I said no to Modern Warfare 2

For the last few years, I have enjoyed playing games online with a community that I found at Austin Servers. First with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and then Call of Duty: World at War. Until recently, we had been looking forward to what, from all preview footage, looked to be a very promising next installment - Modern Warfare 2. It's a big game for 2009 and has garnered unprecedented advertising - I've even seen Wal-Mart commercials advertising that they would have the game on sale at 12:01am for today's launch.

But, I, like many others, are saying no to this game. In the last few months, disturbing stories came out about crippling of features that PC gamers have expected as standard for more than a decade. You can read elsewhere for details if you're really interested in the minutia of it all.

In essence, the company that makes the game series has given up on the PC gamers that made their series popular. They are pretty much focused on the console market - the Xbox360 and Playstation 3. Only a token effort has been made at producing a PC version of the game and it has been stripped of everything that has historically made PC games better than console ones. Activision/Inifinity Ward doesn't want us anymore. That is certainly their right. They can make whatever games they like for whatever market they wish. But, I'm simply not going to waste my money on a half assed and insulting effort that they have put forth. It would have been better, quite frankly, if they had just declared from the beginning that they would not be making a PC version of this latest game.

And the winner is.....

After much reading of reviews, comparing of price plans, features, and coverage, the winner is the Palm Pre! Saturday morning, we braved the small crowd that gathered at the local Sprint store in Pearland and Jen and I each scored ourselves a Pre...and something else that I'll mention later.

So, the tech geeks are asking "Why didn't you wait to see what Apple is going to annouce for a new iPhone on Monday???" Well, I'll tell you. First, a lot has already leaked about what Apple will be delivering for the third round of the iPhone and it just doesn't sound like too much of a leap over the current one. Sure, there will likely be a 32GB version that could probably serve as my main music device and it's going to have a compass...which will be cool if it can geotag photos with heading you are facing when taking a picture. Still, I've always been leary of the phone/mp3 player combo. My trusty 60GB iPod has outlasted several phones and there's really no need to replace it on that basis. Plus, I'm comfortable taking my Ipod out pretty much anywhere, knowing that, at this point, it would be pretty cheap to replace if I dropped it off a cliff or ran over it with a lawn mower. Not so much with a phone. Sure, they are fairly cheap with a two year contract subsidy. But, not so cheap to replace.

Also, AT&T just doesn't compare to Sprint for my family. We've got a family share data plan that gets us unlimited messages and data, along with 1500 minutes a month to share (and free time starts and 7pm and weekends, so that's a lot of time that minutes won't even get used!). We're now a three phone family - yes, the Princess has beaten us into getting her first phone (Jen and I were late in college before we got our first brick of a cell phone!), so that's three lines. It's going to be several hundred dollars a year less than AT&T and even more so than Verizon. So, the iPhone would have to be a whole lot better for the deal to make sense. Really, it's the two years of service that are the bulk of the cost, so you can't just focus on the hardware alone.

Which gets me to the hardware. Reviews are available everywhere and I read just about every single one of them since they started hitting on Thursday. All sounded good, save for two areas of concern - the keyboard has drawn a lot of criticism, and the battery life has been dissed. When we went to put our hands on it, these were my main things to check. While there's no doubt the keyboard is small, it is effective. It's taken me a little getting used to, but my speed is picking up nicely. As for the battery, if I can get through a full day and charge each night, that's something I can live with. I pulled it off the charger early this morning and have been using it fairly heavily today (as much as I would expect on a heavy day) and now near 10pm I've just hit the 20% warning. I don't expect to use the WiFi radio very often and I will pretty well just use the Bluetooth radio when I'm in the car, so that will help me battery life as well.

So, with the major concerns aside, the rest, as I've said elsewhere, is about 95% pure awesomeness. The screen is simply fantastic - sharp, clear, gorgeous color. Palm spent a lot of time on the ergonomics and it shows - it feels good in the hand and, unlike so many "smart phones" it is pretty easily workable one handed. The connection with my Google mail and calendar, at least with the flow from Google to the phone, is pure joy. Today, I when through my photo album, finding good head shots of friends and family to crop out and attach to my contact entries in Gmail. As I check the phone less than an hour later, all of my contacts have been updated with their new photo ID's. I can see all the Google calendars (one each for myself, Jen, the Princess, and the Tornado) color coded on my screen to keep up with our way too busy lives. The included applications work well and the multitasking is simple and effective. I can't imagine having to shut down an application to use another. It's like using a real computer. I've generally found it to be quite responsive.

