Birthday Shout

Just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my lovely wife. Don’t go killing the orchid now!

Did I mention that orchids aren’t cheap… BTW - You’ll like your other gift. Heh.

2 comments November 19th, 2003

Apple Rolls New G5s

Apple has released new versions of the “Power Mac G5″:http://www.apple.com/powermac/, bringing the first model in the lineup to “just” $1799. Still a little over priced for only a 1.6Ghz model, which doesn’t even support the same RAM configuration nor does it include any PCI-X (133mhz) slots. In a nutshell, for $1799 the machine is still not the G5 I would want to buy.

I was hopeful that Apple would release a new chip speed or at least make a single 2.0Ghz model without the above limitations by Macworld 2004 this coming January in San Francisco. Not sure that is going to happen now that they’ve just updated the G5 line almost two months before the show. Another boost in speed and a price cut would seem silly.

Apple also released a new 20″ iMac. Yikes… a 20″ flat panel iMac? That’s just a little too much. I thought the 17″ was a little big due to the widescreen, but the new one is just over kill.

Oh well. I don’t really need a G5 right now anyway. I’ve already got a fast G4 and an iBook. Although I could use a new 12″ iBook G4 or 12″ PowerBook for my daily commute as the 14″ iBook is just too big I’ve learned.

November 18th, 2003

Comment Spam Be Gone

Count me in against the “fight of comment spam”:http://kalsey.com/2003/11/comment_spam_manifesto/. So far I haven’t had to much comment spam, thanks in part to the “MT-Blacklist”:http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2003/10/mtblacklist_version_15_released plugin. When I do get any in the future, phear me spammers.

November 12th, 2003

N-Gage Hacked

Hahahaha! Please let me laugh out loud. The “N-Gage has been hacked”:http://www.mobiletracker.net/archives/2003/11/11/groups_says_nga.php i.e. games made exclusively for the system can be played on other mobile phones. I think the “screenshots speak for themselves”:http://www.club-siemens.net/preview/ngage/.

Game Over.

November 11th, 2003

Sony And Their Game Boy

Sony is entering the handheld gaming market with their PlayStation Portable (PSP) in late 2004. The machine is looking really good so far and may be something I’d actually buy to replace my GBA SP. Unlike Nokia, Sony is going to have excellent launch games for the new system just like they’ve had in the past.

The unit itself is “looking mighty sexy”:http://www.the-magicbox.com/game110403c.htm, sporting a 4.5″ 16:9 letterbox TFT display capable of 24-bit color. There is also built in 802.11 wireless and USB 2.0.

Bye Bye N-Gage.

November 7th, 2003

N-Gage Sells Poorly

I’ve “already discussed”:http://www.snapturtle.com/archives/2003/10/20/19.14.35/ that the N-Gage is destined for the trash bin, but an “article from Wired confirms this”:http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,61117,00.html and it should for everyone else. My favorite part is the often mentioned uber multiplayer functionality that doesn’t even exist yet.

bq. The company is also touting the device’s multiplayer-gaming capabilities, although those do not yet include the ability to match up against other players in real time.

Oh yes, right, you can still download “ghost” files and play against a shadow of someone else. Sounds like fun eh? Yawn.

Nokia, please focus on making kick ass phones and stop wasting valuable R&D dollars on this total crap device. Be a sport and concede defeat and move on. Oh and fire the engineer who designed that piece of junk, he needs to go back to the drawing board.

1 comment November 7th, 2003

The Gaming Holidays

There are a ton of new games shipping in the next 2 months before the Christmas season. Programmers around the globe are working long hours and sleeping in their cubes, “some passing out”:http://www.bungie.net/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/site/0/news/news_detail.html&id=FC5C6C81-A165-4139-943A-99E72590F3D5 just to finish their games before the big season comes.

What’s the cream of the crop that you and I both got to have?

GameCube

“Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King”:http://cube.ign.com/articles/457/457816p1.html - I want the GameCube version for the wireless controller and I couldn’t give a crap about the online play in the PS2 version. Multiplayer is what I wanted for the Two Towers so it’s about damn time.

“Mario Kart: Double Dash!!”:http://cube.ign.com/objects/016/016574.html - Mario Kart just rules. If you say different your just stupid.

“Mario Party 5″:http://cube.ign.com/objects/566/566725.html - The new age family board game. Harmless and lots of fun.

“Beyond Good & Evil”:http://cube.ign.com/objects/481/481963.html - About damn time the GC gets a good 3rd party action game.

