RANDOMIZER9.COM

That’s a big Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, over!

Seriously?!

I know we’re in Texas and all, but I never thought I’d see bull bars on a Mercedes.

Tweet-kus are smart fun / a quick creative brain snack / thanks furry person!

Inspiration is a curious mistress. Much like her sister Lady Luck, she plays by her own rules and can strike without warning at the most odd circumstances.

This past New Year’s Eve weekend, I went with a friend to Ikkicon in Austin. It was something to do, and if nothing else, cosplayers always make for an interesting and fun time people-watching.

I had a feeling that the flavor of odd that is usually associated with anime conventions was going to be a little extra-spicy by virtue of the con’s location, and Austin did not disappoint. As I walked around enjoying the spectacle as it lay before me, I saw something that struck me as odd.

Okay, MORE odd…

It was a person wearing a full head-to-toe red animal/critter/Pokemon-looking-thing costume with what appeared to be a fox’s head and tail. That in itself isn’t unusual, but the kicker was that this person was WALKING AROUND ON THEIR HANDS AND KNEES like an animal. It threw me for a loop; crossing into that “dangerously geeky” territory that I try to avoid like most people avoid regular geeks. Sadly, I was too transfixed by the specacle to take a picture with my cell phone camera, but I did get a picture of that person some time later, this time on two feet, as they assumed some kind of “battle pose” while facing another cosplayer in full regalia.

Now, this is just one of those events that is just DYING to be posted to Facebook. Its nice to have something unique to report besides the usual “I’m having a good/bad day” or “work sucks” or “OMG my child just did something for the first time!” stuff.

Playing with words is something I like to do, and I pondered over how to report this person’s rather successful attempt to “Keep Austin Weird.” I thought I’d borrow a meme from Fark.com and go with a 1-2-3 type of post, showing how this individual went from “Geeky” to “Super Geeky” to “Dangerously Geeky.”

I liked the words, but the format looked ordinary to me. Granted, that may be an effect of spending too much time on Fark.com, but in any event, I thought I could do better. While riding that train of thought, I got the idea of putting it into a haiku style. That is, a three-line verse with the first line containing five syllables, the next, seven and the last, five. I came up with:

bright red furry suit
walking around on all fours
what the frak is this

It was even short enough to fit into a tweet, which delighted me to no end. I then decided that it would a fun to put my postings for the rest of the week into what I call “tweet-ku” format, which adds a 160-character limit to the haiku structure. Despite my tendency to get “wordy,” I don’t think the character limit ever came up, and I only goofed up once on syllable count, so it went well.

A pleasant side effect of the exercise is that those self-imposed limits forced me think creatively in order to stay within them. At times, I struggled to keep my syllables at the correct counts, and I would find myself reading aloud while counting syllables on my fingers. Luckily, I would usually be inside at the time, or in the presence of other like-minded geeks who didn’t ask me why I was counting on my fingers.

Stretching that creative muscle helped me to finish other things, and I think I might be onto something. I may take to writing tweet-kus whenever my muse is tired of the drudgery of my nine-to-five and needs a quick snack to get it going.

Needless to say, that won’t take long!

RANDOM REVIEW – 2009

Another year has come and gone, and as I sit here bored at work, it seems as good a time as any to reflect on the end of what I like to call “the 2Ks.”

2009 was both a good and a bad year for me, personally. On the good side, I got off my rear and put the left side of my brain to work writing a few short stories and poems. I also started to pursue voice acting: taking lessons, getting into a studio for the first time, and doing some podcasting.

Interestingly enough, the shove that got my creative ball rolling again was Mizuumi-con, held on March 21st. There, I attended two panels; the first was a voice acting panel held by Kevin M. Connolly, which gave me an idea of what to expect going into the voice acting business. The second was Chris Holm’s “Inspiring Artists” panel. He and I had won the “My Cage” art and writing contests a while back, and it was my first time meeting him. At his panel, he told his story about (quite literally) where his art took him.

I started by going back through old ideas I had written down, thinking over which ones would be worth the effort to bring them to reality. I got started on a few things, and then a number of weeks later, Chris Holm emailed me. He wanted me to sit in on a meeting of an artists’ group that was starting up. I thought that it would be fun, and so I found myself at a coffee shop that Saturday afternoon. That group would eventually jell into First Storm Manga. My involvement with them has introduced me to some new friends, provided me with a creative outlet and led to some fun times spent at anime conventions.

Career-wise, the best I can say is that I had the same job at the end of the year as I did at the start of it. I was introduced to Military Flavored Baloney, as opposed to the Corporate Flavored Baloney I am used to having. At the end of the day, its still baloney, but the money’s good and the work isn’t too hard, so I’ll ride it out.

Moving on to the less-pleasant events of 2009, I lost two people that were important to me, namely Melinda Garcia, wife of my good friend Carlos Garcia, and my grandmother, Manuela Soliz. They are already sorely missed, and their passing has made me think about the direction I want to take my life in, but that is a topic for another time.

I had also hoped to have a house by the end of this year, but that got put aside due to the uncertainties of my job. Now that I feel more confident about my employment situation, I will start looking for a home in earnest, and my hope to have purchased one by summer.

In my opinion, 2009 was “The Year of the Attention Whore.” Maybe its just because we see them in the news more frequently, but I don’t recall the last time we had this many nutballs jumping up and down screaming “LOOK AT ME!” Just off the top of my head, we have Dick Cheney, Octomom, Joe Wilson, the Balloon Boy parents, Jon and Kate, the White House Gate Crashers, Lady Gaga, some prison escapee in England that has been taunting the cops via Facebook, and the various women that slept with Tiger Woods. Now, I’m not claiming any level of moral high ground, because I was admittedly watching and talking about them just like everyone else, so I guess I’m part of the problem.