As a phone, it is a big step up from what I had been putting up with. I know that you can assign a calling shortcut to each key on the keypad. I had originally planned to take advantage of the letters for some logical mappings (H for home, J for Jen, etc.) But, I've not bothered so far. Why? Universal search - slip open the keypad and start typing. The Pre automatically starts filtering contacts and within three letters I've pretty well got my intended contact narrowed down. While, I'm sure just pressing a holding a mapped button might be faster, I just don't see it being worth the effort to memorize letter keys. On previous phones, even with 99 speed dials available, I never used more than three as I couldn't remember what any of the others were. No more with that on the Pre. Between contacts, the calendar, pictures, the internet - the Pre makes it easy to locate information.

What's not too like? Well, nothing is perfect. I do have to agree with the observations that this thing is a magnet for fingerprints, both on the screen and the body. However, I've also found that slipping it into the simple pouch that comes with it does an excellent job and cleaning the prints off. I've gotten into the habit of carrying it around in the pouch. Probably the biggest complain I have is with volume. Even maxed out, the ringer volume is not very high. The speakerphone volume is also pretty low and the earpiece volume is fairly low as well. I would expect to have trouble using this in a noisy environment.

Finally, while I can understand it, it's still a little disappointing that ther aren't more 3rd party apps available yet. I know that Palm is releasing a developer kit to the general community soon, and I expect (especially with the way AT&T and Verizon are scared of Sprint's exclusivity and salivating over getting it for their networks) that there will be a good market of apps. There's only a few that I'm really interested in, most especially Ewallet.

Well, that's the view after a day and a half. I've read on the PreCentral forums of people giving up on is, which I just find mind boggling. It's true, WebOS is different from the old PalmOS and different from iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. It does things differently and for the most part, better in my opinion. But, it does take a bit of getting used to. Finally in 2009 I am seeing some change I CAN believe in, and it is the Pre and the future of WebOS.

Which will it be?

It is an interesting time in the mobile phone business. One thing I'm sure of, within a month, I will be done with Verizon. We've been with them for pushing eight years now and it's time to move on. I've put up with dull phones and expensive plans in return for the promise of the most reliable network. Well, I've had enough. For one thing, Verizon's network has gone into the crapper. I don't know why. Reception has always been marginal at my house, but these past few years, I have run into dead zone after dead zone, especially around Pearland. So, why pay a premium for a network that no longer is interesting in delivering?
What comes next? That is where things get tough. We're clear of our latest two year contract and I was pretty much expecting to go with AT&T and Iphones for the wife and I (and the daughter is also supposed to get a phone, God help me). I expected a third generation version to come out this Summer and that looks like it is going to happen. So, that is good.
But.....Sprint looks like they are trying to get very serious with the forthcoming Palm Pre. It escapes into the wild on June 6th and everything I've seen so far suggests that it is going to be a very good smartphone. It's probably going to be cheaper to own over the two years than an Iphone. But, while the Iphone has pretty well established itself as the 800lb gorilla of mobile phone and had plenty of support among application developers, Palm is essentially starting from scratch with an all new operating system and will probably take a while, if ever to get a good base of applications.
Plus, I had been planning on the Iphones replacing our current Ipods. For better or worse, we're married to Itunes and I don't expect the Pre to be an exceptional music platform. Still, our 60GB Ipods have been trucking along for many years and don't really need to be replaced.
For now, I will try to be patient (well, I have to for now since neither one is out yet). My only real deadline is the end of July. We're going to Vegas and I do want to have our new phones, in part so I can use them to post about our trip and also so I can have internet access without having to be gouged for $15 bucks a day, which seems to be the average cost for internet access at Vegas hotels.
Patience.....patience.....grrrr.

