maniacal rage

Looking at the comments of this post about Geekbench, a benchmarking tool currently in beta (for both Windows and the Mac), it's apparent that, regardless of Apple's move to Intel chips, Mac and PC users will just never get along. I don't know why I thought the Intel switch would make a difference, but at least, I thought, we'll all be using the same chip so we can stop arguing about which machines are faster—there would be no more gigahertz arguments. But from those comments I would say I was living in a fantasy world.

I get into at least three Mac versus PC arguments at work every week. Most of them stem from really silly comments made by co-workers who are anti-Apple, to which I respond with (usually) legitimate arguments. My arguments are almost always met with sentiments like, "Oh, whatever, Apple sucks." It's hard to argue with someone when that's the entire basis of their opinion. A week or two ago, a co-worker of mine was complaining about having to download iTunes to get Quicktime for Windows. I told him he could click an alternate link to get just QT, but he said that was too much work. Then someone else started talking about how it was "absolutely ridiculous" that Apple would "bundle iTunes with Quicktime" and make you "install both to get one." I asked him why this bothered him so much and yet, on his Windows machine, he has Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, et cetera, most of which cannot be uninstalled at all, all bundled, no choice, installed by default, and he has no problem there. He said he could uninstall Internet Explorer if he really wanted to. I dared him to try.

The truth is, there's just no bridging certain gaps. Regardless of the chips, the hardware, the software—there will still be a divide. I'm trying to be better about not responding to bait at work. Trying to avoid getting into arguments on the subject because, really, it's just not worth it. I love my computers. In reality, that's all that matters to me. If you want to use a PC, use a PC. Want to use a Mac? Great, that's fine too (and we'll have more to talk about). The kind of back-and-forth in that post is the very definition of a useless argument.

Things to accomplish today, July 18, 1985:

• Play He-Man.
• Go over to Mario's house and play He-Man.
• Complain and cry when you get your hands dirty.
• Play He-Man.

Shawn on TXP:

Using Textpattern is like driving a homemade car. But I love it for that fact.

I used TXP for a short time on a site I never launched and I liked it, but it definitely felt strange to use.

Video game pitch idea #27, Titanic: The Movie: The Game (title not final):

You play Leonardo DiCaprio (not his character), you're on the Titanic and you're looking around the ship for women. But you're stuck in the grimy bottom decks and to get good tail, you'll need to make your way to the top. To do this, you'll have to win poker games and slapping contests, as well as dance.

The poker mechanics will be simple—three-card hands, highest sum wins (face cards will be removed from the deck for simplicity and realism, we assume the people on the grime decks were probably not very intelligent)—and the slapping contests will be twitch-based combat. Just one button for slap, one for block. The dancing will require the player to press one button to raise a knee up and down and another button to hit the knee with a hand. Optional control could allow player to whistle or yell random phrases like, "Yeeee-haw!" and "I wish I had money!"

Once your character makes enough money, a scripted event will occur—the door to the stairwell will fall off its hinges and you'll be able to move up to the main deck and being to mingle with the wealthy passengers. We'll have some really great AI here. All the women (distinguishable by the oversized hats) will appropriate respond to your character's interactions with them. For the player, the system will be fairly simple—you'll approach a women and press the "interact" button, which will present you with three phrases: (1) How are you? (2) I am Leonardo. (3) Can we make love in the car I saw on a lower deck? (None of these phrases are final.) If the player chooses option three too quickly, the woman will walk away.

After several interactions, your character will fall in love and then a series of scripted events will occur: You will have intercourse with the woman (censored for E rating), you will pretend to fly on the edge of the ship, the ship will hit an iceberg. You'll get separated from the woman and you'll find a pistol on the main deck. Iceberg creatures will begin to attack you from all sides and you'll have to fend them off with your weapon while making your way through the crowds of socialites, all of whom are running to the edge of the ship and jumping off. Once you've destroyed all the iceberg creatures and their boss (the Queen), you'll find your woman and then the ship will sink.

