that their partner lost and will be sacrificing themselves for the Greater Good. Within a year 50% of earth will be gone. Oh I know, it will be sad to see so many people die, but remember, this is to avoid EVERYONE dying! Which would you rather have? There's no question if we don't implement a world wide suicide solution that our Mother Earth will be a hideous black mass of death and devastation.
So go out and find a partner today! By this time next year, if you are one of the lucky survivors, you will be enjoying a bright new future. If not, be glad in the fact that your grisly sacrifice will be for the Benefit Of Future Generations. Because you know, it's not your life that's important, it's people that will be born 500 years from now. What kind of legacy will you leave them if you continue to sit around existing and wasting precious resources? Your great great grandchild will curse your vile name as they are dying of lung cancer in an overcrowded hospital floating on a barge off the coast of the former Mount Everest! Don't be such a greedy, selfish pig! Suicide is the only way to ensure the survival of the planet!
Or is it? Do we have to accept global holocaust which is coming Any Day Now? I think not! The solution is simple. The problem is overpopulation. The earth is just too loaded up with pesky humans and a finite amount of natural resources. The quality of life for everyone will increase if there are less people and more resources, right? Of course. So the solution is that half of the human population must be eliminated. Now hold on, I know what you're thinking, this is utter madness! Murder is wrong! Well yes, of course it is. But my plan is entirely voluntary. What you must do is find another person; preferably a stranger, or even someone you know if you prefer. Every human must pair up with another human. Race, sex or religion is not important. Once you have found your teammate you will then flip a coin to determine which one of you will commit suicide. The loser of the toss must kill him or herself within one year. The winner will get a special t-shirt to wear indicating that their partner lost and will be sacrificing themselves for the Greater Good. Within a year 50% of earth will be gone. Oh I know, it will be sad to see so many people die, but remember, this is to avoid EVERYONE dying! Which would you rather have? There's no question if we don't implement a world wide suicide solution that our Mother Earth will be a hideous black mass of death and devastation.
So go out and find a partner today! By this time next year, if you are one of the lucky survivors, you will be enjoying a bright new future. If not, be glad in the fact that your grisly sacrifice will be for the Benefit Of Future Generations. Because you know, it's not your life that's important, it's people that will be born 500 years from now. What kind of legacy will you leave them if you continue to sit around existing and wasting precious resources? Your great great grandchild will curse your vile name as they are dying of lung cancer in an overcrowded hospital floating on a barge off the coast of the former Mount Everest! Don't be such a greedy, selfish pig! Suicide is the only way to ensure the survival of the planet!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Book shilling
Go now and buy this book by Sam Harris: Letter To A Christian Nation
It will only take you an hour or so to read. Then, like me, you will be free to go 'round killing babies, punching old ladies in the teeth and setting fire to churches as I do. I've got burning baby all over me right now in fact. Before reading this book I was a good person with a happy smile, clean fingernails and who baked hot cross buns every sunday morning, (the natural result of reading about ancient begatting and 800 year old men on gilded edge paper) but now I have free reign to go completely nuts. It's fantastic! The body count is rising every day! Read it and know the unique sound an infant's head makes when struck with a blunt instrument.
It will only take you an hour or so to read. Then, like me, you will be free to go 'round killing babies, punching old ladies in the teeth and setting fire to churches as I do. I've got burning baby all over me right now in fact. Before reading this book I was a good person with a happy smile, clean fingernails and who baked hot cross buns every sunday morning, (the natural result of reading about ancient begatting and 800 year old men on gilded edge paper) but now I have free reign to go completely nuts. It's fantastic! The body count is rising every day! Read it and know the unique sound an infant's head makes when struck with a blunt instrument.
Screw Daylight Saving(s) Time
By the light of ye olde OS X Software Update I see that our wise "leaders" are going to once again mess with the day they mess with the goddamn clock. You know what, I've always hated Daylight Saving Time, it's only really ever been a pain in the ass and adds pointless complication. It messes with your mind and body. That first daywhen you leave work and it's pitch black outside is a real bummer. The day before the sun was setting, but there was still light. Our bodies prefer to be ruled by the sun, not by arbitrary human tinkering. There is a very noticeable funk one gets in when the clock is changed. Yes, it is a natural bummer when the days start getting shorter and shorter, but for me the alteration of the clock has worse effects. I never felt as if I had "saved" very much by the change.
