Myopia: Gadgets

Diehard Fan

The Venti fan from black+blum kicks all kinds of ass.

MSRP: $608!

Hmmm...

Venti

April 20, 2006 in Gadgets | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pimp My Learjet

A company called Exotic Coach Chicago is converting a derelict Learjet 31 into what they’re calling a LimoJet . Classy.

Bonus from the same site: The Unluckiest Girl in the Whole World .

April 11, 2006 in Gadgets, Humor | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mmm...Delicious Apple

Ars Technica reviews the new MacBook Pro.

March 2, 2006 in Apple, Gadgets, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)

iPod Packaging Parody

If Microsoft redesigned the packaging for the Apple iPod. This is hilarious*.

Squeak-a-mouse

So, I got a Mighty Mouse. I'd been running VirtualPC on my PowerMac, and found that, well, you simply cannot operate Windows without that second mouse button. I'd never before wished for a two-button mouse on my Mac, but now I needed one, and though I have probably eight or nine mouses, I simply could not have this defacing my Applelicious desk. The drivers for the mouse are only fully operable under Tiger, so I bit the bullet and did the upgrade on which I'd been dragging my heels.

I ordered the mouse from the Apple online store and it arrived by UPS. There's that nice moment you savor when you open an Apple box. Those boxes makes promises. Sexy, sexy promises. The Mighty Mouse itself looks like a Apple Bluetooth Mouse with a cord and an outie belly button near the top. I plugged it in. It worked like a charm, and nine minutes later I was addicted to the Scroll Ball. I now instinctively reach for it when I'm using any Apple mouse.

However, there was one little problem. Not every time, but sometimes when I clicked, the thing squeaked. A little plastic-on-plastic cricket squeak that I know would eventually drive me mad. Stark raving mad. I thought after a bit of use it would work itself out, but three days later it was still happening. Fortunately, when I called up Apple they said they'd send another right away. Don't you want this one back, if only to prove I'm not lying? Um, no. You can junk that one. So they must have been having QC issues. I sure hope the new one has no squeak.

In the meantime I ask Kendra if she wants to try the new mouse while I use the ugly Microsoft two-button abomination. You know, just to see if she wants to get one for herself. She tells me she'll wait for the Bluetooth version. Freaking trying to out-techie me! Look at me. I'm waiting for the BluuueToooth version. I'm to cool for a corded mah mah mah mah mah.

She does love her cordlessness. "Hey Kendra! You want I should hook you up to the Internet with some nice CAT 5?" "Nah. I'll wait for you to set up the wireless network. If it takes forever." She passes a glitter-spangled hula hoop around her levitated PowerBook, first horizontally, then vertically—look: no wires!—then tosses the hoop my direction as she takes a deep bow. Of course, I'm not jealous of her PowerBook, but...

(Insert mental image of me kickin' it on the patio. My various devices and peripherals are attached to me in a sort of Borg-meets-one-man-band arrangement: my PowerMac tower is slung on my back like a bass drum, a keyboard dangles from my belt, a mousepad on my chest. My iSight camera dangles from a headband with a gooseneck extension. There is a large power management strip velcroed to my ass and AC cords sprout from it like so much evil black spaghetti. I am leaning nonchalantly against the wall and drinking lemonade through a very long straw because I cannot sit down and I do not have full range of motion in my USB-and-Firewire-entwined arms.)

(At this point Kendra is twirling around the living room, her PowerBook clutched to her chest. She looks like a Disney princess waltzing with a portriat of her one true love.)

Oh Yeah?! My PowerMac has twice the processors you'll ever have, Notebook Girl! And my mouse will be all kick ass and scrolly!

September 3, 2005 in Apple, Being Me, Gadgets | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ranking (Full Stop)

Once your music collection exceeds a certain size, it becomes imperative that you rank your songs if you want to create meaningful playlists. I'm not there yet. My collection is approaching 10,000 songs (I have a 30GB 3G iPod, so they don't all fit). Generally speaking, I don't want to handcraft playlists. I want to select a genre or category and put iTunes or my iPod on shuffle. To this end, I have developed a tagging scheme that gives me a lot of control. Actually rating your music, however, requires that you slog through your library, and listen to the songs (or at least the first few seconds), and give each a number of stars. In my case, that's 9700 songs times (conservative estimate) 30 seconds each = two weeks of ranking at eight hours a day.

But I didn't buy the music to rank it, I bought it to listen to it. So even when I'm intending to rank the songs I'm playing, I usually get caught up in the tunes and forget to rank them. This is why only 15% of my music collection is rated.

An added layer of difficulty is developing a consistent rating strategy. There are multiple options:

Absolute (subjective) quality: zero stars is the worst song in the universe (something by Celine Dion, say) and five stars is the best song in the universe (Randy Newman), even if you don't personally own either.
Relative (subjective) quality: zero stars is the worst song you actually own, even though it's obviously much better than a Celine Dion song, and five stars is the best song you own, even if deep down you know it's not the best song in the universe.
Frequency based: zero stars is a song you may like very much, but just don't want to hear that often. Five stars may be some awful song that you just happen to like very much: a guilty pleasure. The problem here is that the rankings would tend to change over time.
Genre specific: The best Rock song you own gets a five, and so does the best Country song, even if you typically listen to and enjoy Rock more.
Housekeeping method: One star means: "This song sucks. Delete it from iTunes when you get home." Two means: "This song's tags are messed up. Fix it when you get home." Three through five are for ranking.
Objective method: Use an authority such as All Music Guide to rank your music. This gives you a chance to hear things other than your old favorites, and develop some new favorites.
Combo method: mix and match above according to mood. Lacks consistency.

My current approach is to use Scheme 1, with a little inevitable Scheme 3 influence. I also use Scheme 6 in my comment tagging. I also don't actually delete songs, even if I hate them, because that would be contributing unnecessarily to entropy.

What I would like to see from iTunes is a second, dynamically-compiled rating based on usage. If I listen to a song frequently, nudge it up a bit. If I hit "next track" when a song comes on, nudge it down. If I'm spending all my time listening to Jazz, or songs from the sixties, give those songs a boost. I'm envisioning a dialog with sliders to vary the influence of each of these factors. Five-star ranking wouldn't be accurate enough; a score of 1—100 would probably do it.

The idea is to have the software learn your tastes objectively. To map yourself in n-dimensional music space. This info could be used to create really Smart Playlists, and could be shared on the iTMS to connect with listeners with similar tastes.

May 18, 2005 in Apple, Gadgets, Music | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Hook Up?

TiVo logo TUAW.com reports that Apple is considering buying Tivo. This would be very good news. TiVo a great product that is foundering from a lack of consumer understanding, and I can't think of a better company to improve TiVo's shortcomings and integrate the PVR into the home.

Yes, Apple, I will buy another box from you.

February 24, 2005 in Apple, Gadgets, Television | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

More Maxed Mac Mini Mockups

After generating my Maxed-out Mac Mini concept, I’ve found a couple of other Mac Mini expansion concepts: another stacking mockup and discussion of that concept on MacHTPC. Another, rack-mount concept can be found at asteroid.divnull.com .