Nerdgasm - GPS

Yes, Yes...it's been a while. I keep telling you I'm not really a blogger. I also keep saying I'll try to do better. So, I won't repeat myself again :)

Today, I'm having, as my friend calls it, a Nerdgasm. And I'm going to share it with you. I enjoy photography and I'm also a bit of a gadget nut. Over the last few years, I've taken to Geotagging many of the pictures that I take, especially if there from a place that we don't regularly visit. I had been using the built in ability of my Adobe Photoshop Elements organizer to tag photos, and it works well enough.

But, we're going on our first real vacation since the kids have been born and I plan to take lots of pictures in different places. I'll probably come home with a few hundred, and geotagging them manually would be a tedious and imprecise process at best.

I briefly considered laying down the coin for a replacement camera, a Nikon D300 that I've been lusting after a bit anyway. For this camera, I could have laid out some more coin for a GPS attachment that would write the location data to my pictures on the fly. But, I balked at the about $2000 that such a setup would take.

So, I did some more exploring and have found a way that breathes new life into several of my gadgets. The first is my old hand held GPS, a Magellan Meridian that I bought used several years ago when I was into Geocaching. It's been sitting dormat in my room for a couple of years. But, it will be coming with me on the trip, serving as a GPS logger, to record my progress at several places we visit. I've even put to use an otherwise worthless 16MB SD card. It's far too small to be useful for pictures, but it could store track data of me around the world several times. The last gadget is my trusty Nikon D70 that has continued to serve me well as my main camera.

To make it all work, I've picked up two free pieces of software. The first, GPSBabel, takes many of the different ways that different GPS units store track data and converts it into forms that work with other programs. The second wonder toy is GeoSetter - and this thing is truly magical. I made a test run today as I drove to work. I had the Magellan record my track as I drove to work and I took random pictures along the way out the car. Before I left, I made sure that the clock in my camera was set to match the time from the GPS satellites.

After that, I pulled the card of pictures out of the camera, and the SD card out of the GPS and put the files to my computer. GPSBabel took the Magellan format and converted it into a neutral form that GeoSetter could read. Then, I opened the images in GeoSetter and used it's sync function to read the track data and, based on the time stamps in the track, apply GPS Coordinates to all the sample pictures that I took. I had some problems at first, but once I figured out the configuration - WHAM! All those pictures were tagged and tagged quite accurately.

This is huge! We're going to San Diego, and will see the Zoo and the 1800 acre wild life park. On my own, I would have taken all the pictures and given them a common location, likely at the entrance to the Zoo or Wildlife Park, respectively. Now, with this, I can hang the GPS off my back pack and let it follow me around all day and then tag exactly where in the 1800 acres of wildlife park a particular picture was taken!!!!!

Now, if all that has left you giddy, then you've just had a nerdgasm, too. If, not, well, I suppose that's OK, too. Of course, saving $2000 is pretty exciting, as well.

Back from DragonCon

2007 09 01 006_edited-1, originally uploaded by ultimate_ed.

Well, I survived DragonCon! The weekend was a blast, though totally draining. I got to meet up with many of the friends I've made online, especially the gang from Farpoint Media like Jack Mangan, Leann Mabry, and the Wingin It crew.
I got to meet and hang out with authors whose work I've enjoyed like Tee Morris, Scott Sigler, JC Hutchins, Michael A. Stackpole, and Matthew Wayne Selznick.
Plenty of Celebrities were on hand as well. Of course, getting this picture with the Mythbusters build team was massively cool. Their panel was a lot of fun and we got a first showing of an all new blooper reel from the those. I got to see panels featuring cast members from the new Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and Farscape.
And, oh the costumes. I've shot about 250 pictures from the weekend and I need to sort through them and get more uploaded to Flickr. It's amazing some of the work that gets put into them.
I doubt I'll be back next year and it is a pretty good size expense all in all, but I do expect I'll make the trip again sometime in the years to come. If you're any kind of geek at all, you've got to make this trip at least once. But, for the love of God, make sure you pre-register! The lines to get through the daily ticket purchase were insane!

