I think it was the Spring or Summer of last year. We were arguing about something; I don’t recall what. I’ve got an Apple TV which we often use to listen to music. At one point I stomped out to the deck in a huff.

I sat out there for a few minutes. My mood soon turned to just wanting to reconcile, but it was one of those fights that can’t blow over that quickly.

Except I had a secret weapon.

If you use this, use it sparingly. Like once or twice, ever.

I pulled out my iPhone and opened the Remote app. Then I queued up “Embraceable You,” sung by Billie Holiday. It was our first dance at our wedding.

So it started playing inside, where Kelly was. It took maybe 20 seconds for her to come out and kiss me. All was forgiven.

Not bad for a nerd, eh?

We did several skits related to Apple:

• BananaTech
• iTape
• iMac Commercial
• More iMac Commercials

The original script for iTape was a bit different. I had written it as an anti-DRM thing. I still like the final result better (Cunties! Cool!), but here’s the original, for posterity:

Closeup of guy with white earbuds, rockin out. Rock music is playing.

VO – “Watch out RIAA! There’s a new kid on the block, and it’s gonna revolutionize the way people listen to and share music!”

Pan down. He’s holding an ancient portable tape recorder.

VO – “That’s right! It’s the iTape!”

Cut to iPod-style silhouette of guy dancing with iTape.

VO – “With the iTape you can ‘time-shift’ your favorite songs from the radio…”

Cut to guy holding an iTape to a crappy-looking radio.

VO – “… Records…”

Cut to guy holding an iTape up to a turntable.

VO – “… Even from the television!”

Cut to guy holding up an iTape to a television. An Ashley Simpson video is on.

Closeup of finger pressing record. Cut to medium shot, guy gives a thumbs-up to the camera.

VO – “But that’s not all! You can share your collection with friends!”

Two guys with iTapes, standing close, pressing them next to each other. One is playing, the other recording.

VO – “The iTape is revolutionary technology, with state of the art audio quality!”

Closeup of an iTape on a table. A finger presses play. All other sound stops as a horribly dubbed version of “Hungry Like The Wolf” starts playing. It’s warbly and distorted, with lots of hiss, and you can hear people talking in the background.

Music lowers in volume; VO – “The iTape has new random-access ‘counter’ technology that allows you to keep track of your favorite songs! Just write down the number of the position where the song starts, and you can find the song in 5 minutes or less!”

Cut to guy fast forwarding, rewinding, checking paper with numbers on it, fast forwarding, rewinding.

Cut to spinning iTape silhouette. “nu ni nu ni nu ni nu ni”

VO – “The new iTape! Stick it to the man!”

Quiet VO, spoken quickly – “iTape requires 4 C batteries for 20 minutes of use. Required audio cassettes sold separately.”

I forget what “nu ni nu ni nu ni” means. I think it was a momentary inside joke.

Last weekend, while rearranging upstairs bedrooms to prepare a nursery for our son (he’s due in less than 3 months!), I found myself looking at my old G4 iMac. It’s the one with the goose neck and the dome base. This one has a nice 21″ screen. It’s got a problem now where it’s a pain to turn it on, but it’s otherwise in great condition. It’s still a stunning computer.

Seven years ago, I moved from Flagstaff, AZ to the midwest. Things weren’t going so well. I talked my parents into buying that iMac for me. It wasn’t cheap — along with Final Cut Express it was around $1,600.

My interest then was video editing. But it was more than that. For years I was a UNIX nerd. Linux in particular. I still have a soft spot for it (I use Terminal.app and vi every day). But Mac OS X took it to an entirely new level. They somehow managed to combine UNIX underpinnings with solid UI and UX. It was, and still is, amazing.

But, as I said, my interest was in video editing. Through this, I eventually re-connected with an old friend from middle school and started an internet comedy group. We made very few waves (there were some very small ones), but the personal implications were far-reaching. I got a job at IB (where I worked for 5 years) through a recommendation from several of the guys. Shawn officiated my wedding with Kelly. These are people I never would have known if the state of tech on the Mac had been less awesome. They’re all good friends (and we still miss you, Eric).

My current employment can be traced back to it as well. Not because I use a Mac at work (I do), but because the Mac re-ignited an interest in computing for me. Keep in mind, I was not a fan of the mac in the pre-OS X days. It might have been a decent OS, but it was severely lacking in many respects. OS X, though, was a breath of fresh air. It was a technically competent OS with a nice, even wonderful front-end. People forget just how shitty GUIs were 15 years ago.