DST also has historically fucked up my work. There hasn't been a year that's gone by where the images in our Quark docs haven't been needlessly "modified" thanks to the automatic time change on the server. Although improved computer speed and software has lessened this issue as of late, I recall it wasn't too long ago that this put a big hurt on productivity. It was a huge deal to open up a 60-page Quark doc and have to update all the pictures. And you knew it was all for nothing. You were just wasting your time appeasing the whims of this braindead software so you could print the damn thing.
DST also has historically fucked up my work. There hasn't been a year that's gone by where the images in our Quark docs haven't been needlessly "modified" thanks to the automatic time change on the server. Although improved computer speed and software has lessened this issue as of late, I recall it wasn't too long ago that this put a big hurt on productivity. It was a huge deal to open up a 60-page Quark doc and have to update all the pictures. And you knew it was all for nothing. You were just wasting your time appeasing the whims of this braindead software so you could print the damn thing.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Thinking Inside The Box
You know, I have to say that when designing a graphic or logo there seems to be a helluva lot of time spent dicking around with text adjustments. You sit and tweak on point size, leading, tracking, kerning and so on but you also want to experiment with different fonts. Well, when you pick a different font all your adjustments go out the window. If you've got a really condensed font and then try an extended one it can blow up so big you can't see the whole thing anymore. Well, what if you told the software (e.g. Illustrator, Quark etc.) no man, make everything fit within THIS BOX. I want a tool that automatically constrains any and all text that you put into a certain box no matter what to fill the bounds of the box.
If the text was made to behave then it would simply be a matter of tweaking what font you want and the size of the constraining box to fit with the other elements. If you make a certain sized box in Quark and type or import too much text you get an overflow box. Well, why not just do whatever it takes to make it fit? And you should be able to control what parameters it's allowed to change. If you don't want any distortion of the chracters it should only adjust size equally and then tweak the leading\spacing to fit. Obviously there could be a practical limit. Certainly if you make a small box and paste a whole paragraph inside it you don't want .00005 pt. type or something.
I don't know if this exists elsewhere, (maybe InDesign? I haven't used it much myself) but as far as I know no such functionality exists. It seems odd that it wouldn't because it's such a basic thing. Hmmm... If this were possible the design process could be sped up considerably and you could concentrate more on the layout, thinking in terms of objects and shapes rather than spending your time telling the computer to do what it could probably figure out for itself.
If the text was made to behave then it would simply be a matter of tweaking what font you want and the size of the constraining box to fit with the other elements. If you make a certain sized box in Quark and type or import too much text you get an overflow box. Well, why not just do whatever it takes to make it fit? And you should be able to control what parameters it's allowed to change. If you don't want any distortion of the chracters it should only adjust size equally and then tweak the leading\spacing to fit. Obviously there could be a practical limit. Certainly if you make a small box and paste a whole paragraph inside it you don't want .00005 pt. type or something.
I don't know if this exists elsewhere, (maybe InDesign? I haven't used it much myself) but as far as I know no such functionality exists. It seems odd that it wouldn't because it's such a basic thing. Hmmm... If this were possible the design process could be sped up considerably and you could concentrate more on the layout, thinking in terms of objects and shapes rather than spending your time telling the computer to do what it could probably figure out for itself.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Photoshop CS3 Beta Observations
Caught wind of this on some eBay auction no less, so I went and got it. Definitely different looking. One thing that bugs me about having multiple versions of a certain application on your computer is that the OS always thinks the newest one is the one you want to use. So now if I double click an image the thing opens in the Beta rather than full-on CS2. Doh! Anyway, looks like it's got multiple clone sources which looks kinda cool. Eyedropper averaging took a massive jump up to "101" pixels which is indicative of the increasing resolution of digital imagery I suppose. Instead of the bone stock Point sample\3x3\5x5 you've now got 11, 31, 51, 101.
