Stop being Sarah Palin's enablers

I just saw this blog post about Sarah Palin's Scrabble strategy and felt I had to take a minute to write an open letter about it...

To all of the Rachel Maddow-idolizing crazies who are obsessed with Sarah Palin: just stop and take a second to think about what you're doing. You're like the enabler for meth heads.

First of all, you give the "other side" a reason to embrace her further. The more you hate on her in public forums, the more she gets people on her side. You make her the victim.

Second of all, it gives the media a reason to put her on the air. What makes better "news" than someone people love? Someone people hate! We've heard more about Sarah Palin in the last month than we have Barack Obama.

Third, there is no better destination for any politician than irrelevancy. The only way to start the ball rolling is putting out the ignore buffer. Sarah Palin was able to turn the health care debate into a raging inferno with the phrase "death panel." If only we all had started the ignore buffer earlier, this probably would have fallen on deaf ears. [Note: I am against socialized medicine, and even I would prefer not to ever hear her opinion on it nor have it sway anyone to my opinion]

There you go. And this is the last time I ever mention her name, assuming she never will win any kind of public office worth mentioning on this blog.

Should I give up on PC gaming?

For those of you who haven't been following the hub-bub over Modern Warfare 2 on the PC, basically they gimped the crap out of it. The PC title is now restricted to 18 people, and dedicated servers run by Infinity Ward.

I've been playing CoD 4: Modern Warfare for about 2 years on a "hardcore" server that supports 50 people. The server is local, so it has a very fast ping time for me. It's crazy and awesome. Most people probably wouldn't want to play that, but I do, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the real-life aspect of PC multiplayer. Is someone cheating or 'sploiting? Do we all care enough to ban the guy? Or do we just have fun with the everything-goes realm? This is all gone with MW2.

PC gamers will vote down on Amazon any game that looks at them wrong. Spore remains a 1 star game to this day because of its DRM solution. Modern Warfare 2 is therefore a 1.5 star game on Amazon. In this case, I would agree that this game deserves the low rating. It's not a game that appeals to a gamer into multiplayer shooters on the PC. Infinity Ward spent so little time on the port they didn't even bother to localize an error that reports you're having a problem connecting to "Xbox Live" (remember: this is the PC version).

So I just have to wonder, is this a losing battle? Am I, as an aficionado of PC multiplayer shooters, just on my way out? The PC gaming market is pretty targeted towards MMOs at this point anyway, which I have very little interest in. Should I just buy MW2 for PS3 and call it a day?

2010: Year of Linux on the desktop^H^H^H^H palmtop?

5-6 years ago, who knew that Linux wouldn't break through on the desktop, but would on the "palmtop"? But it appears that's what's going to happen.

Android is, at its core, Linux. Every day, we're hearing about more devices coming out with it. There's the Motorola DROID, of course, which is getting a lot of hype. But there are handsets from HTC, Sony Ericsson and more from Motorola on the way. There's also the Nook, the new eBook device from Barnes and Noble, which uses Android. There's a gaming device with android, and there are netbooks supposedly coming with Android.

All of this Android stuff coming out has me wondering, will Linux begin a road to domination in the palmtop space in 2010? Gartner stats: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1126812

The iPhone sold ~5m in Q209. Symbian (really, SYMBIAN?!!) dominated with 20m units. Blackberry had around 7m units. WinMo had around 3.5m. Android had only about 800k units in this sample. It seems like all of these combinations of Android, as well as what seems to be mobile carrier dedication towards making Android work for them, should start to make some serious inroads on these numbers. We shall see.

Joy Division is Genius

I think this is my obligatory, once a year post that Joy Division is amazing.

If you haven't ever listened to their stuff, you should.

A co-worker told me he had watched 24 Hour Party People last weekend and it made me think to put their stuff on tonight.

Desperately Seeking Android

Word is out on Engadget today of impending Verizon Android devices.

I'm so there.