Mid week update

It is a week of changes. The princess started first grade on Monday and is loving it. She really likes her new teacher and has several friends from last year in her new class. We had soccer Monday, but got rained out today. The weather has been hit and miss this week. Still, I show 1.5" of rain in the gauge so far this week. So, I've turned the sprinkler system off, yet again. No complaints about that one.
Yesterday was my sister-in-law's birthday so the wife and mother-in-law took her out to dinner while I watched all the kids. Which proved not too difficult. The tornado loves the boys, though I don't think either he or they really appreciate how much of a size difference there is between them. Fortunately, the boy it tough, so he came through OK.
Workouts are going well. I'm not seeing any kind of loss yet, but I can definitely tell the workouts are more effective that what I was doing before.
Early on Friday morning, I fly to Atlanta to meet a number of friends I've made online over the last few years. We're coming from all over the country to attend DragonCon. I've never been to it before (actually hadn't even heard of it until last year). I expect to have a very full weekend. I'm taking the old laptop to the hotel, so, if I'm not completely worn out each day, I'll trying to get somethings posted while I'm there.

Transformers!

I must confess, for the last year, I've not been too hopeful about this movie. The original toys and cartoon were an important part of my childhood and the early stuff (and the previews for that matter) made it look like a nightmare.
But, over the weekend, I heard a lot of good buzz about it from a number of sources that I trust. So, today, the wife and I went to check it out. It certainly wasn't perfect and there are some parts of it that you are better off just not thinking about. However, overall, it was an excellent experience and definitely a recommend. I would rate it as one of the best Summer movies of this season.

Find your Photos

Alright, this one is cool enough that I have to add my own comment to the blogosphere. Flickr, the online photo service that I and most of the free world use to share pictures, has added a cool new feature. As noted on the Flickr Blog, you can now use Yahoo maps (Yahoo bought Flickr several months ago) to tag your photos with location data and display them on a map. I've tagged a few of the pictures I took on our vacation in July and you can see my map here:

My Flickr Map

Other applications have made this possible in much more roundabout methods, but this integrated solution that combines Yahoo's Mapping capabilities directly with Flickr is a big step. Some are complaining that Google Maps are better, which is true. But, Yahoo is never, ever, going to use the mapping API from their arch rival and this move is also going to drive Yahoo to improve their Mapping side as well.

What's also cool is that, if your pictures already have the location info in them (and there are ways to do this) you can have Flickr automatically read that and add it to your map directly.

I've been hearing about this and I'm pretty excited that it's finally here.

Now, a word of caution - be careful what pictures you tag and what locations you tag. So far, I'm only tagging pictures taken away from the house. I know where my house is and what pictures I've taken there, the world doesn't need to see that on a map.

So, start tagging those pictures and start remembering where you took them.

Crash & Burn

Well, quite unexpectedly, I find myself in the process of buying a new computer. Sunday morning, I come in to find my desktop hard drive had hosed itself again. Mind you, this was the drive that I put in brand new back in January after the previous hard drive had hosed itself several times over the course of a week.
Back then, I was able to use a program to recover most of my data and pick up again with the new drive. This time, I was not so lucky. I've been doing a better job of backing up, but I've still lost the last couple of months of email and my Itunes database is lost along with my ripped CD's. So, I'll be starting from scratch with Itunes when the new machine comes in.
And speaking of the new machine - I guess I'm getting old. I've just about always built my computers from parts that I've selected, including this last one that has failed me miserably after three years, the shortest by far. All my older machines continue to serve in some capacity, such as providing one for my daughter. I'm pretty certain that it was not the drives that were bad. Two failing the exact same way in six months from different brands is to much of a wild chance. So, being about 99% sure there wasn't a virus involved either time, I have to conclude that either the memory, processor, or motherboard has developed problems. Since a new hard drive didn't "fix" it, I'm chucking them all and getting a new machine....a preconfigured machine.
It took me a while to stop convulsing at even considering buying an assembled machine, but I finally got over it and put in an order for a new HP that should arrive in a couple of weeks. I picked my components well and got a good deal. It won't be the ultimate gaming rig (although, I can upgrade the video card later if I want). Truth be told, I just don't have the time for gaming on my PC like I did before the kids. Imagine that. These days, the computer is mostly for surfing, photo editing, and video editing. This new machine will do all that better than the dead one.
The other bonus is that I got no interest and no payments for a year from HP and I'll be getting miles for Continental. Now, I just have to make do with this old laptop we have until the new machine makes it in.

