Thursday, January 28, 2010

My Steps Have Held To Your Paths; My Feet Have Not Slipped. (Psalm 17:5)



Oh, fine! Be that way! Just let my Thursday end! Sure, why not, I guess I don't really need it anymore, right? I mean, it's just Thursday for crying out loud! It's not like it's important or anything, like Friday, right? Sure, take it! Go on, who needs it anyway! It's just a lowly, useless Thursday, you selfish nit!

Man, the nerve of some people! Take my day before I'm done with it... Sheesh!

Odds and ends, where to start...

Ah, yes, the iPad! Look, all I have to say is, what is up with the name? The "iPad"? Are you kidding me? That's the best they could do? I've never been quite on board with the whole "i" thing to begin with. I understand branding, and yeah, they got cool gadgets... I love my MacBook Pro (no little "i" at the beginning of that name!), and my 3rd generation iPod is still going strong after 5+ years (while everyone else I know has had to replace several), and my iMac is a solid, reliable machine... so I'm pretty much a fan of Apple. But the "i" thing is starting to bug me.

When I first heard the announcement for the iPad, of course, I immediately went to the Apple website to watch the promo video that I knew would be there, heralding the new gadget (basically an iTouchXL) as the greatest thing ever, trying to drum up hype so scads of people will once again buy it the day it comes out instead of waiting for the bugs to get worked out and the price to drop. The promo video was certainly effective... the gadget is very cool. But those promos always remind me, in a way, of the announcers for TNA Wrestling... "O, my gawd, you will never see explosive wrestling action like this anywhere else, ever! TNA is the bestest evar!"

I watched the iPad promo with Eldest Daughter today, so we could giggle at the goofy-looking talking heads they trot out to get their hype on. If you haven't seen it, you can see it here. It's entertaining and informative!

But I found this video more entertaining... if you haven't seen the original video on the Apple site, go watch some (or all) of it first, then chuckle at this one...




Getting back to my "love/hate" thing with the little "i", I had the same problem with Nintendo, when they released the Wii. Yeah, on the one hand, it's clever... it sounds like "we", so it encourages group gaming, and visually, the two "i's" next to each other also look like two people standing together, presumably to have fun playing together, I get it. But like the "iPad", the Wii lends itself too easily to crude, lame humor. It's easily mocked. "Playing with my Wii" became the joke of every English-speaking schoolkid worldwide. Just like "iPad" has already garnered a ridiculous amount of jokes about Apple producing feminine hygiene products now... even on the day of it's announcement, the jokes began to flood in.

I don't know... somewhere at both Apple and Nintendo are groups of marketers and Vice Presidents who think too highly of themselves... do a little research before setting yourself up to easily-avoidable ridicule! That's what you get paid crazy amounts of money for! Well, at least it should be...

On a completely unrelated note, I think I'm going to stop embedding video's from Break.com. They seem to be playing random ads/commercials in front of them all the time now, and I was a little miffed at some of the stuff I've been seeing. I apologize if I've inadvertently offended anyone by sharing funny clips. I had/have no control over what they put first. If I can't find the clips of YouTube, I won't embed them.

Like this one!

It's a follow-up to that blind-folded half-court shot I posted previously. A reporter was filming an intro to a news story on that shot, and made a shot even more incredible...



Crazy. I wonder how many takes it took him to make that?

I spent some quality time rewriting some of my fantasy novel today, to send off to the writer's group in prep for the next meeting. Rewriting is FUN! It's a different type of fun than cranking out first draft. I tweaked and polished a couple chapters today until they sparkled with new life and zest! I'm going to read the text aloud one more time, and see how it rolls off the tongue, then send it off on Friday.

We'll see how fun the rewriting process is once I do it a few dozen times! O_O

I am done for the day. A lot of babble. Thanks for stopping by to skim the text. By brother John says that's what he does... he skims over it to see if I mention him at all... John! I mentioned you! If you made it to the end before browsing away, this is your reward!

Adios.

Dave

PS As much as I hate to have to do it, I reactivated the Capcha thing for the comments. I apologize for the inconvenience. I've been getting a lot of spam comments lately.

4 comments:

logankstewart said...

iLike this post, Dave. The only Apple product I own is my 3rd gen iPod, which also is still going strong.

Seems like the Wii was originally going to be called the Nintendo Revolution, which definitely sounds cornier than Wii, in my opinion. Personally, iLike the Wii's name.

Yay! Long live CAPTCHA. I know how much uLike it.

Joseph said...

Love the apple to wrestling announcer comparison! Made me lol.

Joseph said...

Penny Aracde has an amusing rant/comic on the iPad.

David Wagner said...

Death to Capcha!

They should have called it the Portal, or Threshold, or something along those lines. The "iPad" just seems to cute and minimal and limited for what they claim it is. Meh, I don't know...