The “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” line actually comes from the third and mostly awful Godfather movie, which I still also look back at for its portrayal of the way I least want to die, but that fucker who I had been watching for the past few weeks pushed me over the edge by letting Lae’zel die while simping Shadowheart as his “RP” love interest. So much for my console abstinence—which was hardly a show of principle if I’m to be honest, and more stubbornness to remount the gear treadmill, both in-game and out.
I suppose it’s never too late to be taken by surprise. And honestly, even if I had known about the Atari Falcon at the turn of the millennium, I doubt it’d have broken my resolve outside CompUSA, nor lessened my subsequent experiences in Liberty and Vice Cities, among the many places that glorious black monolith took me. This chance historical revelation does, in fact, reinforce my long-held belief that their next iteration nose-dived and explains my disenchantment with console gaming, maybe a loss of faith in the Sony of old. (I say that as if I’m an Apple convert, but the PS3 still sits connected to the even older XBR LCD, which I refuse to update with dominant 재벌 brands and if we ever make it back to Japan, I’m definitely buying one of these.) You’re my only hope to feel again, GTA6!
Never seen this video before, but holy shit, Bowie was a god!
Back when he passed, I wrote an obituary of sorts on the old job’s content-starved Yammer site (thought that was bad enough, then after being taken over by a nearly 1K-large organization, theirs was still manned by a single executive whose role seemed to be to do nothing but), accompanied by this picture:
I remember some banter about David Bowie before the last staff meeting a couple of weeks ago, and I was rummaging through some of the boxes in the garage only to unearth these relics from a bygone era. 7th-generation [iPod] nano for scale… to think I ran with that thing, which really is as heavy as it looks! (And isn’t Apple getting a lot of flak over rumors that their next iPhone is going to do away with the headphone jack, it being what, 2016 now?) All the memorials may have since passed, but the “Heroes” cassette was surprisingly cued up for the title track—like a kind of time capsule, almost—and while the playback reminded me just how old this stuff is, it was a fine personal tribute to the artist.
Bonus: The song is just as brilliant in languages I’ve studied in my lifetime. Sadly, the only music I brought in to play on Mrs. Hogshead’s box turntable was Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France” 12-inch. (Pardon if the lyrics don’t display upon hover, the Soundcloud iFrame seems to interfere with the <title> tag. These links are all bound to fail one day, anyway, so best to preserve the content elsewhere.)
健-san says “Headsets are simply annoying”, and I totally agree with him, even for audio. At least in PlayStation Home everything was accessible from the controller, though even there I had to wonder what was the benefit of donning an avatar to participate in real-world simulations. If I wanted to see an exclusive movie clip, couldn’t I just click on a link without any of the lag? Unless they really think it’d be fun to kill 20 rats for the ticket? Were the emphasis on interaction than immersion, then again, I can’t see how that’d surpass what’s long been available to chatters or streamers to boost their presentations with all the hypertext and media the Internet has to offer. Recently I was trying to impress upon our Generation Z/Alpha scion the sheer amount of time we used to spend on voice calls with each other, limitations like busy signals and long distance charges, and the impacts from advances in technology, but despite as much as hemming and hawing may have added to our hours, our connections didn’t rely on emojis or canned memes. One might argue it was a communication golden age, similar to the art of letter-writing that came before, where the value lie in the effort to overcome the struggle to express. Seems to me struggling in VR will instead be to try to get something out of the pinnacle of human achievement.
Nice birthday present, Sony. Dumping Dan Harmon is either gonna go down like Alan Moore-less Watchmen, or Star Wars without Lucas. We’ll find out soon enough.
I had convinced myself to put off upgrading from my 3G until this year’s new one, but news is it’ll be larger than ever, and while I used to think that a cellular-equipped iPad would be the ideal solution, maybe the smaller form factor of years gone by is worth revisiting. This Sony Ericsson might allow me to explore Android, and I seem to have only have fond memories of the T610. Choices change; the decisions don’t.
The Sony’s wore like how I imagine clip-on piercings would, and crapped out like the other $20 disposables, and while I was comforted by the thicker gauge of the Apple in-ear buds, their pendulous weight is unavoidable. So if not for this nagging cough, I’d be reporting back on these Sennheisers, whose cost I justify with an unheard-of two-year manufacturer’s warranty. Cords still look flimsy, exposed as they are in a wraparound track that’s twice the size of the Nike design, but I like how its first “section” is just the right length to my upper arm, and I can do without the rest. The question remains: can I even run anymore?
Probably ought to choose my words carefully this time, lest I eat my hat again and upgrade, but as much as the new design harks back to my T610, I’ve learned my lesson about two-year contracts amidst product cycles half that (and how they’re even worse if you sign up like I did, six months into one). Plus, jailbreaking has brought new purpose back to my antiquated 3G—to squeeze as much tethering bandwidth out of AT&T before I ditch them come January. In this sense at least, the phone’s only as good as the carrier, and their new plan, which actually lowers the monthly cap while adding an extra $20 to the bill, sounds to me like a step or two backwards. Gimme another Pearl.
Was explaining our stop at Fry’s last weekend to 老婆, and her response: that’s because they were made in China. (The Sony’s, which I successfully swapped them out for, don’t fit flush against my head as intended and has always been the case, insert with the speakers facing forward. Yanking on the extra-long cord brings up the same old concern, too.) Alas, the Zippy keyboard which has served me so well these past few years, comes to us from Taiwan; the flexible Tripp-Lite it replaced, which didn’t fare as well—what do you know, let gravity have at the wires inside and they fail—most likely from the mainland. But let’s hope that manufacturing, regardless of where it’s done, sticks to standards commensurate to premium products such as Deck’s.
The deep keystrokes remind me of my old Selectric II, but it’s as if the thick and hence less portable case is making the extra room for your fingers. Thankfully the FN commands to dim and disable the lighting work over USB to the 360 and PS2, because I’d be blinded by the LED’s at their highest setting. Or made to feel guilty by their gratuitous use of energy. There is, however, a niche concept behind it (even if it harks back to case modders from ten years ago), the braided cord, diamond plate bottom, that’s just as hardcore and uncompromising as Apple’s. At twice the price.
Then again, the headliner inside my Japanese truck designed and built in the US has come unglued and is sagging.
Has it been ten years since Chris got me the Phillips-made Nike-branded headphones that restarted my need for running music? That first pair seemed to have lasted the longest, the stethoscope-like fit the most comfortable and capable, while the lifespan of its subsequent replacements has shortened geometrically: yesterday the latest, which I had hoped for better in the newer Black color, conked out after only a month of sporadic use (my Mountain Dew ratio is approaching 60K). Always in one ear, always in the first mile. We’ll see how long my remaining inventory, courtesy of my purchase-return cycle at Fry’s, lasts before I switch to Sony’s.