There's a new "Black and White" adjustment which quite frankly I find a bit pussified. I mean, I learned how to alter tonal values when converting from color to grayscale at my first job thanks to Ken, a convicted murderer and a helluva swell guy. You just use Hue\Saturation fer cripes sakes. Crank down the main saturation and futz the brightness on the separate color ranges. Well no biggie, Photoshop has always had tools which do the same thing in different ways. There are presets in the Black and White tool, so I suppose that's kinda nice.
Once at a job interview I was asked how I approach color correction. I said , "...and then I might go in and fine tune with Selective Color" and the dude didn't get that "Selective Color" was an actual Photoshop tool but that I was "being" selective about what I adjusted...hell I have no idea what was going through that guy's head. A non-hacker in my beloved corps it would seem.
After many many years of anticipating it, you've now got non-destructive filter effects on layers. Nice. Of course, going filter-crazy is something that one seems to grow out of. Not that it isn't very useful of course.
Oddly enough, they've updated the crude, dust-collecting Brightness\Contrast control which now acts more subtley but with a "legacy" checkbox to make it work the old way which is why you never used the thing in the first place! Heh! Curves has also been updated with some more display features. I noticed it wasn't live-updating but maybe it's just me.
One thing I really could do without is this odd screen view mode which they added. It's called "Maximized Screen Mode" and it seems to keep the main canvas and the palettes separate or something. It seems to serve those unfortunates without dual monitors I suppose (again, one of the benefits of dual monitors in this case is that they are treated as separate devices by the application) but my gripe is that it can't be removed from the toggle stack. I mean, that's double the amount of "F" I gotta tap in a day, folks. I could get a blister or something!
The palettes have got some sort of docking behavior going on, I'm still trying to figure that out. Although maybe it could be a good thing for some. I know many folks who are constantly moving palettes this way and that because apparently the TAB key's function has alluded them. Watching this game of Whack-A-Mole physically pains me, but it's not my business how they work I guess. The Maximized Screen Mode in combination with these docked palettes would seem to serve the function of always keeping "stuff" out of view of your work. I can see how it would be great for a single screen. Old habits die hard, though. There's also some sort of icon collapse thing. Again, these things are merely stop gaps for the True Future of 300ppi Monitors The Size of Drafting Tables. Mote It Be!
The clone tool has got a wicked cool overlay mode now where you can see a ghosted image of your clone source. Could certainly come in mighty handy. This new-fangled selection tool thingy is mighty cool too. The "refine edge" thing is sweet. But so far there isn't anything so mind-blowing so as to demand upgrading, though. I've always felt I could safely go back to version 4.0 and be relatively happy. Okay, that's probably not entirely true. Smart Objects are rather handy. I was most stoked by Adjustment Layers (was that v4? Can't remember...) and layer masks. After that everything's gravy.
There's a new "Black and White" adjustment which quite frankly I find a bit pussified. I mean, I learned how to alter tonal values when converting from color to grayscale at my first job thanks to Ken, a convicted murderer and a helluva swell guy. You just use Hue\Saturation fer cripes sakes. Crank down the main saturation and futz the brightness on the separate color ranges. Well no biggie, Photoshop has always had tools which do the same thing in different ways. There are presets in the Black and White tool, so I suppose that's kinda nice.
Once at a job interview I was asked how I approach color correction. I said , "...and then I might go in and fine tune with Selective Color" and the dude didn't get that "Selective Color" was an actual Photoshop tool but that I was "being" selective about what I adjusted...hell I have no idea what was going through that guy's head. A non-hacker in my beloved corps it would seem.
After many many years of anticipating it, you've now got non-destructive filter effects on layers. Nice. Of course, going filter-crazy is something that one seems to grow out of. Not that it isn't very useful of course.
Oddly enough, they've updated the crude, dust-collecting Brightness\Contrast control which now acts more subtley but with a "legacy" checkbox to make it work the old way which is why you never used the thing in the first place! Heh! Curves has also been updated with some more display features. I noticed it wasn't live-updating but maybe it's just me.
One thing I really could do without is this odd screen view mode which they added. It's called "Maximized Screen Mode" and it seems to keep the main canvas and the palettes separate or something. It seems to serve those unfortunates without dual monitors I suppose (again, one of the benefits of dual monitors in this case is that they are treated as separate devices by the application) but my gripe is that it can't be removed from the toggle stack. I mean, that's double the amount of "F" I gotta tap in a day, folks. I could get a blister or something!
