The D'Arque Cathedral

I used to have a high amount of respect for Palm. These days… not so much.

Doubtless people have been seeing ads for the Palm Pre all over the place. The Pre is their biggest phone release since the Treo, really. It boasts a brand new OS (WebOS) and is supposed to be the most advanced of the Palm phones. Normally I would be interested from the get go, but there were two things standing in the Pre’s way from my standpoint. The first was that, of course, I’m kind of attached to my iPhone. The second is that the Pre is exclusive to Sprint.

Now, however, there’ve been two missteps on Palm’s end that completely destroyed any desire for me to use the Pre. The blatant dishonesty and… well, laziness, for lack of a better word shown by Palm has been mind-boggling.

The first misstep involves the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes. Now, to go about it the right way, one either develops a third-party utility that references the iTunes library database file (like Blackberry does), or one does a deal with Apple. What Palm ended up doing was spoofing the USB identifier of the iPod, thus making iTunes think that the Pre was in fact an iPod. Apple worked to block the Pre, and Palm ended up reporting Apple to the USB Implementers Forum, the organization that maintains standards, compliance, and vendor IDs for USB. Palm claimed that Apple was using the USB identifier in such a way that it blocked interoperation of devices, something that was against the membership agreement for USB-IF. Unfortunately, not only did USB-IF say that Apple’s use of the USB identifier was completely fine, they stated that Palm was completely in the wrong for using Apple’s identifier. iTunes 9 finally broke syncing with the Pre.

Now, there’s word that another of Pre’s applications is a source of trouble. The Pre uses a piece of software called muPDF for its PDF reading functionality. The developers of muPDF, Artifex Software, released muPDF under the GPL (quick summary: you can distribute the software as you see fit, but any changes you make to the source code must be distributed as well). They also state that if someone were to include muPDF as part of an application, either the new software needs to be distributed as GPL, or a commercial license from Artifex is required. Well, Artifex has sued Palm, stating that while muPDF is included in the Pre, they neither purchased a commercial license nor have they released the modified program’s source code.

The Palm Pre might be a wonderful device. I personally haven’t tried it, as I don’t know anyone who has one. Still, considering these two blatant legal issues that Palm are embroiled in right now due to trying to take a shortcut, it makes me wonder how many other problems the device has, legal or otherwise. They’ve already been shown to cut corners in licensing and development. It’s a shame, really… my first PDAs were Palms and Handsprings. Now, though, given everything that’s happening… I’ll stick with Apple, HTC, or Nokia, thank you very much.

http://kotaku.com/5419702/dragons-lair-heading-for-the-iphone

The 1983 laserdisc classic Dragon’s Lair will follow its cousin Space Ace to the iPhone; Electronic Arts is handling the port. Now you can enjoy Dirk the Daring’s inquisitive grunting and Princess Daphne’s coquettish cooing in a convenient portable format.

The game will feature an arcade mode, faithful to the content of the original cabinet game, and a home mode that includes extra scenes. Space Ace, the other Don Bluth animated game on the iPhone/iPod Touch, was $4.99. No word on price point here, and delivery is listed as just “December 2009.”

Oh, man. I used to play Dragon’s Lair frequently when it came out in arcades. I even got my hands on a book with all of the moves, and quickly learned to beat the game. The first time I did so was at Aladdin’s Castle in Willowbrook Mall; the game had one of those monitors on top of it so others could see you play. When I finally slew Singe (the dragon), I heard applause behind me. I turned to see about 15-20 people watching me beat the game. Let me tell you, that gave a little boost to the ego… heh.

Since then, I’d purchased other ports of the game, for the Coleco ADAM (rather good despite the hardware limitations of the time), NES (wow, that was hard and pretty unplayable), and even the PC. I’d never gotten my hands on an arcade-perfect version yet, even though they’d been available for a while. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this… if only to add another little bit of nostalgia to my gaming catalog.

I have to say, I wasn’t quite expecting me to be on the personal use virtualization bandwagon… at least, not so soon, and not where family is concerned. Granted, we use VMware fairly heavily at the office, but I didn’t expect to start making it available for a family member.

Perhaps I should explain a little. For the past several years, my father has been addicted to a PC game called Re-Volt. It’s a racing game with RC vehicles, and the RC vehicles have toy weapons they can use. Almost every single night, Dad would be at his laptop, playing Re-Volt. However, a few months back the video chipset on his laptop corrupted itself, making it almost impossible to use. With few other options, Dad picked up a new laptop. The problem was that the new laptop runs Windows Vista, so Dad couldn’t get Re-Volt to work properly. In addition, a few other applications of Dad’s wouldn’t run. He wasn’t happy, but he eventually learned to deal with it.

