The iPad: Uh-huh, Sure.....

As you maybe can tell, I am less than impressed with Apple's new tablet, called (rather disingeniously) the iPad.

So The Onion did this really awesome satire bit, "Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet", in which Jobs frantically glues 9 iPods to a cafeteria tray and slaps a bit of masking tape on the whole thing.  Unfortunately, that seems pretty close to reality here.  The iPad is basically an iPod touch, except with a huge screen.  The only thing that's new is the iBooks app . . . and hey, if I want to read books on the go, I'd rather have an actual eReader, like the nook.

So is it cool?  Very.  Are some people going to absolutely love it?  Heck yeah.  Am I one of them?  Eh, no.  I'll go for an iPod+Droid+nook combo any day.

Computer Updates + Halloween = Happy Anya!

So, it turns out that when I'm bored with schoolwork, I become very productive with non-school related things.  More to the point, updating pretty much everything on my computer!

A summary:

• Mac OSX 10.5.2 to OSX 10.5.8.  Honestly, I don't see much of a difference, maybe it runs a bit faster, and I can run Safari 4 and other stuff now.  Reccommended in any case :)
• Safari (something) to Safari 4.  Okay, everyone needs to do this.  Well, probably everyone already has, I feel like I'm a bit behind the times here, but it's much faster, much prettier, and has a ton of new features, like being able to browse your most-visited sites in cover-flow style, that are pretty cool. 
• iTunes 8 to iTunes 9.0.2.  The whole reason I went through all of these updates in the first place!  Now that I can actually use the iTunes store, I'm loving this particular upgrade much more than I was previously!  To avoid turning into an Apple commercial, let me just say that if you haven't tried iTunes 9 yet, you are being deprived of LIFE!  Haha, okay, not that extreme, but you should get this :)

 And, on a totally random note, I'm sure the Vatican has better things to do than condemn Halloween as dangerous, pagan, and satanic.  The main danger comes from kids crossing the street in the dark, pagan is not a bad thing, and Halloween originated as a harvest festival, which I do not think is satanic at all.  What's next, trying to ban Dia de los Muertos because it celebrates dead people?  Sheesh.  Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely, safe Halloween, and happy November to you all :)

Things Wrong With The World, Part 2

This was originally going to be in honor of Banned Books Week, a rant about censorship and stupidity, and the futility of trying to keep knowledge from children.  Well, I kinda missed that train (stupid.schoolwork.takes.over.my.life.) but I'll just incorporate that into a larger rant.

I was driving with my mom the other day (well, fine, my mother was driving, but hey) and I just happened to look out my window.  The woman in the SUV next to us had about six bobby pins in her mouth and both her hands were occupied with putting up her hair.  Going sixty miles an hour.  On the freeway.  Are you trying to get someone killed?  I know people in LA can't drive, but this is really taking it too far.

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  For, um, making nice speeches about "hope" and "change" and being an optimist?  Because that's all I can think of at the moment.  I'm sure there were plenty of other people who have sacrificed much more and accomplished better things that this prize could have gone to.  And as much as I love my country and think President Obama is pretty cool, I would have much rather have seen this be awarded to him in a few years' time, when he's made genuine progress on his Middle Eastern peace initiatives.  This lovely New York Times columnist has written what I think to be the perfect speech for Obama to give at the ceremony in December.

NASA crashed a spaceship into the moon to look for water vapor.  And practically no one cared.  Except the scientists.  And me.  What's up with people?  This is the future we're talking about!

Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are pathetic excuses for human beings, just like FOX news is an insult to good journalism.  Honestly, it's people and organizations like this that give all Republicans a bad name.  I laughed when I saw that the White House was treating FOX like part of the "political opposition", because .... they so are.  Really.  And as for some of Anita Dunn's comments . . . wow, remind me to never get on her bad side!