The palettes have got some sort of docking behavior going on, I'm still trying to figure that out. Although maybe it could be a good thing for some. I know many folks who are constantly moving palettes this way and that because apparently the TAB key's function has alluded them. Watching this game of Whack-A-Mole physically pains me, but it's not my business how they work I guess. The Maximized Screen Mode in combination with these docked palettes would seem to serve the function of always keeping "stuff" out of view of your work. I can see how it would be great for a single screen. Old habits die hard, though. There's also some sort of icon collapse thing. Again, these things are merely stop gaps for the True Future of 300ppi Monitors The Size of Drafting Tables. Mote It Be!
The clone tool has got a wicked cool overlay mode now where you can see a ghosted image of your clone source. Could certainly come in mighty handy. This new-fangled selection tool thingy is mighty cool too. The "refine edge" thing is sweet. But so far there isn't anything so mind-blowing so as to demand upgrading, though. I've always felt I could safely go back to version 4.0 and be relatively happy. Okay, that's probably not entirely true. Smart Objects are rather handy. I was most stoked by Adjustment Layers (was that v4? Can't remember...) and layer masks. After that everything's gravy.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Most Books Look The Same
With the vast wealth of typefaces available it seems that the book world isn't interested. I'm not a huge book reader, but I have purchased around six books recently and they all look the damn same. I find it very dull. It's all just a regular 'ol Times serif kind of stuff, nothing catchy about it. I mean, why not try Paperback by House Industries? Still mostly regular stuff, but with a bit more flair. Maybe I am being too hard on them, maybe I just don't see enough books with interesting typefaces. Still, seems to me that they're all the damn same. Of course, this blog itself has a bookish quality thanks to the template, which is cool, but only cause it's the web. Low res screens necessarily must sacrifice most of the nuance of typography in favor of legibility. With books there's no such restrictions. Okay fine, so there's a difference with paper stocks, but you can still get more res with paper. Anyway the point is, I decree by force of sheer will that all books published after this date shall have more interesting fonts. I am waving my hands and squinting very hard now. Waves of energy are beaming from my head making the air look like someone's using a Weber grill. Can you feel the power?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
iMovie and Brushed Metal
Here's a rotten combination: Apple's brushed metal GUI and more importantly, the click-anywhere-that-isn't-a-control-widget-and-move-the-window behavior that goes along with it combined with iMovie, an app where the control areas are small and RIGHT NEXT TO WINDOW-MOVING REGIONS!!! There's two triangles you have to click and drag in order to select a region of your video. But if you make a mistake and click juuuust outside those triangles you move the whole damn window. Annoying as hell! Now, wouldn't it be much better to use a keyboard shortcut to move those in and out points? Well, there isn't. You can cursor to move the pointer, but as far as I can tell there's no shortcut to SELECT either in or out triangle widgets, or more sensically, a keyboard shortcut to select the region you want. You can shift-click to select a region with the mouse, but not with the keyboard. Argh! Apparently the only way out of this mess is Final Cut Express, a cool 300 clams. *doh!*
Now, a sensible person would say: "That ain't brushed metal, that's more like painted metal. Hell, it isn't even metal, it could be plastic, glass or wood! It's really just solid grey. Furthermore, evidence suggests this interface isn't physical at all, but rather pixel-based!"
That sensible person would be correct. But it's besides the point. On the point is that brushed metal graphics and click-anywhere-to-move were conceived in the same instance by our dear friends in Cupertino. Can't we have a preference to toggle this on or off? Come on people, get with the program. How often does one need to move a window anyway? Wasn't Exposé designed to facilitate this issue of locating windows? Besides, iMovie is an application that generally demands full screen interaction. The window should be locked down.
Now, a sensible person would say: "That ain't brushed metal, that's more like painted metal. Hell, it isn't even metal, it could be plastic, glass or wood! It's really just solid grey. Furthermore, evidence suggests this interface isn't physical at all, but rather pixel-based!"
