Could Apple Make a TV?

One of the bigger questions about Apple right now is "could Apple make a TV?"

My answer: Yes and no.

"Huh?"

Allow me to explain.

Yes because what they could make would be called a TV, because it would have that kind of functionality built in, much in the same way that an iPhone is called a phone because it has phone functionality built in.

No because, just like the iPhone, a TV made by Apple wouldn't be a TV as we know it so much as it would be a computer that happens to have specialized functionality.

Apple being Apple, any new integrated device they introduce, such as a TV, would run some version of iOS. Not the iOS of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod, but the iOS of the current AppleTV with some modifications for use as a full television instead of an addition to a television.

"How would that work?"

It would be similar to how Apple put the phone functionality of the iPhone in an app, the TV functionality of an Apple-branded TV would be delegated to an app.

How do you fit an app like that into the current AppleTV interface? As I see it, you can just add another column in the main interface, labelled "Apps", with "TV" being one of the built-in apps. I'll get back to the app's function later in the post.

However, people don't want to pay for ever single show they watch. Especially not couch potatoes.

Therefore it would probably be in Apple's best interest to set up some content deals with Hollywood to get access to all of the best networks' TV shows and movies. They already have deals to sell and rent video content but not to stream it all at a fixed monthly cost, à-la Netflix. Not yet, so far that we know, anyway.

For sports, Apple's already shown the direction it's planning to go in with its latest MLB and NBA deals.

As for TV show, if Season Passes were made to be cheaper, since customers would only be renting or streaming the shows instead of buying them, customers would be more than willing to pay by the TV show for new content. $9.99 for a season of House, being able to watch the episode as it airs, or any time after? Sold.

As for older content, Apple could work out the same kind of deal as Netflix and get cheap access to the older content. Either that or they can simply continue to give access to Netflix's ever-expanding library. Anything that's not available on Netflix, or an Apple version of a Netflix-like service, Apple could just offer as a $0.99 rental on the iTunes side of things.

News, weather, and other types of live broadcasts? You have iOS devices for that. If you really need them on your TV, though, there will likely be apps for that.

That takes care of most of the software and content.

"What about hardware?"

In the consumer world, choice is bad. Choice leads to bad decisions, and frustrated customers. That means that, much like with its current lineup, Apple's going to be making most of the decisions for its customers, starting with screen size.

Apple's handheld devices currently have 2 sizes: 3.5" and 10". Portables come in at 11", 13", 15", and 17". Desktops at 21" and 27".

TVs currently exist at just about every size between 10" and 100", which means Apple will have to choose a handful from the over-abundance of current options.

I won't try to guess which sizes Apple will choose but I'll go so far as to say that if/when they come out with their handful of screen sizes, those sizes will be what Apple considers to be the best sizes.

If I did have to guess, however, I'd say that Apple would chose 40", 50", and 60". 3 sizes, each 10" apart. Simple enough.

In terms of looks, I have a strong feeling it would look like a giant Apple LED display: a big, glass-covered screen and a 1" black border on the glass around the screen. No matte option.

"What about ports?"

Simple.

Look at the AppleTV: HDMI, ethernet, optical audio out, and power. There's also WiFi, to help save from having another cable. I'd be willing to bet there'd be something similar on an Apple-branded TV: A single HDMI input, an audio out port, and power. HDMI can do ethernet now, so I think Apple might try to push that capability to be able to have less ports on its TV.

Except there won't be ports on the TV.

"What?"

Well, at least not anything other than the single port for power. Just like with Apple's displays, there will only be only one port, one cable that you can hook up to a small set of ports and plugs at the other end of the cable.

"How do you get multiple inputs?"

You don't.

Not physical inputs, anyway. If you want to load external content on to the TV, use AirPlay. Using external speakers? AirPlay.

"What about all my old home videos? and my DVD collection? and my game console? and X, Y, Z?"

Well, there's two options: Convert them into a format that can play on Apple's TV, or use the single HDMI input.

Most people wouldn't be ready to make a complete switch to an Apple-branded TV right away, similar to how people weren't ready to ditch SCSI, or the floppy disk, or optical media. But that's the direction Apple's headed, and it won't stop just so you can feel nostalgic.

Want to use that old VCR to play you bootleg copy of that Van Halen concert your friend went to while the audio plays through your kick-ass speaker system? You can still do that. With adapters. Most HiFi receivers include at least one RCA audio/video in/out and at least 1 HDMI in/out, so almost any recent HiFi system could serve as your temporary adapter until you digitize your collection for use on Apple's TV.

Apple doesn't do legacy support. It doesn't support computers more than a few years old. It doesn't support handhelds more than a couple of years old. It definitely won't support your legacy TV appliances.

"But the market's already saturated, the margins are razor slim, blah blah blah."

That's nice. That's the old TV market, before Apple entered the game. There was a computer market before Apple, but then Apple defined the personal computer market. There was a music player market long before the iPod, but Apple redefined that market, too. There was a phone market for decades before the iPhone, but then Apple reinvented the phone. There were tablets long before the iPad came along, but then Apple created something magical.

Apple could do the same thing with TV.

They can make the hardware, they've already got the software, and they've more than likely already got the deals with content providers. They've got an end-to-end solution, just like every other market they're in. It's just a matter of putting on the final touches and shipping the finished product, which I would guess isn't too far away.

