I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.
Congrats, homes — I’m sure that’s a big relief.
Archive: March, 2010
Ricky Martin finally comes out.
Do you trust Old Media with your content?
The Apple Blog just posted an interesting article about Wall Street Journal‘s (WSJ) upcoming iPad subscription cost:
via Wall Street Journal to Charge $17.99 a Month for iPad Subscriptions.
Just when you thought the iPad might be able to breathe some life back into the failing print industry, the industry itself seems dead set on making sure that doesn’t happen.
Well said. There’s no WAY that I would pay that much for their content.
Let’s pretend for a minute that this wasn’t WSJ and was instead some great video game or Mac site, making this argument meaningful to me (no offense, WSJ). For a site to ask me to pay for their so-called premium content (that IS their argument here, isn’t it?), I’d have to consider their exclusive content so much better than what’s already freely available on the internet, that I’d be willing to pay for it.
Is that even possible? In today’s information age, can I fathom wanting to pay for text? I already pay for media (music and video games), but I consume so much free, readily-available text in the form of interesting web articles (<3 Instapaper) that I already can’t keep up with everything that I find interesting.
Let me restate that another way:
There’s more quality free content available to me than I have time to consume.
Without even considering the cost of said premium content, I’ve already got to commit myself to prioritizing it above the free content since I don’t want to waste my money. Regardless of just how good this premium content may be, the internet also provides a wealth of great reading. The TRUE draw of a premium subscription is the promise of no longer needing to sift through hundreds of RSS feeds to filter out the delicious bits of reading, but the drawback of a premium subscription is it’s homogeneous nature. The very benefit they offer is their weakness:
Filtered, editorialized access to the same information that’s already available to me on the internet.
Think about that for a minute.
Are you willing to pay $215.88 every year for that privilege? Do you trust WSJ’s editorial process enough to not filter out dissenting views?
iPhone Foosball
This looks pretty fantastic. The devs create a puff of air from the iPhone’s speaker to propel a tiny styrofoam ball so that you can play foosball w/ a competitor :D
Virtual Boy Returns! (?)
Nintendo let out a press release today teasing their next portable gaming system, the Nintendo 3DS (probably a working title). It’s apparently going to feature 3D gaming w/o the use of glasses.
Things I’m happy about:
- Backwards compatibility with DS and DSi. ‘Nuff said.
- I’m slightly interested in the DS online store, but don’t want to buy a DSi. They haven’t specifically stated that it’s going to be able to access the DSi store, but I’m confident it’ll be there.
- No glasses required for the 3D effects
Things I’m not excited about
- 3D gaming. I’ve been playing Chrono Trigger (both on DS and SNES9X), and the 2D atmosphere is quite fun. I love the innocent feeling of this generation of games, and even though I love my 360 (I’m nearly done w/ Assassin’s Creed 2 — AMAZING game), I don’t feel like I need a new gaming feature. There’s going to be an inevitable growth period in 3D gaming where developers try out new & different techniques, many of which are going to be ridiculous and will add no real fun to their game. Imagine the 3D effects in the Friday the 13th movies where an axe is tossed into the audience — that’s what I’m talking about.
- It’s coming out in Japan in March 2011-ish, but there’s no mention of a US release date
- Nintendo’s history with 3D gaming. Anyone remember the Virtual Boy? Oh, you don’t? I knew you didn’t.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Blu-ray
The bluray pack is available for pre-order, but without the Extended Edition content, I’m just not interested. :(
via HDD Cool Stuff: ‘The Lord of the Rings Trilogy’ Blu-ray Steelbook Exclusively at Best Buy.
SNES 360
Ok, so by now you know that I’ve been playing some SNES games on the Macbook Mini. It’s definitely been fun, but the qwerty control method was just way too goofy for me. I needed a control pad — it was driving me nuts!
I’ve had a few in the past, but they were always cheap-ish affairs that… well, sucked. I then pondered whether or not it was possible to plug my wireless Xbox 360 controller into the Macbook Mini (mbm) for some light gaming, but it turns out that the wire that comes w/ that controller is for power only, and transmits no data whatsoever :(
After *very little* research, I discovered that there are indeed two options for using the 360′s controller on a Mac.
- Get the wireless receiver ($35)
- Get a true wired controller ($27) and use the free Tattiebogle driver
As it turns out, John lent me one, I installed the driver and it worked immediately! The only thing I had to do was open the Snes9X Controller Configuration section and then match up the SNES controls to the buttons on the controller and I was done!
Games work SO MUCH BETTER! It’s truly amazing. If you’ve got the gear and the curiousity, I highly recommend giving it a try :)
Murlock iPhone Holder
Murlock Phone Holder
Check out my iPhone holder :) This cute murlock was a gift from my woman. He makes a great phone holder. Also pictured: my Macbook Mini.
Super NES on my Macbook Mini
Snes9x is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator that lets you play Super NES games on your computer (Mac & PC). The emulator itself is legal, and if you own an original cartridge of the SNES game, then it’s apparently ok to have a copy of the program in a file on your computer, known as a ROM.
Snes9X has been around for ages, & I’ve toyed around w/ it for a grand total of about 15 minutes in the past. As entertaining as it was, there were always newer/different games to be had. My recent aquisition of the Macbook Mini (mbm) led me to reconsider Snes9X since the netbook isn’t powerful enough to play any modern games.
The first thing I realized was that the 10″ screen on netbooks is pretty well suited to playing 16bit SNES games. When I last tried SNES games on my other monitors, today’s monstrous resolutions make the blocky graphics start to look really ridiculous. They’re still as charming and innocent as you remember them, but it’s just not fair. After I smiled and laughed and tried out a few titles (Yoshi’s Island!), I immediately settled back into some Chrono Trigger. I’ve finished probably 30 hours of it on the DS, but my DS is currently on loan performing Animal Crossing duty for my woman, so I decided to start fresh.
After playing about an hour or so of Chrono Trigger, I realized I was hooked. The experience of playing SNES on the mbm is really satisfying! It’s a little tough playing twitch-based games on a qwerty keyboard, but the graphics, sound and emulation are perfect. Next up… a controller.
Breda
MacDork
Hols