That sensible person would be correct. But it's besides the point. On the point is that brushed metal graphics and click-anywhere-to-move were conceived in the same instance by our dear friends in Cupertino. Can't we have a preference to toggle this on or off? Come on people, get with the program. How often does one need to move a window anyway? Wasn't Exposé designed to facilitate this issue of locating windows? Besides, iMovie is an application that generally demands full screen interaction. The window should be locked down.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Click-Through Problem
OS X software developers really need to get their shit together with regards to click-through. I don't think it need be something that always works ONE way. Sometimes you want click-thorugh, sometimes you don't. But it should be consistent across the board and you should be able toggle between behaviors via key command.
Mozilla has one of the weirdest click-through behaviors I have ever seen. You can have an e-mail message window open and yet your active foreground window is something else. Mozilla allows you to highlight text inside the message window but you cannot type or paste anything because it hasn't switched the foreground app to Mozilla! You're typing something inside some other app! Sensing this mistake, you click inside the Mozilla message window and start typing again. No go, it still hasn't switched. No, you must click the TITLE BAR of the message window before you make it active! It drives me batty!
Most of the time I would like to have instantly-switching click-though, meaning that any screen object you can SEE, that isn't obscured by another window can be manipulated. But sometimes you don't want to switch away from your current app via mouse click. For example, accidentally clicking outside a Photoshop palette.
It isn't easy to figure out what behavior makes the most sense, but I guess my main beef is that some apps work one way and others the opposite. It's one of those subtle things which messes you up without you thinking about it.
Mozilla has one of the weirdest click-through behaviors I have ever seen. You can have an e-mail message window open and yet your active foreground window is something else. Mozilla allows you to highlight text inside the message window but you cannot type or paste anything because it hasn't switched the foreground app to Mozilla! You're typing something inside some other app! Sensing this mistake, you click inside the Mozilla message window and start typing again. No go, it still hasn't switched. No, you must click the TITLE BAR of the message window before you make it active! It drives me batty!
Most of the time I would like to have instantly-switching click-though, meaning that any screen object you can SEE, that isn't obscured by another window can be manipulated. But sometimes you don't want to switch away from your current app via mouse click. For example, accidentally clicking outside a Photoshop palette.
It isn't easy to figure out what behavior makes the most sense, but I guess my main beef is that some apps work one way and others the opposite. It's one of those subtle things which messes you up without you thinking about it.
Virtual Depression
As someone who is simultaneously fascinated and repelled by rapidly advancing technology I often find myself bemoaning my own apparent extinction process. I work in the publishing business and what we do is mainly print-based. But all around us the signs of a paperless society seem imminent. I don't have a financial interest in paper itself, but I do fear that it may one day cease to exist. Most of the media we consume is being faked on screens with no physical reality necessary between the content provider and the consumer. Everything about human life seems to be pointing towards screens. It's all about rectangles. Even the ethereal experience of music listening has incorporated the screen with the iPods and whatnot. A record collection has been reduced to a text list. People don't seem to want to touch anything anymore besides a mouse or a screen.
I recently subscribed to Netflix, a service which I do like, but the delivery method has already crushed any physical world, objective medium aspects. No more formal DVD case, you get a generic sleeve with generic printing. These discs are hauled back and forth by the post office. But then you logically figure that this is clunky and pointless; why not just download what you want from the internet? Well, apparently Apple is offering this now as well. The only barrier I see there is bandwidth. A regular definition DVD is 8GB and the new HD blu-ray\HD-DVD stuff is what, like 50GB or something. I don't see this as being practical to download, even with a cable modem. But that's just a matter of time. A future network will be able to pass that amount of data as quickly as one might subscribe to a pay-per-view cable TV broadcast.
Is there going to be any physical art in the distant future? Will mankind desire anything that cannot be put on a flat screen or projected onto our eyeballs digitally? And then I think that why even bother with showing you media\entertainment\education in real-time, why not directly affect the brain. A future Netflix where you just have to think about the movie you want to watch, your virtual fake numbers (money) will be taken from your virtual bank account and a memory of watching that movie will be implanted in your brain.
It makes me wonder what the point of medical science seeking to prolong people's lives is. The older you get the more disaffected you become from the younger generation. I feel jaded now, I can imagine how curmudgeonly I'll be at age 70! Humans seem really good at making all this digital stuff happen at such a fast rate, but it seems that nature has not caught up with us. We desperately want to live in a fantasy world yet our bodies are inextricably anchored in the physical world.
