iPad One Week Later

So, a week later and I'm sitting in bed at midnight, while Christina sleeps next to me, typing a review on the glass screen of the future. I suppose that's a bit of an exaggeration as the future, so to speak, is now. The long and short of it is that i love the iPad. It's got some funkiness to it, but overall, it works as advertised, has a battery life that's borderline ridiculous, and has me happy to ship off my laptop to my parents so that they can talk to my forthcoming daughter via it's web cam.

The web cam, by the way, is in no way missed on this thing. I think that placing a camera on a device this large, while theoretically useful for video chatting, would be pretty much absurd for any other use. The iPad is just too big to use for snapshots. Hell, even the idea of holding it up while using it for video chat seems ridiculous.

As for 3G vs. Non. My logic is that realistically if I'm in a spot I'm not really going to pay 15 or 30 bucks for internet, the sort of files you actually want to download in a spot when away from home tend to be too large to download via 3G anyways, and, i'm literally never without my iPhone anyways, so why not go for extra memory on the device itself.

To the future of comics question... It's damn close. The screen is slightly too small to be used with a standard sized comic. I've dropped Tumor (which was designed to be the smaller digest size) on here and it's damn near perfect looking. Some of the text pieces are a bit small, but otherwise, it's all there. That being said, until Marvel and DC decide to start going day and date with their print and digital releases I think it's still up in the air. Not being able to have your comics transfer to other devices is sort of a no win for most of these apps, although Comixology's app does allow you to redownload things purchased on your iPhone.

Probably my highest praise i can give the device is that I've been using it for work. With the Bluetooth keyboard and the little stand i bought for the it, i have a truly tiny, truly mobile, and truly functional work station that doesn't need a power outlet and is far less distracting then my laptop with all of its IM's and web browsing that seems to only take you away for a second, when in fact it sucks you in for hours on end. That's right, i like that there's no multitasking. It means that i have to decide to stop working to check my email or read the internet or, whatever else I do to interrupt my workflow. For someone like me with a little bit of ocd and a whole lot of procrastinators disease, it may be the system I've been dreaming of.

At least until they release the 4.0 software.

NOTE: As Tony Fleecs pointed out the Wordpress App is greatly lacking in the spellcheck department. Should be all fixed up pretty now.

Flu-filling Day

I'm sick.  And consequently will wear my robe and slippers while doing relaxing things. Here's a list with comments. Hulu.com - Been playing with the Beta of NBC's streaming service.  The one that doesn't generate any revenue for the studios.  Cause those commercials they show are clearly Public Service announcements.  Like the one for razors.  Anyways, that aside, the service is pretty great, especially compared to how shitty the actual NBC.com streaming things are.  The commercials are remarkably unobtrusive... there's only one 15 or 30 second spot per commercial break, and they actually have it integrated, so, unlike on NBC.com the commercial comes and goes without interupting the show.  Been catching up on everything I haven't seen what with the removal of cable from the house.

Myspace.com/pilotseason - It's launching this week, and I guess each of the writers are writing little pieces explaining why you should vote for us.  On a side note, vote for me.

Watch my Netflix - I've had a bunch of Orson Welles Netflix movies sitting on my shelf for three months.  I just never get around to watching them.  I desperately wanted to do a book about Welles, but, well, everyone thinks I'm insane when I explain what I want to do.

Mario 64 - I've decided that before I buy Mario Galaxies, I'll go through Mario 64 from start to finish.  I'm planning on getting frustrated sometime around the 30th or so star, and going to buy Galaxies.   At that point, I will play it until it gets slightly harder than I can easily handle, at which point it'll end up sitting on the shelf until the next Mario comes out.  And so it is.

Finish Sartre's The Flies and start The Orestia -  Which are both the same thing, only, y'know, one's by Aeschylus and the other's by Sartre.  They're research for the book with Guillory, and lots of fun.

Cancel my Vonage - I'm just plain sick of it.  The quality's gotten progressively worse and worse, and despite the replacement modem they sent me last month, it's just... well... shitty.   I'd rather just put the 30 bucks towards my cell service and not have to worry about it.

And that's what my day will look like.

Possibly the greatest video ever made.

