31 jan. 2011
Megamind — Feels like they had a pretty good script and worked overtime to make a mediocre movie out of it.
Tangled — Ungh. The animals are sometimes fun, but damn are the humans annoying and dull. And the songs, eek. Oh well, the guy is cute.
30 jan.
In 2011, I think I'm ready to use a grocery-list app on my iPhone and roam the aisles with my phone in my hand.
29 jan.
I originally wanted to wait until Little Big Planet 2 was discounted or on the used game market, but I think I need the cuteness, stat.
Ohh, depuis quand Amazon.fr vend des vêtements ?
That was a night when I could have used a pint of ice cream. Too bad I'm unable to keep a reserve of those for such times.
There's a time trial in Gran Turismo 5 that begins with a 45-second pit sequence every single time you retry. I hate this game so very much.
28 jan.
Trying to download the PS3 update from the web. Fucking joke. Should sell it before I throw it out the window.
PS3 update stuck at 0% downloading. So much for playing a quick game of GT5. Goddamn fucking asshole of a console.
Why is my MacBook refusing to play any AVIs? (Don't think I ever tried before on this machine.) I have Perian installed and up to date.
Even your red blood cells have a circadian clock
I'm not sure why I find that idea so weird, but I do.
27 jan.
Il y a deux feux de cheminée virtuels dans le top gratuit du Mac App Store français. Honte. Et, oui, je viens d'en charger un.
“Sony’s next PSP, codenamed NGP”
I don’t really like the design but, with a 5-inch 960x544 and (finally) two actual analog sticks, that’s a nice gaming device. Though with such power, 3G, GPS, and a touchscreen plus touchpad (whaaa?), it’s not gonna be cheap. I’m sure Sony was happy when Nintendo finally announced the price point for the 3DS — no coincidence that they waited until that info was released.
That first video shows an interesting — if gimmicky — use for the rear-touchpad, but it also demonstrates how awkward it’s going to be, holding and using the device with games that support it. Do you ever hold your iPhone in landscape orientation without supporting the back of the screen with your fingers? And the third video, showing how you climb vines in Uncharted with the touchpad, is a very good example of how most games forced to use it will make it cumbersome and silly as hell. (Remember Sixaxis?)
I wonder how it integrates with Android. It has to run it, if it’s compatible with PlayStation Suite games, but I’m not sure if it’s a dual-boot situation or the native games will actually be developed on Android.
And they didn’t mention battery life, did they?
Je veux transférer un domaine sur Gandi, le site bugge ; j'essaie de signaler le bug, le formulaire de contact bouffe mon message.
Oh, and, yeah, I like the new navigation bar on apple.com. #breakingnews #stopthepresses
Thank god the Playstation phone isn't named that
More like how Windows 7 phones have Xbox Live. Not altogether absurd.
26 jan.
Marco Arment, on Instapaper’s bookmarklet
No wonder it's so damn annoyingly slow. I just want to save the URL!
25 jan.
Web views seem less OOM-crashy in iOS 4.3 — I can actually click a link or two in my homebrew RSS reader without crashing. Maybe I'll be able to release it after all.
24 jan.
The awkward bullshit to fun scenes ratio was really high on Top Gear this week, and the whole show felt oddly disconnected.
Reading many tech blogs at once can be really bad for your nerves. But I can't rely on someone else to filter the interesting stuff for me.
GOD DAMNIT WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK THAT SOMEONE SOMEWHERE HUNG UP ON AN APPLE EXEC ONCE THAT'S NOT A NEWS HEADLINE.
There must be something about thermodynamics that I'm missing. It's always either too hot or too cold in my room.
22 jan.
OTOH if you need to say "You're editing your profile; click 'save profile' up there when you're done" something's wrong in your form design.
"Use your Twitter avatar: enter your Twitter username and we'll import your avatar." That's smart.
It's a mind-numbing task, minus the numbness.
Thought I'd finally move my all old passwords from Yojimbo to 1Password. Only halfway done and ready to skin kittens with my teeth.
Fringe 3.10 — Nice casting stunt, and a nice character. His story was cute but a little forced.
Has the Onion News Network killed all its former shows and anchors from the podcast? I don't like the new ones.
Argh, Finder forgot the arrangement of icons on my desktop. Hadn't happened in so long I'd gotten back into having a lot of shit there.
21 jan.
Ah ben c'est malin, un peu de rangement et j'ai retrouvé mes vieux photomaton où j'ai face humaine.