I keep thinking that at some point society will reach a breaking point and say, "Okay, enough with this fake shit" and there will be a growth of "old school" mediums. But maybe that is only my fantasy world, and the real world is a world where everything can be reduced to data and put on screen. Perhaps it is better to die when we die. Perhaps Tolkien had it right when death was considered a gift to mankind whereas the elves had to plod on forever. Did you read that story? I've got it on PDF, I'll upload it to your brain...
"What is real
What is fantasy
Are you who you are
Or what you want to be?"
-Mike Smail, Penance
I recently subscribed to Netflix, a service which I do like, but the delivery method has already crushed any physical world, objective medium aspects. No more formal DVD case, you get a generic sleeve with generic printing. These discs are hauled back and forth by the post office. But then you logically figure that this is clunky and pointless; why not just download what you want from the internet? Well, apparently Apple is offering this now as well. The only barrier I see there is bandwidth. A regular definition DVD is 8GB and the new HD blu-ray\HD-DVD stuff is what, like 50GB or something. I don't see this as being practical to download, even with a cable modem. But that's just a matter of time. A future network will be able to pass that amount of data as quickly as one might subscribe to a pay-per-view cable TV broadcast.
Is there going to be any physical art in the distant future? Will mankind desire anything that cannot be put on a flat screen or projected onto our eyeballs digitally? And then I think that why even bother with showing you media\entertainment\education in real-time, why not directly affect the brain. A future Netflix where you just have to think about the movie you want to watch, your virtual fake numbers (money) will be taken from your virtual bank account and a memory of watching that movie will be implanted in your brain.
It makes me wonder what the point of medical science seeking to prolong people's lives is. The older you get the more disaffected you become from the younger generation. I feel jaded now, I can imagine how curmudgeonly I'll be at age 70! Humans seem really good at making all this digital stuff happen at such a fast rate, but it seems that nature has not caught up with us. We desperately want to live in a fantasy world yet our bodies are inextricably anchored in the physical world.
I keep thinking that at some point society will reach a breaking point and say, "Okay, enough with this fake shit" and there will be a growth of "old school" mediums. But maybe that is only my fantasy world, and the real world is a world where everything can be reduced to data and put on screen. Perhaps it is better to die when we die. Perhaps Tolkien had it right when death was considered a gift to mankind whereas the elves had to plod on forever. Did you read that story? I've got it on PDF, I'll upload it to your brain...
"What is real
What is fantasy
Are you who you are
Or what you want to be?"
-Mike Smail, Penance
Thursday, January 25, 2007
What's The Ideal Computer Display?
I came across this digitaltiger site which sells totally batshit multi-up LCDs. It's pretty crazy.Check out THIS monstrosity:
Looks like the control room at a TV station! Excessive? Perhaps. This three-up beauty seems more my speed:
Big fat main work area with yer palettes and PathFinder windows etc. off on the side panels. Mmmm...that would be sweet. But again, I have to ask, why not one screen that size? One argument for multiple screens would be how applications currently behave. For instance, Photoshop goes into full screen mode on whatever display your image is currently sitting inside. In this manner you can put all the palettes off to the side and have a totally unobstructed view of the image. With a single large screen the palettes would in theory be on top of your canvas area. I also wonder if one would be subject to the "work expands to fit the time allotted" phenomenon, except in this case it would be "image size expands to fit the screen boundaries".
People have an innate desire for their image to fill up the complete physical area they are given. You may know the frustration of trying to explain differing aspect ratios to a layman (i.e. your parents) They just think in terms of "there's black bars and the image isn't filling the screen" regardless of the reality that ALL of the source image is being displayed. And who can blame them, really? Certainly mixing 4:3 and 16:9 is inherently half-assed and leads to these confusions. If the image doesn't touch the bezel you're being cheated is what they're thinking.
What really is the ideal size display? You want it to have more than enough room to show everything you want to show, but not be so large that you have to crane your neck or move your chair around. One theory I came up with would be that the screen should be as wide as your outstretched arms and as tall as you can reach while seated. This also assumes relatively close viewing distance of about 18-24".
