Introducing My New Hobby

So, this happened.

I've always been drawn to taking pictures. I'm old enough to remember the joy of taking Polaroids as a wee lad for my first venture into this field. In college I carried around a basic film-based camera, and all the joys that entailed. And for about two decades after that I used various digital point-and-shoot cameras of ever increasing megapixel count. Then, of course, there's the advent of the smartphone, which more and more lately is how I snap the majority of my pics.

But now, I've graduated to the next level. Yes, over the weekend I purchased my very first Digital SLR camera:

I haven't undertaken this endeavor lightly, mind you. I don't intend to just put this camera on the shelf, and only bring it out during family events and the odd holiday overseas. No. I want to put this baby to use! I want to travel all over this great big city I live in and engage in a new art form. Yes, I see this as art, not unlike painting or writing. Another outlet to unleash my creativity, along with my writing. I think it's a great idea, and I'm very excited.

The Canon EOS "Rebel" T5i, or so I've been told by those in the know, is a perfectly good camera with which to begin and learn on. As a neophyte to this level of photography, I must admit to being just a tad intimidated. But I plan to learn as much as I can. To that effect, I've signed up for two entry-level seminars which cover the basics of DSLR photography. These are three-hour classes which I plan to take back-to-back on the same day. I figure I'll take copious notes and ask around a hundred questions. That's the ticket!

Once I'm as comfortable as can be with the basic functions of my camera and rudimentary composing techniques--as well as photo editing--I think I'll spend the following months over the summer visiting different places in New York for prime photo taking. I'll probably look suspiciously like a tourist, but you know what? I don't care. At least this will get me out and about more, and not cooped up in my apartment. In this sense I'm lucky the weather is just now becoming mild and beautiful out there. Something tells me I'll be spending a lot time walking through many of the local parks with my camera in hand.

Some point later, and once I've become very familiar with my T5i, I think I'll enroll in an actual photography course here in the city. I found a 9-week one geared towards the budding amateur photographer such as myself.  That's the plan anyway. Wish me luck!

And in the meantime, here are a few test photos I took with my brand new camera. These were taken in a friend's garden earlier today. I was testing out the macro settings, specifically, and figured some close-ups of pretty Spring flowers were in order:

Not bad. I'm already noticing a substantial difference between this camera and my previous Sony point-and-shoot purchased 5 years ago. These test shots have got me pumped to learn how to use this DSLR properly for more advanced capturing.

Oh, IT'S ON!!!

My Quick(ish) iPhone 6-Plus Impression

(Insert stand-up routine here).

No, not that kind of impression.

What I'm holding up there is my newest phone, Apple's iPhone 6-Plus, which just came in the mail last Wednesday. Which is around 5 days after the phones first went on sale at stores nationwide. This was the usual upgrade after my 2-year contract commitment expired with AT&T, at which time I became eligible to replace my existing phone -- Apple's 2012 iteration, the iPhone 5.

Can You Hear Me Now?

You know, I know I'm going to take some flak for this, but I'll come out and just say it: I'm not all that disturbed by these recent NSA Prism revelations. Yes, I'm serious. I know, I know -- the U.S. government has been tapping into our mobile phone and e-mail content. Oh. Mah. Gurd!!!!

Really?

And???

How is this news? I've always figured my conversations, emails, and Facebook doings were being monitored somehow, somewhere. This blog, too, in fact. It's probably all being filtered through some government data analyst's server farm buried deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota. But do I think anyone cares about what I have to say or write? Hell no! I say: let them do all the snooping they want. Do you really think I'm dumb enough to put out there anything incriminating or of a threat to national security? Do I honestly believe anyone in the higher echelons of our cloak & dagger shadow government agencies actually cares about my Game of Thrones musings, or latest Facebook rant on men who carry around large shoulder bags?

Please, grow up! I don't exactly know why everyone's so surprised by these revelations. Or so afraid all of a sudden. Surely you couldn't have been that naive all these years, right?

Didn't think so.

Is it wrong that our privacy and basic liberties are being trampled upon? You damn right it is! And I'm mad as hell about that. Because if they can do this, then what's next? Don't answer that! It's scary as hell.

Look, ever since I first logged on to this here Interwebs of ours back in September of 1994 (when we were still using Mosaic for access, and the World Wide Web was in its infancy) I've done so with the express paranoia that some super AI or think tank out there would be eavesdropping, just waiting for certain keywords to pop up in all that digital noise and send the black helicopters out to pick me up in the middle of the night. So I just made sure I never put anything out there I wouldn't want my closest friends or family members finding out about. Plain and simple.

If, however, you're one of those pseudo anarchists who uses Facebook as a soapbox to rave about how badly you want the government to implode under an onslaught of a thousand terrorists' dirty bombs--well then, Jethro, you might want to keep you ears peeled for those super silent helicopter blades approaching your bunker.

I hear Guantanamo ain't so lovely this time of year.

The iPhone 5: Why I'm Not Underwhelmed

Well, my birthday came and went without much fanfare as usual. For those into details, it was a week and a half ago on Sep. 7th, and I turned 36. And while I didn't do anything on that day except complete one more revolution around the Sun, I did bake brownies in celebration. So that's something!

Anyway, seeing as how it is my birthday, and also seeing how I've had my current iPhone 4 for over two years now, I thought it was nice of Apple to schedule a major unveiling of their latest iteration of this popular product line around the same time. As a mild technophile I always suspected I would be getting the next iPhone anyway. Not just because I was due for an upgrade, but because I really do enjoy the form factor and GUI of Apple phones. So it was a no-brainer that the iPhone 5 would be this year's birthday present to myself. All I needed to see was a reasonable improvement over my current phone. That's it.