Game Boy Advance

“Mario & Lugui Superstar Saga”:http://pocket.ign.com/objects/550/550433.html - Looks to be a fun RPG along the lines of “Super Mario RPG”:http://www.classicgaming.com/sotss/ and “Paper Mario”:http://ign64.ign.com/articles/150/150453p1.html.

“Sword Of Mana”:http://pocket.ign.com/objects/487/487812.html - How I’ve missed thee Mana. ‘Bout damn time “Squaresoft”:http://www.square-enix-usa.com/seui/index.htm.

“Metal Slug Advance”:http://pocket.ign.com/objects/487/487645.html - Best side scrolling 2nd action shooter EVER. Don’t even try to deny it, you’ll lose.

Playstation 2

“Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando”:http://ps2.ign.com/objects/550/550444.html - More platform madness with some zany RPGs element and a talking robot.

“Need For Speed Underground”:http://ps2.ign.com/objects/552/552528.html - Even though exotic cars are nice and all, the NFS series finally moves to the next level allowing you to customize your own import car.

If you notice, I’ve left the XBox off. I don’t have an XBox anymore nor do I care to own one in the near future so I’m not anticapting any of it’s crap games.

All totaled up I’m going to be out $400 if I get all the games above and that doesn’t even include the must have upcoming Halo for Mac. Oh right, like I’m not going to pay that game.

Now… I just got to find $400. What a crock.

November 6th, 2003

Stuff It

When I first “read this article”:http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-5103279.html I had to check my calendar. I wasn’t sure if I’d woken up from a coma on April 1st as Apple publicly told Microsoft and Intel to stuff it, indirectly of course.

Apple on switching to Intel…

bq. “Right now we don’t see a compelling need to switch processor families,” Jobs said. “We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong.”

Apple on the iTMS only working with iPod…

bq. “Why should we work with another music store when we are working with the Microsoft of music stores?” Jobs said. “I’d rather spend our engineering dollars on enhancing the iPod and the iTunes music store.”

What about Microsoft’s “great” Media Center?

bq. Asked about Apple’s interest in selling Macs that could serve up the video recording abilities Microsoft offers with its Windows XP Media Center Edition, Jobs joked that Apple was instead focused on melding the computer with a toaster.

bq. “I never get mine quite brown,” said Phil Schiller, vice president of marketing. “We can do an up-sell for bagels.”

Longhorn in 2006?

bq. Jobs also took a few shots at Microsoft, saying that Apple is out-innovating its larger rival, which has years of work ahead of it with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. “They’re hoping to be in 2006 where we were with Jaguar,” Jobs said, adding, “We’re going to have a few more releases by then.”

Glad to see Apple stand up for itself publicly and vent a little. Apple doesn’t need Microsoft anymore and they certainly don’t need Intel if IBM is going to start running with the G5. Surely, Apple’s market share isn’t going to go from 4% to 50% nor would I really even want it to. I just want to see them do well with what they know how to do best, innovate.

Good riddance Microsoft.

1 comment November 6th, 2003

Free Songs On Bad Food

Apple announced last month that they would be giving away a free one hundred million songs through a deal with Pepsi. Buy a Pepsi, get a 1 in 3 chance of winning a free song. Sounds cool right? I’d love to get free music but I don’t drink Pepsi.

According to a “NY Post article”:http://www.nypost.com/business/10067.htm, Apple is attempting to do a similar promotion with McDonalds. Great, I’m a vegan and don’t eat crappy fake hamburgers or chicken fried potatoes.

Hey Apple, can we get some free music with the purchase of some vegatables or maybe tofu? Eat healthy, get free music, and everyone wins. Shit, that won’t work. No one likes tofu.

(hat tip: “Blogintosh”:http://dave.typepad.com/blogintosh/2003/11/mcdonalds_to_do.html)

November 6th, 2003

Bluejacking

Have you gotten a new phone recently? Did it come with Bluetooth? If you don’t know, your probably going to get bluejacked at some point in the future.

Bluejacking is the “new spam of mobile phones”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3237755.stm. The Bluetooth technology inside your pretty new phone allows someone to send you messages if you don’t secure your phone. These messages are sent as a contact card instead of as a standard SMS or MMS message. From what I’ve tested so far the receiving user still needs to accept the bluetooth transmission in order for the contact to be sent successfully. There may be some other configuration to allow messages without warning to unpaired devices but I wasn’t able to get that working without pairing the devices.

Apparently this “phenomenon” has been around for some time as searching on Google reveals numerous hits to the subject including dedicated sites such as “BluejackQ”:http://www.bluejackq.com/.

(posted via Bluetooth and GPRS)

November 5th, 2003