A number of reasons, which I will now list in exact priority order.

• AT&T sucks ASS. Now this is not due to a lack of trying to improve on their part. I admire and acknowledge the fact that they have recently increased coverage in Noe Valley, Diamond Heights and Glen Park. My iPhone now works in Safeway (sometimes), which is a vast improvement. However, present improvements cannot overcome other misdeeds. For example, the hours and hours of wait time when I rarely have to call customer service, or the dropped calls in my house with full signal, or constantly drop on 101 while dirving? I am completely convinced that AT&T employs subpar network engineers. How is it that I can get 5 bars in my house and consistently drop calls? The Verizon network is far better.
  
  
• The iPhone is the buggiest phone I've ever had and I believe Google has far better engineers than Apple. If Android has even 25% less bugs, that will be a huge improvement. On the iPhone, apps crash constantly and there are new glitches all the time. iPhone 3.0 introduced possibly the most annoying bug of all time, which is that the iPhone now constantly asks for my wi-fi password at home. Today had a nice glitch where I couldn't get rid of the keyboard from the screen. Just poor programming all around. I have not yet heard of that range of problems with Android.
  
  
• Google integration > Apple integration. My MobileMess subscription is running out in 4 days and I, of course, do not plan to renew. One of the problems with the iPhone is that I can only have Exchange connected to one server plus MobileMess. I'm hoping that Android will let me connect to one Exchange server as well as Google Apps, which is where all of my real data is anyway.
  
  
• Real background apps, please. Kthxbye.
  
  
• I would much prefer a smartphone that I have a prayer of programming. I refuse to buy a Mac just to program my iPhone, and besides, I can't upload my own apps to it anyway. No thanks. I'll take the open option that I can hack the crap out of--legally--if I so choose.
  
  
• No more iTunes!

So anyway, these are some of the reasons I'll be camping out to get my Motorola Sholes or HTC Android device on Verizon as soon as they arrive.

This video brought back some great memories

Around 1999, maybe 2000, one of my employers bought a Flame system with no full time operator to go along with it. I tried to bring in a few people but couldn't get the execs to agree that we needed someone.

So during a conversation about a long-standing dispute over my title (I had been doing "CG Supervisor" work for a couple years and wanted it as my official title), I told my boss that I was going to instead be the full time Flame artist and she could find me in the Flame suite from now on. Then I ended up being that full-time Flame artist for the next two years or so.

Those were some good times. There really isn't a social experience that I can recall in my career that is as fun and rewarding as working with cool clients over your shoulder. The Flame/Quantel/etc mentality is relatively outdated at this point -- the GPU in your computer at home can do what was once a $1m piece of SGI hardware and large, complicated composites are much better done in something like Nuke -- but Flame still has such a great workflow and interface for on-line sessions. It's nice to see it again.

Lyrics I Wish I Understood: "Serrated Edge" by The Dead Milkmen

Up on the hilltop where the vultures perch,
That's where I'm gonna build my church,
Ain't gonna be no priest, ain't gonna be no boss;
Just Charles Nelson Reilly nailed to a cross.

I don't piss, I don't shit, I'm gettin' no relief,
People shake their heads in disbelief.
GO!

Just me on a hilltop with 15 girls,
In a Nelson Reilly orgy that'll make your hair curl.
I don't piss, I don't shit, I'm gettin' no relief,
People shake their heads in disbelief.

Yeah, Charles Nelson Reilly, he's our man,
He can't heal the sick with the touch of his hand,
He can't walk on water, can't make wine flow;
Just another greedy actor on the late late show!

I don't piss, I don't shit, I'm gettin' no relief,
People shake their heads in disbelief.
GO!

Just me on a hilltop with 15 girls,
In a Nelson Reilly orgy that'll make your hair curl.
I don't piss, I don't shit, I'm gettin' no relief,
People shake their heads in disbelief

[Ed: any thoughts on what the hell this means are welcome in the comments]