But what about curved? Can they do curved screens? Is that gonna screw up the beauty of perfect geometry of LCDs? A curved screen would seem to make sense if it's going to be as wide as your uh, armspan. And I assume, it would correct for viewing angle falloff.
What about touch screens? Like Apple's latest phone, or that dude from that one link I can't find with the touch screen doodad. Now what about a really BIG touch screen like that, and not only that but make it 200-300ppi (I have yet to set eyes on a roentgen display, but I desperately want to) It would be not so much a display, but your whole damn desk. A drafting table, even! What about a 200ppi display as big as this:
Yeah, I'm lazy, I used the same screen grabs over and over, but it's just to show a general idea of scale. Imagine if you had that big of an area to work inside? We're talking tens of thousands of pixels here, but it's only a matter of time before that becomes entirely practical. And what if you could pick the top of this thing up, hang it on the wall and watch a movie on it? Wacom's already got a monitor you can draw on with a stylus (haven't used it) but I thought it would be super cool if the thing was just friggin' desk-sized. This could also encourage desk neatness because who's gonna wanna set their junk down on their 300,000 pixel gem of a display even if it IS a flat surface (that which attracts all objects to it, regardless of physical or chemical property)
Cripes, maybe someone already did it (not the touch screen part though)
sharps-4k-x-2k-64-inch-ultra-high-res-monitor/
And Jesus Wept...
Looks like the control room at a TV station! Excessive? Perhaps. This three-up beauty seems more my speed:
Big fat main work area with yer palettes and PathFinder windows etc. off on the side panels. Mmmm...that would be sweet. But again, I have to ask, why not one screen that size? One argument for multiple screens would be how applications currently behave. For instance, Photoshop goes into full screen mode on whatever display your image is currently sitting inside. In this manner you can put all the palettes off to the side and have a totally unobstructed view of the image. With a single large screen the palettes would in theory be on top of your canvas area. I also wonder if one would be subject to the "work expands to fit the time allotted" phenomenon, except in this case it would be "image size expands to fit the screen boundaries".
People have an innate desire for their image to fill up the complete physical area they are given. You may know the frustration of trying to explain differing aspect ratios to a layman (i.e. your parents) They just think in terms of "there's black bars and the image isn't filling the screen" regardless of the reality that ALL of the source image is being displayed. And who can blame them, really? Certainly mixing 4:3 and 16:9 is inherently half-assed and leads to these confusions. If the image doesn't touch the bezel you're being cheated is what they're thinking.
What really is the ideal size display? You want it to have more than enough room to show everything you want to show, but not be so large that you have to crane your neck or move your chair around. One theory I came up with would be that the screen should be as wide as your outstretched arms and as tall as you can reach while seated. This also assumes relatively close viewing distance of about 18-24".
But what about curved? Can they do curved screens? Is that gonna screw up the beauty of perfect geometry of LCDs? A curved screen would seem to make sense if it's going to be as wide as your uh, armspan. And I assume, it would correct for viewing angle falloff.
What about touch screens? Like Apple's latest phone, or that dude from that one link I can't find with the touch screen doodad. Now what about a really BIG touch screen like that, and not only that but make it 200-300ppi (I have yet to set eyes on a roentgen display, but I desperately want to) It would be not so much a display, but your whole damn desk. A drafting table, even! What about a 200ppi display as big as this:
Yeah, I'm lazy, I used the same screen grabs over and over, but it's just to show a general idea of scale. Imagine if you had that big of an area to work inside? We're talking tens of thousands of pixels here, but it's only a matter of time before that becomes entirely practical. And what if you could pick the top of this thing up, hang it on the wall and watch a movie on it? Wacom's already got a monitor you can draw on with a stylus (haven't used it) but I thought it would be super cool if the thing was just friggin' desk-sized. This could also encourage desk neatness because who's gonna wanna set their junk down on their 300,000 pixel gem of a display even if it IS a flat surface (that which attracts all objects to it, regardless of physical or chemical property)
Cripes, maybe someone already did it (not the touch screen part though)
sharps-4k-x-2k-64-inch-ultra-high-res-monitor/
And Jesus Wept...
