Welcome one and all to Shouting about Technology. The purpose of this blog is to address and offer commentary on current events in Tech news and various and sundry related topics running from game reviews to why George Lucas feels he needs to hurt me.
George, you know what I'm talking about.
Why are you doing this, George? A TV show? Were the first 3 or 4 re-imaginings of your original masterpiece too few? Were Episodes 1-3 not bad enough? It seems that at this juncture, all you are doing is adding insult to unseemly injury. Admittedly, you have said that it will take place between Episodes 3 and 4, but how far can we trust the man to not just take, instead of being influenced by, Firefly and Battlestar? Remember, people, this is the very same man who gave us "medichloreans". (or however you spell that)
well, now that's done;
i haven't updated in quite a while. I generally try to keep my blog up to date, even if i let my other blogs go to seed, but it has proved a task that leaves me cold, and as such, I haven't done it. Moving away from the subject of Lucas and his insatiable desire to hurts the ones that love and on to the lighter side I just remembered my self-assigned date to pick up a macbook or macbook pro! I'm waiting till after OS X's latest revamp is released so that I don't have to buy it immediately after purchasing my lappy. It will be sweet.

In other news, I love my iMac, and have finally moved beyond the initial "everything glows white" stage and can tell you the following:

1. Macs and OS X are not going to make your various bits any bigger, so just because you own one does not make you any better\cooler than your friends and acquaintance

2. That said, OS X is a delightful operating system (OS) and while not the "final solution" it is definitely a viable and positive choice when choosing your platform. To quote a stat at you all, 1.8 million macs were sold in the last financial quarter, among those, 1.1 million of them being macbooks. Why are people buying them? Outside of the regular mac factors (sexy design, os x standard) the main reasons are being able to dual-boot Windows (whether at start-up or using Windows and OS X simultaneously via Parallels Software's excellent $80 program.) This is a huge selling point, and it has encouraged a massive shift in the computer (and most visibly) and laptop demographics.

3. Caution: burning CD's in OS X is a pain in the NECK---a quick way to relieve this pain is to download Liquid CD. I spent a couple hours trying to find a good burning program and this came out on top by far. It's free and it's excellently integrated with iTunes.
1. another thing on that subject: make sure you have your music files in .mp3 format or you will have to wade through a long and arduous process of converting your wma's to mp3 or aac. it's a big pain and easily avoided by ripping CD's to .mp3
[the music wants to be free! ;-) ]

4. iMacs are beautiful to move from place to place in the house, because of their "all-in-one" build. I get angel choirs every time i move it, b\c of the simple fact that i don't have to hump a big CRT as well as a tower and their are only TWO cords. So great.
1. downside to iMac design: only 3 USB ports ;-(


that's all for my mac round up tonight, i have a lunch date followed by a court date tomorrow, so i'm hitting the hay (to read Stephen King before bed.)



PS -Japan continues to fill American and European fanboys green with envy as their regions Virtual Console has perhaps not twice as many titles but certainly which are "older school" and desirable to many consumers in non-Japanese markets. My only thoughts are that should one want to play these games badly enough, there are emulators enough, as well as ROM's online by the dozen. NESticle is certainly onesuch and not a bad place to start.

More tomorrow---

Evan