And that's not only what I got, but a bit more.

The iPhone 5 (left) vs. the iPhone 4 (right). Fight, fight, fight!

Building Your Own PC

Something you might not know about me:

Over a decade ago, before I started employment at the legal & finance publisher I work for today, I used to be an editorial assistant on 3 national tech magazines: the now defunct Computer Buyer's Guide and PC Upgrade magazines, as well as their sister publication, Laptop Magazine, which still enjoys success today. I was just out of college at the time and, up until that point, had only Mac experience with personal computing. But I learned a lot working on these publications, including the rudiments of building my own Windows-based PC.

Thing is, I've never actually done the deed before. Not on my own dime and in my own space. Also, it's been so many years since I've thought about doing so that the technology has gone up and changed itself in myriad and exciting ways since. To be sure, at its heart building a PC is still the same. You still need the basic components: motherboard (pictured above), CPU, RAM, GPU, hard drive, power supply, heat sink fan, and chassis. Except, of course, nowadays everything is more robust, faster, and way sexier than back in 1999!

We're Experiencing Technical Difficulties . . .

Arrgh! This is so FRUSTRATING!

Seems my main home PC is suffering from some nasty bit of malware that came "from God knows where, infecting [it] with God knows what!" Kudos for anyone who knows what favorite movie of mine that's taken from. Here's a hint:

How do I know my PC's infected? Because suddenly my anti-viral and malicious software removal tools refuse to operate. I get some bullshit message saying that Windows cannot find the file path or whatever, even though I just used these programs not that long ago. I'm also unable to get the latest Windows Update download no matter how many times I try.

Lastly, anytime I try to download anything new to help fix the problem--up to and including online-only runs--I get cock blocked each time by this bullshit denial window.

Like I said -- ARRGH!

Now, in case you didn't know, I run a tight ship on all my computing products. Nothing irks me more than an infected PC, and I go to great pains to ensure that these things don't happen. It's why my machines always last so long. But of course, you can only do so much. And despite your best efforts, something eventually does slips through. In the eight years I've had this same PC, I've had two previous invasions. The first was pretty easy to fix, while the second (around 4 years ago) was hell on wheels to diagnose and eradicate. It took me two weeks before all the dust had cleared and I stood victorious over the smoking corpse of that last trojan.

This one, though, makes that last attack look like the Spanish-American War (to the Americans, naturally). I'm afraid what I'm dealing with here is the Great War itself. Or perhaps the Battle at Helm's Deep? Whatever it is, it looks bad!

I'm going to be busy for a while getting to the bottom of this. It sucks, because I have so much other crap to deal with right now that I need to attend to. Not this. But if I don't nip this in the bud now, there's no telling how much worse it will get.

Wish me luck!

Consequently, I'm also tentatively looking into a new PC. After 8 years, it's damn near time I upgraded. This baby did great to hold out that long with nary a problem, but now it's feeling a little bit long in the tooth. Notwithstanding this latest snafu. I might have to downgrade this PC to a word-processing only machine, but only after I clean her up a bit first.

So, that's what my weekend is shaping up to be already. *sigh* How's yours starting off?

The Trouble With Comments, Redux

Last week I mentioned in this post how comments have been acting screwy across the board on Blogger lately. Many people, including yours truly, are experiencing problems with Blogger's remote login ID. For this reason I haven't been able to comment on people's blogs as frequently as I'm accustomed to doing of late because I can only do so now from one computer--my home PC, which is permanently signed in at all times.

From all other PCs, my Blogger Google login ID doesn't seem to recognize me anymore. So frustrating! Especially because I almost never leave comments when I'm at home. I usually do them on my mobile smartphone when I'm out and about.

But now it seems some of you are having problems leaving comments on my site, too! And that's totally not acceptable, like, AT ALL!

No Stairway. Denied!

I figured a quick little workaround for this, however. I noticed that the only blogs I can leave comments on are those which have the comments reply form setup as a separate page--and not embedded as a small blank window at the bottom of each blog post like I have it here.

So, starting from today I've switched the settings for all comments on this blog to a separate page form. From now on, you'll have to click on the "Post a Comment" link at the very bottom of the page to be taken to a separate page for leaving feedback. Simple, and not unlike the setup on many other blogs. The difference is that this method seems to solve the login ID problem, at least temporarily.

Again, this is only to assist those of you who have e-mailed me expressing deep regrettable sadness at not being able to leave comments anymore on The Bimillennial Man. Most of you, however, are fine and/or using a different browser like Chrome or Firefox which doesn't seem to be affected.

Yeah, lucky you. Don't rub it in.

In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy your day. It's hotter than Hades' ass crack here in the city today--97 degrees! And it's not even officially summer yet!

I'll also be putting up my Game of Thrones episode 8 reactions very shortly. So keep an eye our for that, would you kindly?

Thankee, sai.

A Quick Note On Comments Lately . . .

Or my lack thereof if you're owner of one of the many blogs I follow. The reason I've been sorta remiss on commenting on your sites is not because I don't want to . . . but because Blogger is acting fucking STOOPIDS lately. Arrrgh!

