3.2.10

I've been gone. So long.

I haven't used this place in ages. Most of this is because I'm a lazy fuck who can't be bothered to invest the time, part of it is because most of my time nowadays is spent drinking myself to death, but the most important psychological block is that I have a tumblr, which in my mind replaced this place.

Those of you with brains obviously realize that tumblr and a propr blogr (anyone else think this "r"-suffix thing really needs to die?) are different things there for different purposes, so I think I'll revive this (or replace it with something else, I just need an actual blog to tell the none of you who are reading to belch forth all the bile the world is provoking in me), so check back. I've got a lot of things that piss me off that I wish to talk about in an overly verbose fashion.

Special Preview: The iPad is stupid and if you buy one you're either stupid or iBrainwashed.

28.6.08

New place

I've got a new home on the web! Since I never get off my ass to actually post here, I thought I'd go over to a venue that emphasizes shorter posts, thus allowing me to keep my nerd status up by putting my verbal diarrhoea somewhere without actually putting any effort into it. Life is sweet. Except for the part where it sucks.

14.2.08

I'm going away from here.

I'll be leaving for Argentina on Saturday. The awesomeness of the trip will be reflected (however dimly) in the pictures I will bring back on the memory chips of my Pentax picture box, equipped as it is with a brand new lightbending attachment made of pure unicorn bones.
Also, Warren Ellis' webcomic will launch soon:


14.9.07

My ideal phone may be tantalizingly close

The phone I use right now is my favourite phone I ever used. It's a Benq S68, and it's awesome because it's just a phone. My philosophy with tech is that I'd rather have something that does one thing well than something that tries to do a whole lot of thing and fails at one or more of them. For example, I always thought including an incredibly crappy camera in phones was stupid: The camera sucks, and the phone is bigger and more expensive as a result.
Of course I'd love to have a phone that can do more than the average phone, but I've never seen one that is still a good phone as a result, but now we're getting tantalizingly close:
Wil Wheaton mentioned in his SG column how much he liked his new Helio Ocean, and I have to admit, that thing is already well on the way to being something I'd want to use. But, here's what my absolute ideal phone would be:
It would obviously still have to perform very well at its primary function, but I don't think we need to talk about this. The other features just shouldn't sap so much battery life from it that I need to recharge it every night, because that shit is tedious, yo.
It should be reasonably compact. Most "smartphones" I've seen are big enough that I'd have to buy a murse to lug it around (they don't even fit in my Urban Tool holster.
It needs reasonable internet access with email integration (gmail would be great, pop3 would be fine) since I'm fucking tired of not being able to look up stuff on the go.
It needs a qwertz keyboard. This didn't used to be a major issue, because I never used SMS anyway, but I've been fiddling with twitter and other tumbleblogs recently, and I just hate hate hate having to write entries with ten measly buttons. I feel the Ocean has an awesome solution to this; that dual-slider thing is dead sexy.
IM integration. I never even considered this until I saw the Ocean does it, but IM integration would fucking rock. I'd just love having my contacts at my fingertips all the time. Only problem with the Ocean? It doesn't do fucking Jabber. Seriously, how can you miss Jabber? They do Windows Live IM - or whatever the fuck it's called - AIM and something else, I think. Not only is Jabber open and well-documented, so it can't be that hard to implement, it's also used by Google Talk, so they could have added another recognized brandname to their list. Well, hopefully they'll add that.
But the seriously mostest sexiest thing about the ocean is GPS with Google Maps integration. It's so brilliant I peed a little. Want. So. Much. I'm not buying another phone without this.
So basically, if Helio built the ocean without a camera (they can leave it in, but meh), Jabber capabilties and, you know made it available where I live, I'd be so all over that. Of course, I'd also have to get myself a cellphone plan with unlimited data transfer, because right now that stuff is fucking extortion in Germany.

10.8.07

Iraq is an utter clusterfuck.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell:
Our success in Iraq depends on our ability to treat the civilian population with humanity and dignity, even as we remain ready to immediately defend ourselves or Iraqi civilians when a threat is detected.

And as this article from The Nation shows, that ability doesn't exist. Neat, huh?