Things Are Better When Multiplied by 1000

Move Over, The Fast and the Furious, there's a new king of the racing movie genre in town:

Note that this movie is not a remake of the 1975 Sylvester Stallone classic shown below (but does seem to draw on it for conceptual inspiration):

Incidentally, the latter flick makes me wax nostalgic for the twilight years of the 20th century, when arbitrarily appending a large multiple of 1000 to the title of something was a trendy way to invoke futurism and instantaneously imbue said something with highly sophisticated, larger-than-life qualities that vaguely suggested omnipotence in a dues ex machina kind of way.

Notable examples of this phenomenon include the following:

• As the great Local News Wars of the 1990s reached their glorious apex, Channel 8 of Portland (Oregon, naturally) decided to christen one of their weather maps Doppler 8000 in an attempt to convince people that they possessed a technologically superior way of forecasting precipitation in the greater Portland area (which, as any resident of that city knows, is extremely challenging, inasmuch as you don't know whether the rain will arrive before or after noontime). In response, rival Channel 6, taking a considerably more comprehensive approach, renamed itelf to Channel 6000. This change may have been confusing to some viewers, as 6000 was not a valid channel on anyone's cable box.



• In 1999, as Microsoft prepared to release the successor to the Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems, a savvy marketer observed that neither "Windows 00" nor "Windows NT 5.0" were very inspiring names; thus was born Windows 2000. To appeal to less sophisticated users (who might be put off by the added sophistication of a 1000-level version number), Microsoft in parallel launched a dumbed-down, friendlier-but-still-futuristic-sounding version of Windows 2000 called Windows Millennium Edition (or "Windows Me"). However, Windows Me's lack of support for popular legacy hardware and software (sound familiar?) and its general inability to connect to the Internet doomed it out of the box -- why wasn't it called Windows 00? -- and it was quickly buried two years later by the widescale adoption of Windows XP.



• In The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XII, the Ultrahouse 3000 (voiced by Pierce Brosnan) pays homage to the line of homicidal computer systems that started with the HAL-9000 found in Arthur C. Clarke's signature work, 2001: A Space Odyssey. This example provides an excellent opportunity for me to mention that my refrigerator is adorned with a circular magnet fashioned after one of HAL's eyes, so that I can derive considerable pleasure from shouting "Open the door, HAL!!" whenever I want a beer.
  
  
  
  
  (It's probably worth noting that my fridge has yet to respond with "I'm afraid I can't do that.")

So, marketing professionals of the world: when you're feeling uninspired about a brand name and your deadline is looming, just multiply your best idea by a few thousand and call it a day. If you need some extra oomph, try adding a random Greek letter or two. And, when in doubt, finishing everything with bunch of exclamation marks never hurts.

This summer, slow and steady will not win...
DEATH RACE 8000πΩθΔβ!!!!!

3:23am

Bose makes an excellent set of earbuds shaped like jet engines that deliver premium-quality sound directly into your ear canal with the acoustics of a home theater surround system. The only problem is that the buds are constantly falling out of your ears, even if you're completely motionless. That sort of inhibits your listening experience.

Some limoncello on the rocks would be just smashing right now. Apparently it's not too hard to make.

This is indented
and italicized
text
broken up into
several lines
like a poem perhaps...

Does it sound different
in your head
when you read it?

It does for me
and the voice is softer
more ethereal
androgynous
like a stoned fifth grader

this->must_be_getting_annoying();

so I'll
STOP

Here's a stack of watermelons exploding in slow motion, set to a version of the 1812 Overture that has been transposed down a couple of keys for some reason:

Why do I still have this lava lamp from high school that I never use? Maybe I should plug it in before I go to bed. Then, when I wake up in the middle of the night bathed in purple and yellow (wasn't there some weird banana-grape chewing gum back in the 80s? I'm sure it was gross), I'll be quite confused and disoriented. Except that the sun is going to rise in a couple of hours, so that will kinda ruin the effect. Oh well, let's see what happens.

Help Me, Dr. Zaius!

Well, I don't know about you, but I had a damn fine weekend, with the centerpiece being a brilliantly conceived and executed breakfast-for-dinner party, hosted at ThongCharm's Boston headquarters.

