Hidden Peanuts

I’ve come to the realization recently that there is such a thing as too much choice. It is easily possible for too many options to be available. Consumer electronics, web services & protocols, even simple reading material can all fall victim to a sort of tyranny of alternatives. Modern technology has opened a lot of doors, and I find that if I don’t shut a few then I never get anything done.

One example is Sony’s Playstation 3. Back in the earlier days of video gaming, choice really didn’t play a big role. You picked from a small circle of competitors (Nintendo, Sony, Atari, etc), bought their console, set it up, and played their games. Today it is not nearly so simple. The PS3 has had five different hardware configurations so far, each with distinct plusses and minuses. Hard drive sizes differ. The number of USB and card reader ports differ. Wi-fi access differs. Even backwards compatibility with Playstation 2 games radically differs: Some variations can play no PS2 games at all, others can play most PS2 games, and others yet can play almost all of them. To complicate matters even further, not all five configurations are still manufactured. Try explaining all this to the average consumer, someone who just wants a game machine to set up in their living room. But, at least all of these variations are functional. Microsoft has split the Xbox 360 into two very different camps - those that come with a hard drive, and those without. Sure, buying the version with no hard drive will save you about $70. But with no hard drive, you can’t save game progress. You can’t download anything from Xbox Live. Purchasing a memory card to offset this disadvantage, which is the cheapest storage option available, eats up $42 of what you saved. And the comparatively meager storage on it will run out very quickly. It’s a false choice really - the cheaper xbox is near worthless.

The issue of these choices also applies to flooded marketplaces. The rush to create web applications and protocols in the last few years has created a fractured marketplace. Users can only give attention to so many products and services; even the most worthy of new entries has a very real chance of going unnoticed in the mess. Wikipedia lists 17 separate IM protocols. A little over two years ago I tried using a new IM service, Meetro. Their main feature is the ability to see who is logged in physically near you. But nobody near me used it at all, so I quickly gave up and moved on. I wondered then, and I still wonder now: how can a new service break through the established choices and reach the critical mass of users necessary for success? As social applications grow, this question only becomes more and more relevant. The best social service in the world is useless without souls to populate it. The only solution I know of right now is effective marketing with a heavy dose of open standards, but of course that’s a very vague answer.

Meanwhile, I’ve hit complete overload on blogs and websites that I want to read. RSS feeds make pulling giant piles of content into one place possible. Unfortunately, the format does not also provide me with giant piles of time in order to read it all. Or even if I do spend what time I do have reading everything I want to, I’ve still lost serendipity. I don’t stumble across many things that I don’t even know I want to read. For me, magazines fill this gap. I really look forward to getting Wired in the mail every month. Having someone else choose what articles I’ll see for me feels oddly refreshing. Sure, I could replicate most of this experience with the magazine’s website. But I still can’t flip through the pages, quickly seeing what catches my eye.

These choices are harder to make than ever before, and I expect it to only get more complicated as we move forward. Recommendations from trusted peers becomes more and more relevant, even necessary. With so much raw information out there to process, we have to distribute it among social circles and be able to rely on what conclusion gets spit back out. That, or sacrifice needless and countless hours.

So, here’s my recommendations:

• Buy the 60gb PS3, if you can track one down. It’s not made anymore, but has the best mix of features. You can replace the hard drive with a larger one off the shelf if that becomes an issue later.
• Buy the Xbox 360 Elite. It’s the most expensive model, but has a much larger hard drive. Microsoft only allows proprietary hard drives, and upgrading to a larger one later is absurdly expensive.
• Subscribe to a few print magazines. I current get Wired, Newsweek, and Smart Money.

I really don’t feel entirely comfortable proclaiming a single movie as the best of 2007, because I really just didn’t see very many.

