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« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »
By the way, I don't recommend playing EverQuest 2. It's a bad, bad game, and there are much better MMOGs out there.
But for those of you who don't think I'm being fair, here is a list of the reasons why I originally thought the PSP would be awesome (followed by the reality of the situation).
I think when you add it all up, the PSP is a gigantic incoming flop.
Space.com: NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars
I always get excited every time some mentions life (or the possibility of life) on Mars. Even if it is only microbial life, it still raises the possibility that life is not unique to the Earth, and I think proof of life will be one of those events that will change the way that we think about the universe.
And yet at the same time, I don't think the human race is ready for this piece of knowledge. It is good that our technology prohibits us from being able to reach out across the cosmos and exploit Mars' resources, because if we could, we would. Within a couple hundred years, we might have the technology to be able to colonize and land on Mars. With the possibility of life present, Mars is not going to be something that you want to change or terraform -- if Martian life exists, it should be given a chance to live and to thrive and develop. Just as we attempt to preserve endangered species here on Earth, we should preserve life on Mars. The problem with our efforts on Earth, is that we've done a poor job. If it's not warm-blooded, cute and furry, we haven't done well preserving them. With Martian life being microbial, i very much doubt that people are going to have the warm fuzzies when it comes to protecting to microscopic organisms (given that Earthlings have always associated microscopic organisms with diseases).
You don't need to go to the East Bay for good Chicago style pizza anymore. When I first came to the Bay Area, I was introduced to Zachary's as the place to go for Chicago Style pizza. These last couple years living on the peninsula, I've tried other pizza places like Pizza Chicago and Windy City Pizza to fulfill my need for a deep dish pizza, neither of them really compare to Zachary's thick crust and tomato ladden goodness. I recently discoverd Patxi's Chicago Pizza hidden on Emerson Street in downtown Palo Alto. The interior of Patxi's is higher class than most pizza establishments (and several notches above Zachary's), and reminds me more of a fancy sports bar than a pizza place.
As for the pizza? The pizza is as good as Zachary's without the need to drive into Berkeley. And, unlike Zachary's, Patxi's does take credit cards.
Patxi's Chicago Pizza
441 Emerson Street, Palo Alto, California 94301
(650) 473-9999
Nikkei Business reported that, to date, 0.6 percent of the 800,000 shipped units have been returned to Sony for repair. Kutaragi was unapologetic about the issue: "This is the design that we came up with. There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which users and game software developers will have to adapt to. I didn't want the PSP's LCD screen to become any smaller than this, nor did I want its machine body to become any larger.(Gamespot)"The button's location is [architectured] on purpose," Kutaragi added. "It's according to specifications. This is something that we've created, and this is our specification. There was a clear purpose to it, and it wasn't a mistake."
Offering additional testimony praising the handheld, Kutaragi said, "I believe we made the most beautiful thing in the world. Nobody would criticize a renowned architect's blueprint that the position of a gate is wrong. It's the same as that."
No one would criticize the position of a gate, but someone might question a gate that due to it's position be difficult to use reliably. If the PSP was a building, and the square button was a gate, you would have:
I wrote some haiku as a ode to this well-designed feature:
pressed the square button
slow, repeating or nothing
digital roulette
Kutaragi says
"No apology, it's by design"
In mail back to Sony
square, square, why so slow?
x, circle, square, why no show?
beauty over function.
Every now and then, I want a bowl of steaming hot ramen noodles, particularly on cold, gray and rainy days. When that craving hits me, I head over to Castro Street in Mountain View for Maru Ichi's Kuro Ramen. I wasn't too impressed the first time I went there when it had just opened, thinking that Ryowa (just down the street) had better broth, but I gave them a second chance, and they did not disappoint. I think one of the changes they've made since the opening is in the fresh hand-pulled noodles.
Also, they have Ramen bentos -- so you have your ramen with a side of gyoza (potstickers) and/or california rolls.
Service is on the light side, and the last couple of times I've been there the restaurant has been packed with a line out the door (but at least you can watch the cooks make the fresh noodles)
Maru Ichi
368 Castro St. (between California St. and Dana St.)
Mon-Thu 11:30am-2:30pm & 5pm-10pm, Fri 11:30am-2:30pm & 5pm-10:30pm
Sat 11:30am-10:30pm, Sun 11:30am-9pm
Probably one of my favorite Dim Sum places, it is located in Cupertino Village tucked behind a Ranch 99. They have a good variety of the standard fare of dim sum, and they constantly change their menu based on the season. There is a heavy use of seafood in their selections.
The dim sum service here is pretty good, meaning that the servers actually come by your table and stop, and are happy to show you what they have. Though their english descriptions can be vague ("seafood dumpling" springs to mind), there's only two carts westerners need to worry about: the one hawking the delicacies (chicken feet and other assorted animal parts) and the one carrying beef tripe.