At said party, under the influence of an espresso martini that needed some serious tinkering (um, like, there needs to be SOME sort of dairy in there, no?), my good friend the Hornett and I spent a good 40 minutes or so (give or take a standard amount of exaggeration) raving extensively about the pristine, distilled comic genius contained within this clip from A Fish Called Selma, a(n) hilarious episode from the seventh season of The Simpsons:

(click to watch video)

The Hornett went so far as to theorize that the entire episode was written around a this one sketch, wrapping some semblance of a plot and other storytelling constructs around this single, juicy kernel. Regardless of whether or not that was the case (and I wouldn't be surprised if it were), I can say one thing for sure: I've had these songs stuck in my head for over a week, and I can't see them going away anytime soon.

Unless, of course, I were to subject myself voluntarily to the ∏th circle of hell (and yes, I believe that is a capital π):

(BTW, in case anyone out there is waxing nostalgic for the original Falco video, this link's for you. For all the kiddies in the audience, maybe you'd prefer this remixed version featuring The Simms.)

Speaking of iPhone Imitations

Check out this incredibly cheesey infomercial for HP's TouchSmart PC, which appears to be an attempt to re-create the iPhone's user-experience gimmickery on a desktop computer:

(click to watch video)

Sure, it demos pretty well for those scenarios where you use your PC as a $1000 MP3 player or slide projector. But tell me this: what value does a touchscreen add to all of the day-to-day word-processing, email-writing, and web browsing tasks that the average person actually performs on their PC? Not much, at least not until we start to encounter software that's specifically designed for such a tactile interface.

For example, consider a software application that allows you to order tacos and fried chicken:

Or how about an application that helps you quickly and intuitively scan through other people's visions of the future:

Indeed, it would appear that the technology sector has served up yet another compelling chicken-and-egg problem... where the chicken is either fried or smothered in cheap paprika-like seasoning, and the egg is a little red ball that looks like this:

iPhone Contrarians

Sometimes, a blog entry engages you at such a fundamental level that your comments in response almost end up being a blog entry of their own. (This has yet to have happened on these pages, but eh, my random babble is probably less engaging than that found elsewhere.) Also sometimes you'd rather pig out on store-brand chocolate-chip cookies than write an original blog entry.

An excellent example of this happening is my response to ThongCharm-Priya's thoughts on the iPhone and all the hype surrounding it. What can I say, stuff happens (and sometimes things as well).

For those of you too lazy to click for yourselves, here are some highlights from the review, with some words randomly highlighted in various colors for no particular reason.

i'm sorry to be the contrarian here in this frothy summer milkshake which is the july launch of the 3G ipod, the motto of which appears to be "i will stand in line in the hot sun and queue like i live in a communist country to buy this object i covet and then be forced to activate it on at&t's crappy network and i absolutely must have it now cuz it's so beautiful and oh, dare i say, iconic".

[...]

form factor: the iphone is sleek, and is neat for pictures and videos with the edgeless screen.

[...]

keyboard: the iphone's keyboard blows. i fatfingered everything and it requires constant attention. [...] i've almost successfully memorized my blackberry pearl keypad so i no longer have to look when i type, and can type with one hand, which comes in handy when i'm walking or in a car or wishing i had the other 2 arms of lakshmi, which is 80% of the time while using the phone

[...]

web browsing: the html browsing was the biggest iphone disappointment because web pages on safari were miniature and unreadable and i couldn't intuitively figure out how to make the browsing easier in any way [...] and sadly, i am way behind in my conspiracy theories and editorial news about central asia.

[...]

i also for some reason got really excited about how you could change phone options. all of a sudden that lame options tab was fun. [...] somehow i liked the icons of everything better, and that's not a real competitive advantage.

And here's my comment in response:

All of those iPhone commercials that have inundated our TVs do a fantastic job of showing all of the nifty little things that the iPhone can do, and how it makes even the most conceptually boring tasks like unlocking the phone or choosing options fun and exciting. Props to Apple marketing for that.

However, there are actually quite a few things that the iPhone can't do, and some may surprise you. Prime example: there's no cut & paste... didn't you just assume that a device as sophisticated as the iPhone would have this basic feature? Even the capacitive touchscreen (for all of its general engineering awesomeness) will not respond to stylus-like input, and therefore in spite of Apple's push to get the iPhone entrenched in corporate America through its integration with MS Exchange, you'll never be able to use an iPhone to wirelessly sign on the dotted line and close the deal in the field (and yes, this is indeed a viable use case for a mobile phone, or at least it will be soon).