That said, here’s my (revised) favorites of what I did see:

• 300
• Stardust
• I Am Legend
• Hot Fuzz
• Ratatouille
• Transformers

300 is a visual feast, but I really can’t recommend it to everybody. As a rule I tend to enjoy highly stylized art, and this more than fit the bill. But I can understand if the violence puts off a lot of people. I Am Legend almost took the top spot, until the ending… it is completely different from (and inferior to) the book, and even negates the entire reason for the title. I will not say more to avoid spoilers, but really… I was extremely disappointed. Hot Fuzz, a sendup of action movies by the guys who brought us Shaun of the Dead, was the funniest movie I saw all year. But again I don’t think it’s for everybody. Ratatouille is not Pixar’s best effort, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t excellent. I had a smile on my face the whole way through. Same thing with Transformers - if you want a Big Dumb Action Movie, look no further.

In the end, Stardust tops this list. I don’t think a lot of people caught this fantasy film in theaters, but now it’s on DVD so go catch up! It’s relatively lighthearted, and reminded me of a slightly less comic version of The Princess Bride. It stays pretty faithful to the original Neil Gaiman book, and the changes it does make really enhance the film. Stardust really has something for everyone: Comedy, romance, action, adventure, and strong characterizations. Walking out of the theater, my friends and I agreed: this is a rare movie, one that we can see ourselves watching over and over again and never tiring of.

And the nominees are:

• Super Mario Galaxy
• Portal
• Halo 3
• Rock Band
• Picross
• Bioshock

A few words about each:

As with other categories, each and every one of these games is worth your time. Super Mario Galaxy is the best Wii game I have played, bar none. The level designers have done amazing, mind-bending things, and unlike many other wii games the motion-sensing controls manage to not feel tacked on. Portal is a work of art, another example of brilliant level design, but also coaxes an in-depth plot out of minimalist surroundings. Halo 3, while still fun, somehow didn’t quite live up to my expectations. While the gameplay was fun, ultimately no sequel can live up to the original Halo’s story. Rock Band is an amazing party game, and once you get over the fear of looking (or sounding) silly it provides a brilliant gaming experience. Picross was a surprise, an addicting DS puzzle game that I’ve played almost every single day since I got it, for at least a few minutes. Bioshock’s art direction and storyline are excellent, bringing vivid life to a decaying underwater city. Unfortunately the storyline falls apart a bit near the end, but up until then it is one of the most genuinely mature and deep stories I’ve seen in a game. The much-hyped moral choices that a player supposedly gets to make in the game really don’t amount to as much as I expected, but how those choices are handled is brilliant. No game has ever managed to make me think about the very nature of choice in a video game before.

So, I really wanted to give the honor to Bioshock. It truly is a work of art. And, I admit, I am a sucker for anything with such a heavy art-deco visual style. But the ultimate whimper of the plot’s resolution gave me pause. Couple that with somewhat limited replayability, and I have to regretfully pass it over. Still, I don’t want to downplay the game too much. Go play it, I doubt you’ll be disappointed with the purchase.

Now on to the winner:

Rock Band

Almost two years ago, my friend Matt and I sat in his living room, playing the first Guitar Hero game and idly speculating how awesome it would be to have a game just like it, but with drums. And a microphone. And online play. Sure, brilliant idea, but naaaaah! It’d never happen! I was glad to be proven wrong: Now I own that game, and Matt and I played it together over Thanksgiving.

The day Rock Band was released, some friends and I played it for almost seven hours straight. And we’ve had a number of sessions almost that long since then. If that can’t justify a selection as game of the year, then I’m not sure what does. All other games have been pushed aside for us, and this is pretty much all we play right now. The track list is near-perfect, and the addition of downloadable content provides near endless replay value as new songs are added. I’m not sure I can fully describe why i love the game so much, largely because so much of that justification is based on intangibles. After finishing a song next to my friends, we all feel amazing, like we just accomplished something awesome. Sure, we aren’t really playing the music. But I will never be able to play these songs on ‘real’ instruments, not without more time than I have to put into practicing. Rock Band captures what I imagine is the full feel of being in a band, and concentrates it down into something the rest of us can experience.
I’m going to cut myself off before I over-gush about this game, (what’s that? Too late?) but I think this XKCD comic sums it up quite well:

If you can get over your fear of looking a bit silly, many hours of quality entertainment await.