For whatever reason, my Google ID login doesn't want to work in the comments sections of most of your blogs when I sign in from anywhere but my home PC. Thing is, I'm only at my home PC really late at night, and I usually check your blogs in the morning while at work or in the afternoon on my iPhone or netbook. None of which allow me to sign in now.

I've been trying to figure the problem out, but to no avail. So bear with me, please. I haven't forgotten you, nor abandoned you. I can't even leave comments on my own blog unless I'm at home.

This SUCKS!!!!

Running Errands . . .

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here before, but my job has a sweet setup by which we get to work extra hours during the two-week pay period in order to have one day off within that same time. So myself, I get every other Friday off throughout the year! This is great because I tend to use these days to get most of my errands done that I can't get done on a work day or on weekends. Some of the time I use it to go to doctor and dentist appointments. Sometimes I visit friends. Mostly, though, I use it just to chill out at home and recharge my batteries since Friday happens to also be my one and only non-workout day of the week.

But then there's days like today where I have to go to the nearby parking garage in my neighborhood and take out the Zipcar to replenish our dwindling food and household supplies at home. Zipcar is awesome for those of you who don't know what it is. It's a car rental service, but you can rent by the hour -- or even half hour, if you want. Best yet, if you live in a big city like I do, chances are there's a parking lot near you that has anywhere from 4 to 8 cars available to all members. You call or go online to set up your reservation, stroll up to the lot closest to your house, and find the car that matches the one you picked out. Then you simple put up your membership card to the RFID box behind the windshield, and the doors automatically unlock for you. It's so simple! Once you're done, you bring the car back and never have to worry about finding parking or maintaining the vehicle. Oh, and insurance and gas is already included in your reservation price.

Like I said -- AWESOME!

So, anyway, around every 6 to 8 weeks or so I make a Zipcar drive up to the Costco in the next county. It's a chance for me to get out on the road (which I love), but then I have to shop (which I loathe). Still, it's a necessary evil since what I buy at Costco saves me a helluva lot of time, effort and money at the local grocery stores here in the city. But today as I went about my normal routine, I stopped in the refrigerated section where all the milk and orange juice is stored. And I realized, not for the first time, how strange the arrangement here is. Take a look:

See? That there is the side of the room where all the many gallons of milk are stacked. I'm a big milk drinker, always have been. So a sight like this does a body good for me. But here's the funny thing I noticed about this arrangement -- all the healthy, fat-free milk is kept as far away from human contact as possible. See, first up there in the forefront of the image are all the red-labeled whole milk. Right behind them are the blue and greens of the 2% and low-fat milk. And what about the pink fat-free milk? Well, they can't be seen from here . . . not until you walk all the way to the back and find them hiding in some forgotten corner like heartbroken step children sent to the basement with no supper. The nerve!

Seriously, what's the deal with that? Why is it always such a chore to find the non-heart attack causing milk in stores? Is it a conspiracy? Or, perhaps more people want--nay, DEMAND--their fatty fat fat dairy? I know, I know . . . most likely it's for the kids. The kids, they say, they be needing their whole milk. And I guess that's true. I would never want any kid to go without their essential daily fat content. Lord knows this country has a serious skinny-kid epidemic, after all.

Still, for a wild moment there I thought that perhaps all my precious fat free milk had fallen off a truck somewhere in Jersey -- ACK!!! I was so relieved to find out such was not the case. *phew*

Anyway, I ended up making my usual circuit around the giant Costco warehouse. I always get a lot of stares from people--mostly mothers--because I'm a young guy shopping by myself with a TON of food in my cart. And because it's Friday in the middle of the morning, too! But that's just the way it has to be. It's too expensive to keep a car full time in the city, so Costco runs can only come when we can get the Zipcar and when we really need to go.

Oh, and I should mention that it wasn't all serious grown-up shopping I did today. Of course I had to snag a nice new tech toy for me to play with on the way out of the warehouse. Now usually I don't look to Costco for my gadget needs. I mean, ewww! But lately my crappy bargain printer at home has been going through its last moments on this Earth. I had gone to Costco with the intention of buying some replacement ink cartridges for it, but to be honest . . . this thing needed to be put out of its misery already. So, even though I had not intended to go all out like this, I ended up wandering over to the electronics section of the store and snagging this:

That there is an HP 4500 Wireless all-in-one machine sitting on my desk in the den! It does print jobs, faxes, scans -- and photo copies, too! And all within pretty much the same footprint as my old crappy printer-only contraption. See, here it is all properly set up and beautiful, sitting in the spot where our old Lexmark ink-jet used to be:

And it runs like a charm. I absolutely love it! I can't believe I waited this long for something that is so essential to a household of professional working adults. Hooray for technology!

Speaking of technology, I had a funny moment when I was leaving Costco and heading for the car in the parking lot. See, Zipcar has an Apple iPhone app (naturally, of course) which you can use to make reservations or edit an already existing reservation. But the coolest feature of this app is the ability to lock or unlock the car from afar before you even get to it. This is useful if, like at Costco, you're pushing a heavy shopping cart full of supplies through the lot while dodging clueless drivers seeking that elusive empty spot. Simply pull out your phone before you set off and push the "unlock" button in the Zipcar app. And by the time you get to the car -- presto! You don't need to fish for the keys!

But Zipcar has this amusing message when you first push the "unlock" icon. It says: "Your request is being sent to space and back. This should only take a sec . . ."