I still own a shirt that says, “I dig Mac OS X”.

I carry around 2, sometimes 3 iOS devices every day. Which is ridiculous, of course.

I remember thinking, back in 2008, how strange it was that just a year before I didn’t have EVERYTHING at my fingertips. The iPhone and iPad have drastically altered my lifestyle. I can’t even imagine life without them now. I use my iPhone more than I’ve ever used any computer or phone. Or any device, really.

iPhone, and iPod Touch and iPad have had such a huge effect on the market that it’s really hard to gauge. People lately have taken to saying that there’s no tablet market: there’s an iPad market. And it’s true. Apple is so far ahead of everyone else that it’s a bit embarassing. They’ll all catch up eventually, but right now the competition is completely incompetent.

So. Here’s one guy who managed to create and shepherd some seriously world-changing technology. I didn’t even mention iPods or MacBooks. He’s probably going to die long before his time. But a large part of modern life is shaped by what Steve Jobs has done. He changed the world for the better.

Here’s wishing him the best.

The process for doing that, though, sucks. You have to plug (!) the PSP into the PS3 with a USB cable. Then you have to go through some menus, select the relevant save games and copy them. Not the most difficult thing in the world, but it is annoying and tedious. It’s the kind of process that only seriously devoted Sony partisan would call “simple”.

What I’d really like is the ability to designate all save games for game X to be stored online. I tell my PS3 and I tell my PSP, and then it’s just works from now on. Sure, I’d have to make sure that my PSP has a chance to sync up before going somewhere, but that would be a minor nuisance.

So, my hopes were raised when I saw “Online Storage” advertised as a part of Playstation Plus. I don’t currently pay for Plus, but I would do so in a second if they offered this. Sadly, they’re not offering anything that I want. From the Technical Solutions section of their English forums:

PS1,PS2,PSP and minis save data cannot be backed up.

Boo. It gets worse:

You can back up your data to Online Storage as often as you wish, however you may only restore data to your PS3 from online storage once every 24 hours.

This is not such a big deal since PSP/PS1 games can’t be backed up, but would be if they could.

But the absolute worst part, for me:

To backup Save Game Data to Online Storage

 

• You can back up or copy the save by navigating to the ‘GAME’ icon > scroll through the options until you are on ‘SAVE DATA UTILITY (PS3)’ > Press X
• Select the save you wish to backup press the triangle button and select ‘COPY’
• You will be asked to select the destination of the back up save, navigate to the new option ‘ONLINE STORAGE’ and press X to copy over.

 

To restore Save Game Data from Online Storage:

 

• Go to ‘GAME’ icon, select ‘SAVE DATA UTILITY’ and then ‘ONLINE STORAGE’
• Highlight the saved data you wish to copy.
• Press triangle and select ‘COPY’ to retrieve the save.

Why should anyone have to go through that every time? How tedious is that? This really is just a way to back up game saves. It’s the equivalent of plugging in a usb drive and backing up game saves one at a time.

What I was really hoping for was something like Dropbox for PS3/PSP. I don’t want to have to care about individual game save files, whether I’m using a console or a handheld, whether I’ve gone through the proper three-step procedures. What I want is an invisible process where I can save my progress in a PS1 game on my PS3 and pick it up on my PSP without any difficulty.

This seems to be the experience with Sony. They make products with tons of potential then either don’t develop that potential or (even worse) remove functionality down the road. Which is another topic.

Maybe the audience for this sort of feature is small. I don’t know. But I can say that I currently have no plans to subscribe to Playstation Plus. The potential features I’ve described would get me to pay for it in a heartbeat.

I just can’t see the point. I’m not talking about apathy. I have very strong opinions, as anyone who has talked to me about this junk knows. But I honestly don’t know what the point of arguing about an election actually does. I don’t know what paying attention to day-to-day politics does.

Usually, in one of these debates, the supposed point is to convince the other person to vote for your candidate of choice. Short of the occasional political equivalent of being born-again, however, when does that actually happen? If you’re lucky, you end up with a fun and engaging intellectual exchange. Too often, though, people get bogged down with identity politics and inconsequential bullshit.

