Dilemma

Ah the dilemma: Gaming has been part of my entertainment since I first saw a computer in the early 80's. Perhaps i'm too old for video games, but are they worse than the junk on TV? I watch NO TV, Games are my entertainment. But i'm an OSX user, so how does that fit? A few games (like World Of Warcraft) run great on OSX, but most generally arent made for it. So I have a number of options:

1) Dual Boot -- thanks to the intel macs and decent graphics support, this is now an option, but still Laptops arent going to keep up with the technology needed for the latest games

2) Console -- XBOX360/PS3 are appealing, but i've been using Keyboard/Mouse for more than a decade and some game types like the MMORPGs arent supported. The ability to sell back games once you're done is nice and some game types arent available or as good on the PC (arcade racing etc)

3) Windows XP/Vista game machine -- this is what I have now. Its in the basement which is cold, but when used solely as a game machine its been ok. The HW is a couple years old now (Athlon 64, 6800GT card, 1GB memory) so it could use a refresh. It also needs to come upstairs, its just too cold down there. But then you have to do the normal windows system admin stuff that is just a pain. On OSX you spend maybe 5% of your time doing admin stuff, on Windows its more like 50% in my experience (i'm a tweaker so that doesnt help, but in OSX there's just no need).

So which way do I go? For now i'll keep the Windows thing limping along (perhaps with some hand-me-down upgrades) and we'll see what the ps3 looks like in the fall. The consoles are now in the PC price range and you can do a very nice upgrade to a PC for the cost of either leading console...

VZ Navigator

Ok, finally the apps are catching up with the technology. Verizon has
an App I just latched onto called VZ Navigator, works on my RazR V3c.
Its a handheld GPS. Fully featured, voice directions, maps, lookup
points of interest etc. And its always on you and in your pocket. Why
pay $2,000 to the car vendors for the option when this exists? It
works, the maps are good, the response is good. Its only a matter of
time before they give it more accuracy with cell phone tower
triangulation etc. Forget the privacy concerns, i'm no longer LOST!

Mac gripe

Don't get me wrong, I love the mac. But for a mutli-media computer
aimed at artists etc there is no sound recording app included with
OSX and the ones out there on the net are not free. Even Microsoft
provides a free audio (microphone is what I was looking for) capture
tool -- sure its crappy but for the basics it works. I just wanted to
send an audio note to my 7 year old and couldnt do it on the mac. At
least not for free...

Google Earth

Ok, if you haven't seen Google Earth yet (http://earth.google.com/)
you need to. Its one of the coolest things i've seen in a long time.

Traveling

Did I mention that I hate traveling?

Song Recognition

A while back someone told me about this service called 411Song
(411song.com). You dial 1-866-411-7664 from a cell phone, hold your
phone up to a speaker, and it figures out what the name of the song
is and who sings it and it text messages you back. Very cool.

The first one is free, the next ones are $0.99 each. Sort of
expensive when you can BUY the song for $0.99. They should team up
with iTunes and do a combined recognize/buy -- all for $0.99 -- after
all it will drive more sales anyway.

Worked flawlessly for the 2 I tried. But i'm cheap so I don't know if
i'll pay for more...

Games

Ok, so since I quit World of Warcraft I played FEAR and Call of Duty
2. At $50 each and about a week of play time (even with a busy life)
you begin to see the value of the MMORPGs. The only problem with them
is they don't evolve fast enough, they quickly get too big for the
companies to manage and you end up getting bored with them.

Another nice thing about World of Warcraft was that it supported the
Mac. The other ones out (top ones being Eve and Guild Wars right now)
don't support OSX. Hopefully with the intel macs things like that
will change. No reason to suffer a lousy OS just to play a good game...

For the record

For the record http://maps.google.com/ is cool. Especially the hybrid
mapping mode -- satellite pictures mixed with route information.

Slow mail on Mac

A possible fix for a slow Mail.app:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006013009291731

Not sure it made things faster but it did seem to rebuild the index
fine.

iPod Video

I got an iPod Video (60GB, white) for my birthday back in November.
The screen on it is awesome (but does scratch easy). I've been using
it to watch movies while on the exercise machine in the mornings at
the Gym. There's a good tutorial for ripping DVDs to the iPod for the
mac at: http://howto.diveintomark.org/ipod-dvd-ripping-guide/. Since
I never have time otherwise to watch movies and it takes my mind off
the pain it works well for me. It also helps that it stores ALL my
music etc.

Bye bye World of Warcraft

So I finally had enough of the Chinese Farmers and poor response by
the World of Warcraft (WoW) support people and nuked my account. I
had a level 60 pally with an Epic mount and a level 39 mage before I
called it quits. The final straw was a wait queue of 400 (51 minutes
esimated) before I could even login. WoW's response was "they've
optimized the number of servers for the number of subscribers they
have". Yeah right. You do the math: $14.95/month, 5 Million
subscribers. I think they could afford a few more computers and
someone who knows how to program a load balancing algorithm.

It was a huge time sink anyway. So whats been going on on this planet
in the last year??