Or at least, he did until this past Friday, when Jennifer and I were at Dave & Buster’s. While there, we encountered a Re-Volt arcade machine, which I took a picture of and emailed to my folks. Unfortunately, that only set off Dad wanting to play the game again. I sighed, and over the weekend I looked into installing it on his laptop. I couldn’t get it to work, so I decided to look into the next best thing: virtualization.

Fortunately, virtualizing XP is relatively easy, as I have a spare license of Windows XP Home Edition on hand. The big question became, “What software do I use?” I could have always used VMware, but I didn’t know whether VMware Player supported 3D accelerated graphics or not, and I wanted to keep to a free solution. I looked at Microsoft’s Virtual PC, but it didn’t support 3D accelerated graphics at all. So, I decided to go with Sun’s xVM VirtualBox, which I know has support for 3D accelerated graphics.

Actually, in retrospect, it’s kind of a good thing Dad decided not to go with Windows 7 after all. He mainly bought it for Windows XP Mode, and I know Re-Volt was one of the items he planned on using with it. Windows XP Mode works in such a way that 3D accelerated graphics don’t work with it either. I’m glad he didn’t find out about that one the hard way…

So, right now, I’ve got XP loaded onto the virtual machine and am doing updates to it, including DirectX and Microsoft Security Essentials. Of course, once this is done, the fun part will be copying the entire machine over to Dad’s laptop, installing VirtualBox on it, and teaching Dad how to use the damned thing. While I should be finished with the virtual machine by the end of the evening, I’ll probably wait until I’m back from New Orleans before I actually install it on his laptop. After all, I know he’ll end up having a ton of questions about it that I won’t want to answer while I’m on vacation.

In any event, like I said, this is the best solution I could come up with for his compatibility issue. I hadn’t thought I would ever need to set up virtual machines for the folks, but Dad wants his programs to run, so virtualization is the way to go. It should be amusing to see how it all works out in the end.

Some time ago, I had written about using IM applications on my iPhone. I tend to do quite a bit of IMing when out on the road; unlike the AT&T Tilt I previously used, the iPhone didn’t come with an IM program of its own. Over time, I installed the official AIM and Yahoo apps, and they worked fine for what I did (the Yahoo one much better than the AIM one). While there were multi-protocol clients out for the iPhone, I was a bit leery about trying most of them. I had heard Trillian had been planning on releasing an iPhone app for a while, so I decided to wait and see what that one would be like. Well, a few days back, my friend Patrick McCarron informed me it had been released, so I went ahead and picked it up.

I have to say, I was rather impressed right off the bat. If you have a Trillian Astra account, it automatically populates your mobile Trillian with the saved IM accounts and asks which ones to load on launch. From there, it signs the user in, and IM works right away. Typing in messages is easy and auto-caps and spell-check works fine. One might not think that would be such a big deal on iPhone, but the AIM app never really supported auto-caps. Push notifications come through fine as well. I actually spent from Friday evening to Saturday evening signed into Trillian on iPhone (as I was away from a PC most of that time), and it worked pretty much flawlessly.

Now, there are disadvantages. Apparently Facebook and Twitter support isn’t in place, which is really fine by me because I prefer using the official Facebook app and Twitterrific for those. There isn’t Skype support either, but then again the Windows Trillian app only acts as a frontend for an existing Skype install. Landscape keyboard support isn’t available, which may be a deal breaker for some; for me, it doesn’t really matter as I rarely use landscape keyboard. The final quibble I’ve heard some complain about is the fact that push notifications are only available for 24 hours between program sign-ons. Again, this doesn’t concern me much as I change my status and availability more often than that, especially if I’m going to bed and don’t want to be woken by incoming messages.

All in all, though, Trillian for iPhone is a rather solid app. I’ve gone ahead and deleted the AIM app for iPhone (which I still consider junk), but I’m keeping the Yahoo app for those times where I just want to sign in to Yahoo to talk to Jennifer while on lunch or something. For $5, it’s hardly the most expensive app out there, and so far has worked out pretty nicely for me. I’ll likely be giving it even more use while in New Orleans later this week as well. If anything changes there, I’ll post about it later. For now, though, it’s a welcome addition to my iPhone app library.

Well, this has been an interesting weekend.