For those of you who will jump head-first into this election season (masochists), here are my suggestions:

• Always ask yourself, “what would convince me that I’m wrong?” There should always be something — perhaps many things — that would convince you that you’re wrong. If your answer is “nothing”, you are not engaged in a real debate, and you’re not being intellectually honest. If the only thing that will convince you is extremely far-fetched to the point of being effectively impossible, you’re also not thinking it through. And if you’ve ever said, “If [politician] told me that 2 + 2 = 4, I would not believe them”, at best you’re not being funny (it’s a tired joke). At worst you’re betraying irrational partisanship disguised as humor.
• Remember that “liberals” and “conservatives” are your family, neighbors, co-workers, etc. They are good people who want to live in a just society. No one wants to ruin the country. If you assert that “liberals” or “conservatives”, or even a “liberal” or a “conservative” are evil, you being uncharitable, even dishonest.
• If you’re going to pay attention to political news, avoid the day-to-day news cycle. That means no cable news. The job of cable news is to retain viewers so that they can retain advertisers. That doesn’t mean they are complete bullshit, but it does mean they will gin up controversy over trivial “news”. In fact, any shallow political reporting should be avoided, whether on television, radio, the Internet, etc.
• Don’t pretend that radio/opinion show hosts are in any way objective. If you’ve ever said, “just listen to [personality] for a while” or something along those lines, think about what that means and why listening to a radio show can, over time, convince you of their point of view.
• Pay attention to your own reaction when you see an “R” or a “D” next to someone’s name. Be honest with yourself. Does it color your interpretation of what they’re saying? Remember that the easiest way to bullshit others is to bullshit yourself.
• This is not the most important election. Even if it is the most important election in the history of the republic, anyone telling you that is trying to manipulate you. Recognize that come election season, candidate X , despite what many people will say, is not the most liberal/conservative or radical/reactionary candidate in history. If you believe that, you’re being manipulated. If you say that, you’re being manipulative. And you are, for all intents and purposes, wrong.
• Patriotism is not a legitimate political position. It is a sentiment. An often harmful one, at that. You can love your country and love your ancestry, but recognize that it’s a personal preference; a sentiment. Saying, “America is the greatest country in the world” is a meaningless statement at best. It’s about as intellectually relevant as “Tacos rule!” I’m not denigrating America, anymore than saying the same thing about the statement “X-Files was the best sci-fi show ever!” means that I don’t like the X-Files. I think my mom is the best mom ever. That doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees with me hates my mom or that I should throw a hissy fit.
• Talking about “character” is usually an appeal to your irrational prejudices and biases. “Restoring dignity” and the like are similar.
• Calling a candidate an idiot is mean-spirited and extremely unhelpful. Claims to intellectual superiority ring about as true as statements of superiority by school-yard bullies. Moreover, it’s fallacious and losing strategy. George W. Bush’s supposed intellectual deficiencies did little to keep him out of office.
• Do you make fun of soccer moms? Latte-sipping liberals? You’re being an ugly bully and you’re spewing prejudicial bullshit. Correct that.
• Are you conspiracy-minded? Have you used the term “Manchurian Candidate” to describe any politician? Realize that you are not being “open-minded” — you’re likely suffering from confirmation bias.
• Are you a single-issue voter? You’re free to do that, but you’re being lazy, and you’re likely a hypocrite.
• We don’t live in tribes anymore, at least not in American society (outside of street gangs). Recognize that our brains haven’t adjusted to this reality. That’s why we argue so viciously. That’s why we care what celebrities and politicians do/think/fart. Try to keep things in perspective.
• Your political hero from yesteryear was much more liberal/conservative than your memory admits.
• There aren’t two sides to any argument. There are many, many more.

I could go on, but I’m rambling.

I’m not saying that these things will help you win arguments, or even keep you sane. It’s precisely these things that make me want to avoid this sort of discussion at all. It puts you at a disadvantage, because almost no one follows most of these “rules”. I certainly have a hard time following them.

That said, I will get into the occasional discussion. I can’t help it. At the end of the day, I live for good arguments. I feel like I’m getting dumber if I don’t engage in these sort of discussions on occasion. But I won’t debate stupid “political” nonsense other than to call it out as exactly that: nonsense. I try to be respectful (or at least diplomatic) but I have no patience for appeals to emotion, conspiracy theories, slippery-slope arguments, etc. And that’s what dominates election-season discussions.