Some time in September, along with updated versions of other iOS devices, sounds like as good a time as any to bring an Apple-style revolution to the living room.

Reality is Subjective

I've been meaning to make this post for a while now, but it's a bit of a tough subject to talk about. Not that it's controversial, it's just a bit much for some people, myself included at times.

Before we get started, I wanted to clarify the direction I'll be taking this blog in. And by that I mean what I'll be writing about on this blog. For the most part it'll try to make it technology-oriented, but I'll also be making the occasional post about things like today's post (and I don't mean that as in meta-posts), about people, about social interactions, about life.

After reading the post title you're probably wondering what I mean by reality being subjective. Well, not what I mean, but how I mean to explain it. That's where things get interesting (or complicated, depending how you look at it).

To understand what I mean one must understand the many-worlds theory, which is the idea that there are an infinite number of universes. One must also understand the concept of predeterminism, which is the idea that every event has been determined not only by the previous event but every event before that all the way back to the beginning of the universe. One must also be able to understand the idea that time is multi-dimensional.

To better understand these ideas (except predeterminism) it's helpful to watch the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA

(Don't forget to watch part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySBaYMESb8o)

This is where things become weird: All those realities, all those infinities, all are yours. And they're all mine. In this universe, where I consider myself conscious, where I'm writing this post while listening to some music and casually chatting with some friends online, this is my universe. But, this universe, with all of it's events, is only happening to me. Everyone has their own universe, each one different, each one with its own set of unique events, each one "belonging" to a single consciousness. Every moment, every decision, every event from a keystroke to the spin of a sub-atomic particle, each one creating a different universe, but none of those belonging to what I, as an individual, perceive as my universe, what I perceive as reality, as my reality.

However, this view conflicts with the idea of predeterminism, which I also believe to be true. With predeterminism, all of the events in my universe have been determined right from the big bang all the way to the end of the universe. But, time being limited to the universe itself, and understanding that a line in time viewed from a higher dimension (or even from outside the universe) can simply be viewed as a single event. Taking that idea to the extreme, the entire universe, with every predetermined event within it, can be viewed as a single event from beginning to end. But it makes sense, because there's a universe for every possible eventuality, so it's only logical that each of those universes was branched off from some sort of "seed" universe, at the beginning of "time", each branch being created when there's more than once possible outcome to a certain event (the spin of a subatomic particle, for example).

But there's a big problem with all this. A problem with all of these events. A problem with this sequence of events leading up to the universe you call your reality:

Death.

What happens to my universe when I die? What happens to your universe when you die? It's not like it can be handed off to someone else. It also can't just suddenly end because you die, the laws of the universe as we know them (at least in this universe, my universe) don't really allow for the entirety of reality to just vanish.

So then what happens? What happens is this:

We don't die in our own reality. We can't. Of course, others can die in our reality. We can die in others' realities (or at least the version of us that appears in others' realities can). But not in ours.

Now, this may sound like wishful thinking (oh, not to worry, you won't ever die, you'll live forever!), but as far as I can tell the logic behind it is solid.

There's already an infinite number of universes, with every possible beginning, every possible end, and every possible event from every possible beginning to every possible end. Every single one of them has already been determined from the moment they began. Not only that, but they all exist, simultaneously.

But they've already happened.

What I mean by that is that none of what you do, none of what I do, is going to change the way your reality, my reality, is. You can't change what's already happened, and given that all events are predetermined, that means every single one of them has already happened.

In a way, it's like a film: The movie, in its entirety, already exists from beginning to end. You can't change the movie. Whether you want the main character to take a left turn or a right turn, he turns right. Whether or not you want her to open the door for the killer, she'll open it (out of sheer stupidity, no less). All of it, from beginning to end, already exists. Every last part of it. But there's different cuts of the movie. There might also be remakes of it. There's different movies altogether where none of the story is the same.

It's the same thing with this universe, with every universe. They've already been made. They've already happened. And you can't change them.

So where does that leave us?

In a sense, we observe. What do we observe? How do we observe? Why do we observe from a human body? If everything is predetermined, then what is consciousness? How is it that we're observing things in what we perceive to be our lives if our lives aren't actually "life" in the traditional sense of the word because of predeterminism?

I have one possible answer: We are not humans. There is no such thing as being human. Humans are not individuals. Humans are part of each universe (or at least the ones where humans exist which, statistically speaking, are vastly outnumbered by the ones where humans DON'T exist).

But then, if we're not human, what are we?

We are the universe. Our own universe, anyway. And we've decided to press "play" on one of the humans in our universe.

There's more like this I can get into, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.

Back To The Mac

Anyone reading this has no doubt heard about Apple's Back To The Mac event from last fall. If you haven't heard of it, here's the basics: Apple wants to make the Mac OS more like iOS. They want to bring the "magic" of iOS to the Mac. They want to bring multitouch gestures. They want the apps. They want all that's good about the iOS experience to come "back to the Mac".

Listening to podcasts and reading articles about it all, it seems to me that not enough people seem to grasp the whole situation, that not everyone sees the big picture when Apple talks about bringing bringing stuff back to the Mac. They seem to be forgetting that Apple is Apple, and that they care less about all the skin-deep changes that people have been talking about and more about the big picture, which is that Mac OS X, as a desktop operating system, is, as Steve Jobs might say, going the way of the truck, and that iOS is where the future of Apple lies.

