The other takeaway is quite possibly that my theme sucks. Any little thing that wants to be wider than the sidebar gets its way, despite my protestations. I did not design this whole theme myself — I just heavily modified an existing one. I might consider switching, but I really love the look of this theme and want to keep it.

I’m wavering between dusting off my web design skills and just whacking this theme into shape, finding something similar but better coded, or just calling Stephanie Leary and offering to pay her to do it right from the ground up.

I may erase the Delicious links and use Tumblr for that purpose, instead.

iPhone 4 vs. iPhone 3GS lightsaber battle. Yes, really. Made with the iPhone 4 and iMovie. Deets here.

Bleeding Cool:

I understand an email went out to a number of Zuda creators half an hour ago. Announcing a radical and swinging reduction of DC Entertainment’s original digital comics line to a small handful of titles. And the canning and dropping of a large number of creators.

Sucks. Zuda was one of the things I really admired about DC.

Hopefully some of my friends still get the eyes on their books they deserve via the DC app.

UPDATE: the site is being shutdown.

techspotlight:

Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right for every citizen.

From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection. Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.

In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law.

The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed.

Note the text at the bottom of the ad.

Found via Droid Life

This netbook has replaced the Samsung NC10 in my heart.

Tumblr posts will show up on this blog as regular posts, so you’ll see them even if you don’t follow my Tumblr. (That’s an experiment, too.) But if you want to follow me there, the address is: ktbradford.tumblr.com. I will attempt not to overload the blog with Tumblr posts — and if it gets that way, I’ll just turn off the crossposting and employ a sidebar widget — and I hope it will lead me to do more long posts here.

Let the experiment begin!

Since I’m using the HTC Evo 4G at the moment, I spend a lot of time on this site. I’m always impressed by bloggers who create device-specific communities almost before the devices are announced.

Rubber (or rubber-like) keys, good size, excellent response. When you type on the Peek’s keyboard you get a little bit of pushback, but not stiffness. And it makes a satisfying click noise as well as tactile feedback. It works whether you use the pad of your thumbs or the tip of your fingernails. It’s one of the best keyboards I’ve ever encountered on a handheld device.

Major cell phone manufacturers, why can’t you do this? Seriously. I am asking. You do so well in other areas. the Droid is a beautiful little phone, but the keyboard makes me cry. The LG Expo is better, but the layout causes me cramps. And the Droid 2? If these pictures are of the final keyboard, I don’t even want to see this phone. Hard plastic, pillowed keys are not good for those of us with fingernails, which is half the population (if not a bit more).

Go, now, and talk to the Peek people. Learn at their feet. Take however long you need. I’ll be here with the HTC Evo 4G suffering the Android auto-correct.

Remember back in February when  people were busy crowing about the fact that some study claimed two-thirds of Americans had an HDTV and those who didn’t were likely to buy one soon? I didn’t believe the study, and I was happy to see someone else disagreeing with it, too^[1]. The main reason why I didn’t believe that study is simply that HDTVs are expensive. Yes, plenty of people buy crap they don’t need simply because it’s newer, bigger, better. But plenty of people –especially now — aren’t buying crap they don’t need if their current device works perfectly fine.

You can still get non HDTVs with big screens for less money. And people who have cable or satellite are still doing fine with their older models. The people who buy new laptops or phones or other media devices are not automatically the people who buy HDTVs. I’m not. I have no reason to. Except none of these damned devices will output with anything but HDMI, therefore I can’t use them with my TV. That’s just wonderful^[2].

How many tech journalists and bloggers consider this? I haven’t seen many do so. I’ve seen so many journalists write off technology because they think it’s not useful when compared to better stuff, but they’re not taking into account that not everyone can afford new, expensive things all the time. Like MP3 players. How many times have I heard: “well, you don’t need one because you can play music on your phone.” Hello! Some phones. Not all. And can I point out that the non-smartphone market is way, way bigger than the smartphone market? And that smartphones don’t tend to have as much memory as MP3 players? And that not every device is made for the over-connected, spendthrift adult?

I realize that the view from the tech world is that everyone has, should have, wants, or should want the newest, bestest things. Not everyone does and not everyone can afford them. And thus the magazines and blogs and sites we produce end up just catering to a narrow audience who, by the way, is overly filled with the kind of jerks that populate the Gizmodo comment threads and not, say, thoughtful consumers who have to take a wider range of factors into consideration, including price and need.

It’s getting to the point where every time I hear someone mention the lack of HDMI a a negative or any other similar sentiment I want to shake them by the collar. Which is not good and professional behavior. So, I won’t do it. But still. Stop it, people.

Notes

1. Research Rants points out that non-tech savvy people probably don’t understand that just because the TV station tells them that they’re broadcasting in HD that doesn’t mean they actually have an HD set. This strikes me as very possible.
2. In the end I just use my desktop, which has a handy S-Video port. Yes, if I want to output audio I have to run a separate cable. Um, who cares? it’s not as if cables are like creeping death or something.

Many moons ago I reviewed a little product called the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, one of the first Android devices I’d ever played with for any length of time. It was a bit like an Android phone except without the phone part, and it was great for watching video and reading books, webpages, etc. Essentially it was a PDA, but that’s an old-fashioned term that went out with the 90s! These days such things are called tablets. Or iPod touch.