The other interesting side of the iPhone hype is how all the other carriers and manufacturers are rushing to bring iPhone-like devices to market, sometimes with similar hype (Samsung Instinct, I'm looking in your direction). While this is a global phenomenon, the funny/sad part is that American carriers who want to compete with the iPhone are still bumbling around with the first wave of imitation devices (e.g. the HTC Vogue/Touch/XV6900, my new baby) while customers of their overseas counterparts are already equipped with the second round of much beefier, sexier handsets (e.g. HTC Touch Diamond). If I subscribed to a GSM-based carrier, I might be tempted to buy an unlocked phone from overseas on eBay and plug in my SIM card to (which I did successfully when I was with T-Mobile)... only there's one small problem, in that most of these devices only support UMTS/HSPA, and the only such service that you can find in the U.S. as of this writing is in a few select cities on AT&T's network... anywhere else, and you're S.O.L.

At any rate, I like the fact that the iPhone has given a solid kick in the pants to the manufacturers and carriers (especially in the U.S.) who were dragging their feet on advancing mobile technology. There's no reason that we couldn't have had visual voicemail in 1999 or touch-oriented user interfaces in 2003, but thanks to the iPhone, those are looking to become new baseline features.

BTW, the thing about the iPhone keyboard is that you have to get used to the idea that the key is actually "pressed" when it's released (which is why it displays a larger version of the key you're pressing above your finger), so if you're used to a BlackBerry, Q, or Treo, it takes some mental adjustment. I installed an imitation iPhone keyboard on my XV6900 and after a few minutes I was tapping away at a pretty rapid pace. In the end, I ended up uninstalling that keyboard (it had a nasty bug whereby all letters entered from other soft keyboards would become numbers) and using the "Touch Keyboard" that comes pre-installed... it's basically a soft version of the BlackBerry Pearl's SureType keyboard, and after a few minutes of acclimation it becomes just as fast as a full hardware QWERTY.

High School Chemistry Review

BTW, in case you forgot what happens when you mix cesium with water:

The Captain's Cookbook, Part I

Lately, the ThongCharm ladies have made a habit of sharing with us some of their most interesting (experimental?) recipes and other culinary undertakings. Since imitation is the highest form of flattery, and since the universe requires some sort of counterbalance to their casually chaotic, quasi-artsy approach to food (lest everything collapse in a Big Crunch), I present to you, in the most somewhat-proud of manners:

THE CAPTAIN'S COOKBOOK
Applying a Services Oriented Architecture to Culinary Design Problems

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a Services Oriented Architecture, suffice it to mean that I shall be both agile and lazy.

Also, I hereby dub myself The Cesium Chef.

And now, for our first recipe.

Random Sweet & Spicy Chicken Meatball Lettuce Wraps
Prep time: 90 seconds
Cooking time: Whatever makes sense, but probably not too much

Ingredients:

• 1/2 package Costco Sweet & Sour Chicken Meatballs (if you wish, you may instead use Costco Buffalo Chicken Meatballs or Costco Teriyaki Chicken Meatballs)
• 1 can pineapple chunks in pineapple juice
• 1/2 pound baby carrots
• 1 bottle K.C. Masterpiece Spiced Caribbean Jerk 30-minute Marinade
• 1 cucumber
• 1 head of lettuce, of whatever type, as long as it doesn't have salmonella

Cooking Instructions:

1. In a fairly large skillet or saucepan, combine the bottle of marinade, half the contents of the can of pineapple (chunks + liquid), and the meatballs. Bring to a soft boil over medium heat, then cover and simmer for some arbitrary amount of time, stirring whenever the thought occurs to you.
2. Using whatever broke-ass knife you have, chop the baby carrots and cucumbers into various three-dimensional shapes that could fit into a sphere of volume 25π/9".
3. Fill each lettuce leaf with some combination of meatballs, carrots/cucumbers, and pineapple, but try not to include too much of the marinade because it's very likely that the meatballs already contain way too much sodium!!! Serve immediately.

Please note that I haven't actually sampled the results of this recipe yet, as it's still cooking. Wait. I haven't checked on the meatballs in like 37 minutes.