The Blog-Files

How Can They Lose?

I pre-ordered my wife a pink iPod Mini™ just after you were allowed to. I was hoping it would arrive before our 5th wedding anniversary, which is at the end of August. I was a little worried, however, that with all the stories about Apple having problems supplying the demand, I might not get it in time. Well, it was shipped on the official international release date, July 24th. I watched it travel with FedEx from Shanghai, China, through Anchorage, Alaska, to Memphis, Tennessee, then on to Winnipeg, Manitoba, through Vancouver, British Columbia, arriving here in Victoria, today. Halfway around the world in just 5 days, not bad. I couldn't wait until the end of August, plus there were some major issues in trying to keep it a secret, so I gave it to her early.

Anyway, the thing is just so freakin' cool, I just don't see how anyone could make a better digital music player. Sure, it is a little bit pricey, but man do you get what you pay for. It is remarkably compact, the new click wheel is a joy to use, the screen is a little bit small but readable, and the sound is awesome. I've tried some of smaller flash-memory based players and sure, they are smaller but they look like crap next to the Mini. I really wasn't expecting to like it that much, being that we already have a 1st generation iPod, but I wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with this orchid coloured gadget attached to my hip with the included belt clip.

Once again Apple has surpassed my expectations and by now my expectations are getting pretty high. How long can they keep it up?

A Back Handed Insult

Reading the news today I saw an article that boasted something along the lines of Apple Could be "Microsoft of music". After reading this I was thinking that, in a way, that could be quite insulting to Apple.

First of all, I realize that the author was probably talking in scales of market share and the kind of dominance Microsoft has in the desktop OS realm. However, to call Apple the "Microsoft of music" suggests to me that they have made it to the top by putting out an inferior product. Not so, unlike Windows and the VHS format before them, iTunes and the iPod are the "best in show". They are winning the battle not because of bullying or flooding the market with cheap products but by putting quality first. Not just the quality of the iPod, which is by far the best Digital Media Player out there, but the quality of the user experience with iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. They way they work together is nothing short of elegant.

That being said, however, it is also quite insulting to Microsoft as well, come to think of it. To be so quick as to declare Apple the runaway winner when there are still a lot of players to enter the game, mainly Microsoft, is absurd. Nobody should ever discount what the behemoth from Redmond can do. Remember the browser wars? They can force their digital music format right down most of our collective throats. Joe PC-User isn't going to have to go too far to buy music online once Microsoft puts "Buy Music" on the desktop or in the Start Menu of the up-and-coming "Longhorn". I actually am getting pretty annoyed with the fact that companies like Microsoft and mostly like Wal-Mart and Amazon, feel the need to enter they digital download marketplace in the first place. For no other reason to dominate yet another market and to see how far their brand can take them.

A Real Mess

Real Networks announced today that they will be adding a new "technology" to their music player/downloader thing that will allow you to play songs downloaded from their service on any number of music players, including the iPod. All I can say is that it sounds like the move of a desparate company.

In my opinion, they have a second rate player. I don't listen to things that have a .rm or .ram extension and I get quite irked when a content provider only uses the Real format. Also, their history of "spyware" has soured the masses. As a Mac user I have been left relatively unscathed by this stuff, but my sympathy does go out to members of the PC community who unwittingly download the RealOne player and then have to subsequently remove the "little apps" it leaves running after the player has stopped.

So the question is, who in their right mind wants to download from them anyway? I live in Canada and can't buy music from the iTunes music store. Even if I could buy music from Real Networks (which I don't think I can), and play it on an iPod, I wouldn't. But apparently they figure if they can get their downloads to play on iPods, then whoa, the flood gates will open. Well, think again. Or maybe they actually think that people are actually concerned about "portability of downloaded music". If people want portability they can download, burn and rip. They should be burning their downloaded music as a backup anyway. So all this Harmony technology does is save the user the "trouble" of doing a work-around, half of which (burning to CD) should be done anyway, to protect your investment. Now some of you will say that you lose quality when you convert between formats and yes you do, to a certain extent. But people that are serious about the quality of the music they listen to don't download music anyway.They buy CDs. Also, if you've listened to any of the other MP3 players out there, sound reproduction isn't as important as the size of the player.

Anyway, I digress. If a company is to be as untrustworthy as to add spyware to their commercial product without telling the end user, it is inexcuseable. NOW, they are reverse engineering a DRM technology to allow their products entry into areas they were previously excluded. It almost sounds to me like they want to be sued. Just wait until Microsoft has a media player on the market and Real reverse engineers their DRM. Bill and Co. would love to see RealNetworks disappear and would love to have a reason to sue THEM for a change. Maybe Apple will sue them and maybe it will eat up RealNetworks 300+ million dollar cash supply litigating the case. Maybe they'll lose and have to fork over a huge cash settlement. Maybe they'll have to declare bankruptcy and then maybe they'll disappear.

That's a lot of maybes, but we can only hope...