Now, when I say that, I'm looking back to when the iPhone was first announced back in 2007 (has it really only been 4 years?). When the iPhone was first introduced it was touted as being at least 5 years ahead of what was on any other phone at the time, because iPhone ran OS X. Now, Apple never really called it "OS X for iPhone". Instead they called it "iPhone OS", and eventually iOS.

Looking back on it now, it's pretty clear that Apple was carving out two entirely different markets with two versions of what is essentially OS X. The one version running on the Mac, the other on their mobile devices. It becomes almost painfully obvious when looking at the current progression of both versions: The Mac version running on what Apple will soon consider the trucks of the computer industry, and the mobile version running on all the mainstream devices Apple hopes, nay, knows most of its customers will be using soon (soon being as early as this year).

If you look a little closer, you can also see where Apple wants to go but knows it can't yet. The iPad and the MacBook Air, for example. Looking at the gestures in the iOS 4.3 developer preview and the Lion preview, you can see that they're using the same (or at least strikingly similar) gestures for the same thing on both platforms: pinch with 4-5 fingers to get to the Homescreen/Launchpad, 3-finger swipe to switch between apps, 3-4 finger swipe up for Multitasking/Mission Control, even double-tapping to zoom in on web content.

Also, look at the recent benchmarks for both the iPad 2 and the MacBook Air. The lower-end MacBook air, which never really feels slow when you use it, gets about 500 ms on the SunSpider benchmark. The iPad 2, which feels even less slow, gets about 2000 ms. Apple being Apple, I'm pretty sure there's a MacBook Air somewhere in the Cupertino labs that's running on an A5 chip. And I'm pretty sure it's no slouch. I'm also pretty certain there's a similar MacBook Air, if not the same one, running iOS.

Part of the problem with that is that, when you look at the big picture, and you know (or at least hope you know) the way Apple works, you know they're wishing that the MacBook Air really was running iOS. Looking at the Lion preview, you know that's where they want things to go, but they can't. They can't just shove most of their user base onto iOS. Instead they have to settle for some sort of transitional period.

The other part of the problem is with the hardware. And I don't mean that in a "ARM is too slow" kind of way, I mean it in a "but how do you bring a touch-oriented OS (or OS variant) to a non-touch device?" kind of way. The answer, however, is "you don't". More than "you don't", but "you can't". It doesn't work like that. Apple's trying to shoe-horn it in, like they wanted to try with the old G5 chips in the PowerBooks, by bringing large multitouch trackpads into the picture but it's just not the same. It's not the same and, for lack of better phrasing, as a port of a touch OS to a non-touch device, it just won't work. Not properly, anyway, and not with the same appeal or sense of proverbial magic.

Anyone who's thought about this for more than a few minutes is aware of this problem. I'm aware of it. Most people who read Daring Fireball, listen to 5by5, etc are aware of it. I'm sure Apple's not only aware of it, but painfully slow. There are people at Apple right now losing sleep because they're aware of it, it's they're job to "fix it", so to speak, and they have no idea how. Their patent filings show you the ideas they've already tried and looked at (like the convertible iMac that flips down to become a flat touch surface), but nothing's materialized out of those ideas because even though they would work they just wouldn't work well, or they wouldn't work in an elegant, Apple-like way. It's just not ergonomic.

People often joke about Apple bringing out a larger (15" or so) iPad and calling it the Max-iPad (haha, get it?), but to be honest I think that Apple's not only looked at it (the product, not the name), they've considered it. But they ran into the same problem as with the iMac. There's no way of doing it that still feels ergonomically correct. People already complain about the iPad's weight, and it's only a little over a pound. Imagine if they were to try to do the same thing with a 13", or even 15" iPad (MacPad?). It'd be monstrous when compared to the current iPad. It just wouldn't work.

I'm sure they've thought of hinges, kickstands, even bigger Smart Covers. But none would work on a device that big. At least not well. But they want it to work. They know when they find a way to make it work (and I'm sure when they do, they'll say it in almost those exact words when presenting it) that it'll be the next big thing. It'll be where the iPad was meant to take us.

The new apps released in time with the iPad 2 show us, in software at least, where Apple wants to bring computers. Garageband and iMovie for iPad show us just how much better suited touch is, not only for apps, but for us. We want to touch things. It's how we're wired. It's how we work. When you add a translational layer, like a keyboard and mouse, you take away from the experience of doing what it is you're trying to do. Playing with musical instruments, for example. Sure, you can play with a drum machine in Flash on your browser, but it just feels so much more... right when you do it on the iPad. When you don't have access to a real drum set, it's the next best thing.

Apple doesn't want to just bring some UI elements and concepts back to the Mac. They want to bring the "magic". That's what they want to do.

But they can't. At least, not yet. But they're trying.

New Directions

I've decided to take this blog in a different direction. I don't know if I'll be keeping the old posts or not. We'll see.

"All Work and No Play" Doesn't Exist in My Vocabulary

First a bit about school, then a few other things.

Visual Basic is an... interesting programming language, to say the least. It was obviously designed to be, um, basic, and visual. When someone says it'll take them 5 minutes to throw together a program in Visual Basic, they're not kidding. This shit is easy.