Playing with Photoshop

Alright, I know I have niether the time nor talent to ever make a living with photography or photo editing, but I do enjoy making use of what skills I do have. I did some playing around with a picture of the wife's car to try and freshen it up a bit. The first picture is the original as I took it in factory green. The second is after playing around with the color wheel until I came across a setting she liked. It's actually a pretty simple trick, but no less fun for being so.

Technorati

I read somewhere recently that there are somthing like 60 million blogs currently out on the web. This site is essentially the main specialized search engine for the blogosphere. You want to read blog entries about some keywords that you're searching for? Technorati is the place to go.
No, Technorati claims to be tracking over 45 millions blogs itself and it ranks them according to how many other blogs link to it. While it is still meaningless, searching for my own blog there shows it to be ranked at a little worse that 1 million out of those 45 million. Statistically speaking, not too shabby. What's really scary is that it's ranked even that high.
Of course, my friend, Shell is doing much better. Currently carrying a rank of 846,809 out of those 45 million. Come to think of it, she'll probably rank even higher now that I've linked to her again. It's all a viscious cycle.
I suppose I could work harder to be as popular a blogger, but, alas, I don't seem to be able to find nearly the time she does. Oh, well.

Finally made the DIGG.COM front page

Alright, this is geeky, but, I am a geek, so there. One of the big sites on the 'Net these days is DIGG where users submit links to stories and such on the internet for other readers to check out. Readers add a "digg" to your submittal if they like it. Based on a complicated set of secret forumulas, you item can go to the front page if it gets enough diggs. I've submitted several articles over the months, but none have ever made the home page until today. I posted a link for a site that lets you see and rate seats on airplanes to help you avoid a bad seat. I was searching for such a site so I could help the wife do the electronic check-in at Continental. I almost switched her to what looked like a better seat at first, but the website indicated that it was much worse (a window seat, but without the window!!!). Apparently, the diggers found this useful, as it has 664 diggs at this point and rising. You can check the DIGG link here to see how it's doing.

Am I going to Hell?

 
Alternative Title: And Then There Were Three

I'm addicted to my iPOD. With my Podcast subscriptions and the thousands of songs I already have, I almost never listen to the radio anymore. While I work, while I drive, while I exercise and even at home, I've either got the earbuds on or the iPOD connected to a stereo. My wife is largely the same with her iPOD.
Naturally, our daugther has picked up on this. I have a playlist full of her songs and I'll often queue it up for her when we're out driving. Lately, she had been asking to listen directly with the earbuds. So, I decided to give her one of her own. Yes, she's still five, although I doubt she's the youngest person with their own iPOD.
She should pick up the interface pretty quickly as she will be able to learn the words of the menus. But, I am going to have to get some more conventional headphones for her - the standard Apple earbuds are just too big to stay in a five year old sized ear.
As you can see from the picture, it is a Nano. I got her the 1GB version, but I've only filled it about 1/4 full so far as I need to pick out some more tracks for her and rip some other CD's. She was quite excited to get her own and I expect it won't be long before she's tuning us out, listening to her tunes while reading a book.
So, is it a mortal sin to give a child this cool of a toy? 

New Toys

Alright, time for an update. In the last few weeks, the wife and I have each gotten a new toy. For me, a new fifth generation 60GB White iPod. For about the last year, I've been interested in one, but I kept holding off to see what the next generation would bring. Also, my music collection was a mess, so I've been cleaning it up, particularly the ID3 tags. When the 5G came out last month, I knew I'd waited long enough. I went for the 60GB as I want to have plenty of room to grow and I want this to last me a long time. I don't really expect to have much use for the video part of it, but it's nice to have.

As for the wife, she got a sweet computer upgrade - a monster laptop from HP, the ZD8000 Desktop Replacement. She now again takes the crown as having the most powerful computer in the house. She had another laptop, but it hardly went anywhere, mostly to hotel rooms so that we could access the internet while on trips. So, knowing her habits, we sacrifed weight and battery life for raw power - and this thing just oozes power. Now, she can get her Civilization 4 fix, and I get to use my own computer again. All is well.