I'm still shocked by the amount of incivility and childishness that our Congresspeople demonstrate.  California's Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano thinks it's perfectly appropriate to yell "You lie!" at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with several other unreapeatable things.  Sheesh, all the governor did was show up at a fundraiser.  A Democratic one, to be sure, and he's certainly made many of us Democrats angry, but there's no excuse for saying what he did.  And then a senator says that Republican opposition to healthcare reform just means they wan't people to "die slowly".  True?  Possibly.  Inappropriate? Oh yes indeed.  And if that wasn't enough, a representative finishes up his rebuttal against a House colleague by cussing him out.  That's practically beyond ridiculous.  I mean, no wonder Congress never gets anything done, everyone is too busy fighting.  I cant believe people think that it's okay to say these things.  Because it's not.  I have the urge to go up to some of these people and shove a bar of soap in their mouths, because these people need a good mouthwashing.

And finally, Pepsi wins the Bad Taste award of the month for it's iPhone app, designed to help men "score" women.  It's rude, it's degrading, it stereotypes women, and as a joke, it goes way too far.  What happened to Apple's famed "app approval process" (oooh, alliteration skillz xD) which is criticized for being to harsh but lets something like this slip through?  Not okay.

In Your Place: Randomz

I made it my mission a bit ago to find Republicans With Brains (they get capital letters in their title 'cause they're just that rare, y'know?).  Actually, Ash kinda inspired me to go on that search.  I found two: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, two lovely senators from Maine who care about things like bailout packages, social equality, and affordable healthcare.  Kudos to them for knowing when to drop the party line.

I want a Kindle.  And an iPhone.  And a tablet.  Why do all the best things in life come with such huge pricetags?  Apple should hurry up and release their tablet . . . but if it's just a large-scale iTouch, I will be quite unhappy.  On the subject of computer-y things, I have a newfound respect for Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator (we're using them a lot in designing our yearbook).  I'll still take GIMP over Photoshop any day, but I haven't found anything to compare to Illustrator or InDesign (my dad thinks I'm a bit crazy.  He says, "why would you want software you have to pay for?"

I love Nancy Pelosi.  She doesn't stand stupidity from anyone, and when told by a senior army figure that she needs to be put "in her place" she responds with "I am in my place".  And her place just so happens to be Speaker of the House of Representatives.  I approve =)  There needs to be more people like her in Congress.  Maybe then things would actually get done in an orderly fashion.

Speaking of, I'm in my place right now . . . watching Stargate Atlantis and "doing schoolwork".  I suppose I have to get back to the second part of that now (though the schoolwork is the reason I have to multi-task and watch SGA at the same time, because it's taking me three months to watch four episodes.  Sheesh).  Catch ya on the flip side! =)

iTunes 9 Is Love (Or It Should Be)

Apple's September conference always has me running home from school a bit earlier than usual to read the news and see what new updates have come out.  And I love most of the new updates this year.  Emphasis on most.

I won't spend too much time on analyzing all the new iPod updates, since you can read those pretty much anywhere.  Quick summary though: a new 64GB Touch, price cuts for the 8GB & 32GB Touches and the shuffle, video camera for the nano.  What I really want to focus on (read: rant about) is iTunes 9.

So iTunes 9 is a wonderful update, I'm not disputing that.  The new features are excellent.  It looks pretty, it runs faster.  And everything I've read about the re-designed iTunes store makes me excited.

Except.  You need Safari 4 to use the iTunes store.  And, well, me being me (tell me if I have anybody else who does this), I go back and forth between Opera and Firefox and never actually use Safari.  So I don't have Safari 4, 'cause, hey, what's the point?  And I can't actually download the update because (as usual) I've been lazy and haven't updated my OS recently, so I'm still running 10.5.2, while you need 10.5.7 to get Safari 4.

Now, really.  I need two updates before I can use half of what makes iTunes so great.  I know I partly have myself to blame, but seriously.  The Safari download could be easier/still availible to us who don't have time to update to 10.5.x every month.  Or . . . just . . . i dunno, make iTunes work with earlier versions of Safari?

The upshot of all this is, I'm very happy with almost everything new.  Just that pesky iTunes store stops me from enjoying everything like I should.