We saw Colin Meloy at Town Hall last night. Since I've had a huge boner for The Decemberists the last few months (I named Picaresque my favorite album of 2005), I was excited to hear Meloy sing solo. Shawn mentioned he was expecting Meloy to be either very strange or completely normal (based on the lyrics of some of The Decemberists' songs), and it turns out he's the latter. The show felt very personal and very low key (Meloy kept saying he hoped it felt like we were all around "a campfire") and it was extremely enjoyable.

Aside from the quality content, the sound was excellent. Probably the best I've ever heard in a live performance. I'm not sure why it was so good, but the guitars and vocals sounded clean and vibrant. Adding to that was the fact that Meloy is one of those rare musicians who is capable of sounding near-record quality live. His opening acts were an interesting pair of women, the first (Amy Annelle) was messy and strange and sort of classic in that "musicians say weird things that do not make sense" kind of way, the second (Laura Veirs) was near-perfect and all business. She was almost too good, too clean, but her music was great.

If you like The Decemberists or, well, frankly, good music of any kind, check out this show.

Update: Shawn talks about the show. I agree—my next show will be The Decemberists.

I was tagged by Mathew, so here goes my addition to the "four things" meme:

Four jobs I've had in my life:

• Front Desk Agent, The Grand Summit Hotel
• Clerk, West Coast Video
• IT Bitch, Deloitte
• Senior Developer, Web, CCG

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Groundhog Day
• The Matrix
• Tommy Boy
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Four places I have lived:

• Bellevue, Washington
• Kent, Washington
• Summit, New Jersey
• Brooklyn, New York

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• 24
• Smallville
• Gilmore Girls (yeah, that's right, I said it!)
• Saturday Night Live

Four places I have been on vacation:

• London, England
• Dublin, Ireland
• Sicily, Italy
• Tokyo, Japan

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Chicken Guaco Loco at San Loco
• Tempura (all kinds, give me all of it)
• Pan-fried Porkchops
• Various cereals with loads of milk

Four websites I visit daily:

• MacRumors
• Digg
• Daring Fireball
• Projectionist

Four places I would rather be right now:

• At home
• Tokyo
• San Loco
• Mountain Creek

Four bloggers I am tagging:

• Shawn
• Jeremy
• Phil
• Greg

Episode II of the podcast is now available. You can subscribe at my podcast information page. My guest for this episode is Shawn Morrison, who you probably know from our short films.

I think this episode is really great, both in its content and its quality. The sound is very, very good—from this point on, all audio will sound at least this good—and it's more structured. The first episode was an experiment-turned-podcast, but this episode is the beginning of the real thing.

In the near future, I'm going to build out the podcast page to include show notes, individual episode downloads and more, but for now, just subscribe to keep up to date. As always, for the best experience you should use iTunes.

New episode next week. Feel free to send your suggestions for topics or anything else to garrett at maniacalrage dot net.

Over the weekend I started playing with the podcast studio inside Garage Band 3. I've wanted, for a long while now, to start doing a podcast—nothing major, just me and other people (call them "special guests," if you will) talking about random topics that interest me and, hopefully, them—and this weekend I sat down and started. My first guest is an old friend, Kevin Pang, who writes for the Chicago Tribune.

While too long, a little strange and not terribly well edited, the first episode is a decent attempt to start playing with making a podcast. It was easy to do using Garage Band and now that I've figured it all out, the next few episodes will be much easier. And they'll be more structured.

Until then, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and listen to the first episode. Hopefully, we'll improve as time goes on.

You can find out more about the podcast on my name domain, garrettmurray.net. I've decided to host the podcast there because, while it has to do with this site in some way, it's more about me personally and therefore it fits better on that domain. It's also available in iTunes and on Odeo (you can find that information on the podcast page).

Your feedback is, of course, greatly appreciated. Suggestions for future topics would also be lovely.

Update: If you subscribed at Odeo, you'll need to resubscribe to the new Odeo channel. Simply click the Odeo link on the podcast information page. I forgot that Odeo doesn't work with M4A files, so now Odeo users will get vanilla MP3s without the extra touches. For the best experience, use iTunes.