It’s my birthday today. Normally I don’t go out of my way to celebrate my birthday; at the most, all I’d ever do is go out to dinner with my parents. In fact, the last time I had a birthday party of any kind was twenty-five years ago. I had mentioned that to Jennifer, and she resolved to do something about that. She spent the past couple of weeks working behind the scenes getting the party ready, and also working to get me gifts. We scheduled the party for this past Friday, set the venue, and I simply waited for the time to come…

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The following is a reposting of an article/rant made by a now-former member of the Mortal Kombat fan community named “FatSatan”. Like many people, FatSatan HATED Mortal Kombat Annihilation; this prompted him to collect every single thing he found wrong about the movie and gripe about it. After the website it was hosted on went offline, I got his permission to host it on my server. After showing it to Jennifer this evening (in response to her question asking what was so bad about the movie), I decided to go ahead and post it on the main site and not just on a subdomain somewhere. So, for your enjoyment… his Ultimate Mortal Kombat Annihilation Rant.

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This has been something of an interesting weekend.

I spent the weekend with Jennifer, and we got to do quite a bit of fun stuff. We started off at Birraporetti’s downtown in the Theatre District, where we had a very nice dinner. That done, we wandered around the immediate area a little, taking in the sights and talking, before we went to see Our Town at the Alley Theatre. The show was very good, and well worth watching. Once the play was over, we wandered a block away over to Bayou Place, where we intended having a drink at the Hard Rock Cafe. On the way, we saw a rather… interesting sight: six guys dressed as superheroes dancing around a light pole. In retrospect, I wish I had been closer so I could have gotten a good picture of it. We went into the Hard Rock, had a drink and listened to a band whose name escapes me, and then made our way to Jennifer’s favorite martini bar. After having a couple of drinks there, we headed back to her place for the night.

The next day was something of a new one for both of us. We had learned that Randall Milholland, the author of one of my favorite webcomics, Something*Positive, was in town for a convention called Oni-Con. In addition, some of Jennifer’s coworkers were going to the event as well. So, not ever having been to a convention before, we decided to give it a go. When we arrived at the Marriott Westchase, we were struck by just how many people there were in costume. In fact, Jennifer said nothing but “wow” for four or five minutes straight. Once we got some cash for the tickets, we met up with her coworkers Joseph and Andrew, and got into line for tickets. Tickets bought, we wandered through the area, trying to navigate through the packed hallways. I even encountered one of MY coworkers while walking around.

At one point, we found a ballroom area that had many arcade and console machines set up. What drew my attention, however, was the fact that they had a working Doctor Who pinball machine. I was in heaven for a bit as I got to play (ironically, it’s the pinball machine I’m best at). Once done there, we moved on to the next ballroom, where we watched as attendees engaged in mock battles. We then crossed the hall into a room where vendors sold clothing and other items. One company, WLP, had three t-shirts I wanted. I bought two; one was a very neat IT one, and the other referenced a popular German forklift safety training video. They didn’t have the third one I wanted in my size, however…

That done, we wandered down the hall again, where we ran into Randy Milholland’s table. We talked to him for a bit, and he was kind enough to do a sketch of the characters Davan and Vanessa for me. The guy was just as hilarious in person as he is in his comic and on his Twitter, I must say. I also got a copy of Super Stupor, which is his parody of superhero comics (and pretty funny to boot). We even got to see Clarine Harp, who is the inspiration for the character of Aubrey in S*P. Randy said he was about to do a panel on webcomics, so we made our way over to where it was, where we were entertained for an hour as he and other webcomic artists answered questions about doing webcomics and talking about their backgrounds. One of them asked why those who wanted to do a webcomic hadn’t done it yet; I almost replied that my art skills make Xkcd look like DaVinci’s work. All in all, though, it was extremely interesting… though by the end of the panel, Jennifer was geeked out, and the overheated room did nothing to make her feel better. So, after grabbing one more game of Doctor Who pinball, we walked over to Outback Steakhouse for dinner, and then made our way back to her house for trick or treaters and scary movies.

Once we got to her house, we got the candy ready for the trick or treaters, and sat down for the first of the two movies of the night: Event Horizon. Jennifer had never seen it before, and wanted to give it a try. An hour into the film, she was definitely unnerved, but we were also a bit disappointed. Not in the movie, though, but in the trick or treaters: we had only gotten two or three coming by. We turned out the lights and proceeded to finish the film. After it was done, she was a bit freaked out, but we went ahead with the next film: Prince of Darkness. If anything, that film scared her even more. She retaliated by threatening to make me watch Twilight; in the end, she put on Bram Stoker’s Dracula which was showing on Channel 55. In retrospect, that movie really wasn’t as close to the original novel as we liked, and we ended up shaking our heads at the Mina/Dracula romance. After that, we called it a night… with a couple of nightmares to boot.