Anyway, I quite liked the Archos 5, though it was early days with Android tablets and it was hard to make out what real use it would be. I think we got a bit caught up in how it wasn’t a phone instead of thinking of it as an updated and awesome PDA-like thing. That’s how I came to think of it, and that’s why I liked it.

But, alas, the tablet had to go back and I sought solace in other Android devices. I’m a fan of the Motorola Droid and I’m really starting to dig the HTC Evo 4G. But in all honesty, the phone I really want is an Archos 5 Internet Tablet you can make calls from. So imagine my excitement when we heard about the Dell Streak at CES this year. And now it’s finally got a release date (end of July) and a price ($499).

I did not get to touch the Streak myself, alas, but I know its roughly the same size as the Archos 5 as it has a 5-inch screen and looks pretty thin. 5 inches seems huge for a phone, I know, but honestly what I want is a small tablet that happens to make calls. The Evo 4G is a pretty massive phone, and that mans I can view web pages, read my RSS feeds, and watch video on a reasonably-sized screen. The Streak will hopefully give me all that and more.

You can’t see, but I’m bouncing up and down right now just thinking about it.

The price is a bit steep, yes. $499 is about what the least expensive iPad costs. But that iPad doesn’t have 3G. Plus, that’s only for the unlocked version of the device. Through the carrier (AT&T) it will be less, we just don’t know how much less yet. Still, I’ll be buying the unlocked one, anyway, since I have no intention of switching to AT&T.

Hopefully we’ll get the Streak in for review well before the launch date. Then guess who’s going to lobby to do the review?

Now that I’ve used Scrivener I can definitely say that it’s great and I love using it. (A fuller review will come, as soon as the story I was writing it for is taken off hold.) I don’t know that I would switch to a Mac for it. I like my netbook, for one thing. And I don’t have money to spend on a $1,000+ computer for just one purpose.

There is another alternative, though. You could always turn a netbook into a Mac.

How, you ask? Hackintoshing! This age-old process of fiddling with OS X until it will install on a non-Apple system wasn’t invented for netbooks, but has definitely found a slew of new adherents in the past couple of years. And since Apple is determined not to give the people what they want, the people will have to get it themselves.

Used to be that Hackintoshing required a lot of dedication, forum-lurking, and some soldering skills. But a new website called MyMacNetbook aims to make the process a bit less opaque. Right now there are a few step-by-step guides for some systems, but the real goodies lurk in the compatitility chart. This is where you’ll find a long list of netbooks and the hardware features that work with OS X out of the box. You’ll note that the MSI Wind is about the perfect hackintoshing netbook.

Writers who’re jonesing for some Scrivener but don’t have the money for a Mac but do have the money for a netbook, this is your best bet. And if you’re a Mac lover who longs for the portability of the 10-inch form factor, now you don’t have to pine (or settle for an iPad). Many of the netbooks that work without too much fiddling are older, so you can probably find them at a deep discount these days.

It was actually very cool. Having never been to a runway show I was only vaguely aware of what to expect. I thought it would be longer, but it was only 20 minutes, maybe, from start to finish. The models walked very quickly down the runways and there were about 30 pieces overall. The idea of the line had something to do with nomads and “New America” and reflecting biker culture, the midwest, trees, mountains, and deserts. I guess I saw that. The AP has some images.

What I mostly fixated on was the number of raccoon and fox tails sewn to the outfits in odd places. Like the shoulder or the hip. Also, coon-skin hats ala Daniel Boone. Yes, I am serious. There was a lot of denim, of course, and lots of leather. Lots of fur and skin as if these poor models spent their days hunting small animals for food and clothing. Except they aren’t particularly good hunters because they looked awfully hungry.

It was amazing to me the looks on the models faces. The practiced disdain and the blank eyes must take years to perfect. I kept thinking of this Daria episode where Quinn takes a modeling class and the instructor tells the girls how to look when walking down a runway.

All right, ladies, your worst enemy is at the end of the catwalk. The one who stole your boyfriend. She has fallen and broken her leg. Your job is to tell her — without words — that you’ve come to watch them cut it off!

When you stride down the runway, you’re walking towards your car. You’ve spotted a headless corpse in it… and it’s a brand new car!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, back to the clothes. If you follow my Twitter feed you’re probably aware of my initial impressions. Dudes in Jack Harkness coats came down the runway first, then some dudes in Vampire Lestat fluffy shirts came down, then a dude wearing a Jack Harkness coat over a Lestat shirt showed up. The one-shoulder capes were interesting but I felt they would unnaturally imbalance me. And, of course, the raccoon tails.

If I were to guess, I’d say that if you spent a three day weekend watching all three series of Torchwood with a break for Interview With The Vampire in-between then fell asleep on AMC showing old Daniel Boone flicks, you might wake up, grab a pencil, and create this year’s William Rast line. These are not bad influences to have. I would actually buy some of those coats and jeans, but I’d remove the tails.

It was a fun night and I’d definitely go to another fashion event if invited. The Sony people were incredibly cool and treated us well. Plus, I met a new friend. What more could I ask?

Notes

1. For those of you who don’t know, William Rast is the name of the clothing line Justin started with his best friend, Trace. I kept calling him NotJustin all night, but I’m sure that fashion people know who he is and all.
2. Anna Wintour. Her hair is very…. immobile.