Well, they weren't lying—iPhoto is a lot faster. Every year I buy iLife almost solely for the iPhoto update and the last few months, with nearly ten thousand photos, iPhoto was really starting to feel sluggish. So, when Jobs said in his keynote that iPhoto 6 was much faster, I wanted to believe him. But I've heard it before about previous iPhoto updates and I never really felt a speed difference. Today is a new day.

Application Loading (from launch until all thumbnails appear)
iPhoto 5: 14.1 seconds
iPhoto 6: 3.0 seconds

Application Closing (from quit command until gone)
iPhoto 5: 9.4 seconds
iPhoto 6: 1.2 seconds

That's a huge difference. In fact, at this point, the application almost feels, dare I say it, very fast. Thank the application gods!

The new interface of iPhoto mimics the iTunes non-metal-but-metal interface and is borderless as well, which I really like. I think it looks better than plain metal and it's nice to see other major metal apps moving to this new style. Hopefully Safari will be next.

I haven't had much time to look through the new features, but the fullscreen mode looks really cool. The only issue I had initially was that the top and bottom bars disappear after a minute and you can't keep them on the screen without moving your mouse to the top and bottom. Seems strange. Update: Julian wrote in to tell me you can have the bars appear all the time by going into the view menu and selecting Show Thumbnails and Show Toolbar. Thanks Julian!

There are a few more pictures of iPhoto 6 on Flickr.

Update: A few people have asked if I'm using an Intel Mac or a PPC Mac—I'm using a Power Mac G5 Quad with 4.5GB of RAM. Obviously, that means my numbers will be better (hopefully!) than, say, an iMac G5, but that doesn't change the fact that the performance gains are major. You can assume here that if you have an iMac G5, your gains will be similar, appropriate to your computer's speed.

Here's my fashionably late list of favorite things of 2005:

Favorite Album: Picaresque by The Decemberists
I had never heard a single song by The Decemberists until October, but every day since then I've listened to at least one song from this album (and usually the whole thing, sometimes more than once).

My basis for a great album is that (nearly) every song is likable and each has a unique sound. You get huge bonus points if yours songs are actually about something (i.e., they tell an actual story). It doesn't have to be something thrilling, but I'm kind of bored with the standard, "I loved this girl, she left me," songs. Picaresque is chock full of amazingly unique songs like "The Bagman's Gambit" and "The Mariner's Revenge Song," both of which tell a story (literally) and are endlessly fun to listen to.

Runner up for favorite album was Plans by Death Cab for Cutie.

Favorite TV Season/Series Finale: Six Feet Under
I had my problems with the show's middle area, but by god if it didn't have the best series finale I've ever seen. I still think about that last episode on a regular basis.

Favorite TV Show (2004-2005 season): 24
2005's season of 24 was probably its best yet. Each episode was packed with action and drama and they seemed to finally perfect the format. Kudos to the person who kept the Kim character off the show and even more kudos to the writers for slowly reintroducing all of our favorite characters as the season went along.

Runner up for favorite show was Lost, but it couldn't win because I didn't start watching it until it was released on DVD. I love the show now (and watch it regularly), but it didn't seem right to choose it as number one.

Favorite Photo I Took: Katia, in Shinjuku
It was hard to pick only one, since I took 1,945 photos in 2005, but I chose as carefully as I could. The lights in the background, the look on her face (and the memory of where we were and how much fun we were having at the time) makes this my favorite photo of the year.

Runners up for favorite photo I took where: Corners, Reflection and Streetlight Snow. You can view this list of favorites on Flickr (where you can comment and view different sizes).

Favorite Game: Resident Evil 4
This is basically a no-brainer. RE4 was a complete reinvention of one of the greatest game series of all time, and it's actually better than ever before. That so rarely happens. I had fun every minute I played this game. That happens even less. If you haven't played this game, go buy it immediately (especially now that it's also available for the PS2).

Favorite Non-Blog Website: Flickr
I love Flickr. I really do. So much. Occasionally, I'll mention Flickr and someone will ask me what it is and I almost lose it—everyone in the world should be using it. Seriously, if you're not—start. Right now.

Runners up for favorite non-blog website were del.icio.us and Digg.