Of course, having programmed before, a lot of it is just learning VB's way of doing things. There's no need to re-learn what arrays are, or how classes work. Just VB's way of implementing them, which is mostly easy but at times really weird. Complex code should probably be reserved for other languages

In the non-programming part of school there's two Cisco courses without books that happen to have a 90% overlap, a course for leaning Windows Server 2003, and a cabling course taught by an anti-consumerist Indian man. Lovely.

Shifting over to games, now.

The olympics were fun. Or at least the men's gold medal hockey game I managed to tune in for over the web. It was the first time I used a good online video streaming service, and it did not disappoint. Watching the game in HD was pretty damned cool. I only wish they would do the same thing for the rest of online shows. Especially the Comedy Network, which is especially disappointing since it broadcasts at 400x300 and only buffers 1 minute of footage.

Speaking of HD video I've decided that, whenever possible, I'll be keeping a full HD (1080p) copy of whatever shows and movies I download. Most TV shows are only uploaded in 720p format, but a lot of movies are put up in 1080p, like Up, so I'll be keeping those in their full 1080p glory. Not just because I have a 1080p TV sitting beside my computer but also because any 1080p video I open up on my main display (2560x1440) is small enough to hover in a window. 720p doesn't fare much better, since I can have four 720p videos open simultaneously without any overlap, but at least when it scales to fill up the whole screen each video pixel gets 4 screen pixels. Anything smaller than 720p just looks like shit. But how, pray tell, am I going to be downloading 1080p video? That's the next exciting bit.

We finally upgraded our internet. Well, technically we still have the shitty DSL since it saves us more money than it costs us on our bill, but we also got cable internet alongside the shitty DSL, and it's fantastic. 12 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up (could be better), no traffic shaping, no bandwidth cap, 40$ a month. Cheap, fast, somewhat reliable (it drops packets), unfiltered internet. It's awesome.

To test it out, I downloaded the updated iPhone SDK, which stands at a little over 3 GB. It took about 1 hour to finish. 1 hour, for a 3 GB file. The same thing would've taken me about a week on the shitty DSL since they throttle the connection as soon as they sense there's any activity. Instead I got it in about an hour, at a constant speed of almost 1 MB/s. (Remember your bits and Bytes)

So what have I been doing with all my spare bandwidth? Well, for half the day most of it goes to my sister when she's playing WoW, but for the other half of the day I've got some downloads going at a throttled 500 kB/s. Plus all my iTunes podcasts are in HD now, and all the YouTube videos I watch are also in HTML5 HD, as is Vimeo.

On the topic of HTML5 video, the WebKit nightlies are really good at playing HTML5 video. The Chrome beta, on the other hand, is absolutely horrible at it. Not only is the video all blocky, it also doesn't play back smoothly. Whatever Google's doing with the Chrome beta, they're doing it wrong. The WebKit team had their own way of handling HTML5 video for a reason, and whatever Google's doing to mess with it needs to be undone.

Speaking of apps, there's two new things to talk about on that front.

One is that I've done some spring cleaning on my iPhone and gone from about 6 full pages of non-Apple apps to only 3 mostly-full pages of non-Apple apps. Not too bad. Of course, the apps I use almost all the time, Apple or non-Apple, could fit onto half a home screen: Safari, Mail, iPod, Phone, Messages, Strategery. Facebook and Tweetie might be able to squeeze into the bottom half with Calendar, Maps, and WeatherEye.

The other is that I've gotten the latest MacHeist bundle, which includes MacJournal (which I probably won't use), RipIt (for ripping DVDs when I can't get the HD version), Clips (to greatly expand my clipboard, maybe), CoverScout (and SongGenie, which I'll be using to populate my iTunes library with the information and album art I'm missing on a few songs), Flow (an FTP app), Tales Of Monkey Island (which I'll never, ever play), RapidWeaver (like DreamWeaver, except for the Mac, and rapid!), Airburst Extreme (another game I'll never play), Tracks (for even more control over iTunes), Solitaire (also won't ever play), and probably Tweetie as a bonus app later in the MacHeist sale (which I already own).

While I was downloading the apps I'll use, I also noticed I had access to the other MacHeist bundle I bought. I also noticed I completely forgot about one of the apps, AppShelf, which is apparently an app to help keep track of all your serial numbers. So I downloaded it and immediately went to town on it, putting in all the serial codes, app icons, homepages, etc, of each app into this little database. It's nice to know that everything's all in one place, so long as it's not easily accessible to the outside world but can still be backed up and retrieved when needed.

On the topic of apps and such, Steam is coming to the Mac! What an exciting time for Mac users. Not only is Steam coming to the Mac, but the entire Source engine is being ported over to OpenGL (none of that Cider bullshit), and your Windows Steam game serials will also work on OS X Steam. It doesn't get much more awesome than that.

Unless of course they were to store your game saves online, so when you go from a PC to a Mac you can resume your game exactly where you left off. Oh wait, they are! Even more awesome!

That's about it for now. I look forward to giving Valve more money when the Mac version of Steam comes out. Cheers.