“Ferrari FF: Four Wheel Drive, Four Seats, One Fantastic Rear End”
I’ve always loved shooting brakes and this one has a great shape. I only wish the 458 Italia’s fucked up front lights weren’t becoming Ferrari’s new signature design element. Not a fan of the gaping maw / sociopath smile, either. And then there’s the name.
My software publisher sensibilities don't give a fuck because it means I'm getting press.
My geek sensibilities are offended that the French PR for the App Store needs to contact me to get the full-res logo for my app.
20 jan.
Argh, iOS 4.3 beta 2 is fucking with my (admittedly questionable) use of gesture recognizers on top of a web view.
19 jan.
Where "deleted" is in quotes because of course you can't actually delete your account, silly, you can just disable it.
FU.
Formspring account "deleted." Finally motivated by their encouraging users to ask stupid, irrelevant questions in bulk to everyone they follow.
Dear Google Reader: when I'm switching the view to "all items" then it makes no sense to honor my "oldest first" sort settings. Thank you.
18 jan.
I'm too burned out to consider going for groceries, despite the untold amounts of chocolate that could be acquired. Bad, bad sign.
17 jan.
World of Goo on the iPad can occasionally be awkward but the physicality of dragging the goo balls around more than makes up for it.
16 jan.
If you dropped the DC end of phone/laptop charger in a bathtub, would it be enough to short the mains? Or would the adapter end up burning?
15 jan.
“Libraries of the Rich and Famous”
I find Lagerfeld’s library insanely oppressive, and it may just be because the books are stacked horizontally. I wonder if it’s just a matter of usage or there’s something inherently more organized to the traditional shelves of vertical books — which can’t occur in nature and are an unstable equilibrium, as it were, whereas Lagerfeld’s arrangement just looks like a monumental heap of books that’s going to fall over you. (Look at the size of those chairs in the lower right corner for scale.)
It's really called Google Hotpot? I just thought it was a typo.
So that was another week that just flew by. Wasn't sure what the noise was.
14 jan.
Best thing about the new iPad gestures: two-finger pinch-out to go back to the main menu will become a standard among third-party apps.
The second season of V is gonna make me barf before it's done, I swear. But then how am I surprised they're making it about god?
"[If our Sun were] replaced by a black hole of the same mass, the orbits of all the planets surrounding it would be unaffected." — Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions
Does Echofon Lite on the Mac App Store have the "Register" nag screen at startup? (Don't think it should be compatible with the guidelines.)
"More iOS 4.3 digging hints at new iPad 2 camera, same 1024 x 768 display"
That's $700 I won't need in 2011. What to buy?
Shouldn't have upgraded to the 4.3 beta so early just for the gestures; Echofon crashes at launch, and my RSS reader every 100 articles.
Did the dollar tank? How am I getting less App Store royalties for December despite Christmas?
13 jan.
Why is Rock Band 2 for PS3 — and only that one — unavailable both on Amazon and on the official Rock Band store?
Care to explain to me why Google Places is a separate app from Latitude? (Also, my phone's location services seem to be broken.)
I like the four-finger gestures on iPad OS 4.3, but the Alt-Tab left/right is unusable; you'll never know in what order the apps are.
I wanna turn on Rock Band to take a photo of my guitarist and play the songs I bought yesterday, but if I do I'll spend the whole day on it again.
Now I'm trying to reboot my iPad and it's been stuck on the "shutting down" progress spinner for ten minutes. Grah.
Left iTunes to back up my iPad all night and the progress bar didn't move one pixel.
I added one file to the Good Reader app two days ago so, of course, my iPad's pre-4.3 backup is literally taking hours. Damnit, iTunes.
Exposé-like gestures and a screen orientation lock in iOS 4.3 on iPad? Looks like another beta I'll absolutely have to install.
The local tracks for the European version of Rock Band 1 are spectacularly bad. Harmonix must really, really hate us.
12 jan.
Yeah, Rock Band is definitely better than Guitar Hero, even for this noob here it's very noticeable.
Just realized, with Flipboard, I could remove from Google Reader all the stuff I don't really read but just keep a lazy eye on.
So the design spec I wrote for my iOS app includes a functionality that's all but impossible to code with the SDK. Yay for me.
11 jan.
10 jan.
