nothing2fancy

Happy Inauguration Day

Stay cool, America.

Apple Needs a Nikon

Daring Fireball gets it right yet again.

The point being that much of what gets chalked up as devotion to/obsession with Apple is, in fact, devotion to/obsession with great design, and there’s an utter dearth of rival PC or handheld gadget makers that value design as Apple does.

I think the Palm Pré and Windows 7 both look great^*. I don’t hate Microsoft, I hate poorly designed shit… and Microsoft makes a lot of poorly designed shit.

FYI, Stephen Fry’s post is worth reading, too.

Moving your iTunes library to a new location

I realize this shit is posted in 1000 different places on the internets, but I wrote up some crap for friends anyway, figured I might as well post it anyway.

First, plug your old hard-drive and your new hard drive in at the same time. In iTunes open your settings, go to advanced, change the iTunes music location to the new hard drive.

Go to File -> Library -> Consolidate Library to move all your shit to the new hard-drive.

Everything will be preserved exactly as it was before.

Microsoft freakin’ sucks balls

Here’s the thing. I needed to upgrade to a gold account to use Netflix via my Xbox. When I try and use it, the XBox tells me to go to xbox.com/netflix to upgrade. Took me 15 fucking minutes of searching and clicking to figure out how to pay Microsoft extra money (I had a certificate, so I didn’t actually pay any extra money).

Then the xbox told me that I had to go to Netflix to sign up and said visit netflix.com/activate to set my shit up. I go there and there is a huge fucking box right in the middle of the window where I enter my code. Easy as pie, took 2 seconds.

Why is Microsoft so fucking dumb?

On a side note: Netflix HD looks freakin great. PLUS, when you add a new movie to your queue the xbox automagically updates and focuses on the new shit you just added. I have a sneaking suspicion that Netflix coded this user interface, it’s pretty slick.

It’s nice to see Microsoft listening to it’s customers

—–Original Message—–

From: Jim Kubicek [mailto:jkubicek@gmail.com]

Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 10:31 AM

To: Steve Ballmer

Subject: Why doesn’t Microsoft make their own computers?

Morning Steve, I really enjoyed your SXSW chat with Guy. Something I’ve been wondering about for a while now is why Microsoft doesn’t build and sell it’s own desktop/laptop systems, or at the very least somehow restrict PC makers from requiring tons of crapware in order to use their product.

This point recently hit home when I tried to reformat my IBM Thinkpad.

The entire reformat process was hours and hours of installing IBM programs to install IBM drivers and IBM wireless access software and on and on and on. I’ve been told by friends that the Sony Viao process is even more tedious and ill-designed.

I realize that this hassle is completely IBM’s fault (or Sony’s fault), but it negatively colors the entire Windows experience. I buy a MacBook, turn it on and it just works. I buy an XBox, turn it on and it just works. I buy a Thinkpad and it comes stuffed with 500 MB of poorly designed software that just replicates features that are already built into Windows.

Thanks!

Jim

To quote Ballmer from AppleInsider

Among the changes he proposed were a shift in relations with Microsoft hardware vendors designed to mimic the experience offered by Apple’s tightly-controlled Mac platform. Likewise, he called for a similar approach in the mobile phone arena, vouching to create “great end-to-end experiences” akin to that of Apple’s closed ecosystem, where it maintains tight control of nearly every aspect of a product’s design.

Glad to see that Big Steve is amenable to a little advice from dissatisfied customers. Oh, and for what it’s worth, he didn’t respond personally to my email, but he did forward it to Ari Bixhorn. I looked to see who this guy is, but can’t find a reference to him. I seem to remember him being a high-up, though.

Let me tell you why we are fucked

It’s because of douchebags like Jim Wooten and his essay entitled “Our values[sic] reflected[sic] in those[sic] of Palin“

People in the small towns where she grew up, “love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” It’s not conditional love. It’s not love based on whether we behave and believe as others wish. It’s lasting and unconditional.

How many issues today are caused by a blind allegiance to the United States of America? Would we have drifted so far off our path if a significant percentage of our population was incapable of believing that their precious country to do wrong?

This same blindness leads to the mountains of praise being heaped upon Palin. There is no rational reason for someone to support Palin unless they, as so many do, believe that their party can do no wrong. McCain is always right. If McCain chose her, she MUST be the best possible candidate.

It’s not that there aren’t these sorts of folks on the left. There are hundreds of “if it’s organic is must be better!” retards out there, too. The only difference? They haven’t been running our fucking country into the ground for the last 8 years.

Caution: Don’t read that article unless you want to become enraged at the blatant stupidity contained within.

Conventions in a minute

“fight fight fight fight fight fight fight”

Here’s the Democrats and Republicans.

(via Conscientious)

How did these douchebags get their own TV shows?

Jon Stewart points out some mild hypocrisy from some cable news talking heads.

Time-Lapse video of my afternoon

Alex set up his camera on our roof deck and had it take a frame every 5 seconds all afternoon. Technical details are on his site. The only thing I’d like to add is that at one point I knock over my glass and shatter it on the deck. The period when Stephanie is all alone up on the roof (and decides to take a nap) is when Alex and I were downstairs fixing new drinks and grabbing a broom for the broken glass.

Time Lapse Roof Deck from Jim Kubicek on Vimeo.

i took a crap-ton of pictures today

Hopefully I’ll post them soon.