As a sci-fan fan and writer, I get a huge kick out of this! But it also reminds me of the stand-up comedian Louis CK, and his rant about how we don't appreciate all the cool technology we have nowadays. Here, check out this clip below where he takes on people's ridiculous frustrations with something as wonderful and useful as cell phones (the relevant part begins at the 1:40 minute mark):





LOLZ! This is so true. People need to have more patience. Especially considering the alternatives we used to have not all that long ago.

How do you feel about today's technology? Useful tools you find yourself increasingly unable to live without? Or annoying demon gadgets placed here on this planet to annoy the crap out of you? Sound off in the comments below.

Lightning Strikes Twice!

I know, WHAT THE HELL? Yet another vlog, David? Oh, geez. *rolls eyes*

But, hey, no one's forcing you to watch these. Right? RIGHT???

Oh, and this time I'm in another room in the house. The room where I close the door and do all my writing. Hey, in fact, I'm there right now . . . writing this very sentence!

Anyway, here's me babbling away for your amusement. Stay tuned 'till the end -- I have a special request for those of you brave enough to watch.

Later!

Are You Getting The Most Bang For Your Buck?

With your Internet service provider (ISP), that is?

Here, go to this website to test the speed of your Internet connection:

http://www.speedtest.net/

Now, see if your results match what your ISP claims you should be getting. If your actual speed doesn't match up favorably with their quoted offerings, then you should get them to credit your account. You shouldn't be paying full price for a gimped Internet connection.

No, seriously, don't let them get away with this BS. Some cable Internet providers, for instance, are banking on customer ignorance to keep this practice going in secret. They might even blame your hardware, or loose wiring or some such nonsense. Don't let them. This is something they do to free up bandwidth for other higher profile or more educated customers to consume. Don't be left behind!

Luckily for me, Cablevision listened and did as I asked. I was going to threaten them with leaving for Verizon FiOS, too. But turns out I didn't need to.

Still, I'm going to be switching to FiOS at some point within the year, anyway, as more and more neighborhoods in the Bronx get setup for it.

I so can't wait for that day!

Apple iTunes Is Really Amazing!

Let me explain my problem with digital music. See, way back in 2002, my wife got me a Dell DJ 20GB HDD music player.

Back then, this was a big deal, as Apple's iPod had only just recently come onto the scene and had not yet revolutionized the way we listened to music. At the time, the majority of us were toting around Compact Disc walkmans and a portfolio of CDs in our obligatory backpacks -- which we'd have to manually exchange whenever we wanted to listen to another album.

Flash music players offered an alternative initially, but the real future of portable music storage would be the compact hard-drive player.

Flash forward to now, and the Apple machine has totally taken over. And its iTunes utility rules the roost. Dell has long since discontinued my version of their music player, but yet I have my entire library on it. It is the only way I have to listen to music. Problem is, after 8 years of continuous use, and at nearly 95% of its total capacity, my Dell DJ is finally ready to kick the bucket. It still works, but earlier this year I must have uploaded the wrong music file because now a good 30% of my .mp3s are either corrupted at the tag level -- or outright deleted. Of the remaining 70%, more than half the music files are copy-protected. Which means, if I were to buy another portable music player, I would need to find the original source for these albums and re-rip them. A major pain in the ass, to say the least.

But, alas, I have had to face reality. The writing was on the wall. Plus, with the fact that I now have a 32GB iPhone 4 mobile, realistically I knew I could port over my entire Dell DJ library and still have room to spare. And since I take my iPhone everywhere I go, I really had no excuse for not using the iPod music function built into it.

Problem is, I resisted having to use iTunes for the longest time. Lisa has had various iPods now over the years. And the few times I've had to deal with iTunes on her behalf was a big headache. iTunes really does take some patience and getting used to, though. A fact I did not realize until I recently made the decision to fully port over my Dell's .mp3 library to Apple's proprietary beast of an interface.

Still, I figured if I'm going to embrace this plan fully, I should do it right.

So over my 2-week Christmas break, I started by purchasing a Western Digital 1TB external hard drive for my home PC.

This thing's a beauty, and runs like a charm! It allows me to free up a ton of space on my existing hard drive, which in turn makes my PC run smoother.

Next, I transferred over as much of my non-protected, but occasionally tag-corrupted, music files from the Dell DJ. Because there is so much tagging confusion going on, it's been a slow process. Sometimes I have to manually open up each file and listen to the music to figure out which song it is. Then I have to research online the exact title, album, artist, year, track number, etc. Sometimes iTunes parses all this information for me from the embedded registry file. Most of the time, it cannot due to the degree of corruption. So I have to enter this information myself.

In the meantime, I've been taking every single CD album Lisa and I own and burning them on our home desktop PC. Now that I have a whopping 1 terabyte of hard drive space to play around with, I no longer have to worry about choking my PC with a blitz of new files. All the music goes immediately to the hard drive, and I've configured iTunes to redirect from there going forward. No longer will it access my PC's pitiful 120GB internal hard drive to play these files.

Burning all these CDs and rebuilding my playlists have been a time-consuming chore. But when all is said and done, I shall have a brand new and non-corrupted music library that totally KICKS ASS! And because it's all on iTunes, it's safe to say I won't be losing company support of my hardware like what Dell did to me. So my music should be totally secure for the next 10 years at least.

That is, until some other new fangled music technology comes about. Maybe everything will exist in the Cloud in a decade's time, and we will no longer need physical drives to store all our media. Who knows?

What I do know is that having all my music on iTunes now has given me a broader appreciation for how nuanced the interface really is.

