The Long Road

Archives: February 2006

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Joe sent me the following video detailing how a Microsoft designed iPod retail box would look like. It’s clever, funny, well-made, but ultimately untrue. While the final box shown does look very much like a generic designed-by-committee MS product, there are a few things we have to keep in mind.

First is that the iPod, and all Apple merchandise, is a lifestyle product. Aside from the quality of their stuff, you buy from Apple for the overall image that they’ve been building for the past few years. Everything they design is thought out from colour, shape, and feel to convey a hipster image. Microsoft, on the other hand, is not about a lifestyle choice. Some smartass would argue that it’s a choice to lead a lifestyle of bugs and security leaks, yeah well that’s not what I’m talking about.

Secondly, the iPod and Windows-style retail box serve very different functions. The iPod packaging has to compete with all other music players and personal electronic gadgets for our money and attention. Windows exists in a completely different situation. No one goes to FutureShop to look at the Windows box while comparing it to a Red Hat Linux box before making their choice; their bed was made long before walking through those sliding glass doors.

Last but not least, MS is capable of some incredible industrial and graphic design. In the late 90s, their Sidewinder products combined style and function to be the best PC controllers available. Ignoring the monstrous Xbox, the 360 is a great exercise in inconspicuous design and much closer to Apple’s lifestyle product marketing approach. The 360’s controller also happens to be very close to the ultimate possibility in modern game pads.

So there you have it, don’t believe everything you see on youtube. Or something.

Posted by Rayne @ 12:07 AM EST [Link] [16 comments]

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

American Eagle: College kids hanging out at a cottage. An impossible combination of preppy and bum. This is where you’re most likely to find the hoodie + blazer combination. Lots of primary colours, some of the best fitting shirts anywhere but good luck finding a pattern that I like. Very crowded layout.

Bluenotes: A low-rent version of AE. Totally, like, high school.

Mexx: Dressy Euro Trash. Clothes you can go to work or to a club in. Lots of black and deep, dark colours (mostly blues). Some of their clothes are a little too “BUSY” or eccentric (diagonal zippers) but the plainer stuff is beautiful and comfortable. My favorite place for clothes. Love their pants.

Guess: The best looking jeans of all.

Tommy: All about showing off the label, expecially Tommy Denim which should only be worn by the rougher members of certain ethnic groups.

Club Monaco: Very dressy. Mostly comes in black or white, if not then muted natural colours. Solid colours only, no patterns. Almost everything is on hangers. The best fabrics!

GAP: Relatively inexpensive, plain, functional, casual, every day wear. Lots of well-made chinos in a huge variety of styles. Very few hangers.

Anyone feel like adding their own?

Posted by Rayne @ 12:21 PM EST [Link] [11 comments]

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

That’s the best way I’ve heard it described. That constant need to know the latest news in the world of comics, movies, games, and people. The internet is truly conductive to feeding this addiction – hundreds of high level articles daily about anything you’re interested in and thousands of articles about things you didn’t realize you were interested. And if you’re a keener, there’re people out there who are kind enough to write very detailed analysis of anything and everything. We have enough information at our fingertips to distract us for several lifetimes over.

But how much is too much? Back in the stone age of 1999 I went in to the theatres and watched The Matrix without knowing a single thing about it. I was completely stunned to discover, along with Mr. Anderson, what the Matrix was, I was happy to see the best use of martial arts yet in western cinema, and completely awed by Bullet Time. Not since have I been able to walk into a movie theatre without knowing the entire set up and having seen key scenes (from trailers) beforehand. A very large part of The Matrix’s impact as a film was the revelation that the world was only a construct, that kind of surprise is plastered everywhere for us to see nowadays. I wouldn’t be surprised if people have spent more time reading about Matrix 2 and 3 than they spent watching them.

We live in an age where every single detail on movies like Batman 5 and Superman 5 are known long before the movies are actually released. It’s a double edged sword because on one hand you have the “internet community” being instrumental in the casting of Christian Bale as Batman and causing enough noise to seriously make WB reconsider “Superman VS Batman” (Lex Luthor as a Kryptonian!) but then you also witness moments where producers go on record as saying something like “we’re trying to make this movie with as many toy tie-ins as possible”. I was much happier coming out of the crappy Batman & Robin than I was out of Fantastic Four. FF was written off by the Interweb (a much better predictor of crappy films than you’d think) before it debuted and I could not help but notice every single flaw that had I read about.

