Finally uploaded some pictures from Christmas.

My apartment, and the holidays.

When I first moved to the US, I noticed that there were a lot of places to get money. The streets are lined with pawn shops, bail bond offices, and payday loan advancers.

One particular national chain giving out payday loans is called MoneyTree. Their mascot is a caterpillar, which I found quite ironic.

You see, as we all know, caterpillars are butterfly or moth larvae that live on trees, and they eat leaves for a living. But when you have a money tree, the leaves are money, so to have a caterpillar mascot for a corporation called MoneyTree is like saying they'll eat your money.

Just saying.

Does anyone have any stats on how well the MS media centers are selling?

I find it really odd that they'd spend millions and millions of dollars advertising for XP (even getting Madonna's song), and next to nothing for this, when really this is the one that needs the advertising money.

Are they expecting the OEM's to do the advertising?

Maybe their effort to save a billion dollars has cut into their marketing budget.

From the OC tonight,

Lindsay: so I a9.com'd him last night.

Are we paying the OC to name drop? Is google losing the advertising war? Can this be the ESPN TSN turning point?

Personally, I would have dropped the .com, and just went with "so I a9'd him last night". It's so much smoother. I'll bet you this has to do with the press going around about yellowpages.

Amazon.com has launched a Yellow Pages Beta. I've been playing with it for about 5 minutes, but the cool thing is that not only does it show you a mapquest map of the location, they also have pictures of the whole street, so you can actually see what the building looks like. Add customer reviews to that, and you'd give yellowpages.com and citysearch a run for their money.

There's been a lot of debate on whether the Mac mini would make a good media center PC, and whether it would be cost effective to do it. So I did some research on a build-it-yourself PC, and a Mac mini with external components. This is purely a hardware price comparison, with no comment on the software usability.

Shuttle PC
Shuttle SK83G Barebones ($199.00)
AMD Athalon 64 2800+ CPU ($114.00)
NEC double layer DVD+-RW ($66.50)
Hitachi 250 GB SATA hard drive ($131.69)
Crucial 512 MB DDR PC-3200 RAM ($70.94)
AVerMedia UltraTV 1500 MCE ($73.00)
Zonet 802.11g USB adapter ($24.50)
Bluetooth Dongle ($20.00)
Windows Media Center 2005 ($131.95)
Media Center Remote ($29.00)

Total: $860.58 + tax + shipping

Mac mini

There's no direct link, but the Mac mini with 512 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, Superdrive (i.e. DVD writer), Bluetooth, and airport extreme comes out to be $903.00. Add to that an EyeTV 200 from Elgato Systems for $329, plus an external digital audio out, plus an external 200 GB hard drive, and now you're looking at over $1400.

Draw whatever conclusions you want. Granted that putting all the components together yourself may take a lot of work and tech know-how, but also know that while there are a lot of $2000-$3000 MS media center PCs out there, there are also ones that sell for under $1000.

Update: So I cheated a little bit in my calculations. Since I'm suggesting an external drive for the Mac mini anyways, there's no need to go with the 80 GB hard drive option, and since the USB bluetooth and wireless are cheaper than Apple's option, there's no need to use theirs. But you will still need at least 512 MB of RAM (since installing your own will most likely void the warranty), and a super drive. This combination, with the slower G4 processor (which you may or may not want to upgrade) would save you about $175, bringing the total to still over $1200. Keep in mind that now you will have two external devices (the hard drive, and the EyeTV) which you'll need to hide.

It seems that Southern Ontario had quite a cold spell a couple of days ago. It's been so warm here, that I may forgo my jacket tomorrow. It's 8 degrees Celcius right now (early morning), with a high of 14 (58 F) this afternoon, and it'll be between 12-14 all this week. So much for a skiing season.

I sprained my ankle yesterday playing soccer. I played through the game (since it happened in the first 5 minutes, and I didn't want to sit out the whole game). But now it's really hurting (and swollen). I even brought a stool to work so I can rest my foot on it.

Normally, I wouldn't complain when it's 13 degrees Celcius (that's 55 degrees for the Americans) in the middle of January, but this is really bringing a number on the snow conditions around Seattle.

Every ski hill within a 100 mile radius of Seattle will have temperatures above 0 this weekend, and will be raining. Most places only have a snow base of ~20". I haven't even been out since the trip to Whistler at the end of Nov. We need a good cold spell with a big snow dump.

Global warming sucks.

Many competitors of Apple in the digital music player arena (like iRiver and Creative) are using a scroll pad instead of the wheel (apparently there's a patent of something), as shown below.

I've only used it at a display counter at Fry's, so I can't really comment on its ease of use, but there is one distinct advantage that this gives to a (multi)media player that no one has taken advantage of yet.

See, the problem with the scroll wheel is that it's a wheel, and as such, takes up a lot of real estate on the surface. This seriously limits the screen size on an iPod, since you can't make the screen bigger without either making the device bigger (which is bad), or changing the wheel (either by making it smaller or getting rid of it altogether, both of which is bad).

With a scroll "strip", however, you can make the screen horizontal, and the scroll area to one side of the screen. If you look at the iRiver H10's above, you can see just how much valuable surface real estate they're wasting. This could all go to a larger screen, with an "easy-to-use" interface. A larger screens allows for a much better experience with photos or video, or anything else (with the exception of battery life, but that's another story).

One immediate problem when you put any control surface on one side is the fact that people who are the opposite handedness (for the sake of conversation, I'm going to assume that it's initially configured for a right-handed person) cannot use the device easily. But there is a simple solution to this as well. Since the screen is landscape with a touch-strip to one side, simply have a setting to allow left-handed people to rotate the device 180 degrees, and now the strip is on the left hand side.

