If video games were realistic

I especially liked these Pacman and Zelda graphics from If Video Games Were Realistic. Most of the 27 entries are good, though - click through for yourself.

The iphone sucks

I'm still waiting for the world to release a cellphone that isn't missing any features. I spent some time using the iphone this month, and it's completely great - but it will continue to frustrate me, as long as it has all of these issues:

∙ Proprietary plug only for data (please can we have standard USB)
∙ Proprietary plug only for power (please can we have standard USB)
∙ Not USB disk (flash drive)
∙ Proprietary software for music interface (just let me drag/drop my mp3s ok?)
∙ One-way-only image transfer

∙ Horrible keyboard. Why not use rotating screen for big wide keyboard?
∙ Missing native apps: googletalk, latitude. The browser hacks don't cut it.

Next I'd like to try out an Android phone. I really like keyboards with actual physical buttons.

What I'm Reading Now: Odd Hours

I'm reading Odd Hours by Dean Koontz now, only because it was the best option at Walgreens when compared to Stephen King, many romance novels, and a biography of former "Face The Nation" frontman Tim Russert.

I'm trying to remember a Koontz book I've read with no psychic characters, and I'm failing.

Overqualified

I'm going to order this book "Overqualified" by Joey Comeau. It's just too funny.

Every page is a cover letter to a different company. I'd like to think Joey actually sent these out, but I doubt it. Some of them would be the DHS on his tail. Consider this letter, to Aliant Telecom:

I have tried to kill myself three times in as many days. I spent six hours on the internet this morning, having shallow conversations with a dozen of my friends. They kept asking "how do you feel?" and posting the little hug icon from MSN. ...

We have to stop it. We have to clean your server rooms with fire. We have to tear out its backbone.

I know that the internet lives somewhere in the tunnels underneath the Aliant Telecom offices in Halifax. There have to be tunnels, there's no other explanation.

Please. Hire me. Give me the access codes to our salvation. If I am in the computers as an employee, it won't see me come, gasoline can in hand.

Buy the book link: http://www.amazon.com/Overqualified-Joey-Comeau/dp/1550228587

Read it for free link: http://www.asofterworld.com/oqarchive.php

The new house is almost done

The new house is almost built, and it's interesting to see how it's starting to compare to the original artist's rendition.

They've just barely taken down the scaffold, and still need to finish trim/roof/landscape, though.

Pre-launch product hype is a mistake

I don't understand why marketers try to create product hype before launch dates. By advertising, posting reviews, and posting youtube videos of products before their release date, they just ensure I never buy.

Why? I have a life, and that life does not involve managing consumer product release dates.

I have responsibilities at work, and I manage them with Outlook, attask.com,and subversion. I have responsibilities at home that I manage with Excel, google docs, IMs, and a whiteboard on my fridge. I'm busy. I don't want another tool to manage future books, movies, music, and games.

...so when I hear an author on NPR discuss his new book, I check amazon.com to buy it. If it's not released yet, then we're done: he missed a sale. This happens a lot. Why don't they release products before they try to talk us into buying them? Do Sears salesman spend 20 minutes talking you into buying an appliance, then refuse to sell it to you? No, because that would be stupid.

I just saw a vid of gyromancer and it looks great*. I have my wallet out. ...but I can't buy it, because it's set to release "Q4 2009". They should have held the video until then. It's old news by the time it hits the shelves, which means fewer sales.

*all I ask is that they release it in English on PC.