It seems restrictive and cumbersome to the uninitiated, but actually it offers far more flexibility and moderation than any other music library manager I've dealt with in the past. Better than Dell's standard manager by a long shot. Much better than Musicmatch. And, surprisingly, even superior to Red Chair's "Deubox" utility, which I used to think was, like, GOD for all my file editing needs.

Honestly, iTunes is the SHIT! If you don't think so, you're not using it correctly. Seriously.

My latest squee-worthy discovery? Creating artwork for each of my ripped albums and playlists that iTunes does not already have available.

It's so cool seeing the full-color covers of all my favorite music splash across my iPhone's gorgeous liquid LCD display. It opens up a whole new world to someone who's been dealing with a green, monochromed, text-only display ala the Dell DJ for the past decade. *shudders*

These past few days I've been focusing mostly on rebuilding my gaming soundtracks. And, honestly, I have a LOT of those! All the Final Fantasy games, Actraiser, Altered Beast, Castlevania series, God of War series, Gears of War, F-Zero, Golden Axe, Metal Gear series, etc. It's been a lot of fun porting all those over and getting all the artwork.

So, as you can see, I've fully embraced my new Apple overlord. Sure, I could have gotten a Zune or Archos player or something similar. But, I'm tired of worrying about where my product support will be coming from years down the line. With Apple and its millions upon MILLIONS or rabid, adoring fans who never leave its side -- I at least know I'm dealing with a company that cares about its image and, more importantly, its customers.

I feel like I'm in good hands. And this makes me a very, very happy tech consumer!

My Booklist

I recently signed up for Dropbox, a very cool service that allows you to create an online virtual folder in which you can place all your stuff (e.g., doc, pics, music, etc.) and have it accessible across any number of platforms -- home P.C., laptop, work P.C., iPhone, and so on . . . simultaneously! So, for instance, if I'm working on my novel, I can back up any new scenes into my desktop's Dropbox mirror folder, and then make small edits via my iPhone if I'm out and about and remember to add some minor plot detail I forgot. This also eliminates the need for me to constantly transfer my Word files back and forth via thumb drive, as well as providing a handy online backup of everything I write. If anything should happen to one of my computers with the Dropbox folder installed, I can still access the same files on another PC, or any platform with Internet access for that matter. Nifty!

You can take a video tour of the service by clicking here and deciding whether you want to sign up for yourself. If you do, please use that link since it's a referral linked directly to me. This way, if you do decide to join after watching the video, we'll both get an extra 250MB of storage free! And we all like free stuff, right? RIGHT????

One of the other things you can do is to allow the public to view certain items -- only those you specifically allow public access to (duh!). I wanted to try it out, so I thought I'd let the world see the book list I've been keeping all these years. In theory, this is a list of all the books I've read ever since the 1st grade. I say "in theory" because, quite frankly, trying to remember every single book I've ever read is a pain in the ass. I've been compiling this since around 2000, based on a more extensive list I kept in high school, circa 1993. And while I've only included the titles that I for a fact remember reading, a lot more have slipped through the cracks of this faulty vessel of mine I call my brain.

Click here if you want to view this list. Actually, please click on it and let me know in the comments below whether or not this works for you. The link will open a dialogue window asking if you either want to "Open" or "Save" the Word doc. I would recommend you "open" it if you just want a quick glance at the list. I'll be putting a more permanent link in my sidebar soon for archival purposes.

In the meantime, check out Dropbox and see if it's the right fit for you. Personally, I love it!

My Lovefest With Technology Continues . . .

I swear, is there really anything my iPhone can't do? I've been a Netflix member now for 3 years, and only recently have I started watching titles through the company's instant streaming interface, which allows one to rent their movies and watch them all online. And now in addition to my PC and HDTV, I can watch stuff that's on my Netflix "queue" over my iPhone as well, from anywhere that has 3G or WiFi coverage.

At first, streaming was a bit laggy when this technology first debuted. But now, thanks to added infrastructure, I have to say I've become highly addicted to this facet of the overall Netflix membership. It's quite smooth and serviceable, to the point that I now get impatient whenever a movie or show is NOT available for instant streaming and I have to wait for snail mail to get my titles. Yuck!

What being able to access my account and watch content on my iPhone does now is allow me to catch up on old episodes of Stargate: SG1 from work. Or any other great tv show I somehow missed during its first run for various reasons.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: oh, bad employee! Watching tv on the company's dime instead of doing his work. But, you see, it's not what you think. We're allowed to listen to music via headphones all day long and until the cows come home here. What I do with the iPhone is similar. I perch the phone up at eye level off to the side. Then I set Netflix to play and go about doing my work at my desk like normal. My eyes are on my work, with only occasional sight breaks to see the important stuff on the small screen before quickly returning. I'm not using company resources, and the screen is not interfering with my PC monitor. In fact, I find I'm able to pay full attention to what's going on in the show I'm watching while barely looking at the phone. In this way, it's really no different than how I sometimes watch tv at home: which is to say, playing in the background while I get other things done.

But it's amazing how much I can get done this way. I guess having my mind occupied on more than one level while I work is a good thing. Not to mention how fast the time seems to fly. And, as an added bonus I get to fly through seasons of tv shows I really don't have much time to watch at home (what with writing and working out and all the other things that demand of my time).

I've said it before here, and I'll say it again: I *heart* technology!

