authenticgeek

REPEAT ALL

Most of the time I just forget about Last.fm and their unending pile of data on almost any imaginable band, but the narcissistic historian in me really likes them for another reason.

Last.fm has, for the most part, kept record of every track I've played in iTunes for almost five full years. And while I know that I enjoyed mew very consistently for a number of months back in 2008, Last.fm lets me say that I'm surely out of my mind with a whopping 1833 plays since I started listening in October of 2006.

I bring this topic up not because I want everyone to share in my psychosis, but because I noticed that Jukebox the Ghost recently broke into my top 8 bands, a sort of cut-off level around ~700 plays where bands either reach or never get anywhere close to.

I'm very happy about this because Jukebox the Ghost keeps putting out music that I really like, of which more is obviously better.

Along those same lines, I would seriously appreciate if someone (possibly myself) could please enable me to play narcissistic historian with many more of my habits and interests. I toyed with writing up a daily log of interesting events but that may satisfy only a single craving - looking back on a general view of interesting events.  Then I would still have to track my music in Last.fm and my beer in Beer.me (no such beer tracking app actually exists at that address - yet) and, if I know anything about myself from being just quite as narcissistic as I actually am, I know I would not be able to keep up with so many updates on a daily basis.

Nothing so awesome could be easy, could it?

Googles, Androids, Geek Tails and Usability

So, I went to Google IO this week and I felt like a total outsider. It's not as though I'm an Apple fanboy, but I do appreciate their products (just as I have concern about their opacity) for their simplicity and popular appeal. The keynotes were pretty heavily anti-Apple though and I did get more than one leering stare as I checked the time on my iPhone. A couple thoughts on Google v. Apple and, more importantly, Google v. Google.

Google has a fantastic ability to ship products that geeks love, this we all know. Unfortunately, they're very often products that only a geek could love. There are exceptions, occasionally a product catches on with non-geeks and I think Google realizes this and improves upon them so they'll have an even greater number of non-geek users. But there's a threshold where products from Google become easier to use. A threshold far, far away from many current Google products. Gmail and Search are above the threshold, for example, but I'm having difficulty picking out any of their other products where I've seen clear improvements in simplicity and usability.

So when Google says "we released x and y today for developers and it's 200% better than Apple's x and y" they get lots of applause and geek love - and it may, in fact, be a much better technical implementation than something similar from Apple - but the world is not technically black and white. Geeks come in all sorts of levels (such as 52nd level Paladin - I kid) and Google's developers just happen to be some of the geekiest. But what about everyone between Google geeks and the guy who's only used BASIC twice? There's a lot of geek in there, most of which doesn't know a kernel from a cache.

Therein lies the difference. Apple releases code and tools that even the geeks that don't know a kernel from a cache can start with. I'm not suggesting that they'll always be ignorant of kernels and caches, just that they are currently, and putting them on the path to creating something and learning more is key. Apple is appealing to the long tail of geeks and getting a ton of interest.

Android is feeling really nice these days, especially on the beautiful EVO screen, but I ran into serious usability problems just starting it up for the first time. Buttons hidden by on-screen keyboards with no obvious way to hide the keyboard, even the tutorial for the keyboard was a little confusing! Between getting developers to get on board and getting regular users to buy android phones... and the marketplace! Every time I open the marketplace I feel like there are only 20 apps and games and the other 30,000 are purposefully hidden from me because there's no way to browse through them.

Finally, Google is in the middle of a crisis (much like Apple) where they need to push open standards like HTML5 because they could be huge - write a web app and have it work on all internet devices - and yet, HTML5 isn't ready for prime time (hell, it's not even ready on android, let alone other phones/devices) and they can't fall behind in the platform-specific app war. So here I am, wanting to be both an Apple and Google developer, and my goal platform (HTML5) isn't available yet - who am I going to go with? The platform that allows every app on to the store, but only shows about 20 of them at a time and has serious usability issues or the platform that has a userbase and clear documentation and tools but might not let my app on after I'm done writing it?

Being a phone developer sucks right now. Someone please fix it, and I don't care which one of you it is.

Who says you can't have two (or four) blogs?

Bringing back the old domain!

I was thinking about some stuff I wanted to share on the web the other day (weeks ago, really) and I didn't really have anywhere to do it. Every once in a while I come across some bit of information that would have been more useful if I hadn't had to search for it quite so hard and I wanted to organize and put that kind of stuff somewhere. Generally, this stuff is technical details or notes about video games that I'm enjoying or musings on what I'm enjoying on the iPhone currently so it's no surprise that I already had a domain that manages to tie all these things together really well.

Sure, I don't use 'authenticgeek' on the internet quite as much as I used to. It's more of a summary of content than a name to hide behind. As for having lots of blogs that are in various states of updates and disarray, I don't think any particular blog keeps me from any of the others as much as lack of inspiration to post about the respective content does. I'll have a problem when I'm blogging so much here that I don't have time to blog elsewhere, or vice versa.

In an effort to be completely antithetical to the way I normally am with blogs, I've started roughly fresh on a stock TypePad design and I'll be using custom CSS to switch things up. No advanced templates allowed. If I want a new feature, I'll try to convince Alex to build it.

HDMI Text Output on the Samsung 2333HD

I picked up a Samsung 2333HD to serve as both a TV and a computer monitor a couple weeks ago. The 2333HD is a nicely designed 23" monitor with a ton of inputs: two HDMIs, a DVI, a VGA, component and coax. The 2333HD is equipped with a ATSC/NTSC cable tuner and can do full 1080p resolution.

After unpacking it, I realized that the TV came with an HDMI cable but not a DVI cable and I had always assumed that I'd connect my MacBook Pro via DVI. In an effort to save a little cash, I picked up a third-party mini Display Port-to-HDMI adapter and hooked everything up. At first everything looked great but after moving some windows to the new monitor I realized that text and details were incredibly blurry. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't the result I was expecting and at first I was resigned to the fact that the monitor was probably designed for TV output and just not a very good monitor.

A day later, my curiosity got the best of me and I was searching around the in-monitor menus when I found an interesting (and severely underlabeled) option in the input panel. Switching the HDMI input to PC input fixed the problem! Here's the exact steps I used:

• Push the "Menu" button on your remote or TV
• Select the "Input" tab on the main menu list
• Select "Source List" from the input tab (it should say HDMI1 if you're connected via HDMI)
• Select the HDMI1 selection from the list and choose PC
• Done! Your monitor should be nice and sharp now.

I've always thought that non-Apple branded monitors could never match the color, brightness and quality of the Apple displays, especially on the newer laptops and iMacs. Perhaps I'm jaded by years of dealing with shitty Dell monitors where dragging windows around between ugly shades of yellow was the norm.

After using the monitor for a couple days, I've realized that the 2333HD is as good as any Apple branded monitor or LCD display. If Samsung keeps this quality and these features at such an awesome price, there's little reason to spend so much more on a much more expensive version.