Tumbling down

[I]t looks like Obama’s Presidency faces a serious threat from media rounding.

Squashed: The Obama slide in New Jersey and Virginia 

(Thanks Jim)

15 notes · Reblogged from squashed

GPOYW: Baseball, Beer and Hot Dogs Edition.

Apple TV and a new UI

Quick, I’m going to go on a short font and UI rant, so I guess you should look for that unfollow button.

The choice to switch to Helvetica Neue¹ for the interface is a little confusing. They’re using it in a regular weight, which lacks the heft Lucida Grande had. This is most striking on the Now Playing screen, where the type looks so fragile.

What would improve the Now Playing screen, ever so slightly, would be to use a bold weight, which I thought I’d spied in one of the browse screens, more. It can bring a little prominence to the song title, or section headers, which will detract from how awkward Helvetica Neue looks at that size. Here’s a rough sample of my idea:

Another problem exists with the main navigation bar and the features above it. In the home screen, the main navigation is non-selectable, but uses the same blue glow used for selections elsewhere. I’m unsure what would be better (a spotlight, perhaps), but it’s distracting at times.

The new menu setup improves movement across sections, but the Remote application feels even less precise than before, and selecting “My Movies” or “My Music” at the top of sections is nigh-impossible; you end up accidentally selecting the features area.

I’ve finally become acclimated to seeing Helvetica Neue instead of Lucida Grande, and the new software is a good improvement on the large part. But there still seem to be rough edges to the software, as if it was rushed ahead of important hardware improvements. My hope is for an Apple TV that can actually do 1080p or 720p at 30fps (or 60, but I’m not holding my breath), and there’s a lot of potential in that largely-empty Internet menu.

¶

My friend’s Halloween costume, also known as the first piece of modern art to grace our apartment walls.

“Beer Pong Table”
2009
Andrew Lovell
Mixed media on foamboard

2 notes

In true Joe Buck statistical speak, I’m batting 1.000 when playing people who aren’t my brother.

1 note

As though you needed an excuse to drink on Halloween, here’s a power hour for you.

The Rise & Fall of The Nintendo Wii

Marco makes, as usual, makes great points about the trouble the Wii has today. From the Basement piece:

When we first got the Wii a couple of years ago, it was a universal hit at Arc90. The bowling and golf games in the Wii sports package were just plain fun.

Fast forward about six months from the time we got the Wii and it’s a completely different story. It was hardly being used. Fast forward two years to today and I can confidently share that it probably hasn’t been turned on in over a year.

This is almost true with me, but what kept me turning on the system daily for nearly eight months was Wii Fit, during my attempt to lose weight. Though I wasn’t using it intensely, it was still being turned on, and I occasionally played one of the Virtual Console games I’d downloaded.

(The recent Internet Channel refund also enticed me to buy Tecmo Bowl for Nintendo, which didn’t quite placate my desire to play the vastly superior Tecmo Super Bowl I grew up with on Genesis.)

One aspect that really doesn’t help is how dated the Wii’s graphics hardware is. It didn’t matter as much when the system was released in 2006 and everyone was (rightfully) enamored with the innovative new gameplay mechanics. But the Wii’s 480p resolution and Gamecube-era graphics hardware produce drab, dated, jagged-edged output on now-quite-affordable HDTVs, and it’s not helping the system age gracefully.

This is going to be true of any system, but is especially so with the Wii. I don’t own an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, so I can’t compare graphics, but I did go retro last weekend playing Nintendo 64 at a friend’s house. Nobody will say early-era 64-bit graphics have aged gracefully, but I think those games hold a lot more nostalgia than anything in the GameCube era. (I always thought most early PlayStation 2 games looked awful.)

Like most used-up fads, I don’t think there’s a future for it.

I have no idea what Nintendo’s next console will look like, but I don’t think they have any great options. The novelty that made the Wii such a powerful fad will remove most people’s motivation to ever buy another system like it.

The Wii makes a fantastic demo / party machine, but where I think Nintendo went wrong was relying too much on people getting together to play games. People tend to get together to hang out and enjoy each others’ company; they don’t play video games in the same room. Wireless play is everywhere these days: just look at the people playing Word with Friends. And none of this addresses the fact that the use of friend codes is annoying and frustrating at best, and lacks any centralization and quick communication.

I don’t put any stock into the idea that much-rumored Netflix support would entice anyone to return to the Wii, since its output is so piss poor. A lack of HD support really takes the wind out of the sails when it comes to media playback.

This is the first console they produced that has no hardware expandability on the console itself, which could have helped fix some of the issues with performance. The next obvious step is a Wii Plus or Wii XL that will address the hardware and display issues, but they can take an intermediate step with software that will make managing friends an integral and easy part of the system, taking a tip from Xbox.

I look forward to the future of the system, but don’t forget that the point of Wii was to entice the casual gamer. I’m completely unsurprised that use of the Wii has lagged, but keep in mind that Nintendo is in millions of homes that probably never would have bought a console at all.

54 notes · Reblogged from marco · ¶

From the comments of Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug:

The Lost Viking:

I used to think all those different power plugs were a hassle, then I found this. It has a socket for every type of plug, and a plug for every type of socket.

It’s like some kind of electrical orgy just waiting to happen.

NYT: Never grow up, financially

¶

beigeinside:

poeks:

Things I’ll Miss About NYC…

Canal Street on a Saturday. Just kidding, Canal Street on a Saturday is the worst place on earth.*

(via RogelSM)

* Okay, fine, Times Square on a Saturday is the worst place on earth.

Nope, you were right the first time. Times Square isn’t on Earth. It’s in hell.

Live here from the outskirts of hell, and I’m okay sitting in my fiberglass tower.

15 notes · Reblogged from beigeinside