Seating on Sundays can be nightmarish if you don't call ahead.
10911 North Wolfe Road, Cupertino, CA 95014
TEL: (408) 255-6988
Monday-Friday: 11:00AM-2:30PM / 5:30Pm-9:03PM Sat.-Sun. / Holiday: 10:00AM-2:30PM / 5:30PM-10:00PM
http://www.222.to/joyluckplace/
I thought it might be handy if I started jotting down some of my notes about some of the places that I've eaten in. This comes particularly in handy when one has a craving to fulfill.
Here's the link:
http://www.hunangarden.citysearch.com
May I never have to google for Hunan Garden again.
Wired: Hide Your iPod, Here comes Bill
Microsoft is afraid of Apple's success in the iPod for good reason: halo effect. In terms of Apple, it means that people looking at the iPod and being satisfied with it might influence their purchasing decisions regarding other Apple products.
More commentary on iPod and Microsoft in the extended
Apple has always done really well in the area of user interfaces. The iPod is an excellent example of this. Although the iPod is a "computer accessory", most people view it as a "personal appliance". The interaction with the computer is so transparent that we often forget that we need a computer to even use the iPod. For the most part, the iPod is self-sustained, but it relies on a connection to the computer in order to load the library. Even this process, through Apple's iTunes becomes almost invisible to the user. Plug in the iPod, load up iTunes, and the iPod begins to synchronize immediately with your music library.
For a Windows machine, this means loading up and installing iTunes, for a Mac it's even easier, as iTunes is already installed and ready to go. iTunes is ridiculously easy to use to bring music into.
On top of all that, is the major accessorization that comes with the iPod. Once you buy an iPod, you want other things -- a car adapter to listen in the car, an armband to use it when you go to the gym, a speaker dock to listen at your desk and the list goes on an on. And these are just iPod specific accessories I'm talking about -- people will buy other accessories which can be used on other devices like headphones. When big names like JBL, Harmon Kardon and Bose make iPod specific accessories, it's a sign that even the big boys have noticed. As much as Creative Labs or Dell like to toot their own horn about their music players, I don't see people lining up outside to purchase them, nor do I see car manufacturers wanting to put adapters in cars for them. They may have a superior product in terms of technical details -- but without the support from the masses, much like Beta tapes, they too will be technological dead-ends.
Now, going back to the "halo effect". I've already written about how usable the iPod is. Why does Microsoft fear it so much? I believe a lot of it has to do with business philosophy. Microsoft figured early on that the two places that people use computers is at home and at work and they've structured their business accordingly. Microsoft was a little slow on figuring out the Internet, and on gaming (for years all they had was Microsoft Flight Simulator), and as soon as PDAs seemed to be the next big thing, they invested in that too. WebTV got repackaged as Windows Home Media Center and so on and so forth. They leveraged their company brand to create copycat products which eventually outmarketed the original.
The problem Microsoft has with the iPod is that the iPod is a copycat product. All the rough edges have been smoothed out by Apple in their design process, and the iPod has managed to outmarket their competitors. The iPod and Steve Jobs has become as entrenched into the public conciousness as Bill Gates and Windows. Just as companies tried to dethrone Windows (failing miserably), dethroning the iPod will require more than just hardware and marketing muscle. The iPod has already hit the part in a product cycle where getting people to change from an iPod to an alternative product is unlikely because they have already made the investment into the iPod, iTunes and iPod accessories.
The life I live at present is a comfortable life. I don't worry too much about the roof over my head or whether I'll have enough to eat. For the next thirty years, I could probably continue what I've been doing for the last eight years and make a decent living at it, but I think I'd feel very empty about it. The old biblical quote "For what does a man profit, if he should gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?" rings clearly in my mind. What I do now wasn't supposed to be a career. There's a part of me that says if they want to pay me for dealing with computer problems, I'm more than happy to take their money, but at the same time, I get the feeling that in doing work, I am selling what is a precious commodity -- time -- for what seems like too low a price.
I decided to go to ART 1 at SJSU yesterday evening. ART 1 is kind of the class that I wish I had taken my first semester at Cal. Part orientation for new students, part reality check in relation to how hard one must work to succeed in the program as well as in the real-world applications of a degree in art. One theme seemed to echo in last night's lecture: Hard work and persistence are the keys to becoming successful, not just in the program, but in life.
Would it be a mistake to hit the restart-button? To essentially wipe out 12 years of education and experience in a field and start over completely? There's an opportunity cost associated with it as well -- 4 more years of school, and I will be further behind than if I just stayed the course, which of course means working even longer to catch up where I would have been. Of course, I can think of many times where staying the course is the foolish thing to do.