Found on College Humor via Slashdot

Douglas Adams Hyperland

Douglas Adams was a genius. Truly a man before his time. Case in point, Hyperland. A documentary discussing the idea of Hypertext (y'know, that whole internet thing) from 1990, that more or less explains exactly how the internet ended up evolving in a startalingly accurate vision. The idea of literary hypertext is certainly a part of the zeitgeist, especially amongst us comic folks, with our production blogs, soundtrack listings, podcasts, commentaries, and so on. It's pretty damn cool to see nearly twenty years ago is good ol' Mr. Adams explaining it all in simple, understandable, and suprisingly not dated language. It's cut up into four parts, but  here's the first to get you started.

Kill Your Television

I did it. The impossible dream.  I don't have cable for the first time since age 6.  While this is no grand acheivement for you normal folks out there, the Television has served a key part in my life and my entertainment while slaving away over my keyboard for 8 or 9 hours a day.  We only have one option for cable in our neighborhood, and because of building rules, we can't have a Satellite dish.

From the time we moved into our little two story palace in Glendale, the cable modem and television have been sub-par at best.  The internet was crapping out every 7 or 8 minutes, and the HiDef and Digital Cable Channels would do the same.  Even the basic cable picture quality was horrendous.  It got to a point where we just download or Netflix everything instead, because watching anything over the service was so fucking irritating.

So, what are we going to do now?  Well, there's a couple of things we've used to replace it thus far, and I think our shift to full-on time shifters is complete.

First, the basic stuff.  We have Netflix and Blockbuster Online accounts.  This allows us to have a non-stop stream of movies and tv shows coming in and out.  Blockbuster are a little bit incompetent (I've received the wrong disc at least 4 times over the past two months), but being able to walk over to the Blockbuster on the corner and rent Mansquito for free is a big plus.

Secondly, the interweb.  I've been using the Netflix Streaming service for the past few weeks now, and really enjoy it.  It manages to not slow down my machine too much, while providing some good background noise (like today's viewing of Across 110th Street).  The selection's not great, but, there's a suprising number of things I'm interested in and like watching, so, hooray.

I also bit-torrent or stream many BBC shows (Doctor Who, Jekyll, Life On Mars, etc.) so, that's stuff that Cable or no, I'd be doing anyways.

Which leads me to the number three... we're about 80% in to get AppleTV.  I'm concerned about the lack of HiDef signal (what's the point of having a HiDef TV without any HiDef inputs.)  But, my theory is that we can buy the box, and download season passes to all of the shows I watch on a regular basis for about the price of four months of cable service.  Considering it would take eight months of cable service to watch those self-same seasons, it seems to be a savings.  The picture quality on those big giant TV's at the Apple store seems to be pretty good, but, who knows what that translates to practically.  Now, if I could find a way to import my BBC downloads into AppleTV format and not have it do that irritating shitty framerate, I'd be sold.

And so, the mighty experiment begins.  Three days without TV and counting. Now if you'll excuse me, I got Yaphet Kotto to watch.

DIY Digital Newsbox

Found via Engadget

Things I Bought in a Sleepless Stupor

\ Full size, rollable keyboard.  I end up dragging my giant ass keyboard with me wherever I go if I'm away for more than a few days.  This, in theory, will help with that (although for longer trips, I'll probably still take my trusty ergonomic).  It's dirt ass cheap, tho, so I suppose it's worth a try.

I Gotsa PSP

So I sold about 10 years worth of Gameboy stuff and managed to get a fully paid for (but gently used) Playstation Portable. I bought it, more or less, for one game.  Lumines.  I played it on my buddy Gilbert's PSP at last year's E3, and was instantly in love.  Honestly, if the PSP did nothing but access the internet, play music and videos, and Lumines, I'd say the thing is worth the price of admission.

I also got the Megaman Redux thing, and the Capcom Remix, worth it just for the inclusion of 1941.

Now, I just need more games and more memory.

Got a new cellphone…

One of those dope ass new Razr phones. And, it was free, thanks to Verizon's new phones every two years. So, I'm celebrating and getting it all updated etc. etc. 032206_17211.jpg Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.

Heh.

Just realized how embarassing my Last.fm play list in the corner must be. I'm working on this little spec in my spare time that's essentially an 80's action movie, so I have the bad 80's arena rock blaring day and night.