Month: February 2020

by
The more time passes, the more I would like to see our future reflected in Corning’s old A Day Made of Glass videos.

It’s less something I view as necessary, so much as one I view as progress. We have all this frakking technology, why not use it?

There’s nothing wrong with having my tablet or a laminated recipe handy when I’m baking something, but wouldn’t it be nicer to just ask for my favourite cornbread recipe, and have it pop up on a surface near where I am preparing stuff?

One of the things that have changed over the past decade is how I view the future. Once upon a time, my vision likely had more in common with early Star Trek or Alien. After all, I was born in an era where having a VCR was pretty damned awesome sauce :P. Today, I rather think of the future looking more like The Next Generation or Prometheus–with interactive displays everywhere. Networking is already gone from pervasive to ubiquitous in my lifetime; I doubt most people in the first world can even get from their bed to their job without > 1 microchips being involved along the way. Today, many folks will pass that mark by the time their morning alarm chimes.

Something that I really do love about Corning’s old videos: is the attention to interface. See, I imagine by the time I’m old as heck, we’ll probably have stuff that looks more like the Enterprise-D: which had bloody interactive touch screens literally all over the place. But real software doesn’t tend to look like LCARS, the way real equipment tended to look like Kirk’s ship. As a UI, I think a lot of what we’ve seen on Star Trek is pretty bad from a getting real work done perspective, and that’s alright: it wasn’t made to be an interface that people used ever single day to do every single thing we will ever do with a computer. It was made to be an inspiring, and effective on screen graphic. Plus let’s be honest, the Okudas did a lot of really amazing work.

Cornings video on the other hand is riddled with software experiences that are so close to what we have now, that it makes it more plausible, more accessible. Much like how the physical controls of Jefferies’ Enterprise were very believable when my mother watched Star Trek back in the ’60s. By contrast, I look at LCARs, and I see a pictures of what could be. I doubt we would envision the future so easily without Okuda’s work, it’s just the software will be very different.

by

Watching The Last Stand (2013), I can definitely say was worth while.

Of particularly great scenes, include: Schwarzenegger’s various interactions with the diner folks, Luis the Tommygun Guizmán, a surprise Vickers gun courtesy of the town nut, and what the Sheriff probably thought was just a little old lady before the thugs showed up. Not to mention the Camaro at the end.

As an action movie it was entertaining. Can you really ask for more than that? Currently it’s available for streaming on Amazon Prime, and on Hulu.

by

Windows 10X: Everything you need to know about the foldable PC OS
https://flip.it/tk_HYE

I for one, am more interested in foldable devices like these than ones we see harped on in phone space.

For me, there’s only two points of interest in a foldable phone. Either one that “Pops” open into a tablet, around the size of a Nexus 7 or iPad Mini; or something very compact ala the old Motorola Razrs. That’s about it. I don’t really want or care about most of the other things that have come up in phones, nor about a seamless display.

Now when we move into the size of a tablet or laptop: my tune changes! A device that can be the size of one, or two iPads; a device that can be a massive tablet or a dual screen book, that’s something I could use. I’m less interested in a seamlessly folded one piece screen than I am a layout more like a notebook with a thin bezel at the spine. See, PC operating systems like NT have better handling of multiple displays than contemporaries like Android and iOS. It’s a faster leap to abusing two screens if your starting point is something like Windows 10 than Android.

I want to see productivity gains from having two related, but not unified displays. It’s less about having a 14” tablet that can fold in half, and more about how two monitors that can interact—touch screen monitors, running mature software.

by

Nintendo has a cloud problem

While from a distance, I think Nintendo has done pretty well to modernize themselves: the fact remains that they’ve still got a long way to go.

Sony has evolved considerably since the PlayStation arrived in the ‘90s. I don’t think anyone ever envisioned how successful that would go. But personally, part of my choice of the Xbox One over the PlayStation 4, comes to being a third party that looked upon PS3’s account and service bits as reasons why I never want to give Sony my billing information.

Microsoft by contrast has been in computer and network crap for virtually ever, as far as PCs go. For what they sometimes lack in the gaming scene, they make up for in being competent at running consumer services where you give them money for it.

Nintendo on the other hand, don’t have a long record of fancy smancy consumer services or backend infrastructure for all of that. It’s increasingly part of modern gaming, but it’s just not their bread and butter. The Switch seems to represent a major leap forward in their thinking, but it’s still a Nintendo.

by

Hasbro is relaunching classic Tiger Electronics gaming handhelds
https://flip.it/Aizft2

When I was a kid, mobile gaming on typically meant one of Tiger‘a handheld games, or a deck of cards. The advantage of the handheld was not needing space, and not having to clean up.

Much as I was greatly attracted to the idea of a Game Boy, as a consequence of those games, I would expect few people would retroactively switch from their phone to whatever modern incarnations look like.

by

Microsoft to deploy ElectionGuard voting software for the first time tomorrow

I for one, see two good things about this.

Firstly that it has an open source base. Voting machines are not a problem domain where we should accept proprietary software from a contractor as good enough. Some form of open review and code auditing is a good thing, and obscurity is not security here: unless you’re the one hacking the ballet.

Second is that Microsoft, for all the crap we give them over Windows, is actually competent. They have both the experience and the suffering to be an ideal player. Microsoft as a company is more aware of security woe than most of us. Plus, did you catch the open source part?

I never actually thought I’d hear about something involving computers, and voting, and not find myself rolling my eyes, or cursing at stupidity.

by

On one hand, I find it a little perturbing when a game doesn’t work with Steam Link, and it used to work fine.

On the other, I also figure that not only is it a non Steam game: it was developed for Windows 9x, and targets 640×480 VGA, so I probably can’t complain when the rendering and the mouse wrapping disagrees on where the cursor and the window are.

lol

by

A while back, I remember reading about edamame served in the pod, salted, as a type of bar snack.

Eating some courtesy of the frozen food isle, I can’t help but think: should have bought beer too. Also, it’s apparently an excellent way to attract the stares of the peanut gallery, and a bag of dog treats may be a perquisite for my survival.
by

While more than a bit of my childhood was spent starting the day with a bowl of cereal, or whatever my mother might have made for breakfast, I find it curious that I’ve never really been a breakfast person.

Personally, I’m inclined to believe it owes to time more than anything else. I’ve no qualms with what breakfast tends to look like in America, nor with dinner leftovers or the like. Left to my own devices, I will usually have a small breakfast. During the weak: this often takes the shape of a small granola bar. During the weekend: I might make something more substantial but may skip breakfast altogether.

What I’ve generally found, is that I’m not hungry enough for a sizable meal in the morning. By the time that I am, I may as well wait for lunch. Which makes sense to me, really.  When I need to be somewhere: the window between getting out of bed, getting cleaned up, and on the road, is short enough that my stomach is still snoring. By the time the day is underway: there is no convenient stopping to eat breakfast. Thus my choices for breakfast are usually intended to tide me over until lunch is approaching, or are as much for sharing with the dogs as it is for myself.

Now, if I tended to get up at the crack of dawn: instead of somewhere between what I define as normal, and what I determine is necessary, that would probably be different.