"I used to be into nostalgia... *sigh*"

I've been playing more video games lately. Not only do I mean I've been renting and buying more, I also mean I've been playing some of my old games again. Not at some sort of crazy-addicted pace or anything, but more than any other time in recent memory.

First up is Crysis. As optimistic as the game's "automatically choose what's best for my computer" settings were, unfortunately even the highest-end iMac can't handle Crysis on "high" settings with AA turned on at a 2560x1440 resolution. To be fair, no computer as of this writing can handle the game on max settings with full AA at that resolution. None. 3 years after the game came out, it still can't be played at its highest settings. Mostly because the game is absolutely stunning, graphics-wise. I mean it doesn't do anything fancy like ray-tracing but I suppose it's not too shabby. The story could be better, and they could offer colours other than brown and grey (which can be fixed with the Natural Mod, Crysis' most popular mod), but otherwise it's a good game.

I also happened to get Crysis Warhead and Crysis Wars, but haven't gotten around to playing those yet. Mostly because playing them requires me to boot into Windows.

Now that Mass Effect 2 is out, I also feel slightly obligated to finally play Mass Effect 1 so I can know what the hell is going on and possibly find out why everyone likes it so much. From what I've heard it's like a very enjoyable sci-fi film or series, except that you can play it. I'll have to check it out, and also keep my eyes peeled for Steam sales of the game.

I've also had a chance to play some Darksiders. I'd give it a 6/10 at best. It's a button-mashing game with a terrible storyline and decent graphics, so it won't exactly be winning any Game Of The Year awards. The thing I hate the most, which is what I hate about every game that does this, is that you have a weapon that doesn't do the type of damage the real-world equivalent would do. What I mean by that is that you have a sword that rival's Cloud-of-FF7's sword in size but still takes 8-50 slashes to actually kill an enemy. Maybe the developer team didn't realize they were using swords instead of sticks or maybe they've never actually seen a sword in real life but I'm pretty sure that swords cut through most things the first time around, especially if they're cutting through soft, squishy flesh. If you try to cut someone's head off with a sword I'm 99.99% certain that you'll decapitate them. The only thing convincing me that they might not is video games. Otherwise: sharp blade = cutting things. I'm also pretty sure a giant scythe is even better at cutting things.

I've also been playing quite a bit of Burnout: Paradise lately. Part of the reason is that I've discovered how to create online games without traffic. Another part of the reason is that I've discovered you can mute people, and if you're the game's host you can also kick them. The biggest part of the reason, though, is that there's a reward for beating all the events and completing all the online challenges (all 500 of them). Sure, the reward is just the ability to put custom paint jobs on every car, but that's still pretty sweet. I've got all 2-player, 3-player, 4-player, 7-player, and 8-player challenges complete, I've beat all the Island challenges, and I've got a few bike challenges left. It should be pretty fun to get 303% completion. To clarify: that's beating all the original events (100%) and online challenges (101%), all the bike events (another 100%) and online challenges (101%), and all the Island events (yet another 100%) and online challenges (101%), for a grand total of 303%. There's probably going to be more expansion packs that follow similar completion schemes.

Best of all, though, is that I've started playing Sim City 4 again! Oh, what a fun game it is. The micro-management aspect of it might be tedious as all hell but nothing beats the feeling of playing god. It helps that it's now gotten to the point where I've started analyzing how the game itself works so I can better "game the system", so to speak. For example, traffic always takes the shortest route, not the fastest, so even if you build a 6-lane highway a few clicks north of your residential area they're still going to take that tiny little 2-lane road a few clicks to the south because it offers a shorter route. Knowing that, it's easy to build a grid-like network of roads, busses, subways, and monorails that evenly spread the load of traffic like butter on toast. I've also learned that if the grid is split at regular intervals you can put a bus stop, subway station, and monorail station in a place that minimizes the amount of area you have to sacrifice to mass transit while maximizing the amount of access the buildings have to it. Sim Cities would never work in the real world, but as a game they're terribly amusing to play with.

Spore's taken a bit of a backseat, but at least with the new video card I can play it on max settings on the Mac side without any lag. The main reason I prefer games like Sim City over Spore is that Spore doesn't really do anything on its own. Cities don't grow, your colonies don't expand, they don't try to adjust their own Terrascore, hell they don't even try to do anything about alien invasions or extinction events. At least in Sim City the cities expand and grow a little on their own.

Classes started again. Most days I finish around lunch, which is nice, but that also means I have to wake up at 7. It's a bit of a trade-off. What's on the schedule this semester? Security, Visual Basic, Windows Server 2003, WANs, and Cabling. Not bad, but it could totally be better. Maybe I'll watch some of those Stanford iPhone courses as the semester goes on so I can finally get around to doing iPhone programming.

On the ISP front, apparently my end of town is too old and shitty to even be capable of decent internet so I may have to go with Plan B, which is to try to get the city to start its own fiber ISP. Not such a bad idea.

The "project" I've been working on for a while has kind of hit a dead end. Combined with not turning out the way I thought it would, I think that's enough reason to call it a day and start putting my resources toward something else (although, to be honest, I haven't really done much with it lately).

That's about it for now. Make sure to check out reddit once in a while, it's where I spend a good chunk of my time. 'Till next time.

Time for a change... in time

If you've been living under a rock you may not have noticed, but it's now 2010. I don't really see what the big deal is considering the Earth can make it annual orbit of the sun just fine without us, but whatever. Happy New Year.

