The Twilight Report

Today when I left the house I noticed it was raining. Then when I was in the train trying to dry off, I noticed it wasn’t raining. Then when I got to St. Leonards and was walking the last leg to work I noticed that it was raining again. I was feeling a bit like Truman when the rain cloud was following him.

I have sort of decided that I want to get an iPhone which makes me feel like a sell out because I think they are stupid. On the other hand I view it as a free iPod touch which would let me watch videos on the train, which currently I can’t do because although over powered, my notebook fails at video when it isn’t plugged into a wall why is that? I’ve noticed that since I started commuting from the Central Coast a lot of my thinking revolves around getting a train which will likely allow me to sit down, and what I am going to do when I get that seat.

Last Friday I went to see Assassins. We were prompted to go see it on account of everyone in my family is a fan of Sarah Vowell and she had a highly amusing anecdote about the musical in the introduction to her highly amusing and well researched Assassination Vacation. I sort of had a celebrity crush on her sometime back. The lighting was really badly done, and the sound was a little buzzy at parts, but several of the actors were actually pretty good. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth were good, but my favourite was the innately jovial Guiteau.

There is something about flawed somewhat incompetent villains that I find endearing. My favourite cartoon character has always been Starscream, the constantly scheming traitorous lieutenant to Megatron. In watching the new BBC Robin Hood series I immediately took a liking to the Sheriff because of the joy in which he employs his sarcastic wit and sadistic pleasures. Lately, however I am liking Gisborne more and more. His melancholy manner and the way he feels so uncomfortable in almost any situation (but especially when he is trying to Marion) is wonderful to watch. It is somewhat troubling that Guiteau is not a cartoon or legendary villain. He’s a murderer.

I started reading the highly entertaining Linux Hater's Blog. It was indirectly linked to from a /. story, and even though I love Linux as a development platform and for developing web sites, it sucks shit on the desktop, and this guy understands exactly why and explains in a concise but nuanced way, along with a whole lot of entertaining^[1] vitriol. The thing is Linux is never going to be a serious player on the Desktop, so it is all fairly academic. I can’t really stand any of the modern user interfaces for an extended period of time. My Mac seems like a relief after a long day using Winblows at work, and sometimes GNOME and KDE are even offer a welcome respite from either or both. So I am picky, that is probably my fault. What is distressing is that user interfaces are getting progressively worse. I spent a day or so using Vista in order to make sure an application at work I was finishing off worked there, and it was a really horrible experience. If I didn’t know better I’d say that they Microsoft was trying to convince me that XP wasn’t so bad after all.

1. if you are entertained by geeky computer stuff

You should never buy new technology the day it comes out. This should be pretty self-evident. The Sony fan boys who camped out to buy themselves a PS3 now have an expensive (AU$1k minus the even more expensive HD TV that you will need to see any difference from a Wii or PS2) box allegedly without any good games. Nice one!

I was talking to someone last night who said she would rather play my yet to be implemented retro Orange Attack^[1], than all the complications and the internets and everything rolled up into a little ball.

Ahh the iPhone. Already predicted to be the next iPod right^[2]? Well, maybe you should ask some users:

• 10 Things that "Absolutely suck" about the iPhone. (Yes he has one)]
• No iPhone For 64-Bit Windows

Of course many of these issues will be corrected in time, but why brutalize yourself with Apple technical support unnecessarily^[3]? Let the fan boys do the beta testing which apparently Apple failed to do.

1. If you think about it you can probably guess what the game is like
2. iPhone: all set to do for phones what the iPod did for pods (I know I stole that somewhere, but can’t remember where: was it Colbert)
3. I am on my third iPod and had to send it back three times. If you do the math you will notice that I sent it back broken once and they didn’t even fix it! All this, mind you, with a device that had been out for years by the time I got it. Can you imagine my pain if I had gotten it the day it came out?