I'd love to see this in a player.

Nat and I joined an indoor soccer team via craigslist. They're aparently a coast guard team that needed more players because a lot of them are away on duty.

Somehow, they signed up for the B league, even though they've only played C league before. Since we just wanted to play, we went along.

B league people are really good. i.e. a lot better than us. Needless to say, we got our asses kicked. The score counter stopped counting at 9, and that was at half time. I played keeper after half, since I was too exhausted to run (did I mention that the other team was really good, and we only had 1 sub, and they were running circles around us?). I think the final score was something like 20 : 0.

It was still fun though. Gives us a chance to go out there, run around, and sometimes kick the ball.

You can buy it on amazon.com.

Some features:

• Carries cargo or a crew of up to five internally or on the roof.
  
• Piloted from within the armored shell or from an exposed standing position through the hatch.
  
• 6hp Tecumseh gasoline engine, top speed 40 mph.
  
• Includes head/tail and turn signal lights, trim and underbody lighting.
  
• 400 watt premium sound with PA system, plush interior, and external camera.

Although I must say the 6hp engine seems a bit ... small ... for a tank.

Unfortunately, this does not qualify for free shipping.

Some other unexpected amazon.com items: GOAT (a $10,000 book), Beluga caviar (on sale for $11,664.00), the Complete Seville California King Bedroom Set ($12,293.99), Black Tahitian pearl and diamond earring ($72,000.00), Sapphire and diamond necklace ($177,769.00),

Keeping an eye on CES through engadget was a joy. It almost makes me want to be a tech journalist, except I don't have any journalism training, and probably can't write.

The two media players from Olympus are definitely something to watch out for. They're sleek, design-wise, and if Olympus can improve the UI (and possibly upgrade the crappy camera), it can be a contender.

And this is why there should be one standard format.

Today Apple announced the new iPod shuffle. It's a 512 MB / 1 GB digital audio player that has a USB 2.0 interface, no screen, and goes for $99/$149 USD. This is actually a good price point for such a player (not overpriced like the iPods). But the downside is the lack of a screen. If you're like me, you probably don't know the names of most of the songs you listen to (especially if you're listening to music an album at a time), and it'd be nice to know what's playing. This would have been a way better player if Apple could have managed to put an OLED screen on there (even if it's just 1 line).

Apple also announced the Mac mini, a screenless Mac going for $499-$599 USD. Again, not much can be said about the design, it's nice, simple and small with a slot loading dvd drive. I have an inkling that this will be the future platform for Apple's own media center, but if I'm right, it's missing a few key features. For example: no tv-in (co-ax, component, s-video, or dvi), no audio-in, and no digital audio out. Unless Apple starts making external USB/Firewire modules with those features, it won't make a very good media center. Expecially if I can get a full featured (refurb'd) one (although ugly) for the same price that includes a wireless keyboard, mouse and remote.

Missing from the Apple announcements are upgrades to the iPod mini and new laptops. Looks like they were more focused on the Mac mini instead, although a G5 powerbook would be nice. Maybe next time.

The OC Calendar, now on my wishlist.

Someone has filed suit against Apple saying that Apple is breaking anti-competition laws by refusing to let other audio players play songs purchased from iTMS (iTunes Music Store).

Before we dig deeper into what's said, let me just note that there are a lot of idiots on the forums (like slashdot) who talk out of their asses, and cannot make a coherent logical statement if their life depended on it, instead relying on analogies that are not analogous at all.

The question of course, is whether there's a case at all. In my opinion, the market is still too premature in order to determine whether or not there's a true monopoly. But it is also important to point out that a monopoly at an early stage could easily extend into a true monopoly.

Here are some facts, the iTMS has 70% of the online (legal) music download market share (source here and here - slightly out of date, but still valid I believe, since iTMS recently broke the 200 million songs barrier); they sell songs in the AAC format (which is a standard format), but it's protected by the FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, which is a way of encrypting the media files, and only allowing certain software and computers to play it.

Now, Apple is not licensing FairPlay to other companies. This includes companies (like iRiver and Creative) which may make digital audio players that compete with the iPod. Now, this all makes business and strategic sense, since Apple sells DRM'd music on iTMS, and Apple makes the iPod, and they want to sell as many iPods as possible, so why would they welcome competitors by licensing their DRM technology? (in fact, some have said that the music sales on iTMS is actually a loss leader for the iPod, so they really don't want other competitors to diminish their iPod market share)

The problem is, since iTMS has 70% market share (or maybe even more now), the fact that Apple refuses to license FairPlay may be anti-competitive (this is up for the courts to decide). This would be like (uh oh, analogy time) if Sony Music suddenly owned > 70% of the music distribution market, and only sold CDs that played in Sony branded CD players. Some might say that this is a little anti-competitive.

So don't let those idiots out there fool you with the nonsense. Apple refusing to license FairPlay is the real issue. This has nothing to do with the iPod, or iTunes for that matter.

If memory serves me correctly, this is probably the first time that I've gotten food poisoning, and it wasn't a good experience.

It actually started before I went to bed on Sunday night. Some slight discomfort that I thought I could just sleep off. Then I woke up in the middle of the night, and knew there was a problem.

The constant pain and frequent trips to the bathroom made me stay at home, the fever made my head hurt, and the loss of liquids made my muscles sore.

I'm a lot better now, but still not 100%.