From the monthly archives:

October 2004

Marvel 1602

October 27, 2004

in Books, Movies, and Music, Comics

Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 is out in trade paperback (or at least Volume 1 is). This is Gaiman’s retelling of the marvel comics universe 400 years back.

I missed this series when it was out in comics because I have massive unresolved guilt about buying comics and never reading them (I still have huge stacks of unread comics from years and years back. So guilty. So so guilty). I haven’t even read it yet. Adding to wishlist.

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photopod

October 27, 2004

in Tech

So by now everyone knows about the new iPod photo that’s been announced with the color screen that you can use to view photographs. Goody.

But you sync photographs onto the iPod using…iTunes. Buh? Pardon? Apple *has* a tool for dealing with photos: iPhoto. Now, OK, iPhoto is not the best product. I use it and I am not happy with it. Its easy to use for really basic importing and building slideshows but really cumbersome for anything more complex. It bogs down if you put any large number of photos into it. Its organization of the photos on the filesystem is labyrinthine and nasty. And it doesn’t provide an easy way of searching or sorting photos on metatdata the way that iTunes has (smart playlists: godlike). I have cursed iPhoto over and over and over again, wishing it were remotely as good a program as iTunes. (and before you all sent me mail, yes I am looking at flickr).

With the photopod this was Apple’s chance to revamp iPhoto, to make it the photo organization program everyone wants to use the same way they did with iTunes. They could have built syncing with the iPod into iPhoto and driven iPod users to using iPhoto. Add a web-based photo organizer like flickr or better integration one of the net photo printing services and Apple could have really had a chance to grab the photo market the same way they did the music market.

They didn’t do any of that. Sync your photos with iTunes? That doesn’t make any sense.

But I’ve been wrong before about ipod stuff, so we’ll see.

And while I’m here, the black iPod would be kind of neat if it weren’t for all that U2 stuff.

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tragedy

October 25, 2004

in Personal

I came into work this morning wearing a fetching sky-blue shirt. I fixed myself a cup of coffee, sat down at my computer, took a sip of coffee from the cup and promptly spilled half my coffee squarely down the front of my shirt.

@#*@#&(*&!!

This never used to happen to me when my entire wardrobe was black. God is telling me I should have stayed a goth.

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the headless cyclist

October 24, 2004

in Art & Design, Links

Check out this great (albeit kind of graphic) poster for a bike messenger hallowen ride out of NYC. Warning: a tad graphic. The artist is Ulgalde, who does weird Giger-like otherworldly-like sketches. Cool stuff.

(I got it from Velorution.)

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fool’s errand sequel

October 22, 2004

in Tech

The Fool’s Errand is one of the most addictive obsessive compulsive puzzle games I have ever played. I spent forever without sleep when I was in college in the 80’s playing it. My grades suffered. My relationships suffered. I was a wreck. It was evil.

Cliff Johnson, the author, wrote a few other games that had a similar feel in the early 90’s, and they also had a tendency to force me to abandon my entire life until I had solved them.

I discovered a year or so ago that Johnson had updated the game so that it ran on modern Macintoshes (and on Windows now), and off I went again. This time around it took me a lot less time solve it because I remembered a lot of the puzzles, but still: complete immersion. Something about this kind of game sucks onto my brain and just won’t let go. It is a sickness.

So yesterday I found out that Cliff Johnson has been working on a sequel to Fool’s Errand, called the Fool and His Money. He’s taking pre-orders. I don’t think I’ve clicked on a paypal button so fast in my life (Pay! Pay! Pay! Yes! Yes!).

I get my copy next month. Must budget time off from work.

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