Here’s a recap of the full nominee list:

• World War Z, Max Brooks
• Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
• Halting State, Charles Stross
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
• I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

Each of these is worth a read. I was tempted to give the award to Harry Potter, if only for the massive societal upheaval and hoopla that the book’s release caused. I have never before stood in line to buy a book at midnight, and expect that I never will again. Pattern Recognition, while not a new release, connected with me on a fundamental level. I relate to the characters and the lifestyles they lead more than any other book I can remember reading. World War Z is pure fun, with fictional interviews of survivors of the first great zombie war. Alternately horrifying and thought provoking. The Invention of Hugo Cabret swapped back and forth between traditional text and large page blocks of gorgeous illustrations telling some segments of the story. The end result is a book that reads surprisingly fast for 544 pages, and inspired me to do some research into the history of film when I finished. I Am America made the list simply because Stephen Colbert makes me laugh so much. But, in the end one book just blew my mind:

Halting State, by Charles Stross

Set in a near future Scotland, the novel opens with a bank robbery inside an online game, and from there eventually spins into high level international intrigue and espionage. The entire book is written in the second person (”You enter the room…”, etc.), which while jarring at first is ultimately a perfect choice for a book so focused on gaming and its impact on our culture. All plot aside, Stross’ world building is extremely thought provoking. ‘Overlays’ on goggles provide constant streams of data to anybody who wants it, gaming is seamless with everyday life, pseudo-VR interfaces are ubiquitous, etc.
Halting State even manages to pull off a standard Big Dumb Action Movie cliche plot element, and make it seem semi-realistic and plausible. I won’t go into specifics for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but I was more than able to suspend my disbelief around it.

If you are at all interested in how gaming will develop in the next few years, and the effect that might have on our culture, read this book.

The nominees are:

• Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist
• Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
• Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

Keep in mind that I’m not claiming these are the absolute best albums of the year. They’re simply my favorites out of what I listened to.

The winner is:

Drumroll please…

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

This album blew me away, I really don’t know how I forgot to include it in my preliminary nominations. Year Zero is a concept album, telling the story of a near-future USA which is run by a totalitarian theocracy. The songs come from different points of view, from people on all sides. The album has something for everyone - radio friendly hit singles like Survivalism stand next to a number of quirkier pieces. Trent Reznor and the band are at the top of their games here, delivering an album that plays great from start to end. There’s not one dud on the entire thing.

On a meta-level, Nine Inch Nails did some fascinating things with their promotional campaign. The current issue of Wired has a feature about the related Alternate Reality Game here. I played along a little bit, and the associated websites (which can still be accessed) do a great job of fleshing out the album’s story. In addition, there’s a new remix album of the Year Zero (somewhat clumsily titled ‘Y34RZ3R0RMIX3D’), which includes the raw tracks for each song on a DVD, preformated for audio editing programs like Garage Band. Fans are encouraged to create their own remixes and upload them to an official website for sharing.

I feel like Year Zero is an important album. Not just for the message, but also for what it heralds about the future of interactive participatory marketing in general.

(now updated with links to the posts announcing winners)

Pretty soon it’ll be time again for me to write about things I liked this year. Books, movies, music, and games are up for grabs. In an effort to revive my somewhat flagging rate of posting lately, I’ll break each category out into its own post once I decide on the winners. I haven’t quite made those decisions yet, but here’s the nominees:

Books:

• World War Z, Max Brooks
• Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
• Halting State, Charles Stross
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
• I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert

Movies:

• 300
• Stardust
• TMNT
• Hot Fuzz
• Ratatouille
• Transformers
• Stranger Than Fiction

Music:
(I didn’t listen to a lot of whole new full albums this year, so the list is a bit limited..)

• Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist
• Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

Video Games:
(This will probably be the most hotly contested category)

• Super Mario Galaxy
• Portal
• Halo 3
• Rock Band
• Picross
• Bioshock

You might notice that not everything in these lists was originally released in 2007. I like to make lists on everything I took in over the year, not just what’s new.

Can you feel the excitement building? I know I can

I’ll be posting the winners gradually as December winds itself up. See anything I left off the lists?

(Update) Links to the posts identifying winners:

Books
Movies
Music
Video Games

I was really excited to read that the town of Chapel Hill has a public wifi project! Combined with my own wireless router and the wifi access on campus at UNC, I’ll be spending almost my entire average weekday in areas with coverage.

Naturally, I’ll need a portable wifi device to take advantage of it. I love my laptop, but it is simply too bulky to haul around town every day. I started exploring other options. This list is a little abbreviated, but after searching around online I had essentially narrowed down my choices to:

1. An iPhone
2. An iPod touch
3. The DS browser cartridge

As much as I’d love an iPhone or an iPod touch, I can’t justify that level of expense right now (even if my much loved 4G iPod did just bite the dust…). I already own a DS Lite, so the DS browser’s $35 price tag was a very compelling advantage. But I really didn’t expect much out of the deal. Almost every review I read of the browser online was extremely negative. I was nervous, but the relatively low price sucked me in. I figured at worst I could resell it on Ebay at a minor loss.

What I got is much better than I expected! I think the people who wrote negative reviews are confused about what this browser is. It is NOT a desktop replacement. Regular web sites load very slowly when images are involved. There is javascript support but no flash, audio, or video. I found that all of the major drawbacks in usability can be solved pretty well by doing three simple things:

1. Disable images in the browser’s options. Load time will speed up dramatically.
2. Use sites designed for mobile browsers whenever possible, such as Google’s wap portal.
3. Don’t expect multimedia capabilities. I knew this going in.

After these steps, only one major drawback remains for me - the fact that there is no support for cookies or saving login information. You have to type everything out (via stylus qwerty keyboard or pretty solid handwriting recognition) every time you want to log in to a site. I don’t miss multimedia options at all; that isn’t what I wanted a mobile browser for. But I’ve been happily accomplishing basic online tasks like checking my e-mail, reading a few rss feeds, looking up addresses or phone numbers, and even a bit of slightly clunky IMing via http://www.ebuddy.com/

The browser itself has two main viewing modes. The first squishes all the content into one narrow column, spanning the DS’ two screens. In the case of sites designed for mobile use, this works very well. The second option, which I prefer for sites not designed for mobile viewing, displays a zoomed out overview of the site on the bottom screen. You can then use the stylus to select a portion of the site to show zoomed in on the top screen.

I particularly want to note that the DS browser DOES work on public wifi access points that require a clickthrough page. For example: Panera Bread, Brueggers, or many airports all require you to agree to some terms of service before gaining access to the web. I’ve seen erroneous posts elsewhere online that say this does not work on the DS browser. But I’ve tested it myself with no problems. When configuring the DS for the access point, an error appears about being unable to obtain an IP. Save the connection info anyway. Try to load any url, and you’ll be directed to the clickthrough page. Ta-da!

The DS browser comes with a memory expansion required for the cartridge to work. It fits in the GBA game slot on the bottom of your DS. There are two versions of the browser available, but the only difference is the size of this expansion module. One fits the DS lite while the other fits the older, larger original DS. Make sure you buy the right one.

Is the DS a perfect mobile browser? Certainly not. It is relatively bulky for the screen size when compared to an iPhone or other similar device, and is another device to carry in addition to my phone. But… I keep coming back to that price. At this point in my life I’d much rather have an extra $364 in my pocket than a low end iPhone. Have realistic expectations going in, and you won’t be disappointed.