All in all, it was a very fun weekend. I’m not sure when or if we’d do another con, but we’re definitely looking into seeing more plays at the Alley. We’re also looking at a couple more movies to watch at some point. For now, though, it’s the start of a new week, and it’s back to work for both of us. Fun fun…

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/moms/6674382.html

NEW YORK — Toys R Us Inc. is introducing a layaway program for larger-ticket items such as bikes and cribs ahead of the holiday season, the company said Monday.

The largest U.S. toy retailer said the program is effective immediately in stores nationwide. Customers can put a variety of items on hold and make a series of payments until the item is paid in full.

Layaway programs are financing agreements in which retailers — without charging interest — hold merchandise for customers until they have finished paying in installments.
Popular during the Great Depression, layaway had become largely a thing of the past before the recession hit. But Sears expanded its program for the holidays last year, and due to its popularity Sears and Kmart introduced an online option this year.

Retailers who have introduced the programs see them as a way to keep customers buying in a time of tight credit and other economic problems. Toys R Us CEO Gerald Storch said his company’s customers were requesting a layaway program.

There’s currently no online layaway at Toys R Us, though there might be in the future, the company said. The Wayne, N.J.-based company said the program is likely to keep going after the holidays, though terms may change.

I’m finding this amusing, simply because I used to work for Toys R Us from 1993 to 1995, and back then it seemed there was no chance in hell the company would ever have layaway. That didn’t stop people from constantly asking if we did have it, though. However, as the store director back then once told a customer who asked why we didn’t have it: “We would need a store two and a half times as big.” I had discussed it with Jennifer while at lunch yesterday, and while she tried to say that people would be trying to get their stuff out and out of the store as quickly as possible before Christmas, I had to point out that the warehouse areas of the store were typically jam-packed with merchandise during the entire Christmas season, even if it’s constantly being sold and replenished. The one saving grace I see here is that the items have to be picked up by December 6th, probably to make room for the big influx of season merchandise. I’ll be interested to see how this pans out.

Well, this has been an interesting week. My mom, her sister Norma, Jennifer, and I went on a road trip to the San Antonio and Austin areas for a few days for vacation. I got to see a lot of areas I had never been to before, and all in all we had a great time. While I did post quite a bit about the trip on my Twitter, I figured I would go ahead and post a recap of the trip here…

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As many people have undoubtedly already read, Sidekick users are in a whole heap of trouble right about now. For those who aren’t familiar with the Sidekick (also known as the Hiptop), it’s a “smartphone” that acts differently from other smartphones. In essence, other than the phone application, it’s a thin client, where everything (including the address book and applications) is hosted on Danger’s servers instead of on the phone itself. An official posting on T-Mobile’s forums states that all data is lost, even though they’re trying to recover what they can.

As for what happened, well… from the rumors I’ve seen, it appears a SAN upgrade went seriously awry and caused the entire array to get hosed. One would think that they would have backups of this data; hell, my own personal “datacenter” is relatively small scale, yet I have daily backups to tape. Also, I have MK Online on a workable and tested backup system. I’m guessing that the backup system they were using wasn’t being kept up-to-date or even monitored. For something as mission critical as that, not having working and tested backups is absolutely inexcusable.

So, what’s happening right now? T-Mobile is stressing to users to not power off or reboot their devices under any circumstances, or else they will lose all of the data on them. Given how bleak the situation looks, I’d say the best thing the Sidekick users could be doing right now is copying all of their address books to paper as quickly as humanly possible. I have at least one friend who is (or now was) a loyal Sidekick user, so this must come as another huge blow alongside all of the other crap she has had to go to.

For me, I had honestly considered a Sidekick a LONG time ago, before moving to my employer’s wireless plan (which is with AT&T Wireless/Cingular/AT&T). Even then, the thought of having EVERYTHING server-side and nothing stored locally unnerved me. I’ve always been a big believer in hosting my own stuff, from email to blogging. Right now the only real exception is Twitter, and I don’t exactly consider that “mission critical” (like any of this stuff is). That way, I can make sure everything is backed up on my own terms, and if something goes wrong, the only person I can blame is myself. Needless to say, I’m glad I didn’t go with the Sidekick now.

So, to all you Sidekick users… you have my utter sympathies. I would wish you luck with your Sidekick, but I’m willing to bet most of you will likely be switching platforms now… and I’m willing to bet that this will be the final nail in the coffin for the Sidekick.