Favorite Blog or Similar: Three-way tie between Daring Fireball, project.ioni.st and Defective Yeti
It seems cliche to choose DF, but it's still one of the only sites that I read all of the content on. Every article, everything. project.ioni.st is great because of the amount of different content that's posted on a daily basis and DY is just really fun to read.

Favorite App: TextMate
Finally, someone did it right. TextMate is by far the best editor on the Mac and, quite frankly, any platform. I've been using it since it was first publicly released and I love it to death. It's worth twenty times its price but, unlike BBEdit, doesn't cost a fortune. Allan Odgaard is my hero.

Runner up for favorite app was NetNewsWire, but I felt like that really would have won more in 2004 than 2005, since I've been using it for a long time now. But still, NNW is a fantastic app.

Favorite Movie: Batman Begins
There's not much to say other than: I love super heroes, I love Batman, I loved this movie. I never thought it could be better than Tim Burton's Batman, but it was.

Runners up for favorite movie were Sin City, Syriana and King Kong, although I didn't see enough movies this year.

Favorite Purchase: Two Dell 20.5" LCD Displays
I'm sure in the long run my favorite purchase of 2005 will end up being the Quad G5, but since I bought that on December 28, I have to give these displays the title. They use the same screens as the Cinema Displays, but I got them for much cheaper and having two displays is a place from which you cannot return to the world of a single display.

Favorite Vacation or Trip: Japan
This was easy to choose. Going to Japan has been a dream vacation for years and in 2005 we spent nearly two weeks there and loved every minute of it (well, maybe not when we were on crowded buses in Kyoto). Tokyo was the most interesting place I've ever been in my life and I will definitely go back and hopefully sooner than later.

My predictions for Macworld, 2006:

1. 11-foot Cinema Displays. They'll release them with ropes so you can tie them to your car to get them home. You'll need to buy a new Nvidia graphics card to power them and it will cost fifty thousand dollars. The displays won't be priced—you'll have to fight a boar to get one.

2. Intel iBooks and Mac minis. But, unfortunately, they'll be Pentium IIs. The chip will stick out vertically through the middle of the iBook keyboard and the Mac mini will be as big as the G5. They'll still call it a mini.

3. There will be thirteen new iPod models released in the first four minutes of the keynote.

4. iLife '06 and iWork '06 will be extremely minor updates that cost five hundred dollars each. iTunes' version number will jump to 13.5.

5. All products will be announced as "available today," but won't ship for five months.

See you in the winner's circle!

Update: Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and, well, probably wrong but closer to right than the others. I win (lose)!

A week ago, I purchased a new Power Mac G5 Quad. My older G5 is now for sale. I would prefer to sell it locally, since it would be a pain to ship, but if you're interested in buying it and wouldn't mind paying shipping, please email me at garrett at maniacalrage dot net.

You can see some photos of both the new Quad and my quest to reorganize my office on Flickr.

Update: Sold!

Overheard on the subway today:

Oh, shit! I left my mug at work. It's my only mug now, too, since what's-his-face took the rest when he moved out last week.

You know you're a good boyfriend or roommate when they've forgotten your name a week after you moved out.

Our second day trip to Nara was Katia's idea. She read in a guidebook that Nara had one of the largest Buddha statues in Japan and nearly 1,200 wild deer you could feed and, if cautious, pet. I heard her mention the Buddha statue before we left, but I must have missed the part about the deer in her initial description. When we were getting off the train at the Nara station and Katia started talking about how excited she was to feed the deer, I thought she'd gone mental. I kept saying, "Why would they have deer at the giant Buddha statue?" And she kept saying, "No, the wild deer!"

We cleared up the confusion and hopped off the bus in Nara Park where we were immediately crowded by fifteen wild deer of various ages and sizes, all looking for deer crackers. We bought a bunch and started handing them out to eager deer. Eager might be an understatement—the deer would rub their noses on your clothes (leaving behind a trail of saliva), head butt you lightly and, in some cases, bite you gently on the thigh or butt—and we quickly ran out of crackers. I have to say—I've never felt the panic of animal attack as much as when I ran out of crackers with six deer surrounding me. Luckily, they all seemed to understand that shaking your hands in the air and yelling "all gone!" meant it was time to find someone else.

