soon to be a noted futurist

Had to share this. A collection of Google product demos, with a sinister twist.

Yeah, I’m an excited nerd. 128 GB SSD drive available for under $500.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_core_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

I know that I could get a 250 GB laptop drive for $99, but I don’t want to worry about head crashes and motor failures anymore. Every time I hear my laptop’s HD say “squinkity-clink,” I die a little.

So the Netflix box has the first season of 30 Rock available. I powered through the season in two days and gained an even greater appreciation for the show.

Tina Fey is brilliant, even if she wasn’t the writer of every episode she gathered a group of talent that created the funniest thing of TV.

My neighbors must have thought I was crazy, with all the loud yelps and hearty extended laughs.

I was just sitting on my couch and noticed the outrageous collection of remotes and input devices I had sitting next to me:

I canceled my cable TV. Actually, I downgraded to basic cable basic. If I had canceled cable TV all together I would have lost the $14 “two services discount” on my cable internet. So keeping basic cable is only $3 more.

In the place of my expanded digital service + HBO, I got a Netflix player box from Roku. The plan is by canceling cable and getting the Netflix box I will save $75 a month. The box will pay for itself in two months, and maybe I’ll end up watching less (crap) TV.

Let me just take a moment to talk about amazing service: I ordered the Netflix player Thursday at midnight (12:04 AM Friday, to be exact). It was on my door step by 1:00 PM Saturday! Of course I’m lucky because it shipped from Watsonville California, but wow!

Took ten minutes to setup the box, mostly me sliding around on my back trying to run more cables through my entertainment center. Then to activate the box, and link it to your Netflix account, all you have to do is enter a 5 digit code. It instantly loaded my “play it now” que, and I was watching the first episode of 30 Rock within 30 seconds.

Stuff I will miss from cable: Avatar: The Last Airbender, That Mitchell & Webb Look, Death Note, Naruto, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, Extras, Flight of the Conchords, Battlestar Galactica, The Daily Show, and The Venture Brothers.

Good news is that most of that stuff is either available streamed off various websites, on DVD from Netflix, or as a download via Amazon Unbox (which I can send to my Tivo). Sure I’ll generally be a season behind, but who gives a damn. As long as no one tells me that they find Earth and it’s populated by the cast of Lost, I’ll survive.

I’ve had my iPhone about a year now, and as an anniversary present the vibrate setting suddenly died. It happened so precisely that I almost thought it was a software bug. I thought maybe they had some “one year after activation” easter egg that had gone horribly wrong.

Maybe this weekend I’ll take it to an Apple Store and put their legendary customer service to the test.

Recently I bought the new Portishead album, the new Radiohead album (doubleheader?), and the new Flight of the Conchords album.

Flight of the Conchords is getting the most listening time, by far. Their ability to mimic genres without doing Yankovic-style direct lifting is amazing. These songs always bring a smile to my face.

Just post something.

One of the other events that happened during my blogging hiatus: I got a PS3 for my birthday. This was right around the time that Sony was phasing out the models that had full PS2 backwards compatibility. Now all that’s available are units with partial software emulation, or the gimped 40GB model that doesn’t play PS2 games at all.

Here’s the funny part: I’ve had the PS3 for three months now and I have yet to buy a PS3 game. I borrowed Lair from work, downloaded a couple of demos, and played a crapload of PS2 games. PS2 games look fantastic and wireless gaming is the new hotness.

I’ve considered buying Heavenly Sword, but I’m waiting for a price drop. Same goes for Ratchet & Clank Future.

The interesting thing about Ratchet & Clank is that during the PS2 days first party Sony games would launch at $40, $10 less than most 3rd party games at launch. This generation they’re charging the full $60 for first party games and I’m having trouble with that. I’m sure Ratchet and Clank is a great game, but $60 is well outside my impulse buy range.

I’ll wait for the “Greatest Hits” version.

One of the most noticeable things about switching to OSX is the lack of MMOs. Of course WoW is still available, but I’m cut off from the huge assortment of Free to Play MMOs that I was having fun dabbling in.

Fortunately the Pirates of the Caribbean MMO just launched, and has a full-featured and free Mac client. From what I’ve seen the game isn’t spectacular, but you can’t beat the price. Of course they’ve got a tiered structure where you can pay $10 a month for priority access (no queuing).

Of course I could install windows on this machine, but I’m trying to resist. I don’t want to taint this pristine machine with Windows. Don’t roll your eyes. If you saw how long it takes my Windows desktop to boot up compared to this laptop you’d understand.