Back To [My] Future

I was reading this news article today in The Hollywood Reporter about the 25th Anniversary trilogy box set of Back to the Future, which is coming to Blu-ray later this month (oh yeah!). In it, they brought up a factoid that many of us fans already knew: that the original Marty McFly was played by none other than Eric Stoltz for a period of about five weeks before they pulled the actor and went with Michael J. Fox instead.

Click on the link above and catch a clip of Stoltz in a few of the now iconic scenes we all love and cherish. I really, really like Eric as an actor, don't get me wrong. Hell, he's frakking AWESOME in the "Battlestar Galactica" spinoff, "Caprica," now running on the SyFy Network. But Marty McFly he was NOT!

Phew, they really lucked out by snagging the plucky Canadian off the set of Family Ties long enough to make this now seminal sci-fi flick. And I'll be sure to snag my copy of the entire set come Oct. 26th. Can you believe I never owned these films on DVD? Good thing, too, because for once I won't have to double dip!

Anyway, it got me to thinking about time travel again, one of my favorite day-dream subjects as of late. I've been trying for years to work out a viable time travel premise for a short story or novella, yet so far all my attempts have been duds. But that doesn't mean I can't still fantasize about what it would mean for me, personally, to be able to travel back in history.

What usually ends up happening when I think of such matters, though, is that I'll come up with two different time travel scenarios:

On the one hand, I imagine a traditional vector wherein the time traveler uses a device to take him back to any point in Earth's timeline.

On the other hand, I imagine the traveler can only travel back within his own personal timeline, and only while occupying the body and mind of the younger version of himself whilst in the period of time he's chosen.

Hmmm, which do you think would be more exciting? The first option obviously offers more freedom, as you can travel as far back as, say, Ancient Egypt, and learn things about that time that even the oldest and most experienced Egyptologists today don't know. Woo-hoo! But the second option is also just as cool, no? Just think of all the mistakes you made in your past that you would now be able to fix. And before you go there . . . let's leave out the time paradox school of thought, or the Butterfly Effect. Two areas of temporal theory I don't particularly agree with, but which have no place in this fun little thought experiment anyway.

So, what would I do given either of these options?

Well, with the first, I would travel back to the 1950s. I don't know why, but I find it a fascinating time period in America. Sure, I could travel further back in time, but the more you go the more you risk entering an alien culture and society that you are not equipped to handle long enough to keep yourself alive. Not knowing the language alone might be enough of an excuse for some Roman centurion to run you through with his Gladius and ask questions later.

No thanks.

For my first time travel venture, I would play it safe and only go so far back in time that I wouldn't immediately stand out as some rube, yet still be far enough back from my own lifetime for it to be a cool and interesting experience. I would explore New York and see for myself the city expand in all its post-war exuberance. Then I'd take a cross-country trip and eventually make my way to Hollywood, and be there when all the great classic films of the Golden Age are starting to take shape. Maybe I'd stop by this sleepy little desert resort town known as Las Vegas and invest in the local real estate boom going on there, too.

For the second option, this one is the most difficult for me to envision. How far back into my own past would I want to go? What would I do all over again or, more importantly, what must I be sure to keep the same?

I think I would travel back to 9th grade and re-do those next 4 years all over again. Isn't that what they all say? I mean, who here didn't have a difficult go of it in high school? But to be in my 14 year old body with all the knowledge and foresight I possess now? Whoa, it would be a whole different story!

Of course, why would anyone want to repeat high school all over again, right? And let's be honest, if I had the knowledge I have now back then, I would probably just drop out of high school, get some bullshit job at McDs or something, and invest my paychecks in all the companies that I know are going to go BIG in the Internet explosion of the mid-90s -- like AOL, Netscape, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and eventually Google. Not to mention other big corporate entities these days like Amazon, Dell and Best Buy! And in the oughts, there's always Facebook! The sky's the limit on just how much I could benefit knowing what I know now. Plus, I'd get to relieve both the Michael Jordan-era NBA *and* the Yankees resurgence to dominate baseball in the latter half of the 90s. Double win!

The danger of this second option, of course, would be if I went back far enough to effect big events in my life, such as the death of my mom. It's a very heavy subject with me, but surprisingly I'm not so sure that I would do something as drastic as that. I mean, a part of me does in fact believe that some things happen for a reason. It's a hard truth, but it's one I've lived with ever since the age of 9. If I had the chance to change the outcome of that fateful night back in 1985, I'd have to go against everything that made me who I am today.

Wouldn't it be worth it, though? To have my mom back, I mean?

Hmmm . . . as you can see, the possibilities are both exciting and woefully complex at the same time. The more I think of it, the more I believe that the further back into your own past you travel, the more damage you can potentially cause to yourself and those around you. Maybe what you think would be a mistake worth fixing might in turn precipitate another much larger problem in the new future timeline you've just created. And once you made this change, or any change for that matter, you'd run the risk of never being able to return to your future time--the present time--again.

Maybe, on second thought, it's better to just stay put where I'm at for now. It's probably a good thing we can't time travel, eh?

The Future's So Bright . . .

Yesterday on his blog, "Whatever", SF writer John Scalzi expressed amazement over his new Droid X phone, and asked us all to consider the moment a particular piece of technology or advancement made us realize that we were now in TEH FUTURES!!! The comments from folks writing in their moment is quite the cross-section of different experiences, but little did I know that my own would come this very day. Like Scalzi, the discovery came with regards to my mobile phone; except that my phone is the phone everyone loves to hate -- the Apple iPhone 4.