Let's try to recap what's happened since my last post: Christmas was mostly uneventful, my sister's taken over my other sister's old room below mine, I spent more money that I don't have, and I managed to get intoxicated a few times.

Christmas was pretty lacklustre this year.

I got some USB-rechargeable AA batteries, but they're 1300 mAh NiMH batteries, so they don't hold much of a charge and they suffer from the 'memory effect'. Sure, there isn't as much room to store the energy since they have to leave room for the USB plug and whatever tiny adapter they have inside, but they could've at least tried to use lithium polymer batteries or something if they're going to be charging almost 20$ a pair. Oh well, still cheaper than buying 20$ worth of batteries every few weeks.

I got the new Super Mario Bros Wii, which is pretty fun. Even if it's mostly a do-over of the original Super Mario Bros, they'd changed and added enough that the game is still a lot of fun. I also got Wii Sports Resort, which has a few cool games, and a few not-so-cool games. Not really worth the money, if you ask me. Maybe if they dropped the price closer to 20$

Still no SATA-to-USB adapter to retrieve the files from my failed enclosure's hard drive, but it's been ordered. It should be here soon. I also got the Griffin AirCurve, which is an acoustic amplifier/dock for the iPhone. It works as advertised, but I find it to be best for when you have an alarm set and want it to be louder than the default volume levels allow. Even the stocking stuffers were kind of lacking this year. Chocolate orange, tooth brush bristle replacements, gum, and some Lindor chocolate.

Just a side note: Lindor chocolates are amazing when you're high. Then again, what delicious food isn't amazing when you're high?

Once Christmas was over, though, Valve decided to throw an end-of-the-year sale. Guess what that means? Cheap games, that's what that means! Crysis and Mass Effect, to be exact. Crysis (the whole pack) for 15$ and Mass Effect for 5$. If I ever get my keyboard and mouse working in Boot Camp, and if the games ever manage to finish downloading (a whole week and I'm at 35%) I'll be sure to have some fun with that.

My sister moved back in. Her computer croaked during the move, so daddy got her a new one. It's got an i5 (I think), a 4650, 6 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB drive. Not bad for 800$. Actually, closer to 600$ since my step-dad gets a discount thanks to his work. All connected to her old less-than-1080p monitor, USB speakers, macro-enabled keyboard and non-Magic mouse, which she apparently didn't like using while she borrowed my computer to keep her WoW guild informed about her moving misfortunes. But that's okay, because she stays up later than I do, so I don't have to turn down my volume or wear headphones when it gets late. That's always a bonus.

On a different note: I absolutely hate phones. Mostly because of the people on the other end. Especially when it's some kind of support line.

Apple support isn't so bad. They seem to get more training (and a bigger paycheck) than anyone else, which usually makes a call to them about as pleasant as a tech support call can be.

Northern Tel (a division of Bell Aliant™), on the other hand, doesn't really seem to know what they're doing. I finally decided to call so they could do something about our horribly-slow connection speed ("up to 5 Mbps" but getting less than 1 Mbps, with a 100+ ms ping). They took note of my complaints and said they'd see what they could do, and if they had any follow-up questions they'd call back. About a week later we got a new IP. Our ping went from over 100 ms to about 30 ms. The speed still sucked, but at least our ping was better. Now to see if they can fix the speed, which is what I was actually complaining about.

UPS support seems to be... very isolated, in that nobody in any one place seems to know what's going on anywhere else. They might as well be sending all their messages alongside their packages, which seem to take forever to get anywhere and have a tracking feature that is less than useless.

On an equally depressing note: Classes started again! Oh boy! Most days I have 4-5 solid hours of class with no breaks. They changed the curriculum again, too, so now I have to re-take Voice and Data Cabling. You know, the class that's supposed to be for electrical students that they just happen to stick on the computer science students because "we deal with cables". It's complete bullshit, but whatever. Oh, and I'll probably have to stay an extra semester to take 2 more classes. That should be fun. But then hopefully I can take a few months off before going off somewhere else, spending more money, and taking more classes I don't want to take so I can learn things that won't apply to my future career.

Can you tell I have issues with the way the current education system works?

Oh, and I finally got my bracelet fixed. Well... 'fixed'. Apparently the jeweler's definition of 'fix' is 'use pliers'. I complained that the locking mechanism was too loose and that it kept unlocking from things as simple as moving my arm. So what did they do? They took some pliers, scratched the hell out of the locking mechanism, dented it slightly, and bent it so that it would be 'tighter'. Unfortunately it's too tight now, to the point where you can't even open or close the lock without pliers (yeah, ha ha). So now I've got a scratched-up bracelet that I can't even wear (or if I do wear it, that I can't take off). I'll be taking it back so they can replace the locking mechanism at their own cost, and hopefully without damaging the rest of the bracelet.

That's about it for now. Congratulations on another successful trip around the sun, everyone!

Happy Holidays

Exams are done, my new iMac was finally delivered, and Christmas is almost here.

Exams went pretty smoothly, except for Cisco. The written part took less than an hour, but the hands-on part could only be done 2 people at a time, and I was lucky enough to go last. It sure can be fun waiting around the school for 8 hours to do an exam. It didn't take too long, maybe 2 hours.