It was bittersweet to have to say farewell to some folks in 2009, but new friends were also made. Thus, as a new year begins, I find myself a little more appreciative of my station in life and hopeful for the many possibilities that lay ahead in The New Year.

Here’s to you, 2009, don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya!

Apple is the new Nintendo (which is the new Apple!)

Somedays it is easy to believe that I have waken up in Bizarro-world.  Apple recently decided that the iPod Touch was going to be a game machine.  Nintendo turned the DS into a music player with the DSi, (using Apple’s codec, of all things!)  In addition, Nintendo announced the DS XL not even a year after the DSi’s release.

What’s next, a new version of Windows that actually works?

Oh…

I have thought of Nintendo as being the “Apple” of the video game industry for some time.  Much like Apple, they march to their own beat and don’t worry about what “the other guys” are doing.  Sometimes it works out great, sometimes they trip over their own innovations, and sometimes they are just too far ahead of the curve for their own good.  At the end of the day, they make lots of money and have lots of die-hard fans.

Apple, of course, has long been known for “thinking different,” as well as for Steve Jobs, overpriced hardware, constantly re-releasing new iterations of said hardware with minor updates, and not being very interested in gaming.  At the end of the day, they also make lots of money and have lots of die-hard fans.

Thus, it came as a surprise to see Apple take a page out of Nintendo’s book, as they touted the iPod Touch as their new portable “game machine.”  Apple was also pretty blatant in promoting their device as being superior to Nintendo and Sony’s portable offerings.  The beauty of Apple’s approach is that Apple itself does not have to make any of the games themselves.

Nintendo, for its part, recently announced the DS XL, a curious move which defies traditional gadget logic.  After all, things are supposed to get smaller over time, not bigger!  In fact, the 4-inch screen of the XL nearly brings it to par with Sony’s PSP.

Speaking of Sony, Lord only knows what they’re thinking…I mean, seriously, $250 for the PSPgo?

For all of the hype, I don’t see games being a big part of Apple’s overall strategy; instead they will be another revenue stream just like apps and music.  The games themselves have been mostly casual affairs, the ‘big budget’ titles have come from EA and their ilk…as if they needed another platform to release Madden onto.

It remains to be seen whether Nintendo will be adding other multimedia functions to take advantage of the DS XL’s bigger screen.  While a video player would be much appreciated by DS users, it won’t contribute to Nintendo’s bottom line, so I doubt we will see that happening anytime soon.

While Nintendo and Apple have taken pages out of each other’s business plans, the fundamental core of what both companies will remain the same, so long as the DS and iPod continue to be money-makers.

I suppose Bizarro-world isn’t such a bad place to be after all.

RANDOM REVIEW REVISITED – HP Mini 1000

I have owned my HP Mini 1000 netbook for just over seven months now, and it seems like as good a time as any to discuss my experience so far.

The original review can be read here.

WAS I A BETA TESTER?

It would appear that HP has corrected most, if not all, of the gripes that I had with my netbook.  Newer models of the HP Mini 1000 now have three USB ports, a standard VGA output, and I believe the whole “Mobile Mini Drive” malarkey has been done away with as well.  Big thumbs-up to HP for making those fixes, but they won’t be doing ME a whole lot of good anytime soon!

ITS SO SMALL AND KYOOT!

For all the press and hype, I don’t think Netbooks have become commonplace as of yet (not in San Antonio, anyway).  I have personally only seen two other Netbooks “in the wild” myself, and my Mini garners the occasional stare when I am out and about with it.  This usually leads into what has quickly become a prepared speech on the pros and cons of owning a Netbook.

Every so often I will get an “OMG ITS SO CUUUUTE!” from a woman, but I have yet to get any significant part of that attention thrown my way.  *sigh*

CRASH BANG BOOM!

Its as inevitable as the tides; you WILL eventually drop your portable computer at some point in time.  It happened to me in June, the Mini fell off of a countertop and the side smacked into a chair on the way down.  Needless to say, I freaked out.  Luckily, there appears to be no permanent damage, save for a nice dent in the speaker grille …so maybe NOW its not so cute!  As a consequence, the battery now has a tendency to fall out at random times, but it wasn’t nothing a little electrical tape could’t fix!

WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN OS MAKES

I was intrigued by the thought of installing Windows Vista on my Netbook at first.  Despite the optimizations and upgrades I had made to the Mini, Windows XP would still grunt and groan when running on the Mini’s modest hardware.  I did some research and found a few reports saying that installing Windows Vista on a Netbook was an excercise in futility, and having had my own bad experiences running Vista on underpowered hardware, I decided not to try.

Meanwhile, the computing press was busy gushing over the Windows 7
beta, and I became intrigued again.  On the surface, it sounded like madness: a newer version of a Microsoft operating system running better than the older one on underpowered hardware?  Unpossible!

Actually it was VERY possible!  I installed Windows 7 and the Mini felt much more responsive than it ever was under XP.  The Aero effects work just fine despite Intel’s nearly-worthless graphics hardware, and tethering my smartphone to get on the Internet when I’m “off the grid” works without any intervention on my part.  When Microsoft offered a discount on Windows 7 back in July, I jumped on it.  I installed Home Premium and I have been very happy with it.

The Mini was pretty good with Windows XP, but it’s GREAT with Windows 7.

ULTRA-PORTABLE BLISS

I have found my netbook to be a great portable computer; it has enough power to do everything I need it to do when on the road, and upgrading the RAM to 2GB made Windows happy.  I wish the battery life could be a bit longer, but except for that little gripe, I consider my HP Mini 1000 to have been a good purchase.

I would encourage anyone who needs a ultra-portable computer for basic tasks to look into purchasing a Netbook.  The price is right, the performance is good, and the portability is great…just be sure you test out the keyboard first!