See, I was watching a Chase bank commercial today. Chase is the bank that I'm with, for those keeping score at home. The commercial was for the Chase banking app on the iPhone that lets you manage your account, pay bills, and transfer money between accounts all remotely. I've had this app on my phone for almost 2 years now. It works great. But apparently it was recently upgraded to include a new exciting feature that has now convinced me that I am truly and surely in TEH FUTURES!!!

Let me presage this discovery by admitting that, in this day and age, I still find the occasion where I have to deposit paper checks. It doesn't happen every day, or even every week. But enough times throughout the year to make it an annoyance for me, particularly during tax season. So what has Chase done now to make my life all the better? Why, they've given me the ability to simply take a photo of my check with the iPhone's camera and use the Chase app to send the pic remotely. When the send is complete, the amount is magically deposited to my account sans the need for an ATM visit or face-to-face time with a teller.

In other words: I can deposit checks into my account FROM MY BED, people! Holy hells!

Yes, yes . . . I'm pragmatic enough to know that this singular feat is probably not as impressive to some of you as it is to me. And I'm also aware that the basic technology behind this function has been around in some form or another on mobile devices for quite some time. But I'd be willing to bet that *your* bank doesn't have this feature, not if your bank isn't Chase. And I'm also willing to bet that you receive the occasional check what needs depositing from time to time, too.

And, I'm sorry, but to me this is just friggin AWESOME!

Isn't it? Well -- ISN'T IT?!!!

Okay, okay. I'm calm now. Let's all return to our more important matters.

So, About That Netbook Dilemma . . .

I spoke about it earlier this month, my decision to buy a portable computer but not knowing whether to go the Netbook or rather small laptop route? Click here if you need a refresher.

So, like I was pretty much already leaning toward in that entry . . . I ended up getting the Dell Inspiron 11z "mini" book. It just came via FedEx yesterday!

So far so good. It does everything your typical netbook does: plays movies on a widescreen display, surf the net, etc. Since it's a netbook, it can't play DVDs or load up CDs because -- hey, there's no optical drive! But there are ways and then there are WAYS around that, which I won't go into here.

It's smaller than your typical laptop, but has a bigger screen than your typical netbook: 11.6 inches, to be exact. Nice middle ground there, no? It weighs next to nothing, too! I don't have a postal scale so I can't tell for sure, but it feels just slightly above 3 pounds with the huge 6-cell power brick inserted into the back.

What else do I like about it? Hmm . . . well, for one, Windows 7 totally kicks ass! I wasn't so sure how I would weather the crossover from Windows XP, but I couldn't be happier. I'm so glad I didn't buy this back in the Vista days, though. Phew!

I actually purchased a MS Office license with the netbook, so I spent a few minutes registering that and then testing out the various programs like Word and Excel. Most netbooks come only with MS Works installed, if at all. But--and I shouldn't need to say this--Works sucks balls! I thought I would be able to handle it, but after giving it a test run in stores I have to say I was severely disappointed. I'll stick with Office for now, thank you.

The built-in webcam was a nice bonus feature I completely forgot about. Once again, Windows 7 made the whole process of recording and compiling videos a breeze. As evidenced by the rather bizarre and late-night vids I posted earlier. Again, sorry for that. I know the quality is horrible. I'll be looking in to fixing that over the weekend.

Funny thing about the vids. For some reason the audio synch was way off when I uploaded them on to my Youtube account. The audio's fine when I review the files on my desktop. But something screwy seems to happen when I upload the same files to Youtube. I'm not the first person to complain about this issue, though. Seems a lot of people who record their videos through integrated laptop or netbook cams experience the same synching problems. What's up with that?

I'm sure if I'd done some more research I would've figured it out. But screw that! I'm an impatient man when it comes to my gadgets. I needed answers NOW!!! I remember a video blogger I follow mentioning switching his account over to Vimeo. So this is what I did. And, voilà! The videos work, and the audio is in synch! So from now on until I learn better, Vimeo will be the repository of all my future inane video babblings.

Scared yet? Well, you should be.

During lunch today I went out and purchased a bluetooth mouse since the netbook has built-in bluetooth technology. I'm currently trying to decide between a bluetooth headphone set for watching movies on the plane vs. a traditional wired one. Either way, this time I'm going to go with actual foam cans instead of earbuds. I'm tired of the feeling of having hard plastic shoved inside my ear canals each time I want to just listen to music or watch a tv show. And, plus, they do a piss-poor job of canceling out the ambient engine noise on airplanes for some inexplicable reason. You would think with the speaker portion jammed so close to my eardrums, I wouldn't hear anything *but* the media I'm playing. But guess again.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll update this blog if any exciting developments occur with my new toy. It's good to live in the age of technology, ain't it?

Ack! What Have They Done?

Somebody up and gave this fool a webcam! Be afraid, be very very afraid.

I'm still trying to work the kinks out. I'm not a big fan of the video quality, despite trying to tweak the settings. Anyway, if you ever wanted to know what I looked and sounded like en media res, here you go!



Well, that was weird. Hey, look, it's like 1:00 in the morning, I'm tired, and I didn't really look in a mirror before recording this. Here, I discuss it some more in this next video. Whoopeee! Here I go with a new toy again.



Seriously, that's all for tonight folks. I'll leave your bleeding eyes alone to recover now. Nighty nite!

It's Coming . . .

Just got an e-mail update from Dell today. Looks like my Netbook has been constructed and shipped off -- hooray! I had placed the order a little over a week ago, and was told I would most likely get it on May 5th. Which, needless to say, felt like a very LONG time away.