Once I finally started, I noticed the guy before me had left all his configurations on the switches, so I had to wait another 15 minutes while the teacher went through them all and made sure there were no traces of it left. I stayed a little longer after I was finished, too, 'cause I didn't want the guy who started an hour before me to feel like too much of an idiot with me finishing before him. And, of course, being the last ones in the room, we had to help clean up and re-wire the room the way it usually is.

By the time everything was done and over with it was almost 9 PM. Not bad for an exam that started at 9 AM.

The last exam was a bit… weird. As a bit of a preface: We didn't do anything in the class all year. He gave about 5 lectures that were mostly review of what we did last year, then gave us assignments without teaching us how to complete them. It turned out the exam was pretty much all the assignments bundled into one.

Except, people were having problems. I mean, sure, we also had tons of problems while doing the assignments, too, but he never actually showed us how to do them "properly". Not only that, but the virtual machines he had given us were also having some problems. Some of them wouldn't recognize the disc drive, so we couldn't install some of the required components. Some of us didn't even have our discs so we had to wait until we could borrow someone else's, which took a good half-hour. Then some of the components within the VMs wouldn't work.

It was a mess.

Finally, when everyone was done, he announced "oh yeah, and your unit tests for the semester should be online later this week". Wow, thanks for that. I'm sure those would've been more helpful before the exam. That was on the 14th. It's now the 22nd and he only just turned on the last two tests. Oh, and our transcripts were finalized today, so any marks we get on the unit tests won't reflect retrospectively in our final mark. I'm just left wondering if I should even do them.

But enough about the bad news. Onto the good news!

My iMac came in! (Finally!) It only took about a month. Ordered on the 27th of November, delivered on the 17th of December. But it's okay, Apple, I forgive you. It was worth the wait. If anything, the wait made it more worthwhile.

27" iMac, 2560x1440 resolution, 178 degree viewing angle (yes, I've even tested it out, it's awesome), 2.8 GHz i7-860, 6 GB of RAM (upgraded Steve's 13" MacBook Pro from 2 GB to 4 GB and put the extra chips in the iMac), 1 TB hard drive, ATI 4850 with 512 MB VRAM. It's amazing.

It also came with a wireless keyboard (which I already had before, but this one is ever-so-slightly different) and Magic Mouse. While not exactly "magic", it's a pretty cool mouse. It brings the cool multi-touch gestures of the MacBooks to the desktop.

Speaking of multi-touch gestures, if you happen to own a Mac with a multi-touch capable mouse, check out this site. It increases the number of things your mouse can do by an order of magnitude. It can even do some multi-touch stuff on some of the older MacBooks that only support two fingers.

I never managed to get that Christmas shopping done. Mostly because nobody told me what they wanted, or anything they needed. I'm thinking of getting the parents some seat warmers for their vehicles, but I'm not sure about my sisters. Money is always nice. As for my brother, I was thinking of getting him some hot sauce, since he's a big fan of spicy food. But not just any hot sauce, I'm talking about hot sauce that has a Scoville rating of over 1 million. The kind that you only use one drop of in an entire batch of chilli. You know, the kind that makes you think you're going to die if you get a drop on your tongue.

I already upgraded Steve's RAM, but I think I might do his hard drive, too. He's got the stock 160 GB, 5400 RPM drive in there right now. I'm thinking of upgrading him to a 500 GB, 7200 RPM drive since it's on sale at newegg right now. Besides, he could use the extra space and speed. He downloads a lot, and speed is always a good thing to have. I'd go SSD, but that's prohibitively expensive, and doesn't have as much space. I kind of wish they would come out with metal foil drives already.

I'll use Time Machine to back up his drive, replace it, then restore his machine from backup. It should be pretty painless.

I might get him his own Magic Mouse, too, since he said he wouldn't mind having one. FutureShop has it for 90$, Apple has it for 70$, so I might get them to price match it.

Megan's back for the holidays. One semester down… I have no idea how many to go.

Oh, and Amanda's moving back in. The parents are gone down to Toronto right now to pick up her and her stuff. They should be back tomorrow.

That's all I've got for now. Check back later for updates on which expected Christmas gifts I got and which ones they forgot to order (like the USB-rechargeable AA batteries).

Oh, and I may start another blog soon. An 18 and over, gratuitously filthy blog, that is. We'll see how that goes.

Homework, among other things

So I managed to finish my web programming assignment. A big leap, in my eyes, to go from a bit of HTML and CSS on my own time to all-out PHP, MySQL and Javascript, but unimaginably easier and more convenient. Having the ability to use loops to generate a page and only generate the parts you need is pretty nice. So is not having to rewrite every single page. Kind of a pain, however, is getting all the HTML code to still line up in the source code. While not at all necessary, it's still something I like to do as a matter of professionalism.

This weekend I have the task of making a 15 minute presentation about my website (oh boy, and with Steve's MacBook Pro at hand I can finally use Keynote in class!), a short presentation for Systems Analysis about some company offering Software As A Service, filling out an entire lab book with answers, and figuring out how to set up a DHCP server, a VSFTPD server, a backup routine, NIS, LDAP, and a mail server. On SUSE 9.