“Jaded Fanboy” is how I’d describe my attitude now towards a lot of entertainment. Marvel’s Editor-In-Chief gives weekly interviews where he never answers anything satisfactorily, spins all his staff’s mistakes into someone else’s, creates useless soundbites, and is generally condescending. I used to love reading Marvel comics, but now they’re all filtered through this lens which shows me this guy hyping products to hell and failing to hold anyone accountable for shoddy delivery. There’s a point where you just know too much about the decisions and personalities behind a product that’ll leave you incapable of enjoying it on its own merit.

Posted by Rayne @ 07:00 PM EST [Link] [46 comments]

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

As expected, December was monstrous! While researching laptops, I pretty much impulse-bought my new LCD monitor for 1033$; with 400$ off, it was an excellent deal! Stephen’s decision to get one really helped push me to buy it. This really cuts into my laptop budget but it’s likely that I’ll be spending close to what I would have before anyways…I’ll just get a smaller screen.

X-mas cost almost 250$ (not too bad considering some other people’s gift buying insanities), the best deal was my parents’ 650$ duvet + cover which I managed to snag for 260$. I spent roughly 230$ on clothes, they were good purchases since they’re clothes I wear consistently now, unlike some other clothes I’ve bought before.

It looks like I sucked at poker in December, winning only 1 game while losing more than a few. Everything else looks pretty normal, except for eating out because of the 1 expensive dinner I had...but it was worth it! I think I’ve forgotten to include a haircut somewhere in there cuz I know I have at least 1 each month.

Posted by Rayne @ 10:32 PM EST [Link] [6 comments]

Monday, February 6, 2006

So there’s this boy. He comes in every Sunday to visit me at the Laundromat. He’s 8 years old. A couple of months ago, his mom was there regularly to do her laundry so I chatted with him a few times. Then his mom stopped coming because she got some machines. The first time he came by himself to visit was quaint, he stayed for a while, talked about this and that. But then he started doing it every week and his visits kept getting longer and longer. This week, he came in soon after I opened the doors at 7am. My immediate reaction was “WTF?”, he ended up staying there until 5pm when I left, having gone home for maybe 30 minutes in the early afternoon.

Aside from spending all day at the happiest place on earth, there’re a few other strange behaviours in all this.

1. This week he fully expected me to drive him to McDonald’s for lunch. He had gift certificates (or something) and kept asking me what time my lunch was so that we could go to McD’s. I told him to walk it (30 ish mins) but he refused. He had no alternative plans for lunch and was sitting around until 1-2 o’clock, and obviously hungry, when I asked one of the regulars if he could get the kid some food.

2. He takes a walk around the place to look for “fallen quarters” and frequently comes back with a few bucks. He’ll come up to me and say “the snack machine ate my 3$” which it sometimes does; he’s done this more than once now and I question the veracity of his statement but I don’t really want to call this kid a liar and make a scene in front of all the other customers.

3. When I leave, I say goodbye and he does the same except that he’ll go out the front and make his way to the back to where my car is and waits there. He watches me load up my laundry and hangs around the driver door until I ask him if he wants a drive home (he lives like 6 doors down). When I get to his place, he avoids getting out of the car for as long as possible until I make it absolutely clear that I would like to get home as soon as possible.

So what the hell is going on here? Am I just that cool to a 8 year old boy? Is he super-clingy? Are there problems at home? Is he there to steal money? Am I a friggen babysitter!? He said that his mom was going somewhere on Sunday (with his other siblings) and told him to “go to the Laundromat”. Which is quite possible, yet very irresponsible.

I cannot deal with having to spend like 10 hours entertaining and keeping an eye out on this boy every week. I want nothing more than to read my book and drink my coffee at 7am on Sunday mornings, yet there he is. The added responsibility of having this kid around all day is ridiculous; he’s EVERYWHERE and asks hundreds of questions.

I need to make it very clear that he can’t be there all day, any suggestions on what’s going on and how to handle it? I’ve made suggestions that he goes home, I’ve asked why he’s up so early or if he has anything better to do but none of this works. Help!

Posted by Rayne @ 03:40 PM EST [Link] [9 comments]

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