“Breakthrough device of CES: Motorola Atrix = Phone + PC”
Clearly, something is broken in my RSS workflow — as in, I’m not reading the right blogs, and/or not being attentive enough when I do the reading — because I completely missed this when it was announced:
The company trotted out the Atrix 4G, a new dual core smartphone that contains an extra surprise: a piece of “Webtop” software that allows it to function like a full PC when connected in one of three docking modes:
Desktop PC mode with keyboard, mouse, and display
TV mode with a remote
Laptop mode, with a special laptop-like dock
I’ve dreamt of such a concept for many years: a phone that would just hold your data and apps and transform into your desktop or laptop so that you never have to sync anymore… and it’s become reality sooner than I expected. It’s not only a really cool concept (plug the phone into a dock, it becomes, essentially, a netbook) but it looks to be implemented just as cleverly and efficiently as could be by a third-party (it’d probably be better if Google designed Android for that purpose from the ground up but, within the limitations of an added layer, it’s insanely well designed and realized, from to to bottom). Just watch Engadget’s video. Amazing — and for one thing I can’t believe this thing is coming out with a Motorola logo.
It’s a niche product to be sure, but a niche is where you can still exist on today’s smartphone market. If I ever wanted to switch away from iOS, I’d just buy that phone.
9 jan.
I always make the sexiest avatars in my video games, and then I'm more frustrated every time I see them i a cutscene. #guitarhero
I keep forgetting and rediscovering that I like Flipboard now.
8 jan.
I'm also (and it's no coincidence) not nearly as bad at it as I was afraid I'd be.
I'm enjoying Guitar Hero more than I expected. Added bonus: look! everything in my room is flying upwards now!
“RotorConcept ID1-SWAT”
I want to buy it just because the design is awesome. (But it’s big and expensive and I’ve vowed not to spend money on a helicopter again unless it has collective pitch.)
How not to handle a PR snafu
There have been riots on the internet yesterday over CoverSutra 2.5 becoming a Mac App Store exclusive even though the developer had promised, years ago, that existing customers would get free upgrades until version 3.0.
Here’s her response today, that I may be paraphrasing a little: “I’d completely forgotten about that promise. I’m not gonna fix it because, fuck that, I’d have to add a couple of #ifs in my code and I’m too busy selling new apps. Besides, I’m utterly insulted that you’re reacting this way instead of giving me a pass because I’m a nice little indie developer.
”
I’m sure some people have overreacted, as internet types are wont to do, but somehow I don’t think that’s how you do public apology. (Hint: reneging on a promise, no matter how old or minor, always means having to eat crow.)
7 jan.
The Unexpected Return of 'Duck and Cover'
Never realized, or forgot, that "radioactive fallout" is actual dust falling.
Is V 2.01 even worse than the first season or had I just forgotten? In any case, gotta appreciate the Flashforward homage.
6 jan.
New Twitter for Mac lost keyword filtering (via @lionel)? I want to believe that means it's coming to server-side account settings.
I want to give myself the gift of space-age laser-powered photonic printing for my birthday. Do I get cheap B&W or invest in cheap CMYK?
Avatar Kinect
Looks like a great tech demo implemented in the most useless possible way.
I like how coherent the evolution of Starbucks' logo is over 40 years, but I would have still kept the seal, and just reduced the font.
At least the presence of Remote Desktop on the Mac App Store makes me hopeful for an eventual iOS client.
Fancy non-titlebars (App Store, Twitter…) break usability. You shouldn't have to think about where you've got to grab a given window to move it.
I like "type anywhere to tweet" in the MacHeist Tweetie 2 special features, but still no setting for a right-handed sidebar.
Well, I could have lived another day without a Mac App Store. Meh. (Of course I'm only saying that because I have no app on it.)
First reason I'm sticking with Echofon: I like to have my timeline sit flush with the left side of the screen, and Twitter still can't.
Why did Twitter feel the need to alienate all the fans of Tweetie by playing coy about the upcomping Mac App Store app?
5 jan.
Arg, une relance de l'Urssaf pour un chèque de cotisations envoyé qu'ils n'ont pas reçu. Si ça ne va pas se retrouver débité deux fois…
4 jan.
I'd forgotten winter meant driving to the supermarket by night. Oh well, at least that pedestrian will never get run over again.
Je reçois mon appel de cotisations de la Maison des Artistes aujourd'hui et je le paye par retour du courrier. Ils ne vont pas en revenir.
3 jan.
2011 brings a new keyword to ignore (twitcam), and still no ignoring keywords in either Echofon or Twitter itself.
RT @leroncier: “Les cadeaux de Noël de iTunes ressemblent aux cadeaux pourris d'un arrière grand père gâteux : «Tiens, je t'ai offert du dégivrant.»”
2 jan.
Never Let Me Go — That didn't work. I'm sure there's a good movie in there, but it's hidden too well to see.
1 jan.
[insert sarcastic new year's wishes here] #misanthrope
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