I recognize that plenty of family and friends don’t like to debate with me, precisely because I have a low tolerance for certain lines of discussion. I probably need to work on that.

To a larger point — do political arguments ever make people happy? Does it ever accomplish good? If so, is that enough to balance out the all the negatives that usually result?

And (to people I know personally) do you really want me to hide or block your posts to facebook/twitter because you buy into and repeat nonsense? It’s entirely possible that that doesn’t bother you. In which case, go nuts. I probably won’t block you, but no promises.

(As an aside, part of my motivation for writing this stems from something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately — the propensity for people to be mean, especially on the Internet. This is well-travelled ground, but I find myself increasingly irritated and upset when otherwise intelligent, kind people say hateful, stupid things. Do you say nasty things about hipsters, soccer moms, “guidos”? Do you say nasty things about celebrities? Have you ever called someone a “fanboy”? Do you think most people are stupid? If so, you may want to ask yourself some serious questions.)

Games that I own, have started, and still need to beat:

• Final Fantasy XIII
• Mass Effect 2
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
• The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
• Bioshock
• Oblivion
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Xenosaga II
• Okami
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
• New Super Mario Brothers
• New Super Mario Brothers Wii
• Super Mario RPG
• Paper Mario
• Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
• Monkey Island Chapter 5
• Final Fantasy I
• Final Fantasy IV (I beat it a long time ago, but not the DS version)
• Final Fantasy III
• Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines

I’m currently playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, so it’s not on this list (yet).

On the upside, I recently knocked The Secret of Monkey Island 2 off the list. And I’m very, very close to beating New Super Mario Brothers (last level of world 8).

I think I’m very close with FF 13, but it’ll take a day to get back in the swing of it. ME 2 will be easy to pick up.  I don’t think I was too far along in that.

I quit on the last mission of Grand Theft Auto IV. That stupid motorcycle mission where you go off the ramp into the boat or something. Missed it every time, and my frustration has resulted in me not cranking the game up for something like 3 years.

If I can get this list halved by the end of the year, I’ll be happy. Not going to happen, but I’ll try.

This list doesn’t include games I own but haven’t started yet, like FF 2, KH 382/2 Days, Xenosaga 3.

I think that’s a fantastic idea. I’ve thrown together some JS to do this. It’s available here. As a happy bonus, it allows for a range of sentences and it doesn’t require a page reload to highlight parts. The sentence selection, however, is terrible. So if anyone has any suggestions, please fork and put in a pull request.

My code does allow highlighting some stuff while jumping to another part, which I think is pretty neat. That is, “Read starting here, but really pay attention to this.”

(Also, Ken: No, you’re a nerd)

The last few months have been fairly trying. Two friends of mine have killed themselves since July. One was a partner in Flapping Crane, and the other was a childhood friend I haven’t talked to for a very long time. I went to Eric’s funeral. Couldn’t bring myself to go to Nick’s.

My dad sometimes tells stories about friends who killed themselves. It always seemed so alien to me before. I guess as you get older and meet more people, the chances of someone you know killing themselves goes up. Those are just the odds. That doesn’t make it easier to deal with. But it does help explain it, sort of.

There’s been some other crap that’s made life a bit stressful, but I won’t talk about it here, because I like being mysterious, like a squirrel with a cape. Why does he have that cape? Does he realize how badass it makes him look? Squirrels are nuts, yo.

I’m currently mulling wiring my house with Cat 6. Probably going to do it through air ducts, with a wiring closet in the basement. Seems like a nice way to avoid some of the more confusing pitfalls of wireless.

This Thursday, the wife and I are going to a live(ish) Riff Trax show, which should be a blast. Friday night, my dad and I are going to enter a poker tournament. I fully expect to last at least 15 minutes, though I’m possibly being overly optimistic.

It’s raining outside now. Dig that sound.

Bryann’s delivery should win him free marshmallows for a week or something.

It’s a parody of the following scene from “Intervention”. So if you haven’t seen that clip yet, you might want to watch it first.

Today’s is Toofies 3 (yes, I know it says “toofies4″ in the URL — don’t ask). This was actually the first thing we had shot in a very long time. Probably 2 years. So yes, the new skits are fairly short and sweet. We’re getting back in the swing of it.

But this one really makes me laugh. It took some serious concentration for me not to crack up while shooting it.

The outtakes are kind of funny too. I might put them up after we launch the new site. Whenever that will be.