Now if I can just get some homebrew PDA software up and running on my DS, the device’s domination will be complete!

I feel really strange reviewing an antenna, but I’m so happy with this purchase that I feel compelled to try and do it justice.

Background: When I upgraded to a new laptop, I also picked up a USB ATSC TV Tuner (this one, which I’m also very pleased with) with the objective of using the computer as a DVR. I really wanted to use it to record HD broadcasts, something my well-aged VCR can’t handle. Not wanting to pay an extra $60 a month for an HD DVR from my cable company, this seemed like a great solution. I decided I’d experiment with the freely available over the air HD stations.

I started experimenting with a few cheap antennas, but didn’t like what I saw. Then, I discovered this beauty: The Philips PHDTV1 Indoor Antenna. I have it set on my dresser, and it picks up every HD station in the area - each major network, a local weather station, 3 PBS stations, and The Tube. The Tube in particular was a great surprise - a channel that shows music videos 24 hours a day. I leave it on in the background all the time. And all these stations are in crystal clear quality. In fact, reception is so good that now I’m thinking of cancelling my regular cable entirely - most of what I watch is on the networks anyway.

I now own two of the antennas - one for the laptop, the other for my main tv. One minor oddity - I get better reception if I balance the antenna on it’s back (so the orientation is vertical instead of the default horizontal). The PHDTV1’s price goes between $20 and $30, depending where you get it. Worth every penny. Who’d have thought that my leap into the future of TV would involve cancelling cable and setting up an antenna? My brain can’t quite comprehend yet that this apparent step backwards is a good thing.

It’s been a while since I reviewed anything, and I find myself missing it. I’m half working on an idea involving reviews, which is one reason I’ve been holding them back. But anyway, here’s my new favorite cookbook:

A Man, A Can, A Plan: 50 Great Guy Meals Even You Can Make is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Each meal is simple, with central ingredients that come from cans. A few non canned items are sometimes required, but nothing complicated - usually just a sliced tomato or a bag of shredded cheese. The book is divided into sections by the associated manly main ingredient: ham, chicken, fish, chili, beans, spaghettiOs, veggies, fruit, and beer.

Yes, there is an entire section dedicated to spaghettiOs. I’ve fallen in love with SpaghettiO Western - two cans of Os, one can of black beans. Mix in a skillet and heat until hot. (Of course, since this is a manly book, I don’t “mix” items. I am directed to “dump” the cans together) Sprinkle with cheese, and eat. If I’m feeling adventurous, I add in some corn. It’s ridiculously cheap and simple to make, tastes miles better than the Os alone, and leaves me with tons of leftovers. That’s the easy end of the spectrum. Others, like the Ham-and-’shroom Scramble that I made, feel more like actual cooking.

There’s no earth-shattering culinary tips in this book, but it gave me a ton of great ideas for easy bachelor meals that I wouldn’t have hit on otherwise. If I have one complaint, it’s that a number of the 50 recipes are more side dishes or desserts than a full meal. But there’s still a pretty good assortment. Each one is better than another frozen pizza any day.

After almost four years with my last computer (A Dell Inspiron 5100 which held up remarkably well) I finally upgraded! I decided not to mess with success, and bought another Dell laptop - an E1505 this time.

Vista has taken some getting used to. The constant pestering about mundane security issues is really grating on me, for example. But overall I’m quite happy with my purchase. And while it’s probably a minor thing to focus on, I love that having Media Center built into Windows (combined with a USB tv tuner) lets me use the laptop as an HD DVR and stream the recorded shows to my TV via the Xbox 360. I’d been considering buying a Tivo or something similar lately, but really balked at paying yet another monthly subscription fee. Problem solved!

But my absolute favorite thing about this laptop compared to the old one? My computer’s fan no longer sounds like an airplane is buzzing my apartment every time I bring up a youtube video.