Airport Expressions

It seems to me that if something Apple does isn't exactly perfect, the media jump all over it. I have recently been reading articles about the recently shipped Airport Express, a portable, 802.11g base station that not only lets you set up to 10 computers in a wireless network, but allows you to plug in a USB printer so that all the computers on your network can print to it wirelessly, and on top of that it contains technology to allow you to connect it to your home stereo and stream music (encrypted, so as to deter wireless theft) from any of your computers on the network to that stereo. All this for what, $179?

Maybe the critics are too busy picking it apart they fail to see the whole picture. It does ALL those things, in a handy little package.

Now, I realize that most "Wireless-G" base stations only cost in the neighbourhood of $89-$189. So the Airport Express does seem to be on the high end of the scale and maybe that's why the reporters expect more from it. But the articles I was reading stating that it "falls short" of expectations made me wonder what do these people actually expect?

I haven't actually tried one, so I may be a little off base here, but after trying to manage my wireless network at home using my Linksys Wireless Router with 4 port switch, I can only imagine the Airport Setup is superior and probably worth paying a little extra for. If the Airport Express was available when I bought my router (for $279 back then), it would have been a no-brainer. Even so, I'm considering buying one to replace my Linksys (I should have bought an Airport Base Station in the first place, instead of going the cheap way).

One other thing I've noticed about my router, it doesn't have a USB port or an audio jack. You wouldn't believe how difficult this makes it to play music through my stereo, although I can print with a shared printer, but that's only because OS X is so freakin' cool it lets me share my printer that is connected to my Mac which happens to be on the network.

Anyway, I get a little frustrated when I hear "experts" picking apart a product and getting all down on it when there isn't anything else out there to compare it to. If you're trying to compare it to all the other portable 802.11g wireless basestations with USB printer sharing and music streaming out there, good luck. There aren't any. And if there were, I'd bet they'd suck. People should be glad Apple is around trying to innovate otherwise we'd all be stuck using MS-DOS.

Nope...

Well, it turns out that the functionality of Kung-Log is the same as it used to be. That is, I can post an entry, but then I lose all control of it. I can't retrieve it to make changes, which is something I almost certainly have to do.

So I'm back to using the web-based MoveableType entry method. It's a little more tedious and image manipulation is a little more involved. So I probably won't be including as many pictures as before. Linking involves actually typing out the URL in an href thing so I'm not as likely to link anything either. There is also no spell checking either so you will have to forgive me for any mistakes.

Is Kung-Log Working Again...

It looks like my free version of Kung-Log seems to be back online. This may make my blogging a little more easy. I still have to check to make sure it is still working on the iBook, the computer from which most blogging takes place.

Update

My daughter is now just over two weeks old. She's doing fine, gaining weight fairly rapidly, with only what seems like a minor cold or something giving her (and us) any grief.

We recently returned from a trip to my cousin's wedding on the Sunshine Coast on the mainland and sunshine was definately not in short supply. It was very warm and that can cause a lot of problems for little kids. The baby managed quite well and was kept in the shade for most of the trip. My three year old, however, had the difficult task of being a three year old in the sweltering heat. Just trying to keep him cool all day was a full time job and in the end ultimately impossible. He didn't last the entire wedding and fatigue finally caught up with him, resulting in a major meltdown.

There is nothing more futile than trying to deal with an inconsolable child. There is, literally, nothing you can do. Everything is wrong. The only positive thing was that, in the morning, everything was back to normal again. If you can call the activities of a three year old normal.

I learned a valueable lesson from the adventure, however. Travelling with kids is not for the faint of heart.

I Fixed It? I Did!

After thoroughly screwing up my blog. I am happy to announce that it is back online. You may notice it looks relatively the same as the previous one, except that it now has a red hue. I tried in vain to move the links and calendar to the right side of the page but couldn't manage to do that without some really weird things happening, like losing the side scroll bars, which make navigating the more difficult.

The only positive thing about this episode is that I've learned a little about how this blog thing works. I don't know enough CSS to make it look exactly how I want, but I've decided that the functionality is a little more important the presentation.

So now that I've exhausted my curiosity, maybe I'll just leave well enough alone. Maybe...

Trying a New Style

As I had about 20 minutes of free time. I figured I could quite rightly screw up my weblog by trying to change the look of it. Well, in no less than 5 minutes, I managed that feat. I'm not sure why it doesn't look like the default styles that I copied from the Moveable Type website, but it works. I'm hoping to sometime in the future be able to bring back the calendar that used to appear on the left. I wanted to move it to the right side of the page but it disappeared altogether.


Oh, well. I'll chalk it up to experience and try again later.

She's Here

It's been a while since I've had anything worth posting but with the recent addition to my family of a baby girl, I find that there are probably numerous topics of which I could write.

After a long wait, Anika Jolene Marykuca-Vidal arrived at 4:53 AM on Saturday, July 3rd, 2004. The labour/birth was fairly quick by conventional standards the details of which I won't go into now. Suffice it to say that I am now being, once again, bombarded with challenges like finding time to sleep. It is much harder this time. We've got a three year old that is trying to "drop his nap", which was when I was hoping to get mine. The only reason I have time to post anything now is because my wife and new baby are asleep and the boy is watching a video, which requires very little supervision.

So, it looks like I may get the chance to keep my blog alive...with a little help from my son.