iM tiRed of lazy tech journaliSm

Tech writers are the best. I most certainly don’t read the stuff that hits news aggregates because of informative banter and notable content, I read it for comic value.

Well… comic value and insight into human nature. Most notably: laziness

It seems to me that the easiest way to get published is to talk about a i* killer. Replace the wildcard with either “pod”

pod
(expensive media player)

“pad”

pad
(expensive tablet)

or “phone”

iphone
(sort of like an Android, but worse, except for battery life, which doesn't matter)

…and write a half-assed article about a new product. Guaranteed Google, MSN, Yahoo, Drudge, or whoever else will have that bad boy on the front page.

Protip: Next time you are charged with the task of covering a new Samsung product’s press release, save some time and just go with “End of Apple???” and be done with it. The whole killer angle was spent several years ago…when we nerds were buying Sandisk players, loading Ubuntu on netbooks, and making wild guesses on forums what RIM was going to do with the next generation of BB phones. Oh….the good old days.

FWIW, I’ll put a Droid X up against all three of those products. For the price point, nothing can touch that machine…my Droid 2 included.

Found: My Dream Robotics Project

+1 Android
+1 Arduino
+1 Voice Recognition

I found this guy over at engadget…called truckbot, it packs the aforementioned awesome things I love.

cellbot
I want to build this so badly

Truckbot is autonomous…the little sucker won’t drive off the edge of a table, even if user prompts it to. This may be a violation of one of Assimov’s robot rules…go look it up.

No time to blog…must continue drooling over this.

iPad Updates

Yesterday marked the official iPad release in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. And our neighbors to the North, Canada. I’m trying to think of an insult to Canada, but all I can come up with is ehPad. I think I’ll go with that…Apple ehPad.

We Yankees have had these around for what seems like a long time. What is the current state of the latest Apple buzz-inducing product?

robo
little robot dude looks happy

Well, apps, for starters. Apple managed to get a huge bump due to the iPhone developer core. Granted a bunch of the available apps are ‘iPhone ports’ so to speak, there are tons and tons of them. I really like a few of the ideas that have been thrown around. From the simple-ish ideas, like an air hockey game…

air hockey
Pong 2.0

…to the hholier than though less than two iPhone and an iPad having squares need not apply apps…

scrabble
what do you do with Zs...or Xs

…there are some very entertaining apps for purchase. I like that Scrabble notion quite a bit. I bet I could do that with a pair of Droids and a Linux tablet, but I digress. I need to make more money writing paid posts like this, before I can think about two Droids. Fail.

The one thing that has fallen off the radar is the marketing point that the iPad was to be the Kindle killer. I have not seen any press regarding using an iPad as an e-book reader, which on the onset was one of the primary selling points. It could be an issue with battery life, with respect to the Kindle’s battery kind e-ink. More likely, it is easier to show flashy things like gaming on the units…makes for a more interesting story, I suppose.

I guess I’m still on the fence. As is the case with all things techy and new, I still want one. You can keep the iPhones though…I’m not biting there.

In the mean time, I’m going to see if my ehPad meme takes off.

Arduino Hello World

Hola Mundo!

arduino hello world
if it's on then it's muthafuckin on G

See that blue LED? Pretty hard to miss. That is essentially the Arduino version a ‘hello world’ program. In other words…I’m live, suckaz. For what it is worth, that is my Mini 9, on Linux, talking to that microprocessor…no easy task. No hard task either, because our nerd-ass community is awesome. So is the command prompt.

Open source ninja. For the EE win.

All About the Benjamins Baby

watcha wanna do
wanna be a ballah
shot calla
balla
who be dipppin in tha benz wit tha spoila
on an off with tha…

hundo
dolla dolla bill, yall

Uncle Sam just channeled Diddy. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby…and the Benjamins are all about the security, baby. Hit the Treasury Department’s site and check them out.

I’ll leave that url for the reader to dig up. The last thing I want is the damn govmint seeing this site on their damn backlinks. Freedom of damn speech, for the damn loss. FTDL.

Meme fail.

Laser Tomfoolery Ends in Arrest

This CBS affiliate is reporting that the man arrested a mini-van owner for a little green laser hyjinx. Hyjinx? Hijinks? Hyjynx? Not sure, but tallk about some injustice…

tomfoolery
pew pew pew

FTA:

On the ground, a Camden police unit responded to the corner of Alabama Road and Congress Road and located Villalobos sitting inside a red Dodge minivan. Police approached Villalobos, who admitted to being the person flashing the laser light at the helicopter, saying that he thought it had been a news helicopter.

The laser pointer light was located inside the glove compartment box of the vehicle.

The question remains, Did this guy…

a) Own said mini-van
b) Borrow his wife’s mini-van, or
c) Borrow his mom’s mini-van

I’m going with c. It seems like a really “live at home in the basement” thing to do…