But seems I'll be getting it a week earlier than estimated. This Thursday to be precise. Yippeee! Looks like I have a new toy to break in over the weekend. I'll post impressions and maybe a pic or two when I have the thing up and running.

In the meantime, if you have absolutely no idea what I'm blabbering on about, check out the original entry I wrote on the whole affair a while back by clicking here.

Laptops vs Netbooks

I've been looking into this conundrum for the past two weeks now. Which portable computing system to purchase, that is. And bearing in mind that I don't want to spend more than $800 for whichever choice I do go with.

Do I get a Netbook: generally smaller, slower, and weighing a lot less than a traditional laptop, but lacking a lot of the features that are standard on the latter?

Or do I get a Notebook PC: generally bulkier, but possessing greater functionality over a Netbook?

In the end, I had to decide what exactly I intended to use this machine for. In my mind, I rarely need portable computing power in my everyday life. I'm always either at work or at home, both locations already providing anchored desktop options more than adequate for my needs. And when I go out on the town, the last thing I want to do is lug a computer around with me. Nor do I write in coffee shops, or am by any means a mobile professional always on the go.

In fact, the only time I would need a laptop is when I go away on trips. But since I only do this once or twice a year, it hardly seems worth it, don't you think?

However, I just booked a 2-week voyage on a cruise ship. This after having just come back from a week's stay in Paris where I was sorely missing easy, instant access to the Internet and suffering from withdrawal. Added to this is that said cruise liner has wifi available all throughout the ship and in cabins. So it became clear to me that what I really needed most out of my potential mobile PC was the ability to connect online. And to watch movies on the plane, or to upload trip pics at the end of each day rather than in one huge dump at the end of the trip.

I need to be able to do all these things on one nifty, easy-to-use device that won't break my back carrying it through the airport.

What I don't need is a mobile unit that plays CDs or balances my money accounts. But I *do* need one that lets me draft the occasional short story or novel excerpt on the rare occasion I'm bored on my trip and just NEED to write! Hey, it does happen.

In the end, as should come to no surprise, I settled on the Netbook option. They typically only weigh 3 lbs, and, with the right amount of memory, are perfect for when all you need to do is hop online and check e-mails or watch Hulu.

Moreover, most new Netbooks today come with Windows 7 and some version of MS Works already pre-loaded. And for a good chunk of change, if it so pleases one, one can get the MS Office suite added on, too. If you're into that sort of thing.

Me? A simple word processor, built-in wifi, and a big enough screen to watch videos comfortably on is all I need. For real computing power, I can just wait until I get home. Plus, with a Netbook lying handily around the house, Lisa can hop on real quick to check her mail at any time. Which means no more nagging me to stop hogging up the desktop PC when I'm brainstorming my latest prose session. Bonus!

So, after searching high and low for just the right Netbook, I finally settled on my old tried and true source for most of my computing needs: Dell. Yeah, it's not a choice that's popular with most technorati these days. Or, worse, the pseudo technorati known as Mac users. But Dell is a pretty decent middle-of-the-road option. One that has never failed me yet.

Plus, after looking into virtually every other offering on the market now, I fail to see how any of them tops the Dell model I eventually settled on.

Behold, the Dell Inspiron 11z "mini" book:

The standard model comes in obsidian black, but I've found that the plastics used to make these minis are too shiny and prone to fingerprint smudging. I normally love all my electronics to be as black as the inside of a coffin on a moonless night . . . but this time I decided to fall back to my favorite general color: Blue. The standard "sky blue" option Dell offers for their Inspiron line, however, is a bit too lite of a blue. I prefer sapphire or "midnight" blues.

So I decided to splurge a little extra and use Dell's online "Design Studio" division to customize the top lid of this netbook. The color scheme I settled on--called "Suzi Says Feng Shui" from OPI--is a sort of brushed cobalt blue with some swirlies thrown in. I could've done without the swirlies, but cobalt blue is my FAVORITE! I just hope it looks more cobalt and less aquamarine in person than in that pic above. We shall see.

At the very least, I won't have to deal with fingerprint smudging. I mean, they'll still be there I'm sure. I just won't be able to see them as well as I would against a black background. And, as they say: seeing IS believing!

Anyway, for those who are into such things, here are the specs. Take note of the slightly larger than normal (for Netbooks) screen, as well as the extra memory, which I had to upgrade and which I think is typically abysmal on most Netbooks offered in brick-and-mortar stores. With the amount I've chosen, however, I think my videos and website loading should be quite a bit faster than normal:

DELL INSPIRON 11z SPECS:
----------------------------------
11.6" display.
Pentium SU4100 processor (1.3Ghz/800MHz FSB/2MB cache)
Windows 7 premium edition
250GB hard drive
4GB RAM (DDR2, 800MHz on 1 DIMM)
Wireless G mini network card
Built-in Bluetooth
Built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam
3-in-1 flash card reader
HDMI out
56WHr Lithium-ion battery (6-cell)
Dimensions: Height 0.92" x Width 11.5" x Depth 8.43"
Weight: 3.3 lbs

Not bad, if I do say so myself. Laptops can do all this and more, of course -- at the penalty of weight, poorer power management, and general bulkiness. But for a Netbook, this is pretty impressive. And while I haven't made the concrete decision yet, I'm almost certain this is what I'll be getting.

Unless someone out there can point me to a better option . . .