Taking a break from feeding the deer, we walked around to all the major temples in the area and took in the giant Buddha (which I couldn't get a good shot of because of its height and the lack of light). In the Buddha temple there's a column with a small hole at the base and it's said that if you can fit yourself through the hole you'll be guaranteed eternal happiness. Katia fit. I didn't.

We never got tired of feeding the deer, but eventually we did get hungry, so we made our way back into town and had a lovely meal. We saw a few nice pagodas, splashed a small Buddha statue with water and then headed down to Horyu-ji—one of the oldest wooden buildings in the world—before heading back to Kyoto for the night. Nara was one of my favorite parts of our trip to Japan. Maybe I'm simple, but you don't see and feed a bunch of wild deer every day. Combine that with some amazing temples and Nara was a winner.

There are sixty-one photos from Nara available on Flickr.

The bus system in Kyoto is horrible. It works, buses come somewhat regularly, but there aren't enough of them for the amount of people who ride them. Nearly every bus ride was an awful experience—everyone was packed in like sardines, pulling on each other to get on and off—and while we had to rely on the buses to get around most of the time, we dreaded it (especially when heading into touristy areas where it was especially crowded). It's a strange social dichotomy: people are extremely polite to you but have no boundaries when it comes to cramming onto a bus or walking on the street. If you walk into a 7-11, every clerk in the place will say hello to you politely, but people will carelessly (or even purposefully) knock into you in a crowd without acknowledging it. An older woman who would smile politely at you at the bus stop would later use your arm as rope to pull herself onto a bus.

The good news is, once you get off the bus, Kyoto is full of beautiful shrines, temples and plenty of greenery as well. We spent the entire first day in Kyoto walking down the Path of Philosophy and through countless temples, taking in the lovely fall colors along the way.

After two weeks of travel, the last day in Kyoto was really the first day of bad weather and, since we had seen a ton of stuff, we decided to spend most of the day shopping for souvenirs and eating good food. I think Kyoto was the only place that I didn't mind leaving after only a few days, but I'm sure that has to do with the length of the vacation and the fact that we were a little tired by the end.

You can see my photos from Kyoto on Flickr.

After four full days in Tokyo, we expected to be ready to move on to Osaka, but when we boarded the shinkansen bound for Osaka we were actually very disappointed to be leaving so soon. We probably could have spent a month in Tokyo and still felt it was too short when we left, so we vowed to return to Tokyo again very soon and prepared ourselves for our one night and one day stay in Osaka.

Well, it turns out, Fodor's was wrong—a day isn't enough time. At least not to fully enjoy most of the sights in Osaka. Although, truthfully, we would have had a lot more time for other sights if we didn't both love aquariums so much. After spending the night in our gorgeous hotel with built-in spectacular view, we planned to start the day with a quick aquarium visit but we ended up staying there for several hours because it was huge and full of good stuff (like sleeping otters). We took in the Osaka Castle which looks amazing from the outside but is totally modern inside (boo), crossed the town in an attempt to make it to another shrine but were too late.

By the end of the day we realized we just didn't have enough time there to do much more and resolved, yet again, to return to Osaka sooner than later and to give ourselves more time. We returned to the hotel, picked up our stuff and headed to Kyoto, our last major stop in Japan.

There are eighty photos of our stay in Osaka now available on Flickr.

A few things that happened in 2005, in no particular order:

1. I changed jobs twice, once in February and then again in June. Finally feel comfortable and *gasp* enjoy my job.
2. Turned 24.
3. Traveled to Japan and Seattle.
4. Completed our first professional-quality short film and entered it into a short film competition (and lost).
5. Participated in the 24in48 project.
6. Watched Oscar seemingly nearly die and then recover fully.
7. Saw The Sound of Music for the first time.
8. Redesigned this site twice.
9. Fell in love with Ruby on Rails.
10. Remained in love with Katia.
11. Started taking improv classes.
12. Posted 1,945 photos to Flickr.

2005 was a very good year for me. As the clock struck midnight on Saturday I felt, for the first time in a long while, satisfied with the passing year.