A real life George Bailey: a man volunteers to get laid off so his friend can keep his job. Get some kleenex before you watch this one.
A side note: I cannot imagine how awkward that guy must feel having that paraded in front of a national audience. But I, for one, appreciate it and extend my thanks to Ralph for helping to renew my faith in humanity, just a little bit.
I got an iPod for Christmas. An iPod Nano, 4th gen, to be specific. This is my first iPod, and also my first Apple product. You see, I hate Apple. I hate Steve Jobs and his black turtlenecks and that whole cult of personality going on over there. I hate Quicktime and iTunes and the monopolies they try to create on your system if you install them. I hate the iMac, the iBook, the iEverything, and that whole cutesy, trendy, overpriced iStyle they’ve managed to foist on the hipster crowd. I hate OSX – not really for any good reason, mainly just because it’s an Apple product and its fanboys are annoying. And I hate that guy that plays the Mac in the Mac/PC commercials – John Hodgeman is so much cooler. So yeah, you could say I hate Apple. Or at least I did. Let me explain.
I’m not a complete neanderthal when it comes to portable music – I’d had a Creative Zen Touch which served me well enough for a couple of years, but the battery had died for good and so I’d been without a player for a while. Even when I was using it, the size and weight of the thing made it uncomfortable to carry casually, and the interface was a bit clunky. It sounded fine and did just what it was supposed to do – play mp3s – but it was about as convenient as an old walkman CD player as far as size. So I just didn’t use it all that much.
This iPod is very different. If you, like me, have managed to steer clear of the iCraze til now, I feel it important to emphasize how incredibly small the Nano is. It’s slightly less long, and about two-thirds as wide as my cellphone (a Samsung u540, for comparison) is when closed, while being about one-fifth as thick. It’s as thin as the door badge I have to get into work, and weighs about the same. The build quality is phenomenal – the metal casing feels solid, and the glass covering the surprisingly-large screen is also very sturdy-feeling.
Another thing about the screen – its about the same size as my cell phone’s – is that it is remarkably clear. At 320×240 we’re not talking about anything earth-shattering here, but it’s much more than I had expected or become used to. That, combined with the incredibly smooth Apple software (cover flow is awesome!) provides a really pleasurable experience. It’s actually fun to use the Nano. Hold it in your hand and see the album art and song playing, and adjust the volume with the click wheel. Tilt it on its side and it shifts to cover flow view, so you can browse your collection easily. I’m really impressed with the software on the device, and this is the one area I’ve always conceeded Apple excels at. They simply have a better interface than anyone else out there when it comes to the iPod line of products.
But that brings me to the point of the software on your computer. No way in hell was I going to install that resource-sucking abomination called iTunes onto my computer, so I needed to figure out a way to easily manage my collection and syncing duties via a third party. Enter Songbird. I’d just started playing around with this on my laptop recently, so it was already installed, and came by default with the iPod plugin. Syncing my music to my iPod was completely painless using Songbird’s interface, and for that I give them many props. My only complaint is that the Songbird plugin does not yet support album art uploading to the iPod, but the Songbird staff has said that they hope to be able to support this feature soon (though they have been saying that for at least six months…), and the loss of album art is just a minor annoyance to me at this point. I don’t really look at the album art on the Nano except if I was using Cover Flow, which I can navigate just as easily by name as by picture. That said, if anyone knows a way to easily upload the album art without using iTunes or messing up Songbird, I’d love to hear it.
So this Apple-hating PC user has finally caved and got an Apple product, and he loves it. In fact, he’s using it right now. I’m listening to Dark Passion Play by Nightwish, and it’s fantastic. This the first gadget I’ve had this much fun with in quite some time. Now don’t expect me to go buy an iBook now and spend all my time in the local Starbucks wearing a stylish black turtleneck, but I’ll certainly be more receptive to Apple’s offerings in the future.
So, posting has been nonexistant rather than light the last couple weeks. Sorry for that. Work has been keeping me busy, and I’ve been doing a bit more to get caught up around here – not to mention the holidays busyness. In addition to that, politics has just been depressing lately, as have local sports, so I haven’t felt much like writing on said topics, which left me without obvious source material. That said, I’m back to give a quick update on what’s going on in the world of me.
The Cardinals have lost 4 of their last 5 games and now look like a team that doesn’t deserve to be in the playoffs. I’m hoping they come back and prove me wrong tomorrow against Seattle, but I’m not holding my breath. If we don’t shape up, it will be a quick first round exit for the boys in red. The Suns lost on Christmas day to the Spurs on a heartbreaking buzzer beater three, and the Celtics have now lost two in a row to break their 19 game winning streak. So color me annoyed.
I also got Mass Effect for Christmas from my brother, but am reluctant to install it due to the draconian DRM scheme put in place by EA. I am not sure whether to look for a crack of some sort, or just install it into a virtual environment, but I’ll certainly update with results of whatever I decide to do there. I also got an iPod (yeah, I know) which will be the subject of its own post later.
I finally saw The Dark Knight – and while I don’t feel it quite lived up to the earth-shattering hype that it was given by my friends and the online reviews, it was a masterful movie. Ledger truly did give a brilliant performance, in that I didn’t even recognize him as the actor in nearly any scene. I felt that Aaron Eckhart’s portrayal of Harvey Dent was also genius, perhaps on par with Ledger’s Joker in the method of portrayal, although obviously not given quite as much screen time or opportunity in the script. But I really felt that Eckhart was Dent, and being so convinced is the mark of great acting. With that in mind I think the character and portrayal of Batman by Christian Bale was outshone by the masterful acting of Ledger, Eckhart and the ever-brilliant Gary Oldman (as James Gordon). The movie was less dark than was expected as well, which made it easier for me to recommend to my parents and more squeamish friends. While it’s certainly deserving of the PG-13 rating, the violence was done in such a way that it was mostly kept off screen, and is thus easier to take. It’s a movie I can absolutely recommend, and strongly suggest viewing twice – it was much better the second time, for me.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash. The man was a genius. I’ve also been actually enjoying some Christmas music this year, which I normally don’t. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Christmas was a small, informal event in which my family got together, watched basketball, talked about life and God and the meaning of Christmas, and ate delicious foods. Exactly as it should be.
Here’s hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas. Now go drink some egg nog or something.