Yeah, that's gonna be fun, getting to set up obscure software on old software without being given any documentation on how to do any of it. Oh, but it's to "prepare us for the real world, where we might not be told how to do our job". Except in the "real world" (which one are we in now? we're definitely not in Second Life) there's a minimum requirement as to how much you have to know before you can do something. Even The Sims managed to cover that.

All the other stuff isn't so bad. I kind of like giving presentations, especially if I like what I'm talking about. Talking about one of my own projects? That's loads of fun. I love doing that. It's my chance to show off. I'll give it 110%, and hopefully get a similar grade since I managed to put in that much more effort than everyone else.

Making a presentation about something boring? Not bad, but still tolerable if I get to use Keynote.

Filling out a lab book with notes? Boring, but at least it'll boost my mark by 10% (seriously? yeah).

Oh yeah, I'm also expected to do a bit of Christmas shopping and socializing, too. And it's a weekend, so I'm not waking up before noon. This is going to be fun. Assuming Saturday has a 1 PM wake-up time, a 9 PM to 2 AM socializing time, then Sunday has a noon wake-up time, 1 hour finish-up on socializing, then a 11 PM bed time, with about 25% procrastination rate, I've got about 12 hours. The website presentation should take all day Saturday on its own, then the more boring presentation taking up an hour or two on Sunday if I'm lucky, the lab book another hour or two, then the rest of the day can be spent wrestling with SUSE 9. Lovely.

Oh, right, then I have to go on Blackboard and fill out all the course surveys, finish up a few rogue assignments, do a few quizzes, and make sure I'm not missing anything. Awesome.

Not that they could've started giving out this work in any of the 3 months of school we just went through, that would've been too balanced. No, they have to dump it all on us the week before exams. You know, because it's just so terribly easy to do a semester's worth of work in a week. So easy.

Anyway, I think that's enough for one day. I'll be sure to post a status report sometime next week.

Some Updates and Some Ranting

I've updated my script. Now that I'm on a smaller screen (people who say you can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p have never gone from a 1920x1200 to a 1280x720 display) having rings with a (maximum) 400 pixel radius seems a bit excessive, so I've fine-tuned it to be proportional to the display. You can download the file by following this link. I love MobileMe iDisk sharing, it's so simple.

The other update is that I've ordered my new iMac, but unfortunately I couldn't fit the i7 iMac into my budget so I've had to go with the Core 2 Duo iMac with the upgraded 4850 video card. Seeing as how the video card was the problem in my old iMac and not the processor I think I'll be satisfied. For now, anyway. Although it hasn't shipped yet, so I think I'd still have time to cancel it and go for the i7 if I really wanted, which I do, but can't afford until later.

Screw it, I'll wait. Shipping and delivery would take a month anyway, I might as well wait a few more days so I can get the model I really want.

Steve's iPhone broke on the 12th. I set up a replacement via Applecare on the 13th. We got his replacement on the 16th. I sent out his old one later that night. Apple still hasn't received it, and FedEx still hasn't recognized that I sent it out. Right now it's considered "lost in the mail" and I may have to end up paying a 300$ late fee because of it. I think I'll call Apple tomorrow to try to explain the current situation, in hopes that I don't get nailed with an unnecessary fee.

I ordered some new pyjamas in September. They got to me in mid-October. They were too big so I returned them and requested a smaller size (5$ shipping). I still haven't received the replacement ones yet, and it's been almost a month. I have a feeling I'll have to call them too.

It doesn't help that Timmins seems to have the worst shipping times in the world. When I ordered Snow Leopard back in August it took almost a month for it to get here. By that time I'd already downloaded and installed it, so now it's more ornamental than anything, although technically it's legal now.

I hate how credit cards take an annoyingly long time to update themselves. I usually have to wait 3 days after any transaction to find out how much my balance is. Right now it's saying I have a "balance owing" of about -100$, which means I should have 100$ in credit. Then right besides it says "available credit" as -75$, which technically means I'm over my limit by 75$. I have no idea how they managed to work out that they owe me money and I owe them money at the same time, but it can get really confusing.

Schoolwork seems to be piling up more and more every day. It doesn't help that teachers give out work faster than we can get it done. Literally. We need to have access to the lab to be able to do our work but the lab has such limited hours that we can't get it done unless we spend half a day waiting at the school between our last class and the last class to use the room to finally finish up. Worse still is the ambiguous work which sets a vague goal, gives no instructions on how to get to it, and expects us to figure it out. I don't really see how that's "preparing us for the real world, where [our] boss might give us a task without telling us how to do it", since employers are kind of required to make sure the employees have the proper training to do any task assigned to them.

Still no job. Nobody's really hiring, and I refuse to work fast food, so it seems I'll be out of a job for a while. I think next semester I'll apply to be work in the lab at school, since you pretty much make your own hours and get to do your homework while getting paid. Of course, there's the downside that you have to help other people do their homework if they ask, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Naps are nice. I seem to be taking a few a week, nowadays. They usually last a full sleep cycle (about 3-4 hours), but they're worth it. I especially prefer it over not napping. Not napping kind of sucks if you're tired. Even going to bed early doesn't quite seem to cut it. Considering most animals (including our ancestors) sleep a bit a night and a bit during the day I don't really see a problem with doing the same. It's what we're designed to do.

I think that's enough for one post.