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Sales Tax, Gambling and Chutzpah
I'd like to extend a very personal and heartfelt FUCK YOU to Apple Inc. for charging sales tax on out-of-state online purchases. What gives? That's why you buy stuff online, so you don't have to pay goddamn sales tax. But order anything from apple.com and the assholes charge you sales tax. So fuck Apple for their compliance and fuck the federal and state governments for taking a taste of something they had jack shit to do with. Praise be to all other online merchants who do not charge sales tax, such as Amazon.
Of course, it can be argued that a more tangible tax is preferable to the hidden ones we pay on absolutely everything we buy. Why? Because you know you're being taxed. (a devil's advocate arguement I suppose) Roll the tax into a single figure and people don't care so much. This is the Pissing-People-Off-Will-Help-Them-Resist argument. It's not an easy one to support, but I can see the logic.
I'd also like to extend another heartfelt FUCK YOU to Potawatomi Bingo and Casino for their shitty, dewey-voiced radio ads boasting how much taxes they pay to the "community" (whatever the hell that is) like they're some goddamn humanitarians. You know, all the money for fire trucks and roads and baskets full of kittens for crippled children. My goodness, how could we ever live without fucking taxes!? We'd all surely die! Those people throwing what's left of their paychecks into the casino so it can be turned around and sent back to the government, those people are helping keep our community going don't you know? Taxes are the life blood of humanity! Ahhhh!
It's poetic justice when the descendents of violently overthrown native americans form gambling havens to voluntarily pick the pockets of Whitey, but to boast and gloat about how much tax revenue they're generating for Whitey's government makes me sick. That's one surreal, enigmatic sell-out if I ever heard one! Almost as bad as the enigma of a state who wants to ban online gambling on one hand and sponsor a lottery on the other! I call for all yiddish dictionaries to be ammended using this example in the definiton of "chutzpah"!
Yes folks, that gambling...ooh it's the Devil's tool it is! Sinful! Shame on you all for wanting to gamble! How dare you throw your money away like that instead of buying milk for your family! You should go down to the corner store right now and get that jug of milk for your poor doe-eyed wife and children! Straighten up and fly right, citizen! Oh and while you're there, make sure to pick up a few POWERBALL TICKETS! Odds of winning are only 1 in 300 million! Oh it will be so wonderful to fulfill your patriotic duty! Let the floors of our great state be covered with instant scratch off metallic detritus! Hooray!
Of course, it can be argued that a more tangible tax is preferable to the hidden ones we pay on absolutely everything we buy. Why? Because you know you're being taxed. (a devil's advocate arguement I suppose) Roll the tax into a single figure and people don't care so much. This is the Pissing-People-Off-Will-Help-Them-Resist argument. It's not an easy one to support, but I can see the logic.
I'd also like to extend another heartfelt FUCK YOU to Potawatomi Bingo and Casino for their shitty, dewey-voiced radio ads boasting how much taxes they pay to the "community" (whatever the hell that is) like they're some goddamn humanitarians. You know, all the money for fire trucks and roads and baskets full of kittens for crippled children. My goodness, how could we ever live without fucking taxes!? We'd all surely die! Those people throwing what's left of their paychecks into the casino so it can be turned around and sent back to the government, those people are helping keep our community going don't you know? Taxes are the life blood of humanity! Ahhhh!
It's poetic justice when the descendents of violently overthrown native americans form gambling havens to voluntarily pick the pockets of Whitey, but to boast and gloat about how much tax revenue they're generating for Whitey's government makes me sick. That's one surreal, enigmatic sell-out if I ever heard one! Almost as bad as the enigma of a state who wants to ban online gambling on one hand and sponsor a lottery on the other! I call for all yiddish dictionaries to be ammended using this example in the definiton of "chutzpah"!
Yes folks, that gambling...ooh it's the Devil's tool it is! Sinful! Shame on you all for wanting to gamble! How dare you throw your money away like that instead of buying milk for your family! You should go down to the corner store right now and get that jug of milk for your poor doe-eyed wife and children! Straighten up and fly right, citizen! Oh and while you're there, make sure to pick up a few POWERBALL TICKETS! Odds of winning are only 1 in 300 million! Oh it will be so wonderful to fulfill your patriotic duty! Let the floors of our great state be covered with instant scratch off metallic detritus! Hooray!
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